Start Grind Barcelona Entrepreneur Insights

Welcome, welcome to Start Grind Barcelona. I hope that you have got some energies left from all this week at Mobile World Congress, because I fucking don't. Who's the first time coming to Start Grind Barcelona? Raise your hands, because I'm going to be very explicit about swearing. not. I'm not gonna judge, don't worry, I'm not biting. Cool, welcome. For those not knowing Sartre Brand, I'm gonna start with a little bit of an intro. It's gonna be fast because we want to go to the fireside chat, that's when you're gonna learn interesting things. Sartre Brand is the biggest... community for entrepreneurs worldwide what we do is connect inspire and answer and connect inspire and educate entrepreneurs in over 700 different chapters in more than 135 different countries open my time brightening everybody my name is Henry So, we don't pay our speakers, they pay us with their time. Time of founders is very precious and expensive. At the count of three, we're going to stand up and give her the biggest rock star applause. Okay? One, two, three, on your feet everybody. Welcome Laura on stage. Alright, alright. Oh, that was a very abrupt ending to the music. Yeah, thank you. Is it working? I think it is, yeah. Awesome. Well, usually my first question is how many times have you been welcomed on stage as a rock star? You got that question in 2007. So one yeah, so one second one it hasn't happened ever since no what happened? well, I Guess you are the only one that welcome people like this. So then you have to come again here to get the thesis second one yeah great um just to give some context to people here so uh i've known you for several years since i think two companies before this one right um the first one was a knock i remember there was a home exchange for people who are traveling basically families going to san francisco exchange your home with some somebody else in barcelona and you can stay there for a month something like that right you had another venture in the middle but now seems like you hit the jackpot with hotels network which is a company that is now 100 plus employees Please give some context to the audience because some of them, I remember they were in our last event with you, but some years have passed. So what do you exactly do and at what point you are? So we are a tool for hoteliers to personalize their website and grow their direct channel. So it's a B2B business, especially for hotels all around the world. So we are around 140 people today. in the company. We have been for seven and a half years in the market and it is from the beginning it was kind of clear that there was product market fit and we have been expanding the product and into more products and into more teams to continue growing from Barcelona but also with offices in other places. From Barcelona but you started in San Francisco. Because the first conversations we had about this company, you were living in San Francisco, so you took the other route. Usually companies are here, and then they're like, oh, I'm too famous now, I want to raise money, I want to make it big, I want to go to San Francisco. Whereas you came back here. Why did that happen? So we went there because we were part of an accelerator program that was there physically, being present there. And it's true that we thought that we were going to be able to raise money there. But San Francisco is not a place for travel. They are not interested in this industry specifically. And we saw that in Spain, yes, it is a place for travel. There's much more interest in Europe in general and in Spain specifically. So it's true that we decided to come back and raise money from here and it worked out. How about the, because the main topic of the conversation is going to be the pains of scaling up, especially in hyper growth, you raise a big series. And one of the things that is usually one of the first pain points for a company is going into scale-up mode is you have to switch from having generalist profiles in the company because you start up only with... Generally, it's people who would just like be a workhorse and help with legal, contract, sales, a little bit of marketing and blogging and maybe coding a little bit. To specialists, right? How did this transition happen? At what point did you start replacing these profiles? So it is true that we have tried not to replace but to evolve the profiles. So very around year two, you need to start having some specialists and combined with the generalists. So by year two you start to have more and more specialists and then of course by year six, seven we have really clear specialists. It is also very good that we have you find your profile and you get better and better at hiring and especially what you need for every department. So then now I think we have a we have master. I'm very happy with different and the different teams and how we master what is the profile that we need for to hire. But okay, that's interesting that you challenged me there, that you didn't replace them. However, I understand that if you're adding more specialists, the generalists will run out of things they could do. Because they have fewer jobs, right? Or fewer tasks in the company. they quit the company, right? And so by quitting the company, they were the early employees, and company culture has to adapt a little bit. So when did you start suffering losing your first employees, and what impact did it have in the culture? The real core ones didn't quit, so they are still with us. It is like that. Then it is true that maybe you hire a lower profile for some specific jobs and then you see that you need something that is higher. And usually what happens in our case is that they have found themselves not fitting into the job so then themselves they have gone out. And then it's when you replace for somebody with a higher experience, for example. Or in the case when you are really in hyper growth, you need to hire more people and you decide to go for a specific... A profile that has done it before, that's something that is usually what will happen with you at some point. You need some roles that they have done, that specific job of 100 more people in company, so they can come into your company, so then they know what type of... of specifically tech or processes to have. And we have done that mix between those that they wanted to leave and then those hires that were higher roles that just fit it into. what we needed in the next two, three years. I assume that some of these people you went to hire for these very specific things, it's because they either know the compliance in the sector, they bring the authority of having worked at a certain, I don't know, bank or big player in the industry, or maybe they have a certification, something like that, that's valid to your company. But that brings perhaps the component of some kind of conflict with the people existing there that they see like their promotion is maybe capped, right? Or the... they have some sort of a ceiling because you start bringing people from outside the organization. So how do you compensate this with career plans or motivating the people to grow personally inside the company? We have tried to raise people from within. We have tried to do more than bringing people from the outside. We have had specific trainings to get these people up and just hire less people for those top things that need to be done. But really, the growing up has worked in many different departments. From tech, success, sales, we have been growing people up. And it has been working. Because I assume that another challenge is keeping company culture because you have to hire a lot, right? Because the VC has given you, I don't remember the specifics of the accumulated rounds you've done, but say you've got 50 million in the bank right now that they have to be deployed in the next three years. That means that you have to double your headcount. That means that you have to... to hire 11 people per week, just making up some random numbers, right? That means that you have to make a lot of mistakes in hiring because you have to hire fast. So how do you optimize for this? How do you calibrate the, I'm going fast enough to find all these people, but at the same time I'm not fucking up with every single hire I do? So on one side we have tried not to go as quick as those numbers. We were around 80 when we spoke and now we are 140, 150. Thank you. So one of the main things is to have the hire profile very clear. At some point we decided to have two hiring people inside the house and they have managed, one is for tech and one is for sales and success, and they have really understood very well the type of profile that works with us and that has been a game changer for us to have somebody inside. What size of the company did you bring these higher new set hunters so to speak around 60? Where do the where do you source your people from like not only in markets But like what channels are using to hire in a in a world that's so complicated right now And also it's very there are a lot of players hiring for exactly the same profiles that you need, right? There's a lot of competition some companies paying more some companies hiring remotely from freaking San Francisco therefore the salaries are twice or thrice as much what you pay. So what are the channels and where do you source your people from? The truth is that for sales and success, LinkedIn is what is working the best. With ads or even just natural... people that apply. We of course have a... we pay an incentive for our people that will bring others to come aboard so that also works very well to have an incentive for those that are already in the company to bring. more people in how about product let's talk a little bit about about the product and because you know we know the the the roadmap of startups is usually we want to go from a to b however the the journey is not a straight line right it's usually like this and then go back like this and then you know we run out of funding and then the co-founder quits and then whatever so it's kind of like a lot of bumps in the in the road and so product suffers a lot from that um when did you realize that you had finally found product market feed, what year and what company size? In our case, we saw it very early that the hoteliers wanted to pay for this. So very early, we started to market and to have a price for it. It is true that maybe at the beginning it was too cheap. That's a mistake that usually we do. You put it too cheap, and then you see that it has really value, and then slowly we have been taking the product at a higher and higher price. adding additional things. Of course, the product is stronger, it's more robust at this time, and now the product is four times the price that we had initially. But the market fit was from the very beginning clear, like in the first three months. We tackled the correct thing that they wanted to have and they wanted to pay for. But was it because you had all this experience of these three companies you had created in the same space that probably you created this one when you already knew what you wanted to build? You didn't have this product discovery phase in this company because it's not your first company. Yeah. For us, it was talking to hoteliers what really made a difference. We spoke in, there were different conferences at the