Paddle’s Harrison Rose on Building a Great Culture at Scale

At the start of 2018, we were maybe just over 20 people and I think we're 130 by the end of 2018. So during that year, we strongly had to think about our employer brand. We knew something that people would check ahead of applying for any company was Glassdoor. Employees are savvy, they're going to check these things ahead of joining. I think we had a profile on there. I hadn't thought much about it. We don't gamify this, but we do have this as a health metric for the talent team. And one of those things is that their Glassdoor rating. Our approach to this is if you're doing a spectacular job for that candidate from the very first day they call you to walk through that door, and if they're let down in the right way and given the appropriate feedback at the end of that process, we want to delight those people to such an extent that every single person who walks out of that door, one, wants a job at Paddle and two, enjoyed that process so much they want to share it with others whether they got the job or not.

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Bombs away. Welcome to another episode of Built to Scale with me, your host, Mitch Fanning. For those tuning in for the first time, the goal of this bi weekly podcast is have meaningful conversations with interesting people with a focus being on helping B2B SaaS companies go to market scale and win. In episode 19, I had a down to earth conversation with Harrison Rose, co founder of Paddle, a subscription and commerce platform that enables SaaS businesses to grow faster. And we talked about what it takes to build a great company culture at scale, which is exactly what Paddle has done. In fact, in 2018, Paddle hired over 100 people and at the end of the year were ranked by the Deloitte UK technology Fast50 as being the fifth fastest growing software company in the UK and are now gearing up for a US expansion. Now, I'm not sure what's more impressive, the fact that they did this all at the same time while building an amazing culture, or the fact that they did this all before the age of 30. Either way, it's incredible. Now, before we jump into the conversation, I have two quick announcements. One, if you recall in episode 15, I had on April Dunford, who is an absolute expert in product positioning and her book, obviously awesome, how to nail product positioning so that your customers get it, buy it and love it is available everywhere books are sold. I just got my own copy and I've started reading it and I have to say it's incredible and I've taken a lot of notes. So if you're looking for a very practical approach to defining your own product positioning, this book is a must read. My second announcement is I'll be taking a month break off, so my next episode is June 24th and it's going to be a new episode on the topic of SaaS pricing. All about SaaS pricing. So stay tuned for that. Okay, that about covers everything. So without further ado, let's get into it.

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So Harrison, welcome to the show.

Hey Mitch, it's great to be here.

So I'm really looking forward to this episode because we're going to be talking about something that's really important, which is obviously building a great team culture. And I think PADDLE is a perfect case study for this subject because the company, and we were just talking about this before we hit record, is really focused on scaling and as a result going through this massive phase of hyper growth. But at the same time you and Christian, which is the CEO and the other co founder, seem to be equally focused on building and sustaining a really great company culture. So I thought I would kick things off by just asking why is building a great culture so important to you and Christian? And what is that culture typically in the end, what would it look like if it was ideal?

Yeah, I think I've always struggled to define what, what a great culture necessarily looks like and I feel that that could be because it's going to be very unique to each company in question. I really kind of perceive it as this kind of DNA of the company, if that makes sense. It's made up of such an array of things I think it would almost be impossible to list such as, you know, the people you've hired, the value you've shared, the way that you work, treat one another, kind of the shared mission that you have. That's kind of what makes up a great culture for me in terms of why that's important. It's going to be important for so many reasons. One, creating an environment in which anyone can walk into, feel welcomed, recognized, like minded individuals or people who share similar values to them and allowing them to flourish and Enjoy their work all the way through to enabling you to build the best possible products and attract the best possible talent that you have. It really is fundamental in that core part of the business, which is why I kind of use that DNA analogy, I guess.

Sure. So was it something that you guys deliberately set out to do? You often find that that's one way or one approach that companies have kind of gone about it, they've created some founding documents and they've gone about it deliberately. And then the other side is they just kind of let it happen organically or naturally. And then sometimes there's the hybrid of the two. Which camp do you guys fall into?

