Friendship & Building companies - New Friendship

While flying back from San Fransisco to Amsterdam I am digesting on a very amazing GTM leadership week DevRev The team continues to progress with pace and build memories, this time we met in Santa Clara .

During the 3 hour delay I really started to think above friendship and building companies. What I see here is extraordinary.?

I think we all can testify and confirm, friendship will play a significant role in building great companies.? Like to share a few key learnings when thinking about friendships while companies are being build.?

Vulnerability,? trust and communication is probably the foundation and most valuable aspect in building the company. Trust allows for honest feedback and strong desire to collaboration and finding overall improvements to reach next levels. It is fuel for growth.?

Friends are very likely to share similar values and goals, making alignment easier to the mission and vision.

Building a company of course is challenging, let’s not think the opposite.?

Having friends as co-founders or team members can provide emotional support and resilience during tough(er) times. An ear to listen, hand on the shoulder is what is such and important signal. Friends often understand each other's strengths and weaknesses, which can help in delegating tasks and roles that suits each individual's skills. Complimenting each other skills builds greatness. Development and being open to improve, also by being coached, is so important. Embrace coaching!?

Especially in the build phase mini conflicts are inevitable and actually desired. Friends may be more adaptive to resolve disagreements or even conflicts amicably due to their personal bond and shared objectives. Having friendships is important, however it's also important to set clear boundaries and maintain professional to avoid potential pitfalls? It is very important to ensure that business decisions are made objectively, not influenced by personal relationships. Avoiding blurring lines is important as well as holding each other accountable , equally measured for all teams and individuals? and all within the same standard.?

New Friendships!

The foundation of building successful companies is not only the foundation of strong personal relationships . It is about also building new friendships to get to that 10x.?

Personally I was very pleased to see the tremendous amount of new DevRev leaders joining the company in the last few weeks/ months. Bringing in new people to support the growth of any company can be highly beneficial, when done correct. New individuals often bring creative and new perspectives, bring extensive experience, and specialized skills that can help take the company to the next level. This week I witnessed (again) that hiring talent outside of the friends circle is an important element in the build phase of the company. The new team members provides objective and fresh perspectives and insights and even more important innovative ideas.?

Listening to the experiences of the recent new hires shows we embrace and welcome significant extra industry experience and expertise. It will be crucial for scaling the business. The level of skills and expertise they bring to DevRev will help to address potential gaps we identify as a team. It gives me comfort to see that the newly hires leaders bring an established networks that can open doors to new partnerships and new customers. Overall I got even more comfortable to continue to be able to develop myself within the team.?

DevRev , at this stage , is one of the fastest growing companies out there. The need for structured processes and scalable operations increases. Experienced professionals such as Laura Fu can help implement this process efficiently and balanced. She has been truly impressive these last few days, with refreshing content and ideas.?

People like Laura Fu and other recent senior hires like Steve Melamed (Head of Sales)? , and Richard Marr ("pickleball ") can mentor and develop existing team members and will support to foster a culture of continuous collaboration , learning and growth. Saptarshi Bardhan is after his initial few weeks directly creating an impact in building a promising demand strategy. Thenu Kittappa , leading global partnerships, will with her experiences be essential to scale the business supported by partners and alliances in all segments. One of those interesting segments will be the Start Ups. Not even formally started I have listened to Gaurav Arora , which was inspirational. Talking inspiration, our Head of Engineering ( Ahmed Bashir )? gave a speech, which still gives me some goosebumps.?

Obviously we continue to also see challenges, while building with energy, passion and grit! Integrating new team members into an existing company culture can potentially come with challenges: I am convinced with the founders Manoj Agarwal and Dheeraj Pandey and DevRevs existing leadership team we will manage these potential challenges by design

We…

• all ensure that new hires align with the DevRevs culture and values to maintain a cohesive team environment.
• continue to embrace change while new hires bring fresh and innovative ideas. Evidently communication, involvement and collaboration is key here.?
• and while the pace of growth is big, a robust hiring and onboarding program needs to be established which ensures new hires quickly understand DevRevs believes, mission, vision and overall operations
• all will strive to balance between leveraging the expertise of new hires and maintaining the original team's dynamics, which again is crucial.?

I am comfortable and see a thoughtful process to integrating new hires into our company. Can’t wait to see how that enhance their capabilities, drive innovation, and successfully scale their operations. EMEA will welcome some Rock Stars soon as well (stay tuned for upcoming announcements)?

With open arms they will embrace above and will witness, from within, the massive potential ahead of us.?

The newly hired EMEA members are friends from within my inner circle and new friends (from the outside) which are already created during hiring process.?

“Let’s leverage the human graph and our pursuit of knowledge to build the earth’s most customer-centric company.”

Welcome to new friendships

Patrick van de Werken

Head of Sales/ GTM EMEA

DevRev?