same time here in the city. Of course, Barcelona is a place where you have many types of our clients. Yeah. So we spoke with several and it was clear that they want it. We were able to then go back to the house, build program a little bit and then go back. And they said, yeah, I want it and I want to buy tomorrow this thing. And you mentioned pricing very briefly, but I think that's pretty key. And a lot of people are like, oh, I don't want to launch because I don't have figured. I haven't figured out my pricing yet. Whereas successful founders are like, fuck it. I'm just going to ship and then I'm going to tweak it every month. talking to people and I'm gonna change it every day, A-B testing, what not. How did you find out what your exact pricing was and like how long did it take to nail it? We still don't have it. No, no, no, now it's very clear. I mean, of course, in our case, we have to compare to other tech stack that the hoteliers were selling, were buying. So you have to compare to find a range that will work. And then, of course, is how much value are you bringing? At the beginning, we were not bringing so much value because the product was smaller, was slimmer. But then, as we have been growing and growing, now it's clear what is the price. And of course, we have the typical three pricing options where you can choose if you want something cheaper or you want something more expensive. And how did you get rid of the mental roadblock that comes from perhaps having imposter syndrome of saying like, no, that's probably too expensive for the client when you actually haven't asked or haven't tried, right? It's like, oh, no, you yourself, you're giving a no that the client would not have tell you. So it's like, oh, I think like 20 euros per month. I don't remember your pricing strategy. 20 euros per month, it's going to be too expensive for the client. Let's put 15. Whereas perhaps the clients wanted to pay that 20 euros. How did you overcome this situation? In our case, when we started to speak with the Americans, for them it was very cheap. Of course. It's always cheap. So then is when we saw, okay, I mean, if it's cheap for the Americans, I mean, we can take it up and then we have to take it up for the rest. Also, we see the numbers that the hoteliers are making every month because, of course, we have dashboards on, we track all the data. So we see their return on investment. So we can really see how much money extra they are making thanks to our products. So then it was easy. Okay, with this return on investment, then we can charge this. is very cheap for you. Did you made any fuck up regarding pricing? Like you said something that is too expensive sent the wrong pricing to the wrong person gave a discount to somebody who had already paid or something like that? Well, this always happens. Yeah. Especially Share a couple then. No, it's this is more the sales team it's not myself. But I mean, of course it's a very fragmented there are many, many clients many fragmented industry and And there are huge clients and then there's smaller ones. Some of them with just one hotel, some of them with hundreds. So these things that you are sending a price that you shouldn't be sending or you have a price for a partner that it shouldn't be shared, these type of things happen. For that, you need processes as you grow. Some of the pains that you will have as you grow is that you have to implement more processes. At the beginning, everybody knows everything. Then you grow and you have to standardize. and there is where you have to make sure that no mistakes happen thanks to these processes. And that's when the early stage generalists, they leave the company because it's not a fucking playground anymore. Now it's a serious business, I'm not interested in processes and workflows. It's gotten too serious, right? But in this sense, have you got any situation in which you had some kind of conflict because the team grew too large? Maybe not too rapidly because you said they didn't grow too rapidly, but in the case that, you know, the expectations weren't set enough with the early stage people that maybe they see that, you know, the shares options are not working out accordingly for them or maybe... they don't have the career progression. The company has switched in your product strategy or something like that. Have you had any big, major conflicts with team? There has been some small conflicts. I mean, this always happens. At the end, when you deal with people, they have their own passions, they want to grow, but then you have this number of options for everyone. So there's always this tension going on. Some people can grow up, some others, maybe they are not qualified enough or they don't... It's not the right time. And then to manage, you wait a little bit and then there will be some options in the future. This always happens in all the different teams that we had. And how do you distribute this kind of task within the... Maybe I assume it's like the co-founders take this responsibility or it's HR completely or HR screens them and you take on the most serious ones. What's your framework? In our case, the managers of each team is really responsible for training, for growing the people and then for choosing who is growing to the different, to higher levels. So it's really the manager taking the time also to grow the people into higher positions. Because. As I see this, like, 140 people is 140 problems. potentially like yeah it could be like oh uh one is underperforming the other one is overperforming and the team is upset the other one is gone away missing nobody knows what what the fuck is happening with that person somebody's like you know internal conflicts right ego battles something like that what is the what would you say like are the most conflicted parts in a in or teams in a company like yours because i assume you are very sales driven as a company they're super competitive but at the same time there's conflict customer success who perhaps they don't have the capacity to onboard as many clients as sales can do and then tech is like, oh, we want to develop something else, not that fast. How do you compensate all of these expectations between teams? I think you will see it in the future, but for me, the most conflicted teams are sales and tech. Yeah, or marketing and tech is also like, sales and tech, why? Sales because of course you have all this, I mean, they are really individualistic, going for their targets and really individualistic, really going for trying to get more market if they can. And then if there's any mistake, it usually is from someone else, is the product is not working, well, typical, all those things that you know. And then tech because of this competition that there's all around the world on talent. that if the project is not maybe their passion or if something happens something cross on their mind they want to change or they go to head hunting and then they get a better offer so those are the most ones conflicted ones for sure and I think in many companies that you will see in the future. I say that one of the most complex parts of scaling up teams is actually not losing people right people are like oh we gotta hire faster yes but also if you're losing a lot of people fast enough then you probably will not grow right so how do you see the future of scaling up teams? stop the bleeding or is there any any kind of strategy that you have to retain the talent I don't like the word retain right or maintain the talent in the company is it through company culture is it through motivation is it through like extreme coaching, what do you do in order to lower the employee attrition in the company? So one of the things that we have tried is to be very flexible and to really embrace the hybrid model in which you can come to the office or if you want, you don't. If you want to move to a different city, you can do it and you can still work with us. And then, so this is one of the, being really flexible has been one of the main things that has worked for us. And we try, this is a difference, like, if you want to work for a flexible company, it's going to be with us, because we really try this. And then culture. We really, so we are very flat. You can speak with the CEOs or with any of the other founders very easily. You can suggest and propose your ideas, and they will be listened to, and they will see an impact. These in other bigger ones or in other different type of organizations doesn't work. And here, when I speak with people, they say yes, I mean it's real. When I say something, it's going to be listened to and I see that there's going to be maybe an impact and we will start that new project, for example, when people suggest. Are these benefits that you mentioned only for developers or it extends to the rest of the team? Because some companies are like, no, only for developers because they are expensive to hire and whatnot. How about designers? They're people too, right? And then you create these first class citizens, second class citizens. Is it for everybody in the company? No, it's for everyone. Okay. And how about like... I mean, that's a complicated question, but where do you find your developers? Because I guess that's the question everybody wants to make. So we find them through headhunting, that is internal, and it also works for us to have CTO and certain people that are known in the industry, so then there's people that want to work with these people, and then also the project. So we are a type of, so we have, for example, data science, and we manage lots of lots of data, and there are some developers that they want to do that. So we try to focus on the product, and then on the people that we have already inside the company to attract new people. I think that one thing you did particularly well is to hire a, you are now CIO, but it used to be the CTO, because hiring a CTO that everybody wants to work for, that he's well known in the industry, will attract a lot of talent purely inbound with no marketing strategy, no nothing, just I want to work for Jordi, the name of your former CTO, right? So that's a good strategy if you really want to attract developers, right? The other thing I wanted to ask you regarding remote work, because you got a beautiful office. But since you're very flexible on remote work and you started in San Francisco and you allow for this in the team, some companies are like, yeah, developers get remote work, but sales, no. But not because developers, they want to have this sort of extra benefit for them. It's because sales, supposedly, they work together in a group. They perform better if they're in a room, just like being like alpha man and all of that. It's just like, ooh, just competing against each other, feeling like a team. Do you all? Do you see this kind of distribution also in sales and other departments that are not purely tech? In our case, it's also hybrid and they can come to the office a couple of days a week and the other days of the week. They stay at home and I know they feel very productive because there's no noise, they focus, and it's the days that they have more calls with clients. So in our case, it works very well that they have a couple of days or three days at home. To be boom, boom, boom. Also for success, it also works to be concentrated. You go, also have your calls with your clients or you have your onboarding