Yeah, I feel like we've seen both extremes of that, actually. So Chris and I began working on PADA when we were around 17. It feels like a lifetime ago, seven years or so, now I'm going grey, etc. All those good things. But we kind of worked together for a couple of years on paddle. We probably hired kind of 10 folks. We're just about to raise, I think, a Series A and had never considered culture or even talks about it. I think the first time it was raised was by those potential investors who went on to lead that Series A, Kindred Capital. And they just kind of asked very casually, what's the culture like at paddle? Only for Christian and I to sit there and look at them completely bemused with it not being something we considered whatsoever. And I think that the reason that you can get away with that in the early days if you don't know what you're doing, like us, when you kind of get started, is I think it's very easy to actually facilitate a good working culture. When you're all sat in one room, you've kind of hired every single one of those people in there, you speak to them every day. And just by nature, you're kind of very close knit. But as you scale, you have to be more conscious and strategic about this and the impact that, the changes that you make, the processes that you introduce and the people that you hire impact on this culture. So it's very different when you're 10 people compared to adding, you know, the hundred folks that we hired in 2018. So in the early days, yeah, you're right, we didn't consider this enough. But when we had to go through some of this hyperscale, it was then that we built out a people and talent team to start working on this in terms of some of those initiatives that we introduced to help us with this to begin with, we always Tried to get our people involved in defining and helping us codify what this culture even was, given that we hadn't considered it to start with. And we did a ton of stuff, but just one example would be we did a first offsite last year, which was a big success and brought lots of people who are relatively new to one another very close together. But we did things like a workshop whereby people could comment on any one of our existing values. They had to kind of depict an existing value or create a new one in kind of picture form how it could be portrayed, why it was important, some examples of this happening and how you might change it, or why you think it's important to introduce to paddle. And we often come back to our values and assess them over time. And that's kind of linked to something that I think is equally important about as well as developing and sustaining culture. And it's being conscious that that culture will evolve. The culture that we had at 10 people when we kicked off and weren't even aware of it is very different to that which we have today. And I think the trap that some people can fall into is thinking that culture is static. And there are always some people in your organization who kind of long for the days of old or only hire the people exactly as those that have come before them and really think this is kind of a wrong approach. And your culture will evolve just like a product or a go to market strategy, as well as your understanding of it, including its importance, in my view. But you kind of need to eventually be mindful. If you can do this earlier, the better. I'm sure that each and every change you make or individual you hire really should bridge that culture and continue to develop it. And you should try and be mindful of that as soon as possible, I guess.

Yeah, and that's a great point. And speaking of values, the Netflix culture deck, I think they kind of made that public. It's been years now. That was kind of the first real, I guess, impactful example of how people had deliberately gone about building out values in the company and everyone kind of started to scramble and copy that. And I almost feel that having values public is almost just table stakes. So I guess my question is how. How do you ensure that the values that you've set as a company, even if they evolve, you know, how do you. How do you ensure that they're put into practice every day versus just being forgotten about?

Yeah, yeah. And to start, I mean, I completely agree, you see a lot of these values on people's websites and you do sit and wonder about their similarities to others. And are the people in these organizations actually depicting these day to day? And the first thing to get right is ensuring that they actually reflect the behaviors that you want within your organization and then actually enacting them becomes easier. But we introduce those values at the very earliest stage of the life cycle for an employee. So we have a value fit stage of every single interview that we do for every role across the entire business, from C level to anyone. And that consists of two folks sitting in a room with that potential employee from outside the team they're due to join. I appreciate this is easier at scale, but you kind of get the idea. And those two people meet the new hire and assess whether they meet paddle's values. Now, the thing that we got wrong here initially or probably didn't make clear enough, is that you enduring that what sometimes called culture fit, and we quite purposely change the name there. You're not assessing whether this person is someone who'd be a mate of yours or whether you go and grab a pint with them, which we heard four or five times, being Brits, I guess, or go on holiday with. That can really lead to just hiring people who look and feel like themselves and result in a lack of diversity. And that's really not the point. You really need to be assessing this person against the values that you look for in employees and colleagues at paddle. Do they depict the behavior which will help them be successful here and welcomed in our environment? And are they going to enrich what we have today? So we introduce them right at that very earliest stage and then try to filter them into as many activities and behaviors and actions that take place in PADDLE thereafter. I think the strongest example of this I can think of are that we run hackathons once per quarter here. And one of our engineers, Jeannie, her hackathon project was to build what we call this kind of Valleys leaderboard. So every person who joins the company, they're kind of assigned a house or a team. Did you kind of have that in school where you join and you get assigned like a house or a team that you're a part of? I don't know if that's a thing elsewhere.

