How Hotjar runs their startup like a hotel

A brutally honest conversation with David Darmanin, the Founder and CEO of one of the coolest upcoming startups in Europe.

Björn
Björn
Aug 8, 2017 · 31 min read

Founded on the belief that there should be an all-in-one solution for user analytics and feedback, Hotjar aims to democratize user analytics and feedback, and make it accessible to anyone wanting to improve their user experience —just one script and one account for everything.

Over the last three years, Hotjar grew from 3 people to 40+. They have over $7m annual recurring revenue, are profitable, have no VC funding, and are a fully remote company.

I sat down with David Darmanin, founder & CEO, about how he thinks, makes decisions and manages Hotjar.

Caveat: This was not a typical Q&A interview. It was more a brutally honest conversation, so I decided to share it that way. Some of the sentences are edited for easier readability.

David Darmanin — Founder & CEO of Hotjar

When you meet somebody for the first time, who is David and what does David do?

It’s funny given your introduction because I was finishing a slide for a Growth Marketing Seminar I was invited to. I have a similar background to yours — I was Head of Design and Optimisation at a software company. We grew tremendously, we made every fucking mistake we could have. And when we did make a ton of revenue and we didn’t have, maybe, very happy customers, it was more transactional, we were, pretty much most of us, unhappy and we lost our mojo as well. So, that’s the point where you realize, it’s less about the result and it’s more about the purpose and the journey of how you get there.

“Growth for the sake of growth is a very dangerous slippery slope.” —David Darmanin

We decided to build a company focused around the journey. Because of this, and because of the success we’ve had, I get invited to speak at a lot of events. I’m speaking at this event tomorrow from The Growth Tribe. They asked me to talk about growth, and one thing I’m going to talk about tomorrow, which I’ve never talked about. I always give my background and share of what I’ve learned. That it’s all about let’s focus more on the user and the customer, and leverage our growth through there versus, ‘What can we do to grow?’. Like how do we throw darts and hit something? I created another slide, which is a new angle, which is one of the new interesting lessons, ‘Growth for the sake of growth is a very dangerous slippery slope’.

This is something I’m going to be speaking about, which is our purpose. At Hotjar, our purpose is all intertwined, because we did optimization and we grew companies, I consulted that there was no purpose, and it was too optimized around revenue. It was interesting to see how so many companies are doing that, but they don’t understand the users and customers.

Hotjar’s mission

At the same time, having been through that, we see into the future, and we think that the company’s, products and services who are gonna win, are the ones that are focusing on the customers. We think that’s going to happen over the next decade. Many people are not realizing, that it’s already happening.

It’s crazy to think that Amazon, went from selling books, with the right mindset, to now pretty much owning the fucking world. Just because Amazon had the right mindset. So, there is this shift, that you no longer can build a site to acquire leads and sell them to someone.

“Amazon (Jeff Bezos) went from selling books to owning the fucking world!”

You have to start thinking about — What value do I create? Because if you don’t do that, there are so many people out there, that someone is gonna do it, and you are just going to be wiped away. We think that this is the future, and we’ve learned and made our mistakes.

With Hotjar, we’re building a tool, we hope, will be at the front of that. In a way, Hotjar is hopefully going to be the tool which allows companies to put the user and the customer at the front and center of everything.

In a way, Hotjar is kind of part of our journey for us. It’s not only that we’re building a tool to do it — but we’re also using that mindset, not only the way we build the product, but also the way we are building the company. So, we’re taking it, in a way, a step up. Which is, let’s not only think about the user and customer but besides the customer, there is another customer, which is the team.

“The way you treat your team, is how they’re going to treat your customers.” —Richard Branson

Björn: There is actually a really interesting video from Simon Sinek. Where he talks about, everyone is about measuring the NPS of the customer, and people are always about putting the customer first.

He tells this great story, a real story, that he is at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas, and he goes into the bar to get a cappuccino. He has this amazing experience and the barista is the nicest guy he’s ever met, and he tips him a 100%. Simon asks Noah, the barista serving him. “How do you like working here”, and Noah replies, “I love my job”. Simon asks him: “What makes you love your job?” and Noah says: “Every day a manager walks by, and asks me: “How are you doing, Noah?” and it’s not just my manager, it’s every manager! And then they ask me: “What can I do to help you do your job even better?”. Noah also tells him, he has another job, at Caesars Palace, and he says: “There they only watch over my shoulder trying to catch me for a mistake”. You can imagine the service being wildly different there.