where you have to focus on many different things. And it really, you know that the office day is going to be slower. It's going to be about talking with others and your day at home is going to be fast and very efficient. So you will accomplish a lot on those days. One of the things that it's probably a little bit stupid, but it makes a difference It is the people usually don't work on their background webcam background, right? If you don't take a lot of calls say like developers Maybe it's understandable like we got one of our best developers has got like it the Simpsons poster Like on the wall is like dude you can you can have these on the background while talking to our biggest client Which is a fucking huge corporate in the financial sector, all with a suit and a tie, and then you've got the fucking Simpsons behind you, right? So, have you actually worked on this to provide your team with, you know, virtual backgrounds or... I know it sounds stupid, but it actually makes a difference because it's the first impression, right? They have to talk to clients. Yeah, so we have a training for everyone, also for tech, where we talk about how to present yourself online. And how to... at the end is to be effective. If you are physically or you're online and you want to get your... message through and I also explain to the developers you also want to get your message through whatever it is with a client or within your team so but sometimes with their computers you cannot have a virtual background so then we say okay no worries we understand just make sure that you whatever message you want to tell you're gonna be telling this message as well so be be aware of that Yeah, because especially with remote workers in the people of like, you know working from the beach It's a project managers working from the pool all the time. I don't know like you don't really get a lot Doesn't work in our case now. I used to be back in the day when I was like a digital nomad wannabe, but for serious companies it doesn't really work. Is there anything regarding remote work and scaling up that's created some kind of conflict in the company? Namely, the meetings are not as productive, it's hard to... coordinate all the agendas and schedules in the company or you know people are less reactive they skip meetings more just because they forget to check calendar things like that it's not something that you have seen as counterproductive in our case no we have a small team so we try to work in small teams and it's you're very close to your team leader so at the end you're gonna have you have a team leader that is kind of there in case you in case these type of things happen, that usually in our case didn't. We also have a training again at the beginning when they join, it's very clear that we delegate and you are owner of your time and your project, but then we also expect from you that you will be on time on those different things. Let's talk a little bit about company culture, because it's one topic that I'm particularly passionate about. But as a starting company in the early days, you assume that you're going to get it right the first day, which is impossible. It's overly optimistic, and then you start hiring people like, oh yeah, maybe this is not going to happen. I'm not finding the right people. What things didn't you get right about company culture? What things have you had to adapt over time? Maybe, I think we were trying from the beginning. What's your company culture to start with? Can you describe it? One of the main things for example that we value is the speed. This is something that even if you grow we are really keen on maintaining a high speed because it's going to be the difference against the incumbents, the huge companies in the industry. And even if you are 100 and something you can still have small teams and keep the speed. get the speed with focus. We try to have less projects but really try to finish them in one week or two weeks and that really gives us the focus, it's helping the speed to go quick. At the beginning we were very clear on speed, even our annual company meeting is called the speed week. So that's because we want to make clear for everyone that we want speed and we are different to other companies. So at the beginning... Maybe, for example, we didn't embrace hybrid or from home before COVID. It was with COVID that, of course, we were prepared. Everybody had their laptops. Then is when we embraced hybrid. And then is when we hired more tech everywhere. So maybe that was maybe embracing hybrid from the beginning. From the beginning, I'm talking about 2016-17. That would have helped more. Yeah, I mean in hindsight I think we're all experts on remote, right? But I think a lot of people had to do this transition forcefully because of the pandemic and a lot of people were not prepared, they didn't have the equipment, they didn't have the laptops, the training, the backgrounds, the good Wi-Fi at home. So we was completely a lot of people was completely clueless. Thankfully you were a technological company So you were more well equipped now? Yeah, nothing said but however in terms of company culture They I always forget the number but they always say like company culture breaks north of 80 people, 100 people, I don't know. Like, when was the breaking point for your company culture? Is this something that you said like, oh, yeah, definitely, it's not the same culture we had in the early days. Something changed, even if it's like something small. Or you didn't experience this at all? I mean, of course, I guess that we were not as fast as we were when we were 10, 20, 30. But then we couldn't do what we can do now. So there's some trade-off. You cannot get the same speed as when you were smaller, but you can do a specific thing. things and here's a question for you what are you doing in your companies to have a speed to be quick even as you grow because that's something that is going to always keep you apart from others that are already players in the market so that's something that I think about every day what I can do every day to have higher speed than others how about the incentives so another thing that I think it doesn't get spoken about is the relationship with co-founders and leadership team right how do you keep your incentives and vision aligned because as a company evolves it grows maybe changes the direction you have to change market b2c to b2b or the other way around and you get investment and then there's politics come into play Do you recalibrate like every year with your co-founders, with your leadership team? Hey, this is where I stand personally, this is where I want the company to go. How do you do this thing, this realignment of vision of the company? So we were five from the beginning and the five of us still are in the company. We really like the project, so for us seeing the baby grow and grow was the main, main thing. We incorporated, of course, founding and we had the board with more and more and more people trying to have just a few seats on the board, so it's not a huge... How many? We, they have five and two of ours, so then we have one independent, so at the end it's two and independent. Okay. So this is not very complicated. For us it's more to execute and get this bigger and bigger and really, I mean, it's more for the clients, for... helping them to sell more, more than how much I have and how much you have. What are the lessons learned on the fundraising that you've done and the board composition? Is there something that you would do differently in another company? I think having the training or the experience from previous companies and also being in San Francisco, talking with many different people, I think we got a good balance on what was recommended to have. and what was healthy to have and I think we are happy with this structure. And how about your department because you're the VP of Customer Success and I think normally, you know, we invite only like CEOs and CTOs, maybe operations, but not this very specific profile. Can you run us through what does your team do and how it evolved over time because I think that... When you start you want to onboard every client you have, right? But then it's like, oh maybe like the free tier will have to become self-service or they have something automated and I'm gonna be working only on the corporates or tier 2 and tier 3, right? So things like that. How did it evolve over time? Yeah, in fact we have evolved into having smaller teams, more specialized and this is something that of course will happen as well to you. As you grow you need more specialization. So now we have four teams within the success team. One is for onboarding. One is for smaller clients that we just have them kind of self-serve. Then we have one that is for growth. So we have a team that is doing the upselling and is really growing for, it's trying to grow the additional products that we are launching. And then we have the client success for the medium and big clients. So specialization is key. And then smaller teams, we have even smaller teams within those teams, because we have many languages in our case, so we have to really focus on the different languages and different markets that might have different needs. And as we have been growing, this has been the kind of what has been working for us. You know, our legacy contracts, right, because I assume that, you know, startups, they change all the time. If you're lucky enough, you don't have to change your product a lot, but pricing has changed in your case. Conditions might have changed. You have now a bigger set of languages, as you mentioned, and your company provides more value over time. However, you might or might not be increasing your price, and then you probably have changed your contracts, but not with everybody. You've got legacy contracts that if you change something, you remove this feature, you turn a percentage of your clients, right? So who's in charge of that? How do you deal with the legacy in the product? In charge, as you grow, that's kind of the most complicated thing. Also, how to take prices up for the ones at the beginning. So in charge, at the end, is kind of the management team that is going to decide when is the time to change prices and to adapt the contracts for the different clients. So sales will be a little bit more involved. But then also success will have to be involved at some point to make sure that that takes into place. Let's start, kind of to wrap this up a little bit, I want to open the floor for questions, but it's always fun to ask this one, but what's your most expensive fuck-up in the company? In this company. In this one. Because the other time you shared like your previous startup, you closed it too late, and you lost quite a few hundred dollars, something like that. But in this company, what's your most expensive fuck-up? So one thing, I mean, of course, is not having a higher price at the beginning. I think we could have put a little bit more just from the beginning so then it's easier to take it up. And then, of course, you will experience in yourselves that billing is one of the most complicated things. When you have to bill many countries, many languages, many different products, it's complicated. So I would say take a tech stack, take a platform that will allow you. to build correctly even if you have to pay a little bit more i think