It could been. It's going back. I try to forget my years of schooling, but no, it seems familiar. Yes.

It seems legitimate. Yeah. But everyone who joins us essentially is assigned what we call a house or a team. I think they're named after like Game of Thrones houses or something. Very contentious given the recent comings on. But Then you can visit a Slack channel called Shoutouts and you can run a slack command to give a colleague a shout out with an associated paddle value such as focus on the impact or do the right thing. And you can use that to call them out for living one of our values. And this channel is super active every single day celebrating those who've gone above and beyond and really depicted our values in the day to day work at Paddle. Those scores kind of get totted up and you can track how folks are performing and we've really kind of gamified it, if that makes sense. Sense. But little things like that can really encourage you to shout out those that are depicting the values that you kind of rate so highly or hold in high regard. But there just needs to be a constant stream of communication and calling out not only of when values are being depicted, but when the opposite is happening as well. And that's equally important.

No, for sure. And you actually, I'm going to go off script here because you said something interesting that I want to touch on. You know, you made the comment you're not looking for someone that you would go out and have a pint with, et cetera. But in a way it almost, you know, just from, you know, the research I've done and talking with you, it almost feels like that as a byproduct, it seems like that's something that you would do with, with a lot of your teammates regardless, you know, now. So the question is. Or the, the other comment I guess I'd make is you also find companies, they look at it where they hire as if almost like it's a family member or that kind of like it's a family. They kind of use that in air quotes. And then you often find companies who say we hire and kind of treat our whole process of hiring and performing like a sports team. How do you guys look at that?

Yeah, I think there's probably a balance to strike there. I think you're right in that wanting to spend time with these people and enjoying being around them is definitely a byproduct of hiring those who share the same life view and values and put credence to the same things that you do. I think one of the things I'm most proud of here is kind of being able to walk through the doors absolutely. Any time of day or night, quite frankly, and see groups of people huddled together, learning from one another, having a great time, whether that be about work, a project they're working on, or just about anything. And that's super, super. Rewarding and I think evidence that we have built a great culture here and people like being here. I think when Christian and I first started paddle, we had some really clear visions of we don't want to work with assholes and we want to enjoy coming to work every day. And that seems really obvious, but I imagine that some people might not feel those things are true for them. And we never wanted that to be the case for our team in terms of whether we're kind of a founder or a sports team. I think at any one time you have to strike the balance between both. So I want people to enjoy their time here. I want people to enjoy and benefit from the benefits that we've rolled out for them and all the things that we do for them. Albeit people will always complain about free lunch, but at the same time we all had to do a job right? And I think at any one time that the people and talent team and the teammates here and trying to permanently strike a good balance between you absolutely thriving and loving your time here and being as comfortable and happy as possible as well as we are here to deliver and continue the hyper growth and meet our ambitions. But again, your value should feed that same belief. The people you've hired should feel in the same way and want to achieve the same thing.

Now, we've been talking about hiring obviously quite a bit in the last five minutes or so. Despite not having a lot of experience hiring previous to paddle. I'm just, you know, walk, walk me through what were some of the. We. We've already talked a little bit about the challenges, but were there some other challenges early on that you guys really fumbled on or how did you go about, I guess, figuring out, you know, how to bring on the right team members?

