How do you run a top startup? Trust in staff is key, say founders

Southeast Asian startups have been on the rise, with venture capital investments in the region hitting a record US$20.4 billion in 2021. But the greater the rewards, the greater the competition. Startups have had to jostle with thousands of competitors to catch the eyes of investors, customers and potential recruits.

A key ingredient to stand out from the field is trusting staff, according to chief executives of LinkedIn’s Top Startups this year.

Here’s a look at how they show trust in their staff and how they have adapted their management style over the years.

Andrea Baronchelli , CEO and Co-founder of Aspire

On management style

I strongly advocate goals clarity, open-communication and speaking your mind. I’ve been told that my management style is quite collaborative. Change is the only constant and we have to always be receptive to new ideas and input, in order to keep up with the times. While I believe my management style hasn’t changed much, the ways in which I collaborate with the team has changed drastically, especially since we started as a team of 2 in 2018, and now have over 400 people.?

An example of this are feedback loops. When we were a small team, it was much easier to gather quick feedback from the people around me. Now, we’ve had to adapt our feedback loop and proactively increase the opportunities for the whole team to provide input. Once every few weeks, I host coffee chats with the Aspire team, where anyone is able to participate and ask me anything, from our business strategy to my personal life.?

On lessons learnt

As our team scaled rapidly, especially during the pandemic, it was not easy to find the right culture fit when it came to hiring in a remote environment. Aspire grows and moves quickly, and that’s something that not everyone is used to, especially when they come from a more structured organisation. This is why we started drafting out our Aspire values, and created a structured hiring process using different tools – assessment tools, psychometric tests, score cards, methods and interview panels - to ensure that culture and value alignment. Together with our management team, we continue to review our hiring policies to ensure we bring on team members who share the same purpose, feel a sense of belonging and take ownership of their work.

Wai Mun LIM , CEO and Founder of Doctor Anywhere ?

On management style

When I founded Doctor Anywhere, there were just four of us so it was essential for me to have a more hands-on approach across all elements of the business. As we rapidly expanded our business, so did the complexity of our operations and innovations grow. I saw it was the right time for the team to decentralise decision-making and importantly, focus on hiring the best talent to grow our expertise and the business. Our expansion to our first overseas market, Vietnam, just a year after launch, marked just that - we made it a point to hire a local country leader, a local team, to establish our business there. Today, it remains among our most successful markets that is accelerating the healthcare landscape locally.

On lessons learnt

One aspect that defines many startups is the rapid rate of change and ever-accelerating pace of growth. We started out as a small team, growing to 50 a few years ago and nearly 700 employees today. Along the way, our business focus, team dynamics, and culture has constantly evolved. Figuring out a calibrated approach to grow both our business and people, yet building a culture of excellence and a great place to work has been one of the most challenging, yet eye-opening experiences. One important lesson I’ve learned amidst our fast growth is that we are only as good as the people we have - and that requires room for experimentation, autonomy, and trusting in the skilled people you have to weather the future together.

David Brunier , CEO and Founder of Flash Coffee

On management style

In one word, I would say it’s all about empowerment. Instead of seeing myself as a manager, I see myself as an enabler of the teams we build here at Flash Coffee. I focus on assembling very strong teams who are excellent at what they are doing, and I see my job as moving obstacles out of their way so they can run. It’s incredibly important for me to stay proactive and remain in the driver's seat throughout the day - the worst thing that can happen to me is to become reactive.

On lessons learnt

I am a natural communicator and extravert and I feel that communication towards the team and other major stakeholders is extremely important. When schedules get busy (which is a given when building a fast-growing company), it’s easy to streamline communication, and expect everyone to know what to do and what the company’s point of view is. But in reality, there will always be a certain information asymmetry based on how information is cascaded into the organisation. It’s our job as managers to ensure that all teams can perform at their best and that’s only possible if they have the information needed to make strong decisions. I’ve learned that there is no such thing as over-communicating and that teams perform better, and are much more motivated if you trust them with more transparency, access to data and insights about the company’s strategy.

Anderson Sumarli , CEO and Co-founder of Ajaib

On management style

In leading Ajaib, I only have two things in my mind: fair and direct. Fairness is a critical part in managing a motivated team. Fairness will inspire trust. We earn employees' trust by treating employees equally and holding them to the same standards. Also, I believe directness is a sign of respect. Being direct assures precision and cuts down unproductive worries.?

On lessons learnt

I used to think that years of experience on resumes are always good predictors of great candidates. I’ve come to learn that a resume displays the hard skills that someone possesses but does so little in telling someone’s character. Although specific hard skills significantly impact some roles, over the years, I learned that valuing the right cultural fit is equally as important. You can teach someone hard skills, but you can’t teach someone to believe in the same values or have the same hunger for the mission as you do.

Rafi Putra Arriyan , CEO and Co-founder at Flip

On management style

For me, adaptive leadership is pivotal to helping me as an individual and my team as an organisation to adapt and thrive in challenging situations. This practical leadership style encourages me to embrace changes and how I should act, respond, and decide on various stakeholders, conditions, and contexts.?

My management style has changed since I started to build Flip with the other co-founders. I never worked for a company nor built a business. Flip is my first organisation to lead and my first company to work for. I believe in embracing learning by leading a growing and leaping company.?

At the beginning of co-founding Flip seven years ago, without professional experience in managing a company, I saw myself full of anxiety in any kind of challenging situation. As a result, I always demanded things be executed fast without considering others. That’s when I realized that I had to change and adapt how I led a team, along with the feedback my team gave.?

Therefore, I encourage myself to be a reflective or introspective leader who looks at and corrects myself before doing it to others in a particular situation. I also used to implement a well-known technique in problem-solving for programmers called ‘Divide and Conquer’. Therefore, in tackling a vast problem effectively, I will divide it into small ones, and we will resolve those properly.?

Thus, my management style is about a process of learning, unlearning, and relearning where I need to be adaptive and introspective.?

On lessons learnt

Mistakes in managing a team are inevitable, and I always learn the key takeaways to improve myself as a company leader. I remember the early days when I used to try to do everything by myself if I am seeing that the progress is not as fast as I expected. This is always like the natural reaction that I feel when I am seeing something and this feeling to do things by myself is still there till now.?

But I try to consciously suppress it, because I started to build an understanding that this is not how a great company is built. We need to give time and space for the team to learn so they can also grow by themselves.

What does a startup need to be successful, beyond a good product? Join the conversation using?#LinkedInTopStartups.

Reported by: Ting Wei Toh