it's something that is key to be to be prepared when you are bigger how many times have you been close to shutting down the company zero zero okay and close to not paying employees because you were running out of money or something zero we were i mean we raised just before covet for example and we didn't we didn't fire or take into air dead to anyone because We decided to invest and develop new products in this time and we also thought that the industry was going to rebound and to really as we are seeing now that the industry is totally back. We thought it was gonna be quicker that the engine has been but summer 2020 was amazing summer 2021 was also very good and then from there it's just up. I mean I'm surprised because normally I ask this question to everybody and they're like whoa eight times, ten times, twelve times, you're like, zero? I mean, hard to believe, but good for you. Probably it shows that you have been an entrepreneur before and you can manage these kind of situations. Is there any specific advice you would like to give people here with regards to fundraising now? Because you've done fundraising in the last three years that have been particularly challenging, even more so now in the last months, but I know, the reason I'm asking this is because resourcefulness and capital allocation are two key skills that I look for in an entrepreneur. when I invest for instance, then I think that you have done it particularly well as a company owner, right? What's your approach to fundraising now? It will be like shorter and smaller rounds in order to not lose a lot of valuation or maybe take as much money as possible because you don't know how long this is gonna last for? Well there's not so much money in the market, it depends also on your on your stage. My recommendation would always say take the minimum you need even sometimes Sometimes we are in a startup environment, but sometimes we want to just build a company that is sustainable in itself. So one is, do you really need funding or not? Could be that you don't need. And then if you decide that you want, then you will also decide that you play the whole circus that it is, that will mean that at the end you have to sell or you have to sell to someone or you have to IPO. But if you decide to play, then I would say start with the minimum that you need, especially now that there's not so much money in the market. Once then you can get... There's also debt, so there's no need for everything to be funded. There's also debt, so there's also other options that you can explore. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the reason I'm bringing this up is because, I mean, we got people here from Exotica and there's another travel tech company from Barcelona. What they did in the pandemic was like, OK, we cannot, people cannot travel now, but it doesn't mean people cannot buy future travel. So they sold a fuck ton of future travels and that gave them cash. Because in their case they sell like prepackaged travel destinations. So all of a sudden they had like tons of cash that they had raised for free. And people could execute these travel packages in the future. In your case, it's different because you work with hotels. So the cash flow is different, right? So you've got to be creative. And I think that we've got to end the mentality of, you know, it's only fundraising, fundraising, dilution, dilution, dilution. Because there's crowdfunding, there's venture debt, there's sales and bootstrapping, there's doing consulting on the side. There are other kinds of financing available. So I 100% applaud your recommendation of maybe you don't have to raise. capital. Any other advice you'd like to give to the founders and entrepreneurs here before we wrap it up and go for beer? Because I know we both want beer. So I was reading, so this is going to be the year I was reading an article of client success or customer success. So as there's going to be less money, people have to be, companies have to be more efficient. And there's an article that is called the snowball of the turn, that the turn in itself that you're gonna you might experience this year, in fact it's a snowball. It looks like it's small, but as it's going down the hill, it's getting bigger and bigger, because not only the revenue that you are losing today, it's also the revenue that you are losing in the future, because it's not going to stay with you. And you're also losing these buyers, these managers, marketing manager, e-commerce managers, that are not buying from you and will go to other companies, and they will not experience your product. So any turn that seems that it's a small, in fact, it's a big loss for the company. So in a way, it's the year for client success or customer success to stop this turn happening. As they will have less money, they might be thinking of cutting some resources, some products, and we don't want them to cut your products. And the last one. How can we help you? What do you need as a company? So as you said at the beginning, we are hiring for client success. We are also hiring in sales and in tech. In data, data science and tech, backend, frontend. You can see our offers in the company, in the website. And then of course we are pro the direct channel of the hotels. So if you are a booking or Expedia client, always check the website of the hotel. Because usually they have a better offer. So why not checking and booking directly? It's going to be better and also better for you. You will have a better service when you book direct. Just a recommendation, a tip from the industry. A hundred percent. I do that all the time because I started getting like sometimes 40% discount, 50% discount. So you call to the hotel, they're like, yeah, happily don't go through booking. And so they give you these crazy discounts, a hundred percent of these. Well, thank you very much. Big applause for Laura. Thank you to you. Thanks. I'm gonna be opening the floor for questions. Raise your hand. One question per person and try to be as generic like don't ask things. Oh, my company does this, does that. Thank you. I have a short question. The main reason I never really booked to the hotel websites is because I don't want my email address to be out there and then to get like reminder emails and every month or every year I get another email from those hotels. Can you relate or is there some way to get around this? If you just book and you don't join their newsletter, they shouldn't send you emails. And also they don't have the right to do it. So the main thing is you don't want to join their newsletter, don't do it. But a reservation will not... shouldn't be able to send you anything. Especially now with GDPR. They should not. They try to ask you for the phone and email and you're like, no. Is it mandatory? And they have to say no, obviously. Next one? There's one over there. Thank you. Hi, my name is Harriet. I'm a financial controller at a startup similar size to you, about 150 people. I'm interested to know how your finance team is structured, whether that's globally, a headquarters, size... the team? So we have a team around five and it's centralized here in Barcelona because at the end we send the invoices from here even though it's from we're doing several languages and in several currencies but the team is centralized here with different people, different languages is true but different people here all in Barcelona. Do you know what accounting software they use out of interest? Do you know what finance software they're using out of interest? Software? Yeah, so we are moving into Salesforce billing. Okay. And yeah, before we have... That's something that I don't recommend. Okay, sounds very similar to my situation. Do you want to share the company you work for? Arbalest. We're an experts slash knowledge sharing startup. We're based in the other country. CloudWorks on Paso de Shigracia. Okay. Thank you. Salesforce Billion. So then it's integrated with Salesforce that, of course, we use for our CRM. That's many. Cool. Any last questions? No. Oh, yeah. No pressure. I mean, you're separating us from the beers. Take your time. You mentioned Spit. I was curious about how do you implement or... which actions do you take to ensure speed within the company? Yes, there's many two things. One is to have small teams, and then the second one is focus on those teams. So not having many, many projects to accomplish, have one or two projects, sprints of one week or two weeks max, and then get to do them and then go for the next one. There was another one here in the front. Yeah. Sorry, thank you. What has changed forever for good and what is coming back like before in your business? In the travel business? Well, yes, in the way you operate your business, could be culture or modus operandi, you say that things are coming back, you know? So what is coming back normal and what has changed for good? So one is having meetings online with top players, with the marketing manager. In the past, we had to go and see them. physically and that's a huge and it's a traditional industry so that was kind of the way to go and now it's much more efficient Now the salespeople can do a demo, share a screen, and especially the other one on the other side is used to it, and now they understand and they buy this way. So this is much, much more efficient. Things that are coming back. Fairs, for example. Some people saw that the traditional fair is not coming back, and yes, it is. Next week is ITB Berlin. It's the biggest travel fair in the world, and it's going to be huge. And Fitur here in Spain, you want to see them from time to time physically. in person to close a deal or to strengthen relationship but then you can also do online that's for good Ok, another one Hello thank you for your time and this interesting speech I had some questions about company culture but you answered most of them already so I just wanted to ask further or more how you create in a very fast growing team values and as transparency for example especially when you say you have a lot of different smaller teams which sounds very useful but then how do you create this common sense and transparency between these different teams So one of the things that we try to do very much is knowledge documentation, like knowledge center. In fact, we use Notion, for example, for this knowledge base, and it works very well. So then everyone can relate to different articles written there that we try to update very frequently. So they transfer, everyone knows what's the process, what's the procedure to do something specific. And then of course we use Slack that is quick. for everyone, but you can usually go first to read in Notion. If you don't find it, maybe you ask a teammate. Okay, thank you. Nice. Thank you. Last one? No? Perfect. Yeah, be your time. All right. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Big applause for Laura again. Thanks to you. Thank you. I don't remember the specifics of the catering, I guess it's rooftop? Rooftop, there's gonna be beer, there's gonna be a bit of catering, enjoy yourselves. Till what time can we be here? 9.30. That's why I pointed to you because you're gonna be the bad cop like They're gonna be geeky's at 930. We got plenty of time one hour of networking Enjoy this fantastic phenomenal building and again, thank you very much to cloud works for these phenomenal phenomenal welcome

