How I've seen Adyen grow without losing its identity

I was contacted by a headhunter in 2012, who offered me a position working for Adyen's sales team. I'd never heard of the company but later found out that at that point in time there were only three people on the team in Brazil - I was going to be the fourth. I was ready for a challenge though: the plan sounded ambitious and I'd always wanted to develop a company virtually from the ground up, and here was that opportunity right in front of me.

It was a good decision. Over the past eight years I've seen the company move from a small co-working space to our own office, from a small company to 74 people currently working on our team.

I saw Adyen expand to Mexico, develop new products and gain incredible customers in the region until we became leaders in the payment industry.

However, the most interesting thing for me was how - despite the growth the company experienced - we were able to maintain our culture, which in a lot of ways is what most defines us as a company.

Our magic formula

 At Adyen our corporate culture is guided by eight principles, which we call our Formula. They are:

1. We work to benefit all our of customers (not just one) .
2. We make good choices to help build an ethical business model and drive sustainable growth for our merchants.
3. We innovate quickly and make constant improvements .
4. Success is more important than an individual's ego. We work as a team across different cultures and time zones .
5. We don't hide behind e-mails. We pick-up the phone.
6. We're direct, but we're not rude.
7. We include different people to improve our ideas.
8. We create our own path and we will not be delayed by pessimists.

The formula was not like this at the start: through time new principles were added according to new needs imposed by growth.

The idea was to strengthen those principles that define the way we work, and which should be maintained, regardless of the size of the company.

The truth is that we all follow these eight principles as closely as we can because they work, and they make the day more productive and fun.

Obviously, there is no single formula for success, but I am confident that consistency, courage and perseverance will always be key components to achieve good results.

And that is what I observed in Adyen in 2012 and still see today: consistency in terms of the values we believe to be important as part of our long-term strategy and in how much we invest in people. Courage, to remain faithful to our values and strategies, as well as being able to adapt to situations when necessary –always seeking the best results for our clients. And perseverance in how we adopt our formula on a daily basis, both for small activities as well as with larger projects.

Speed is our DNA

One of Adyen's great differentiators is speed: we are quick to innovate and be the pioneers to launch new developments in the market. This agility is characteristic of start-ups, where there is no hierarchy or great bureaucracies to make things happen. But how do we maintain this culture in a company with 21 offices around the world and in totally different time zones?

Going back to our formula, it's easy to see how speed is something we've never given up on - a lot of our principles have actually helped preserve it.

And that priority is visible in many of our board's actions. One such example are the conferences frequently held in Amsterdam to bring people together from the same team, at the same time, around the world. There are events for the sales teams, the development and support teams, in addition to everyone getting to socialize together and which all of our employees are invited to take part in - regardless of their position, which office they work in, or even how long they've been with the company.

Each of these events is organized by a team of dozens of people who help with preparation and logistics. All employee expenses are covered by the company: travel, lodging, food... Needless to say, the cost of this is very high, but there is no price for the return in interpersonal relationships between teams, exchange of experiences and uniting different offices. Generating value for employees is priceless.

On top of everything else, it maintains our speed. You'll meet people at these events who'll be able to help you out on future projects. And everyone knows that face-to-face connection is irreplaceable. Even if it's just a simple face-to-face chat with someone, you'll be more likely to call them or send them a WhatsApp message in the future, solving problems as quickly as possible.

Therefore, the company's objective is to maintain these events, regardless of the effort they require. A question we frequently get from new team members is, "will they keep on doing this, even with the company growing as much as it is?" My answer is always yes — why would we interrupt something that generates this kind of result?

Near, even from afar

With the arrival of the pandemic this year, all travel was suspended and the challenge of keeping the team close became even greater.

But of course, this continued to be a priority for the board, which ended up creating a super interesting initiative: a virtual cafe. We get an e-mail once a month asking us to schedule a 30- minute chat with a specific person drawn at random. This person can be from any country and any team, it doesn't matter: the idea is to encourage everyone to connect, get out of the home office routine and exchange experiences about the period.

Here, in Latin America, we are very concerned about the unity of our teams. We constantly organize events for all of our areas, ranging from co-working sessions to happy hours with bingos and guest artist shows.

We also started a welcoming committee for new employees where representatives from various areas introduce the team, speak about what their daily life is like, and answer any questions new recruits might have about their area.

More recently we created an initiative that brought together a large part of the team: the LATAM, Paris, London, and New York offices were all challenged to do 30 minutes of exercise for 21 days straight. This remote competition was successful in that it helped distract participants from the stress caused by social distancing, in addition to helping improve their physical well-being.

It's been really great to see how - even with our exponential growth - we've been able to develop a cohesive team with a variety of profiles, but with the same work ethos and characteristics we value so much. Our selection process is quite rigorous and involves individuals from multiple areas assessing not just technical aspects, but also ensuring that our candidates are a good match for our corporate philosophy. It is our strategy to ensure that moving forward, when the team doubles in size again, we will continue with the same family feeling we have today.