David: The thing is, it’s so easy to find yourself falling into old habits, right. It’s so easy just to think, ‘Oh, we’re growing a little bit slower, what can we do?’, which is the wrong mindset. Or, the team is not producing, ‘Who the fuck is not doing his job?’, it’s so easy to think that way.

When you think about it, that is typically your ego reacting, or you’re just thinking short-term. The reality is, that there is always a true source of the problem.

What is the number one thing that gets you excited?

With Hotjar, we think there is this huge opportunity to just listen and observe. People are not doing that because we’re stuck behind all these dashboards and numbers. I’m so excited about the possibility we can change that, and no one is kind of working on this. In a way, it makes it even more exciting to think about this opportunity.

I don’t believe in educating people, so for us, it’s going to be more of a technology piece. Give people the technology, so if they don’t figure out how to do it, then we’re not making the technology simple enough. It’s always our fault.

But anyway, if it was a year ago and you ask me that question, I would be thinking about ‘How do I make it simple?’, ‘Why are people not using it?’, and ‘Why do they need education?’ — they shouldn’t need education.

However, nowadays it’s different. Now it’s obsessing about, ‘How do I create an organization that can do that?’ and ‘How do I create an organization that can do that even without me?’. An organization that can last, you know what I mean? It’s this change of mindset. Which is good and bad. Why? I’m super passionate about ‘product’ and I miss that. But it’s good because as a CEO that is truly my job. It’s finding the right people to do the right things.

What did you mean with, ‘people shouldn’t need education’?

“No one wants to be educated. No one!” — David Darmanin

David: No one wants to be educated! No one. And if you think about it, you never learned when you were educated. You learned, when someone gave you the tools, and told you, “Go fucking do it!”.

What we’re trying to do is not to say, ‘Why don’t we build an Academy, train people and give them courses? And I always tell them, “No one is ever going to fucking use them”. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Let me educate myself”, you know what I mean? It doesn’t work that way.

Many companies are starting to shift in this direction — like creating playbooks, educational case studies and stories. What we’re heading towards, is make the technology so easy to just let them explore and let them make mistakes and discover things, and learn on their own.

Don’t educate but create the tools and let people play around —David Darmanin

An interesting parallel would be computing. Computers came out, and you had Microsoft that created DOS, and there were complicated machines that required education. But how did things go mainstream? You had geniuses like Steve Jobs, that created friendly, simple computers. And they had this vision to just put it in every household. Big shifts in patterns, typically happen not through education.

How do you define education?

I’ve had sessions in a previous company, where I brought in 60 people and told them, “Ok, I discovered something, and here is a different way we can do things”, and it was inspiring and everyone said it was awesome. Next day, everybody went back doing what they were doing before.

Björn: Hahaha, that sounds really familiar.

David: So you need to break that. How has behavior changed in the past? What was the tectonic shift that made people do things differently? It was usually technology that changed people’s behavior, rather than a manual or a textbook. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a massive fan of reading but to me that is wisdom.

What books have influenced your approach to life and business?

I’ve been inspired by Seth Godin, reading ‘Purple Cow’ — about being different. Which was a shift for me thinking about marketing, about standing out and about being different. That influenced Hotjar’s concept of ‘WOW’. How do we ‘Wow’?

We have a Hipchat channel called, ‘WOW moments’, where everybody in the team posts their ‘WOW moments’. Which is good, because you need a positive thing you can share, but at the same time it’s also one of our cultural values — ‘Always hunt the WOW’.

Purple Cow — by Seth Godin

David: It’s about being remarkable. And it doesn’t mean you need to spend money and do something insane. It could just be about being thoughtful. Like, telling a customer you looked at their site and you really like it. And that you are going to buy something from them. It’s the small things.

It’s like coming home and telling your wife, “I just met the milkman outside and he said something sweet to me”. We typically over think the wow, it’s really about going back to the basics. That’s one example of influence.

“Everyone would be so boring if everyone had the same narrative” —David Darmanin

Second is, reading over 10 years about the concepts and principles of ‘Lean’, which had a huge impact on me. Even on the design of the company, how we design processes and methodology. How big a project can be or not everything is centered around it. These are just two quick examples. Many books I’ve read have influenced Hotjar, and in this case, my life in small different ways.

The most important thing is having a growth mindset as a person and letting books influence you, but then creating your own mindset. Otherwise, everyone would be so boring if everyone had the same narrative.

What is the one thing that you believe will always stay the same in the future?

How would you measure speed inside your own company?