Raise your hands, because I'm going to be very explicit about swearing. not. I'm not gonna judge, don't worry, I'm not biting. Cool, welcome.

For those not knowing Sartre Brand, I'm gonna start with a little bit of an intro. It's gonna be fast because we want to go to the fireside chat, that's when you're gonna learn interesting things. Sartre Brand is the biggest... community for entrepreneurs worldwide what we do is connect inspire and answer and connect inspire and educate entrepreneurs in over 700 different chapters in more than 135 different countries open my time brightening everybody my name is Henry So, we don't pay our speakers, they pay us with their time.

Time of founders is very precious and expensive. At the count of three, we're going to stand up and give her the biggest rock star applause. Okay?

One, two, three, on your feet everybody. Welcome Laura on stage. Alright, alright. Oh, that was a very abrupt ending to the music. Yeah, thank you.

Is it working? I think it is, yeah. Awesome.

Well, usually my first question is how many times have you been welcomed on stage as a rock star? You got that question in 2007. So one yeah, so one second one it hasn't happened ever since no what happened? well, I Guess you are the only one that welcome people like this. So then you have to come again here to get the thesis second one yeah great um just to give some context to people here so uh i've known you for several years since i think two companies before this one right um the first one was a knock i remember there was a home exchange for people who are traveling basically families going to san francisco exchange your home with some somebody else in barcelona and you can stay there for a month something like that right you had another venture in the middle but now seems like you hit the jackpot with hotels network which is a company that is now 100 plus employees Please give some context to the audience because some of them, I remember they were in our last event with you, but some years have passed. So what do you exactly do and at what point you are?

So we are a tool for hoteliers to personalize their website and grow their direct channel. So it's a B2B business, especially for hotels all around the world. So we are around 140 people today. in the company.

We have been for seven and a half years in the market and it is from the beginning it was kind of clear that there was product market fit and we have been expanding the product and into more products and into more teams to continue growing from Barcelona but also with offices in other places. From Barcelona but you started in San Francisco. Because the first conversations we had about this company, you were living in San Francisco, so you took the other route.

Usually companies are here, and then they're like, oh, I'm too famous now, I want to raise money, I want to make it big, I want to go to San Francisco. Whereas you came back here. Why did that happen? So we went there because we were part of an accelerator program that was there physically, being present there.

And it's true that we thought that we were going to be able to raise money there. But San Francisco is not a place for travel. They are not interested in this industry specifically. And we saw that in Spain, yes, it is a place for travel.

There's much more interest in Europe in general and in Spain specifically. So it's true that we decided to come back and raise money from here and it worked out. How about the, because the main topic of the conversation is going to be the pains of scaling up, especially in hyper growth, you raise a big series.

And one of the things that is usually one of the first pain points for a company is going into scale-up mode is you have to switch from having generalist profiles in the company because you start up only with... Generally, it's people who would just like be a workhorse and help with legal, contract, sales, a little bit of marketing and blogging and maybe coding a little bit. To specialists, right?

How did this transition happen? At what point did you start replacing these profiles? So it is true that we have tried not to replace but to evolve the profiles.

So very around year two, you need to start having some specialists and combined with the generalists. So by year two you start to have more and more specialists and then of course by year six, seven we have really clear specialists. It is also very good that we have you find your profile and you get better and better at hiring and especially what you need for every department. So then now I think we have a we have master.

I'm very happy with different and the different teams and how we master what is the profile that we need for to hire. But okay, that's interesting that you challenged me there, that you didn't replace them. However, I understand that if you're adding more specialists, the generalists will run out of things they could do. Because they have fewer jobs, right? Or fewer tasks in the company.

they quit the company, right? And so by quitting the company, they were the early employees, and company culture has to adapt a little bit. So when did you start suffering losing your first employees, and what impact did it have in the culture? The real core ones didn't quit, so they are still with us.

It is like that. Then it is true that maybe you hire a lower profile for some specific jobs and then you see that you need something that is higher. And usually what happens in our case is that they have found themselves not fitting into the job so then themselves they have gone out.

And then it's when you replace for somebody with a higher experience, for example. Or in the case when you are really in hyper growth, you need to hire more people and you decide to go for a specific... A profile that has done it before, that's something that is usually what will happen with you at some point. You need some roles that they have done, that specific job of 100 more people in company, so they can come into your company, so then they know what type of...

of specifically tech or processes to have. And we have done that mix between those that they wanted to leave and then those hires that were higher roles that just fit it into. what we needed in the next two, three years. I assume that some of these people you went to hire for these very specific things, it's because they either know the compliance in the sector, they bring the authority of having worked at a certain, I don't know, bank or big player in the industry, or maybe they have a certification, something like that, that's valid to your company. But that brings perhaps the component of some kind of conflict with the people existing there that they see like their promotion is maybe capped, right?

Or the... they have some sort of a ceiling because you start bringing people from outside the organization. So how do you compensate this with career plans or motivating the people to grow personally inside the company?

We have tried to raise people from within. We have tried to do more than bringing people from the outside. We have had specific trainings to get these people up and just hire less people for those top things that need to be done. But really, the growing up has worked in many different departments. From tech, success, sales, we have been growing people up.

And it has been working. Because I assume that another challenge is keeping company culture because you have to hire a lot, right? Because the VC has given you, I don't remember the specifics of the accumulated rounds you've done, but say you've got 50 million in the bank right now that they have to be deployed in the next three years.

That means that you have to double your headcount. That means that you have to... to hire 11 people per week, just making up some random numbers, right?

That means that you have to make a lot of mistakes in hiring because you have to hire fast. So how do you optimize for this? How do you calibrate the, I'm going fast enough to find all these people, but at the same time I'm not fucking up with every single hire I do?

So on one side we have tried not to go as quick as those numbers. We were around 80 when we spoke and now we are 140, 150. Thank you. So one of the main things is to have the hire profile very clear.

At some point we decided to have two hiring people inside the house and they have managed, one is for tech and one is for sales and success, and they have really understood very well the type of profile that works with us and that has been a game changer for us to have somebody inside. What size of the company did you bring these higher new set hunters so to speak around 60? Where do the where do you source your people from like not only in markets But like what channels are using to hire in a in a world that's so complicated right now And also it's very there are a lot of players hiring for exactly the same profiles that you need, right?

There's a lot of competition some companies paying more some companies hiring remotely from freaking San Francisco therefore the salaries are twice or thrice as much what you pay. So what are the channels and where do you source your people from? The truth is that for sales and success, LinkedIn is what is working the best.

With ads or even just natural... people that apply. We of course have a...

we pay an incentive for our people that will bring others to come aboard so that also works very well to have an incentive for those that are already in the company to bring. more people in how about product let's talk a little bit about about the product and because you know we know the the the roadmap of startups is usually we want to go from a to b however the the journey is not a straight line right it's usually like this and then go back like this and then you know we run out of funding and then the co-founder quits and then whatever so it's kind of like a lot of bumps in the in the road and so product suffers a lot from that um when did you realize that you had finally found product market feed, what year and what company size? In our case, we saw it very early that the hoteliers wanted to pay for this. So very early, we started to market and to have a price for it. It is true that maybe at the beginning it was too cheap.

That's a mistake that usually we do. You put it too cheap, and then you see that it has really value, and then slowly we have been taking the product at a higher and higher price. adding additional things. Of course, the product is stronger, it's more robust at this time, and now the product is four times the price that we had initially. But the market fit was from the very beginning clear, like in the first three months.

We tackled the correct thing that they wanted to have and they wanted to pay for. But was it because you had all this experience of these three companies you had created in the same space that probably you created this one when you already knew what you wanted to build? You didn't have this product discovery phase in this company because it's not your first company.

Yeah. For us, it was talking to hoteliers what really made a difference. We spoke in, there were different conferences at the same time here in the city. Of course, Barcelona is a place where you have many types of our clients.

Yeah. So we spoke with several and it was clear that they want it. We were able to then go back to the house, build program a little bit and then go back. And they said, yeah, I want it and I want to buy tomorrow this thing.

And you mentioned pricing very briefly, but I think that's pretty key. And a lot of people are like, oh, I don't want to launch because I don't have figured. I haven't figured out my pricing yet.