You're very kind. In terms of not a lot of experience hiring people. I don't think I'd ever actually been to an inter myself, let alone hired anyone. And now we're kind of 140 people, which seems absolutely crazy kind of seven years on. But I guess the biggest challenge for us in light of the culture piece that we're kind of talking about, was probably diversity. So we started the company as two kind of teenage white male founders with a very bold vision. And even then we actually started in the Midlands before moving into our angel investor's office in London. I mean, it was relatively challenging to convince folks to come and join us and leave their Christian jobs or whatever it may be. We ultimately just hired the best talent we could with the resources we had available to us. And I think what we realized before we knew it started thinking about culture and those two timelines align that the ones I was talking about earlier was that we kind of realized there were, you know, 10 white males sat in an office and realized that absolutely wasn't normal. And we really had to work to put those mistakes right. But it kind of becomes self perpetuating. And that's a risk to companies I think, is that if you don't think about culture early, like we didn't before you know it. Yeah. You're 10 white dudes in a room and suddenly that's not an environment that people are going to feel comfortable in or they're going to walk through the doors and think this is strange. I'm really proud today that we put in a lot of effort to improve upon that. I think with 51% non British, 30% female and 35% black Asian minority ethnic at this point with lots more work to do. But it was a real struggle to improve some of those ratios, having started off on that wrong footing. So I think the advice I give to myself seven years ago would be be mindful of culture, be educated about it and it's going to make one your job a lot easier in the future because without a diverse team, you're not going to deliver a product that is applicable to the wider set of people and you're not going to be able to attract the widest set of talent. So I think that's probably the thing we struggle with or the advice I kind of give myself if I were to go back in time.

Yeah. And again, really important issue is diversity. And as a company grows, obviously as you'd mentioned, the key challenges, maybe that lack of diversity or remaining inclusive. As you had mentioned, you guys are almost at 150 team members at this point, which is incredible. How do you approach hiring now and specifically assessing for that cultural fit? And maybe that's not the right term, but how do you do it at this point?

Yeah. So the hiring process is obviously very different depending on what role it is that you're applying for. There are commonalities between them. We talked about that kind of value fit interview piece that we do for every single candidate with regards to kind of culture and diversity elsewhere during that hiring process or that life cycle, if you like. We really try to think of it as like an employer life cycle and a funnel from them finding us on the website all the way through to them working at paddle we've tried to do. I mean the talent team are prolific and fantastic. And have done a great job about rolling out tons of initiatives. And we've done everything from, yeah, ensuring a minority group or female is on every hiring panel. I think last year we did our first internal bias training or unconscious bias training for interviews internally. Next up on their kind of project list, which is very long. And because this is a topic that I really feel very strongly about, I think we're going to introduce blind CV review. And then the last one I think that I can reel off off the top of my head would be, I think this one we actually do is sourcing underrepresented groups at the beginning of a hiring process. So you look at your initial pool of candidates, you look at what groups are accurately represented there, and you proactively source for them before kicking off the process. They're the types of things that we've been changing or have introduced during that, the current process to make this as fair as possible and to set us up for the best possible success with regards to culture and hiring that diverse team, if that makes sense. The people I think really leading the way on this are actually just down the road from us, near Old Street Monzo, which is a challenger bank in the uk. I saw recently they began hiring actually for a diversity and inclusion team lead. And they're really leading the way on some of this stuff, in my view. So if people are interested in this, I'd certainly recommend, of course, our content and some of theirs on their blog.

Can you tell me the name of the company again?

They're called Monzo, like a challenger bank in the uk.

Okay, I'll put that in the show notes. That's great. So I noticed again when I was doing the research that you had a link to Glassdoor, which was part of the, you know, you usually see the social media logos and there's usually the, you know, the usual suspects. But I noticed the Glassdoor logo and it's interesting because, you know, again, despite them being around since like 2007, I often see a lot of companies in HR specifically almost seeing. Seeing it as a liability. Not everyone, of course, but you almost. They almost had to kind of start as people started to go to that and provide their comments. It was almost something that had to be managed reactively versus, say, proactively. And of course you can gamify it. There's lots of ways that you can gamify. But it almost looks like you guys have proactively embraced Glass Door versus trying to struggle or fight against it. Was it something that was. Was it just kind of like yeah, let's just throw it on.

Or.

Or did you guys actually strategically think about putting, like. Because, again, you don't see the Glassdoor logo as a link to many websites from my experience.