I always say, “All roads lead to Rome”. So, if product moves well and executes well, and thus we’re doing product well, everything becomes easier.

  • Marketing is easier because it’s so easy to get a customer to buy a great product.
  • Support becomes easier because they will be fixing fewer problems.
  • Operations become easier because again, all the things that are operationally difficult are being solved by the product, like invoicing is automated.

Just if you think about it, it’s easy to forget, but really your main focus of your company is ‘product’. That’s one way we measure how quickly are we executing on that.

The second is, if someone asks us a question, or asks for help, someone asks us for an invoice, or someone wants anything, or someone applies for a job at Hotjar. How long does it take us to go through different stages?

Recently, we had some negative reviews on Glassdoor, and we revamped completely our interview process, to shorten times and create SLAs (Service Level Agreements) from hiring managers.

We have a small team, right. When I’m talking about it like this, it sounds like we have a thousand people or something like this. We are only with 42. But we’re operationally obsessed because we think, the stage we’re at is where you obsess about operations.

It’s like this concept of ‘Building up a Building’, the last thing you want to do is have the first few floors to crumble and take the whole building down at one point.

How do you make sure the people really say what they think, towards each other but also towards you as the CEO?

One thing that we are doing, in our meetings and what not, we are starting to create systems where people feel more comfortable to ask questions. For example, before, we asked: “Does anyone have questions?” — but then we started using sli.do, but it could be any tool. Basically, you have a simple URL, and it opens up for people to ask questions anonymously. Typically, when I asked, “Does someone has a question?”, at our company meet up and we used sli.do, we had 50 questions!

Sli.do — the tool Hotjar uses to capture questions from people at events/meetings anonymously

I think you are right! As the company transforms, there is this thing happening. And my gut feeling, it all comes from me being open and showing that I’m ready to be vulnerable in a way, so they feel more comfortable doing that. An example of that being, if I had a challenge at home, or something personal, I would not be open to sharing that with the team and talking about it. The second part is giving them feedback and showing them what is ok, and what is the right format for giving feedback. Having said that, I haven’t nailed it yet. Still working on it.

Björn: Maybe, you’ve heard about this before. It’s called, ‘Radical Candor’. Have you heard about that concept before?

David: No I haven’t, but it sounds very interesting.

Björn: Let me send you the link for after the conversation. Simply put, it’s this concept of brutally honest feedback, but in a really constructive way. The person, who coined this idea of radical candor, worked as a product manager at Google for Sheryl Sandberg. Sheryl was known for being really direct. And it seems like we’re increasingly growing up in a society, where people feel there is more political correctness, and that we need to be more softer towards some of these things. But she’s a big believer of not doing that. Don’t be politically correct. Say exactly what it means.

David: I love it! It’s already being sent to my Kindle.

David: That is something we do at Hotjar, if someone joins at Hotjar, they automatically receive a Kindle. They can get any book they want to read, and just pay for it with their Hotjar credit cards. The problem is, people don’t use it as much as I wish they did. We even have a library, with books that we recommend, but it’s something we need to invest more into.

Hotjar gives every employee a Kindle with an unlimited credit card (for the books)

How do you deal with the feedback loop when everybody is working remote at Hotjar?

“If you’re going to write a book, you don’t get feedback on the fucking book, you get feedback on the title and pitch first.” — David Darmanin

The worst thing you can do is, is getting into the habit of getting feedback late. That’s where people get demotivated and upset because they have to redo everything.

We always say “If you’re going to write a book, you don’t get feedback on the fucking book, you get feedback on the title and pitch. Next would be, high-level outline, then detailed outline, then the first chapter. So, get feedback early rather than waiting too long. That is something we give a lot of importance to.

How do you guide people how to give feedback?

Essentially, there are simple processes, and obviously, there is space for creativity and doing whatever, but if you’re going to work from everywhere in the world, you’re going to need structure.

We actually have a section about feedback. First, go to two people who are close to you, and maybe use chat and like quickly. Then we have the second level, which is Basecamp, and then use the right tools that allow for easy feedback. For example, if it’s written, use Google Docs, because you can add comments contextual. Or I can even do editing, so people can see suggestions. If it’s ‘experience’, you can use Invision, so you can use comments on your designs. We put a lot of structure around it. I think it works pretty well actually, people tend to ask a lot for feedback on Hipchat. But besides the process and platforms, we don’t put too much thought into it.

Do you see that if people don’t have this “corporate” guidance, chaos starts to appear?