Whereas successful founders are like, fuck it. I'm just going to ship and then I'm going to tweak it every month. talking to people and I'm gonna change it every day, A-B testing, what not.

How did you find out what your exact pricing was and like how long did it take to nail it? We still don't have it. No, no, no, now it's very clear.

I mean, of course, in our case, we have to compare to other tech stack that the hoteliers were selling, were buying. So you have to compare to find a range that will work. And then, of course, is how much value are you bringing?

At the beginning, we were not bringing so much value because the product was smaller, was slimmer. But then, as we have been growing and growing, now it's clear what is the price. And of course, we have the typical three pricing options where you can choose if you want something cheaper or you want something more expensive. And how did you get rid of the mental roadblock that comes from perhaps having imposter syndrome of saying like, no, that's probably too expensive for the client when you actually haven't asked or haven't tried, right?

It's like, oh, no, you yourself, you're giving a no that the client would not have tell you. So it's like, oh, I think like 20 euros per month. I don't remember your pricing strategy. 20 euros per month, it's going to be too expensive for the client. Let's put 15. Whereas perhaps the clients wanted to pay that 20 euros.

How did you overcome this situation? In our case, when we started to speak with the Americans, for them it was very cheap. Of course.

It's always cheap. So then is when we saw, okay, I mean, if it's cheap for the Americans, I mean, we can take it up and then we have to take it up for the rest. Also, we see the numbers that the hoteliers are making every month because, of course, we have dashboards on, we track all the data.

So we see their return on investment. So we can really see how much money extra they are making thanks to our products. So then it was easy. Okay, with this return on investment, then we can charge this. is very cheap for you.

Did you made any fuck up regarding pricing? Like you said something that is too expensive sent the wrong pricing to the wrong person gave a discount to somebody who had already paid or something like that? Well, this always happens.

Yeah. Especially Share a couple then. No, it's this is more the sales team it's not myself. But I mean, of course it's a very fragmented there are many, many clients many fragmented industry and And there are huge clients and then there's smaller ones. Some of them with just one hotel, some of them with hundreds.

So these things that you are sending a price that you shouldn't be sending or you have a price for a partner that it shouldn't be shared, these type of things happen. For that, you need processes as you grow. Some of the pains that you will have as you grow is that you have to implement more processes. At the beginning, everybody knows everything.

Then you grow and you have to standardize. and there is where you have to make sure that no mistakes happen thanks to these processes. And that's when the early stage generalists, they leave the company because it's not a fucking playground anymore. Now it's a serious business, I'm not interested in processes and workflows.

It's gotten too serious, right? But in this sense, have you got any situation in which you had some kind of conflict because the team grew too large? Maybe not too rapidly because you said they didn't grow too rapidly, but in the case that, you know, the expectations weren't set enough with the early stage people that maybe they see that, you know, the shares options are not working out accordingly for them or maybe... they don't have the career progression.

The company has switched in your product strategy or something like that. Have you had any big, major conflicts with team? There has been some small conflicts.

I mean, this always happens. At the end, when you deal with people, they have their own passions, they want to grow, but then you have this number of options for everyone. So there's always this tension going on.

Some people can grow up, some others, maybe they are not qualified enough or they don't... It's not the right time. And then to manage, you wait a little bit and then there will be some options in the future. This always happens in all the different teams that we had.

And how do you distribute this kind of task within the... Maybe I assume it's like the co-founders take this responsibility or it's HR completely or HR screens them and you take on the most serious ones. What's your framework? In our case, the managers of each team is really responsible for training, for growing the people and then for choosing who is growing to the different, to higher levels.

So it's really the manager taking the time also to grow the people into higher positions. Because. As I see this, like, 140 people is 140 problems.

potentially like yeah it could be like oh uh one is underperforming the other one is overperforming and the team is upset the other one is gone away missing nobody knows what what the fuck is happening with that person somebody's like you know internal conflicts right ego battles something like that what is the what would you say like are the most conflicted parts in a in or teams in a company like yours because i assume you are very sales driven as a company they're super competitive but at the same time there's conflict customer success who perhaps they don't have the capacity to onboard as many clients as sales can do and then tech is like, oh, we want to develop something else, not that fast. How do you compensate all of these expectations between teams? I think you will see it in the future, but for me, the most conflicted teams are sales and tech. Yeah, or marketing and tech is also like, sales and tech, why?

Sales because of course you have all this, I mean, they are really individualistic, going for their targets and really individualistic, really going for trying to get more market if they can. And then if there's any mistake, it usually is from someone else, is the product is not working, well, typical, all those things that you know. And then tech because of this competition that there's all around the world on talent. that if the project is not maybe their passion or if something happens something cross on their mind they want to change or they go to head hunting and then they get a better offer so those are the most ones conflicted ones for sure and I think in many companies that you will see in the future. I say that one of the most complex parts of scaling up teams is actually not losing people right people are like oh we gotta hire faster yes but also if you're losing a lot of people fast enough then you probably will not grow right so how do you see the future of scaling up teams?

stop the bleeding or is there any any kind of strategy that you have to retain the talent I don't like the word retain right or maintain the talent in the company is it through company culture is it through motivation is it through like extreme coaching, what do you do in order to lower the employee attrition in the company? So one of the things that we have tried is to be very flexible and to really embrace the hybrid model in which you can come to the office or if you want, you don't. If you want to move to a different city, you can do it and you can still work with us. And then, so this is one of the, being really flexible has been one of the main things that has worked for us. And we try, this is a difference, like, if you want to work for a flexible company, it's going to be with us, because we really try this.

And then culture. We really, so we are very flat. You can speak with the CEOs or with any of the other founders very easily.

You can suggest and propose your ideas, and they will be listened to, and they will see an impact. These in other bigger ones or in other different type of organizations doesn't work. And here, when I speak with people, they say yes, I mean it's real.

When I say something, it's going to be listened to and I see that there's going to be maybe an impact and we will start that new project, for example, when people suggest. Are these benefits that you mentioned only for developers or it extends to the rest of the team? Because some companies are like, no, only for developers because they are expensive to hire and whatnot. How about designers? They're people too, right?

And then you create these first class citizens, second class citizens. Is it for everybody in the company? No, it's for everyone. Okay. And how about like...

I mean, that's a complicated question, but where do you find your developers? Because I guess that's the question everybody wants to make. So we find them through headhunting, that is internal, and it also works for us to have CTO and certain people that are known in the industry, so then there's people that want to work with these people, and then also the project. So we are a type of, so we have, for example, data science, and we manage lots of lots of data, and there are some developers that they want to do that.

So we try to focus on the product, and then on the people that we have already inside the company to attract new people. I think that one thing you did particularly well is to hire a, you are now CIO, but it used to be the CTO, because hiring a CTO that everybody wants to work for, that he's well known in the industry, will attract a lot of talent purely inbound with no marketing strategy, no nothing, just I want to work for Jordi, the name of your former CTO, right? So that's a good strategy if you really want to attract developers, right?

The other thing I wanted to ask you regarding remote work, because you got a beautiful office. But since you're very flexible on remote work and you started in San Francisco and you allow for this in the team, some companies are like, yeah, developers get remote work, but sales, no. But not because developers, they want to have this sort of extra benefit for them. It's because sales, supposedly, they work together in a group. They perform better if they're in a room, just like being like alpha man and all of that.

It's just like, ooh, just competing against each other, feeling like a team. Do you all? Do you see this kind of distribution also in sales and other departments that are not purely tech?

In our case, it's also hybrid and they can come to the office a couple of days a week and the other days of the week. They stay at home and I know they feel very productive because there's no noise, they focus, and it's the days that they have more calls with clients. So in our case, it works very well that they have a couple of days or three days at home. To be boom, boom, boom.

Also for success, it also works to be concentrated. You go, also have your calls with your clients or you have your onboarding where you have to focus on many different things. And it really, you know that the office day is going to be slower. It's going to be about talking with others and your day at home is going to be fast and very efficient. So you will accomplish a lot on those days.