So I think there's a few elements of this. Say at the start of 2018, we were kind of 20 that maybe just over 20 people. And I think we're 130 by the end of 2018. So during that year, we really strongly had to think about our employer brand, which, frankly wasn't very strong prior to that. So that was something we just wanted to get very, very good at. We knew something that people would check ahead of applying for any company was Glassdoor. Employees are savvy, they're going to check these things ahead of joining. I think we had a profile on there. I hadn't thought much about it. We don't gamify this or I don't think we even proactively encourage any prospective candidates to leave Glassdoor reviews whilst they're here. But we do have this as a health metric for the talent team. Our talent team aren't actually financially KPI'd in any way. They just have a set of health metrics or KPIs that we look at permanently. And one of those things is their Glassdoor rating. And for us it was. I could see how you could perceive this as a liability. If you're letting someone down who really wanted a job at your company and they didn't get it, that person has every right to be disappointed or angry or frustrated. I think our approach to this is if you're doing a spectacular job for that candidate from the very first day they call you to walk through that door, and if they're let down in the right way and given the appropriate feedback at the end of that process, we want to delight those people to such an extent that every single person who walks out of that door, one, wants a job at Paddle and two, enjoyed that process so much they want to share it with others, whether they got the job or not. And that's a very high bar I think we set for our talent team in light of the very high pressures we've put them under in the past. So I guess for us, Glassdoor is a measure of that experience. For our. We call it the candidate experience. Glassdoor is a measure for that and we try to embrace it. But, yeah, we're really proud of how that's going so far.

I have to comment there, that's an unbelievable way of looking at it. Number one, like you said, in hr, having, you know, a really strong quantifiable OKR or metric is sometimes tough and to, you know, actually saying, you know, being so proactive and saying that even if the person is not accepted that they're going to be inclined to leave a positive review. I think that's something that every company should, you know, any, anyone who's listening to this, who has that influence should, should definitely take that advice. I strongly agree there now and it helps.

They kind of, we have, we see reapplications and things of this nature. It really is, is beneficial. I can't, I can't recommend it enough.

No, that's, that's really great. Another thing that, that I've noticed Paddle does, you know, unlike some companies, is you've placed a lot of emphasis on health and well being for the company. A couple examples are access to external coaches, creating a safe space to talk about things like mental health and having those mindful sessions at lunch. Again, a lot of companies aren't necessarily going to say they don't do this, but it just seems like you guys are very overt, even to the point where you're putting it on your website, specifically talking about things like mental health. Are there any visible signs that this, this type of, again, you know, focus around health and well being has helped Paddle build a strong culture?

Yeah, I think so. I think if you're going to take on a project like this, and we do take mental health incredibly seriously, this can't just be like a sticker or a poster on the wall. Like you can't take yourself seriously and be publicly claiming that you care about people's mental well being. If that's the extent of your policies on this stuff. We invested in this a lot. And those mental health and well being initiatives vary from Yoga Weekly, which is very popular, all the way through to. I think we actually have 12 mental health first aid champions, myself included in this within the business and a long waiting list for others as well. A company to probably stick in the show notes is Sanctus, who come in to see us monthly and give us two mental health coaches that any one of our employees can go and speak to about anything that's happening in their lives. We really strongly care about this. I don't have the metrics to hand broadly about the impact of mental health on, on the workplace, but I know that it costs billions. The days off that folks are having to take off during their work life, but for mental health reasons are costing the UK billions. And if you actually look after your people, which I think is frankly just the right thing to do. There are absolute correlations and monetary benefits in doing that as well as it just being the right thing to do. I think I don't have internal metrics on this yet, and this is something we're working with people and talent on. But to me, the sheer amount, each of those initiatives I talked about, the sheer amount in which they're being used, shows their worth to me. I think we'll probably try and run some NPS or satisfaction scores in those. But frankly, for us, looking after people's physical wellbeing is as important as their mental health. And the fact that all of those initiatives are almost oversubscribed and we're struggling to keep up with the demand shows the appetite for it. And yeah, if we can help pave the way for other companies there, we certainly will do so. I think one thing that's helped us there is really quite candidly sharing our mental health experiences as an organization with one another and showing that vulnerability has been helpful for myself. Talking about that to others in the organization and to anyone being able to kind of share that, if that makes sense.