“We as humans are hardwired to be lazy. Self-discipline is the first thing to fall.” — David Darmanin

And we’re now being advised by Bill Macaitis, ex CMO of Slack. And it’s interesting to see, that one of the key things for them to operate really well, were small things like self-discipline. You have a meeting? Let’s write some simple notes. People might say that’s corporate, like a young startup with 20 people would say, “That’s fucking boring”. But it’s really the self-discipline of being kind of mature in a way.

If you’re buying a new apartment, you don’t just go and order stuff from that guy and whatever. You actually follow up and write things down, you measure, and decide whether you need a builder. Or if you’re going to buy a fridge, it actually does what you want. So, I think when building a company, there needs to be the right level. It needs to be simple and work in an easy way. And as soon as something becomes too complicated, you grab it, think all roads lead to… product, you automate it, and eliminate the need for the process. I think that’s the key, how do I eliminate that need completely.

Björn: I agree, there is this difference between being real corporate and documenting guidelines. I think it’s Eric Schmidt that said, there still needs to be some ‘Organized Chaos’, because if you’re trying to make everything dummy proof, very quickly you’re going to attract dummies. Your average IQ will drop down. It’s actually something I heard in the podcast ‘Masters of Scale’ by Reid Hoffman.

What other organizational habits do you try to enforce in the company, to get the company and culture you want?

Hotjar has fun with their weekly demos, where they show what they’ve done

This is probably THE thing, we focus the most on because it’s the ultimate way to be lean. To address the problems and fix them, as opposed to keep on doing the same thing and have some critical conversations.

We do it also on very high levels as well. We have a leadership team at Hotjar, and every quarter, we do a retrospective of the quarter. We plan shit and they happen, and we ask ourselves, ‘How can we get better?’. We realized we were actually quite bad at leading in certain aspects. Now we’re gonna improve on it, and already things are starting to change. It’s interesting.

Then we actually do it on another level, with my founders we did a 2-year retrospective. Where for example we analyzed 2 years of activity and look at, how often did we release changes, how big those changes were from a value point of view. And how many issues we had, like downtime and what not, and map them together. How we’re hiring. Actually, what’s happening, is that as we grow issues are replacing shipping (of new features). And that is the reason why we got slower at ‘product’. Now, we’re changing that completely.

The retrospective habit, to me, is the most important thing. When you finished something. Whether it’s a week, a massive or a small project, you need to stop and think, ‘How did it go?’ — let’s learn from it. I think that is one of the key components of learning.

Other habits, I would say the most ingrained are probably feedback retrospectives, the planning, and the demos. Then there are many that I would love us to do more.

Björn: It’s always important to just focus on a couple and make sure they actually happen right!

David: hahaha yes.

Björn: So you have the weekly, the quarterly and then even the 2-year retrospectives, whereby you are trying to zoom out and are trying to get this helicopter view.

How do you try to balance your time spend on helicopter view and the day to day operations?

Another thing we introduced, which we are still trying to get at doing, is what we call ‘Meeting Free Wednesdays’. You don’t book any meetings on Wednesdays, so you can actually fucking think or get some work done. That is something that tends to work quite well. It’s actually working so well, that we’re planning to introduce a new concept. Which is the idea of taking kind of ‘Work Leave’, which sounds weird, but it’s this idea of taking a week off to work on a massive project. Maybe a week is extreme, but let’s say take 48 hours of isolation so you can reflect, write, produce or be creative.

Why do people still struggle with focus time if they are remote?

We underestimated it from a product point of view. There was a lot of catching up to do. Having said that, our advisors tell us that, we’re very good at employment compared to other startups that they’ve worked with.

But obviously, we’re very critical of ourselves. One thing was, the company was a little bit more successful as anticipated. We did not hire quickly enough, so what happens is typically leaders and founders become bottlenecks and firefighters and all that stuff.

What happens is, the worst thing you can do then is start digging into the trench. The key really there is to stop everything and to say, let me go out and hire the person that is going to change that pattern. Sometimes that is what you need. I’m going to take the day off because I’m going to write a profile for a CFO, because I need to nail it — and everyone can wait. Because this CFO profile needs to be written and done. Obviously being remote is easier, you just quit Hipchat and email and you can have a day focused on that.

Right now, for example, one of our 4 pillars is customer experience. Which is our customer success team, our ‘Heroes Team’, which is our support, and also pitching ideas to ‘product’ to eliminate support. I still run that department, which is insane. As CEO, I’m also acting as VP of Customer Experience. Again, we waited too long to do that. Now I’m doing that, plus being CEO, plus hiring a VP of Customer Experience. This is it right, this is the world of the startup.