One of the things that it's probably a little bit stupid, but it makes a difference It is the people usually don't work on their background webcam background, right? If you don't take a lot of calls say like developers Maybe it's understandable like we got one of our best developers has got like it the Simpsons poster Like on the wall is like dude you can you can have these on the background while talking to our biggest client Which is a fucking huge corporate in the financial sector, all with a suit and a tie, and then you've got the fucking Simpsons behind you, right? So, have you actually worked on this to provide your team with, you know, virtual backgrounds or...

I know it sounds stupid, but it actually makes a difference because it's the first impression, right? They have to talk to clients. Yeah, so we have a training for everyone, also for tech, where we talk about how to present yourself online.

And how to... at the end is to be effective. If you are physically or you're online and you want to get your...

message through and I also explain to the developers you also want to get your message through whatever it is with a client or within your team so but sometimes with their computers you cannot have a virtual background so then we say okay no worries we understand just make sure that you whatever message you want to tell you're gonna be telling this message as well so be be aware of that Yeah, because especially with remote workers in the people of like, you know working from the beach It's a project managers working from the pool all the time. I don't know like you don't really get a lot Doesn't work in our case now. I used to be back in the day when I was like a digital nomad wannabe, but for serious companies it doesn't really work. Is there anything regarding remote work and scaling up that's created some kind of conflict in the company? Namely, the meetings are not as productive, it's hard to...

coordinate all the agendas and schedules in the company or you know people are less reactive they skip meetings more just because they forget to check calendar things like that it's not something that you have seen as counterproductive in our case no we have a small team so we try to work in small teams and it's you're very close to your team leader so at the end you're gonna have you have a team leader that is kind of there in case you in case these type of things happen, that usually in our case didn't. We also have a training again at the beginning when they join, it's very clear that we delegate and you are owner of your time and your project, but then we also expect from you that you will be on time on those different things. Let's talk a little bit about company culture, because it's one topic that I'm particularly passionate about. But as a starting company in the early days, you assume that you're going to get it right the first day, which is impossible. It's overly optimistic, and then you start hiring people like, oh yeah, maybe this is not going to happen.

I'm not finding the right people. What things didn't you get right about company culture? What things have you had to adapt over time? Maybe, I think we were trying from the beginning.

What's your company culture to start with? Can you describe it? One of the main things for example that we value is the speed.

This is something that even if you grow we are really keen on maintaining a high speed because it's going to be the difference against the incumbents, the huge companies in the industry. And even if you are 100 and something you can still have small teams and keep the speed. get the speed with focus. We try to have less projects but really try to finish them in one week or two weeks and that really gives us the focus, it's helping the speed to go quick.

At the beginning we were very clear on speed, even our annual company meeting is called the speed week. So that's because we want to make clear for everyone that we want speed and we are different to other companies. So at the beginning...

Maybe, for example, we didn't embrace hybrid or from home before COVID. It was with COVID that, of course, we were prepared. Everybody had their laptops. Then is when we embraced hybrid. And then is when we hired more tech everywhere.

So maybe that was maybe embracing hybrid from the beginning. From the beginning, I'm talking about 2016-17. That would have helped more. Yeah, I mean in hindsight I think we're all experts on remote, right? But I think a lot of people had to do this transition forcefully because of the pandemic and a lot of people were not prepared, they didn't have the equipment, they didn't have the laptops, the training, the backgrounds, the good Wi-Fi at home.

So we was completely a lot of people was completely clueless. Thankfully you were a technological company So you were more well equipped now? Yeah, nothing said but however in terms of company culture They I always forget the number but they always say like company culture breaks north of 80 people, 100 people, I don't know. Like, when was the breaking point for your company culture? Is this something that you said like, oh, yeah, definitely, it's not the same culture we had in the early days.

Something changed, even if it's like something small. Or you didn't experience this at all? I mean, of course, I guess that we were not as fast as we were when we were 10, 20, 30. But then we couldn't do what we can do now.

So there's some trade-off. You cannot get the same speed as when you were smaller, but you can do a specific thing. things and here's a question for you what are you doing in your companies to have a speed to be quick even as you grow because that's something that is going to always keep you apart from others that are already players in the market so that's something that I think about every day what I can do every day to have higher speed than others how about the incentives so another thing that I think it doesn't get spoken about is the relationship with co-founders and leadership team right how do you keep your incentives and vision aligned because as a company evolves it grows maybe changes the direction you have to change market b2c to b2b or the other way around and you get investment and then there's politics come into play Do you recalibrate like every year with your co-founders, with your leadership team?

Hey, this is where I stand personally, this is where I want the company to go. How do you do this thing, this realignment of vision of the company? So we were five from the beginning and the five of us still are in the company.

We really like the project, so for us seeing the baby grow and grow was the main, main thing. We incorporated, of course, founding and we had the board with more and more and more people trying to have just a few seats on the board, so it's not a huge... How many? We, they have five and two of ours, so then we have one independent, so at the end it's two and independent.

Okay. So this is not very complicated. For us it's more to execute and get this bigger and bigger and really, I mean, it's more for the clients, for...

helping them to sell more, more than how much I have and how much you have. What are the lessons learned on the fundraising that you've done and the board composition? Is there something that you would do differently in another company? I think having the training or the experience from previous companies and also being in San Francisco, talking with many different people, I think we got a good balance on what was recommended to have. and what was healthy to have and I think we are happy with this structure.

And how about your department because you're the VP of Customer Success and I think normally, you know, we invite only like CEOs and CTOs, maybe operations, but not this very specific profile. Can you run us through what does your team do and how it evolved over time because I think that... When you start you want to onboard every client you have, right?

But then it's like, oh maybe like the free tier will have to become self-service or they have something automated and I'm gonna be working only on the corporates or tier 2 and tier 3, right? So things like that. How did it evolve over time?

Yeah, in fact we have evolved into having smaller teams, more specialized and this is something that of course will happen as well to you. As you grow you need more specialization. So now we have four teams within the success team. One is for onboarding. One is for smaller clients that we just have them kind of self-serve.

Then we have one that is for growth. So we have a team that is doing the upselling and is really growing for, it's trying to grow the additional products that we are launching. And then we have the client success for the medium and big clients. So specialization is key.

And then smaller teams, we have even smaller teams within those teams, because we have many languages in our case, so we have to really focus on the different languages and different markets that might have different needs. And as we have been growing, this has been the kind of what has been working for us. You know, our legacy contracts, right, because I assume that, you know, startups, they change all the time.

If you're lucky enough, you don't have to change your product a lot, but pricing has changed in your case. Conditions might have changed. You have now a bigger set of languages, as you mentioned, and your company provides more value over time.

However, you might or might not be increasing your price, and then you probably have changed your contracts, but not with everybody. You've got legacy contracts that if you change something, you remove this feature, you turn a percentage of your clients, right? So who's in charge of that?

How do you deal with the legacy in the product? In charge, as you grow, that's kind of the most complicated thing. Also, how to take prices up for the ones at the beginning.

So in charge, at the end, is kind of the management team that is going to decide when is the time to change prices and to adapt the contracts for the different clients. So sales will be a little bit more involved. But then also success will have to be involved at some point to make sure that that takes into place.

Let's start, kind of to wrap this up a little bit, I want to open the floor for questions, but it's always fun to ask this one, but what's your most expensive fuck-up in the company? In this company. In this one.

Because the other time you shared like your previous startup, you closed it too late, and you lost quite a few hundred dollars, something like that. But in this company, what's your most expensive fuck-up? So one thing, I mean, of course, is not having a higher price at the beginning.

I think we could have put a little bit more just from the beginning so then it's easier to take it up. And then, of course, you will experience in yourselves that billing is one of the most complicated things. When you have to bill many countries, many languages, many different products, it's complicated. So I would say take a tech stack, take a platform that will allow you.

to build correctly even if you have to pay a little bit more i think it's something that is key to be to be prepared when you are bigger how many times have you been close to shutting down the company zero zero okay and close to not paying employees because you were running out of money or something zero we were i mean we raised just before covet for example and we didn't we didn't fire or take into air dead to anyone because We decided to invest and develop new products in this time and we also thought that the industry was going to rebound and to really as we are seeing now that the industry is totally back. We thought it was gonna be quicker that the engine has been but summer 2020 was amazing summer 2021 was also very good and then from there it's just up. I mean I'm surprised because normally I ask this question to everybody and they're like whoa eight times, ten times, twelve times, you're like, zero?

