Do Not Join Circles.Life
By: Samuel-Georges Attal (Originally published here.)
1. People say… “Culture and founder dedication fade away when a start-up scales up”
At Circles.Life, the founders’ priority is to constantly think and rethink company culture and every single employee’s personal growth in the company. As a Circles.Lifer, you will embark on a journey that will transform you in the span of only a few months!
At Circles.Life, you are not given tasks — only problems with valuable guidelines that are up to you to solve.
You will get the opportunity to speak to founders directly and interact with motivated employees dedicated to change the world as much as you are — all in a vibrant, multicultural environment. This dynamic enables you to perform above expectations through hard work in a warm and encouraging atmosphere (the teams regularly go out for drinks and bonding activities!).
2. People say… “Telcos don’t know what to sell”
While telecommunications is often described as a stagnant field, our ambitions go well beyond the telco industry. At Circles.Life, our goal is to defeat common paradigms and innovate in this sector.
In essence: We strive to become the go-to consumer brand delivering highly personalized digital services in the world.
As Circles.Life continues developing more verticals through our Ecosystem platform, we could very well become the super app everyone dreams of. Any idea could become the next Facebook ‘like’ button — making Circles.Life a place where you get to write your name in the history books.
The company’s culture strives to place equal importance on necessary developments (to ensure stable and scalable network provision) and innovative big bets (new products, plans, promotion, distribution channels and potential for virality).
Our exceptional expertise in branding, communication, product upselling and navigating a digital ecosystem is what enables this sense of familiarity with our users and will be the pathway to our success in all digital fields.
3. People say… “A telco that only operates in Singapore is not going to make history”
Circles.Life is the first fully cloud-based digital telco service provider in the world. We entirely own our tech stack that can integrate with minimal integration points to any Mobile Network Operator globally.
In 2019 alone, we launched in our first international market, Taiwan, in June, and have plans to launch in Australia and 2 other countries before the year ends.
Naturally, with international launches in the pipeline and a growing pool of customers from all over the world, you can expect to learn how consumer behaviours and patterns differ across various cultures through our future range of geography-specific features.
Circles.Lifers do not perceive working for the company as a job, but a passion. They are all here to drive a vision of creating rocketship moments, to add expertise to the team to develop yet new verticals, processes and digital know-how. This is a place where everyone will listen and will let you express your passion and witness the impact of your actions on our customers.
Failure is lauded, as long as you can share the learning and ensure that your next mistake is a new one from which you will learn.
Think about it this way: Your task is to design a product that will attract a billion subscribers. There’s a 1 in a million chance you succeed on your first attempt. Learning from your first failure, and most importantly, from other people’s failures and input, improves your chances of success to 1 in 1,000. This process will continue until the odds become 1 in 10, which eventually leads to a successful product that you and your team will take ownership for.
4. People say… “Telcos have no role in providing ad-hoc services for the customer”
As telcos can retrieve data from innumerable touchpoints, there is a lot of potential to leverage on analytics to help us continue providing unbeatable customized services. Indeed, Circles.Life has invested heavily in the data platform — we have a dedicated team in Bangalore headed by Yahoo’s former Director of Engineering, Amitava Ghosh.
This exponentially expands the range of technologically advanced products we can develop to give power back to the consumer!
Here’s more advice if you wish to work in product:
5. People say… “Joining the product team at Circles.Life is not going to be better than working at a new start-up or an established company”
Let’s consider why this is the ideal role:
- Versus a new start-up: You have no constraints on resources to develop any product or feature to fit your OKR.
- Versus an established company: You have the autonomy to build any product, develop any process and truly have an impact on our mission through your work and ideas.
So, what is expected of you after you have been offered a role?
We would assume that you are driven by our mission and are ambitious and strong enough to fight through hurdles to impact the organization.
At Circles.Life, we are committed to help you unlimit your growth, so throw everything you know about hierarchy out the window. We prefer a flatter approach that emphasizes a well-defined thought process. Fight for your ideas, listen to other people’s comments, advice, and enhance your products together. Nobody dictates absolute truth — everybody in the team mutually reinforces everyone’s ideas.
A word of advice: If you feel constrained or working on tasks which you find irrelevant, mention it!
Most ideas don’t just come while you’re in the office — they can also come to you outside work hours, your personal life, your travels, the articles and books you read, even your observation of Singaporean lifestyle use cases. This is the way you will understand which problems are yet to be solved by our services. Approach Circles.Life as a gateway to empathize with people in your life. Since it is perceived as ‘cool’ enough by our young crowd segment, they’re able to engage with you and share their feelings about Circles.Life and why they love it!
If that still doesn’t convince you, do not join Circles.Life.
Our awesome Product team is on the hunt for bright minds and trailblazers. If you’re a team player who thrives on cross-collaboration, you’ll feel right at home! Head over to our careers page to see how you can shape your next great adventure with us!
#CompleteTheCircles #CirclesLifers #CirclesLife
About the author: Samuel-Georges Attal joined the Circles.Life family as a Product Management Intern in July 2018 after graduating from the London School of Economics (LSE). Half a year later, the product team officially welcomed him on board as Associate Product Manager, where he was responsible for our telco app customer experience and user journey. Fun fact: He launched our in-app Daily Poll!
The next step of his journey takes him to America to pursue further studies in Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). At Circles.Life, we encourage continuous learning and are excited for what the future has in store for Samuel-Georges!