The advice I would give, to anyone who is a startup and sees success, is that from the beginning set aside to interview 10 people every week, no matter for what role.

You should be interviewing 10 people every week. That’s like 10 hours, like 1/4th of your time, should be meeting, interviewing non-stop. It’s so easy to take a 3–4 month break to focus, but then you’re screwed, so that’s why it’s so important.

What do you spend a silly amount of time on right now?

David’s calendar also schedules specific time for lunch and diner

David: Let’s look at our calendar. What do I spend a silly amount of time on….? Now, most of my time is spent on speaking to teams, giving them feedback and seeing their work. It’s minimizing now as the teams are taking off and are getting better at what they do.

Unfortunately one of the things up there is email. It’s probably one of the things I hate the most. Especially as CEO, I need to keep relationships going with people and that doesn’t come naturally to me as a person.

I don’t even know if I’m an introvert or an extrovert because I’m very good around people and I like making people laugh, and I like being a leader. I also like going into my cave and be on my own. I see it more as work to network and to get to know people to expand my network as something that I enjoy.

To me, that function, requires a lot of work. That’s probably why I wasn’t so good at hiring in the first place. Let’s focus on technology and do that later. That’s probably why I spent so much time on it.

“Procrastination comes from not choosing to do something.” —David Darmanin

Again, the growth mindset is all about acknowledging that there is work to be done, and doing it. Procrastination, which is something I’ve always been very intrigued by. We, humans, are wired that way, to procrastinate. The books I read about it, and the general thing I’ve learned about it, is that typically procrastination comes from not choosing to do something. Which is quite interesting. It’s deeply psychological. It’s this concept of, “I have to do the bills, I don’t want to do the bills. Fuck ohhhh maybe I’ll do it tomorrow”, whereas, “I’M GOING TO DO THE BILLS” because it’s something that has to be done and it’s going to impact my life.

Typically it’s the mindset that is actually driving this thing. In my case, I just need to work on my mindset and think “How am I going to improve myself and, how am I going to get better at relationships?”. So I understand this is going to add value to me, and I take it in my stride and become analytical about it, ‘How can I become better?’. Once you choose to do something, is only when you get to excel. It’s really difficult to breakthrough I think.

What do you advise others, to break through obstacles?

“If you want it, just go fucking do it.” — David Darmanin

David and Shia LeBeouf would get along just fine

David: Typically, what I do is my CEO pep talk. Usually, it’s like, “What do you want?”, “Do you want it?”,“Because if you want it, just go fucking do it!”. But if you don’t, drop it. Just quit. I’m not saying, quit your job, but quit the thing. You want to become a product manager, just fucking go get it. I can’t make you get it. Once you want it, then you are going to make it happen.

Typically I see that half of the people I speak to get “it”, they go and are going to make it fucking happen. And half of the people I say this to don’t get it, and maybe they’ll settle. Which is fine. But if you want to be happy, you need to acknowledge whether you want it or not. I think it’s dealing with that.

It’s not always good to want “it”.

What do you mean when it’s not always good to want “it”?

“The moment we promote you to lead and you fail at it, you can’t go back to being an individual contributor. You will feel that your ego will not let you do that, and there is a big chance you’re going to end up leaving the company.” — David Darmanin

David: True, and a very small point about that, which is really important, the danger is to push someone who is doing something and who is learning within that environment, to push them too much beyond what they’re enjoying. It’s also good to understand, where they are comfortable and what they love. And not to push the limit. If you do push the limit, there is no going back. They might be unhappy with the move or change they made and it can ruin the chance of being good at what they were originally doing in the company. Does that make sense?

Björn: Yes and no.

David: Let me give you an example. In many companies, you have someone who, maybe an individual contributor, let’s say a developer. And that person says: “I want to grow, I want to move, and do new things”. It’s very easy to instinctively, the very next thing, most people think, “I want to become a lead, I want to become a manager, I want to become a director.” And easily, 70 percent of the cases, that is not a good idea. Why? One, because the ratio from leader to non-leader is low. You’re instantly entering a much more competitive pool.

Do you really want to fucking be a team lead? Is this really what drives you? Will it be the thing that wakes you up on Monday? Because, if it’s not, it’s so competitive when you go up to the next layer, that you are probably going to be shit at it. And the moment we promote you to lead and you fail at it, you can’t go back to being an individual contributor. You will feel that your ego will not let you do that, and there is a big chance you’re going to end up leaving the company.