I mean, hard to believe, but good for you. Probably it shows that you have been an entrepreneur before and you can manage these kind of situations. Is there any specific advice you would like to give people here with regards to fundraising now? Because you've done fundraising in the last three years that have been particularly challenging, even more so now in the last months, but I know, the reason I'm asking this is because resourcefulness and capital allocation are two key skills that I look for in an entrepreneur.

when I invest for instance, then I think that you have done it particularly well as a company owner, right? What's your approach to fundraising now? It will be like shorter and smaller rounds in order to not lose a lot of valuation or maybe take as much money as possible because you don't know how long this is gonna last for? Well there's not so much money in the market, it depends also on your on your stage. My recommendation would always say take the minimum you need even sometimes Sometimes we are in a startup environment, but sometimes we want to just build a company that is sustainable in itself.

So one is, do you really need funding or not? Could be that you don't need. And then if you decide that you want, then you will also decide that you play the whole circus that it is, that will mean that at the end you have to sell or you have to sell to someone or you have to IPO. But if you decide to play, then I would say start with the minimum that you need, especially now that there's not so much money in the market.

Once then you can get... There's also debt, so there's no need for everything to be funded. There's also debt, so there's also other options that you can explore.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, the reason I'm bringing this up is because, I mean, we got people here from Exotica and there's another travel tech company from Barcelona. What they did in the pandemic was like, OK, we cannot, people cannot travel now, but it doesn't mean people cannot buy future travel. So they sold a fuck ton of future travels and that gave them cash. Because in their case they sell like prepackaged travel destinations.

So all of a sudden they had like tons of cash that they had raised for free. And people could execute these travel packages in the future. In your case, it's different because you work with hotels.

So the cash flow is different, right? So you've got to be creative. And I think that we've got to end the mentality of, you know, it's only fundraising, fundraising, dilution, dilution, dilution.

Because there's crowdfunding, there's venture debt, there's sales and bootstrapping, there's doing consulting on the side. There are other kinds of financing available. So I 100% applaud your recommendation of maybe you don't have to raise. capital. Any other advice you'd like to give to the founders and entrepreneurs here before we wrap it up and go for beer?

Because I know we both want beer. So I was reading, so this is going to be the year I was reading an article of client success or customer success. So as there's going to be less money, people have to be, companies have to be more efficient.

And there's an article that is called the snowball of the turn, that the turn in itself that you're gonna you might experience this year, in fact it's a snowball. It looks like it's small, but as it's going down the hill, it's getting bigger and bigger, because not only the revenue that you are losing today, it's also the revenue that you are losing in the future, because it's not going to stay with you. And you're also losing these buyers, these managers, marketing manager, e-commerce managers, that are not buying from you and will go to other companies, and they will not experience your product. So any turn that seems that it's a small, in fact, it's a big loss for the company.

So in a way, it's the year for client success or customer success to stop this turn happening. As they will have less money, they might be thinking of cutting some resources, some products, and we don't want them to cut your products. And the last one.

How can we help you? What do you need as a company? So as you said at the beginning, we are hiring for client success.

We are also hiring in sales and in tech. In data, data science and tech, backend, frontend. You can see our offers in the company, in the website.

And then of course we are pro the direct channel of the hotels. So if you are a booking or Expedia client, always check the website of the hotel. Because usually they have a better offer.

So why not checking and booking directly? It's going to be better and also better for you. You will have a better service when you book direct. Just a recommendation, a tip from the industry.

A hundred percent. I do that all the time because I started getting like sometimes 40% discount, 50% discount. So you call to the hotel, they're like, yeah, happily don't go through booking. And so they give you these crazy discounts, a hundred percent of these.

Well, thank you very much. Big applause for Laura. Thank you to you.

Thanks. I'm gonna be opening the floor for questions. Raise your hand.

One question per person and try to be as generic like don't ask things. Oh, my company does this, does that. Thank you. I have a short question. The main reason I never really booked to the hotel websites is because I don't want my email address to be out there and then to get like reminder emails and every month or every year I get another email from those hotels.

Can you relate or is there some way to get around this? If you just book and you don't join their newsletter, they shouldn't send you emails. And also they don't have the right to do it. So the main thing is you don't want to join their newsletter, don't do it. But a reservation will not...

shouldn't be able to send you anything. Especially now with GDPR. They should not.

They try to ask you for the phone and email and you're like, no. Is it mandatory? And they have to say no, obviously. Next one?

There's one over there. Thank you. Hi, my name is Harriet. I'm a financial controller at a startup similar size to you, about 150 people. I'm interested to know how your finance team is structured, whether that's globally, a headquarters, size...

the team? So we have a team around five and it's centralized here in Barcelona because at the end we send the invoices from here even though it's from we're doing several languages and in several currencies but the team is centralized here with different people, different languages is true but different people here all in Barcelona. Do you know what accounting software they use out of interest? Do you know what finance software they're using out of interest?

Software? Yeah, so we are moving into Salesforce billing. Okay. And yeah, before we have... That's something that I don't recommend.

Okay, sounds very similar to my situation. Do you want to share the company you work for? Arbalest. We're an experts slash knowledge sharing startup.

We're based in the other country. CloudWorks on Paso de Shigracia. Okay.

Thank you. Salesforce Billion. So then it's integrated with Salesforce that, of course, we use for our CRM. That's many.

Cool. Any last questions? No. Oh, yeah.

No pressure. I mean, you're separating us from the beers. Take your time.

You mentioned Spit. I was curious about how do you implement or... which actions do you take to ensure speed within the company?

Yes, there's many two things. One is to have small teams, and then the second one is focus on those teams. So not having many, many projects to accomplish, have one or two projects, sprints of one week or two weeks max, and then get to do them and then go for the next one.

There was another one here in the front. Yeah. Sorry, thank you.

What has changed forever for good and what is coming back like before in your business? In the travel business? Well, yes, in the way you operate your business, could be culture or modus operandi, you say that things are coming back, you know? So what is coming back normal and what has changed for good? So one is having meetings online with top players, with the marketing manager.

In the past, we had to go and see them. physically and that's a huge and it's a traditional industry so that was kind of the way to go and now it's much more efficient Now the salespeople can do a demo, share a screen, and especially the other one on the other side is used to it, and now they understand and they buy this way. So this is much, much more efficient. Things that are coming back. Fairs, for example.

Some people saw that the traditional fair is not coming back, and yes, it is. Next week is ITB Berlin. It's the biggest travel fair in the world, and it's going to be huge.

And Fitur here in Spain, you want to see them from time to time physically. in person to close a deal or to strengthen relationship but then you can also do online that's for good Ok, another one Hello thank you for your time and this interesting speech I had some questions about company culture but you answered most of them already so I just wanted to ask further or more how you create in a very fast growing team values and as transparency for example especially when you say you have a lot of different smaller teams which sounds very useful but then how do you create this common sense and transparency between these different teams So one of the things that we try to do very much is knowledge documentation, like knowledge center. In fact, we use Notion, for example, for this knowledge base, and it works very well. So then everyone can relate to different articles written there that we try to update very frequently.

So they transfer, everyone knows what's the process, what's the procedure to do something specific. And then of course we use Slack that is quick. for everyone, but you can usually go first to read in Notion. If you don't find it, maybe you ask a teammate.

Okay, thank you. Nice. Thank you. Last one?

No? Perfect. Yeah, be your time.

All right. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Big applause for Laura again.

Thanks to you. Thank you. I don't remember the specifics of the catering, I guess it's rooftop? Rooftop, there's gonna be beer, there's gonna be a bit of catering, enjoy yourselves.

Till what time can we be here? 9.30. That's why I pointed to you because you're gonna be the bad cop like They're gonna be geeky's at 930. We got plenty of time one hour of networking Enjoy this fantastic phenomenal building and again, thank you very much to cloud works for these phenomenal phenomenal welcome

Transcript for:Start Grind Barcelona Entrepreneur Insights

Transcript for:
Start Grind Barcelona Entrepreneur Insights