Building Greatness: The Main Ingredients Required to Build Enduring Company Allegiance

We had a an incredible gathering of early LogMeIn alums this past Friday night to celebrate the life of our former colleague, mentor, and leader Seth Shaw. It was a night to share stories, vivid memories, and the lifetime of impact Seth had on all of us in attendance during the early, formative years of the company.

Some of our former team members traveled cross-country to be there. I think Jim Kelliher estimated we had about 75 people in attendance. Most of them dropped what they were doing on short notice to be there. That's the type of company we built. We all wanted to be there to remember Seth appropriately. We all wanted to be there together.

Since that night, I've been trying to put my finger on the specific list of ingredients LogMeIn had in those early days to try to piece together how a great company comes to be. What are the specific characteristics that lead to the creation of a generational, enduring business? What creates an environment that, 15-17 years later, people still want to gather, in our old office space, to pay tribute to a colleague? What are the characteristics that create such strong allegiance?

Here is the core list I can wrap my head around:

1. The company's products are great, not good: The early success we built with the company from a SaaS standpoint in 2006 was led by our LogMeIn Pro, IT Reach, and Rescue products. Yes - we had three products, plus another offline product called Remotely Anywhere, we were selling that were largely better than was in the market already. The secret was in the speed and reliability of our connectivity. Without getting into too much detail, our technology allowed for us to spend less per remote connection AND have faster connection speeds for our customers. That gave us a pricing, margin, and performance advantage versus the larger, slower incumbents. We had created a technology moat that would be difficult to replicate. Product differentiation? Check.

The other piece about great, truly differentiated products is that it creates real enterprise value. We had a defensible position behind differentiated products that led profitable growth steps year after year. We weren't a billion dollar company overnight. We built our way there slowly, but most importantly, predictably. Investors love predictability in a business. A great product will give you that. A good product will not.

2. We built a deliberately efficient model: On my first day of work at LogMeIn, February 6, 2006, I remember sitting in the small conference room of our small 20-person office on the 4th floor at 500 Unicorn Park Drive in Woburn, MA. Our co-founder and CEO, Michael Simon was sitting at the head of the table explaining why we had the LogMeIn Free product. Essentially, we gave away a product that allowed people remote control access of their desktop. At the time, it was a revolutionary move. Remote control through products like PC Anywhere or GoToMyPC was expensive for an individual user. We decided to make remote control a commodity - give it away for free. The way Mike explained it to us was simple: the company spent $1 to acquire a new user and that new user generated $1.25 of revenue over time by getting exposed to our premium products. The numbers changed as we got bigger, but the principle never wavered. We would spend efficiently and build a business that made money. It's the reason we never raised a major funding round again after taking on a small Series B. How about that.

Oh, and we also never had to do mass layoff to cut costs. We never "doubled the sales team" without having a territory for them sell into. We spent quite a bit on marketing, but it fueled our business. We spent efficiently, not wastefully.

3. The focus was always on the long term: It's funny because we operated on a monthly cadence in the sales org, but for most of the years there, there was very little panic if a month was down or a quarter was flat. As a company, we trusted the process. Sure, individually there would be angst if a forecast was missed, but the most common reaction from our executive leadership team was patience. There was such confidence in the overall business model that we knew stormy months and quarters would pass. And they always did. "Beat and raise" quarter after quarter. Did we want to be bigger than we were? Sure. Did we want to go faster with our growth? Of course - it's human nature. But - were we willing to violate the efficiency of our model and grind our teammates down to the bone to get there in the short term? No. It wasn't a marathon. It wasn't an ultramarathon. We were in a race that had no finish line, so we made sure our pacing was appropriate for what was likely to be a multi-decade operation.

4. Placing an early premium on people: This factor starts and ends with our founder and CEO, Mike Simon. Here's the thing. We had a team of people who largely wanted to work together. We wanted to be together (meaning, physically - in person). We wanted to work together and then grab a drink after work if we could. No, we were not a family. But we also weren't just co-workers. We were a true team. It felt like a team. We behaved like a team. That came from our leadership. Back in the late 2000's, there weren't a whole lot of companies that were taking their entire cross-functional company to an offsite kick-off meeting in Punta Cana or Cancun. We did it every year because Mike and the leadership team knew how valuable that time with our globally distributed colleagues was. It's how salespeople became close with engineers and product leaders, it's how we created quick friends across offices in Sydney, Bangalore, Amsterdam, and Boston, and it's how we created a culture where individuals wanted to perform as much for their teammates as they did for themselves. That is not something that can be forced into a company through values and mission statements. It has very little to do with compensation. Above all else, it is not transactional. Team is something is forged over time and is built on a foundation of trust and integrity demonstrated by leadership.

Here's another little secret from the people part. We weren't all "A" players. Not everyone was a day-one superstar in their job. Over time, we learned how to invest in people. How to train them. How to develop their talents. How to move someone from average to above average. If you were at the company, showed a solid work ethic, and put a strong, consistent effort forward, the company was behind you. Were there people who didn't make it? Of course. Usually, it was because they either didn't work that hard, violated the trust of the team, or tried to invoke a "playbook" from another company that didn't apply to ours. But if you approached the job with a growth mindset and cared about your work and your teammates first, you could flourish at LogMeIn.

When 75 of us reconnected this past week, you quickly realize which ingredient of the bunch is the most enduring. It's the people. In the words of Kevin Harrison and Seth Shaw, we Earned, Learned, and Had Fun at LogMeIn. But the "Had Fun" piece had everything to do with who we went to work with every day. And that, ultimately, is what created such allegiance to a company that did so much for so many.

The one goal I have, for the rest of my career, is to attempt to recreate this recipe somewhere else. I would love nothing more than to know of an alumni gathering, taking place in the fall of 2043, to celebrate the friendships forged while building an enduring, longstanding business on the shoulders of a great product, an efficient business, an amazing CEO, and a unified team. A place that impacts people, positively, for the rest of their careers.

A place, like the one we built many years ago, at LogMeIn.