5 years Optimizely: 5 leadership lessons that made a huge difference

I joined Episerver as CEO in December 2019. We went on to acquire Optimizely in the summer of 2020. Today’s Optimizely is a very different company than either company was. We have a leading portfolio of solutions – 10 (!) leader recognitions by analysts - for marketers to manage, publish and optimize content to create high performing digital experiences; we are financially strong with a healthy blend of profitability and growth and a strong global team; and we are successful in the enterprise with customers such as Salesforce, Shell and Travelers. We are building a company to last that is relevant. While every day is full of opportunity to do better, here are five things we did that made a huge difference over the last five years. I hope these might be helpful to others in their leadership journey:

1) Define your purpose and stick to it

I wish I could say I had it figured out when I joined Episerver in December 2019. A grand game plan. No, none of it. It took a while to shape our vision. When I first joined, I educated myself by talking to customers and partners. The MarTech space is very noisy. I heard all about composable and headless architectures, but I felt very uncomfortable with that talk track. I didn’t get it. Why does it matter? Where is the business value? Customers I spoke to wanted to be better marketers, create more demand, do more with less. They wanted to make decisions based on data and understand customers better through testing. Higher conversions, more revenue, better personalization. It went back to a lesson I learned 20 years ago: technology is always an enabler, not the thing itself. Can your digital channel create more business for you at a lower cost? That was the key question. We focused on acquiring and integrating category-leading solutions into a unified lifecycle, simplifying the process for marketers. This became our 'operating system'—Optimizely One, launched in late 2023 - to drive the highest ROI. In a world of complexity and tool overload, we would provide a simpler and better alternative for marketing teams, making the lives of marketers better. Optimizely One became our breakthrough moment. Took us nearly three years. Now competitors that I looked up to when I first joined copy our messaging and our acquisition strategy. Clarify your purpose and mission and stick with it.

2) Build your team and embrace diversity.

Your team is everything. Getting the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off, is your most important job. I am the first to admit: it is hard. What I see many people do is stack their leadership with people from their past employer. I started to go down the same route. But if you go from a large company to a small one, you bring complexity. Worse though, you waste an opportunity to take advantage of different backgrounds and mindsets. Diversity comes not just from gender, age, and race, but most importantly from people with different mindsets and experiences. From start-up to large company. From public to PE-backed. The journey in building your team is never done.

3) Improve your ability to execute.

I constantly ask myself “are we a better company now than the year before?”. You need to progress and improve your solutions but also the way the business runs. This goes beyond your P&L. Externally, we are proud that we consistently moved up and to the right in the analyst reports, but what's not visible in charts are the internal improvement that allow us to execute better. The quality of the team. The design of processes. The instrumentation. It is all about people, processes and technology that allows you to execute better. We have re-designed our entire quote-to-cash process, our forecasting for bookings and retention, our analytics from ARR to pipeline. I compare our systems and processes today versus five years ago, and it is hard to tell that we are the same company, but it starts with the right talent for the situation you are in and the ambition you have.

4) Blend your cultures and have fun.

The photo above includes people from four different companies. All of them came to Optimizely with different cultures. My view has always been that cultures are not static but evolve. A good example is when our acquisition of a start-up brought in a snake killing philosophy. You see a snake in the building. You can either call a meeting to discuss the snake and why it is in the building or you can just kill the snake. We had some intense discussions on what company we want to be. We chose snake killing. That’s the beauty when cultures come together - you can pick and choose the company you want to be. And you need to have fun along the way. Life is simply too short. Laugh a little. Make friendships. There are plenty of difficult and serious moments. Fun is important. It makes everything so much easier.

5) Grow yourself and never stop.

I learned a lot over the past five years, and I am learning every day. I had no idea what debt covenants were when I first joined a PE-backed company. There is no playbook to handle Covid or the emergence of AI. There are so many things I am learning every day, and I truly believe that the upside for Optimizely in front of us is far larger than the journey we have behind us over the last five years.

When I look in the mirror, I tell me myself to stay curious, to care deeply, to roll up the sleeves to get into the details, and to enjoy every challenge because there is much opportunity in them.