Oh, it absolutely makes sense. And one of the best analogies somebody put it to me was you, obviously, when it comes to physical health, don't leave that to chance. You do things like diet, exercise, etc. But even now that it's mental health is accepted, people still leave it to chance and they don't take that proactive approach to improving it. So, you know, that's really great to see. So we're gonna change it up a little bit and we're gonna move into a rapid fire section to close things off. So I'll, I'll say a statement and you've got about 60 seconds or less to, to give me an answer. So, Harrison, are you ready?

Yeah, I hope so.

All right, here we go. So artificial intelligence fills you with hope or dread? Pick one.

Hope. I think I was indoctrinated by Google on this when I went to a talk the other day and hearing them about how they think it's going to increase productivity rather than be seeing lots of people's jobs, albeit I feel they might be a little bit biased there. But yeah, I'll buy into that.

Hope so. Google's AI algorithm has, you know, indoctrinated you. That's what you're just.

Intelligence has got so good that I have no free will anymore.

Perfect. Okay, so do you agree or disagree with the following statement? A good decision today is better than a perfect one. Tomorrow?

Yes. And I think you'd find it probably quite difficult for people to find people who didn't agree with that statement. I think the hard thing is putting that into practice every day. But yeah, that's a yes for me.

No, absolutely. It's not an easy one. So what's one thing you wish your phone could do?

Yeah, this one's embarrassing, I guess. Like I'm pretty old school and actually try to avoid using my phone when I can. And I swear by my Mac to the extent where I started texting my mother a lot more as soon as I could text message her from my Messages app on the Mac. So if I could be as productive on my phone as I am on my Mac, I'd be very pleased.

That's really good to hear, considering I'm the same way as you and we're coming from different spectrums as far as our age. So that's really good to hear. I'm glad that it's not just me and my generation. Your favorite app or tool and why.

This is a good one, particularly as a company that sells software or apps. I think my favorite one or the one I've stuck with is a to do list manager called Todoist. The why for me is I often feel like I have an overwhelmingly long list of tasks to do and it helps me tame some of those. I also know a huge range of people who've tried to stick to it to do app and failed, but I've been using that for a good three or four years now. Very pleased. So yeah, Todoist.

For me, it's almost an ironic statement that they've tried to stick with the to do list or app and failed.

The amount of people I see with these just like massive text files that are like tens of thousands of lines long is terrifying. Yeah, it's just scary.

So, next question. What's what do you believe that others might disbelieve?

This could be good. I could go really rogue. Rogue here. No, I'm not sure if it quite fits. And this applies to me at work. I think I really need to develop trust with someone by working with them, seeing them behave, act and think. I think a lot of people you meet or hear from or read about can appear as kind of world changes on paper, but finding incredible people in practice in reality is much harder. Actually working with someone and seeing them is going to be the thing that I need in order to establish that trust and credibility. It works to my disadvantage sometimes, given that does take time.

Sure. And this might be Connected. But the next question is what have you changed your mind about lately?

Yeah, yeah. I guess to stick on the kind of coaching theme it semi linked. So I've done the Myers Briggs Personality Test here in the UK a ton of different times. I'm not sure if that's, that's popular in your neck of the woods, but never rated it. I didn't look at it with credibility. I guess through personal experience I'd always get the different results and never felt they were quite the right fit. But I got introduced to a book called Standout by Marcus Buckingham and it been, it's been really, really helpful in helping me understand behaviors and traits in myself actually as well as peers. And really actually for the first time help me self regulate some of the tendencies I'd have which could which are less productive for peers or I should do more of. And I don't think I'd really ever found a book like that. So that kind of changed my mind on some of those personality tests and has been really helpful for me day to day. So would recommend that.

Okay, I'll put that in the show notes. That's great. So the last, really, the last question is where can people find out more about what you're up to or what Paddle's up to on the interwebs.

Yeah, I personally am terrible at social, which my marketing team would kill me for. You can catch me anytime@harrisonadel.com on Twitter, which I don't tweet regularly enough at. I'm Paddle Harrison. Grab me on LinkedIn for paddle with paddle.com and AD Paddle HQ on Twitter.

Okay, perfect. Well Harrison, thanks again. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today on a, on a really important subject and it's been great.

Thank you. It's been great fun. Thank you. Sa.