How do you deal with the growth ambition of people?

Is growth vertical? Is it horizontal? Is it learning a new language as opposed to becoming a lead? Is it taking on a new project and more responsibility as opposing to becoming a manager?

It’s tricky and it’s a case by case thing and that’s why it’s also key to not only hire for a very good growth mindset team, but also hire very good leaders that identify that and help people grow.

Björn: This is definitely I can recognize from other organizations. I think that typically people think, “I can only progress my career by becoming a manager”.

I recently saw a company that disabled this motivation to progress to a manager role for status and sorts, by making the salary from the individual contributor equal to the one of a manager. Then there is not a financial incentive, and you will only really become a manager if you really, really want that.

“If you’ve never have read anything about leading people, then you probably want it for the wrong reason.” — David Darmanin

David: Exactly. A very good indication of that, is typically when someone wants to become a manager, I ask them, “What have you read, EVER, about leading people?” If you’ve never have read anything about leading people, then you probably want it for the wrong reason.

I’m CEO, but even 15 years ago I was reading about how to lead companies, how to be a great boss. It’s usually something you’re really passionate about, and that you’re already exploring. It’s really good to think about, ‘What do you want to explore? What excites you? What would be good for you to have?’

Björn: Yeah, especially compared to what other people think what is the way to do things.

David: Exactly, the big thing is the ego. The ego is always the enemy.

Björn: There is actually a great book from Ryan Holiday, that is called like that. “Ego is the Enemy”. It’s really popular amongst American sports teams, like the Atlanta Seahawks that won a Super Bowl in the recent years. It’s based on Stoic philosophy. I will share a link to it.

David: Hahaha, I’ve already written it down.

What 20% of your time, generates 80% of the result for you, to build your company?

I reached out to establish relationships and get to know people that I got really excited about, and actually hired them. Now I no longer think about creating content, which was something I was doing before. They are doing it. I’m no longer creating mockups of pages and concepts, one of the other guys is doing it. When you think about it, that has such a huge impact, because as CEO I can now shift to the next challenge.

I think as the CEO, the most important objective is really — before you said, to make yourself ‘replaceable’ — I actually think it’s not about making yourself replaceable because if you are a good leader as a CEO, you don’t want to be replaced. That is probably the worst thing, you can do to a company.

More than replaceable, I think it’s more that you want to hire enough people to move yourself to become purely a leader. Purely bringing the team together, the right people and making them work together, as opposed to the person that needs to intervene. Pretty much eliminating yourself from the ‘how’ component, that is the CEOs objective, I think.

Björn: So you can focus more on the ‘why’ as opposed to the ‘how’ and ‘what’?

David: More than that, I would say, focus mainly on ‘where’. Where are we going? This is our purpose and we’re headed towards the moon. And then, like you said, the ‘why’. Why the hell should we go to the moon? It’s rallying the troops. I think that’s really important.

Björn: If you’re all in one office, it’s easy to stick it everywhere on the walls and create the buzz around the ‘why’, but…

What is the best way to get everyone one same page on Hotjar’s ‘why’?

With Hotjar, we stole and adapted Rockefeller’s one-page strategic document. It’s really one page, and it highlights, ‘Here are our values, here are our big audacious goals, our vision, our brand promise’. And then we have really big ass projects we work on that impact our values. 3–5 year projects and initiatives that are this coming year, plus our strengths and weaknesses.

It’s like a manifesto. This we update every quarter, we speak to everyone why we’re updating them. We record the calls, where we discuss how it evolves. Then what I’ve done also, is that every person that joins the company, I would take a one hour call with them to explain the full story of how we decided to build Hotjar, where we are coming from etc. That was repetitive and I felt I wasn’t always doing a good job at this. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it was bad.

At one of our meet ups, I think it was in Malta. I put a lot of effort into the whole story. Showing me with a bad haircut, and how I had an agency, what we discovered and using the tools out there. We recorded the whole story on video. Now, everyone that joins the company, the first thing they have to do is look at that video and schedule a call to have a follow-up to do discuss the one-page strategic document. So now it’s part of our onboarding. The why, the story. I repeat it every 6 months when the whole company meets in one location, and we always open the session with the same thing. The whole story and why we are doing this. It’s repeating non-stop.

Do you think you are sharing your “why” enough with the team?

“We’re always splitting the cells and adapting.” —David Darmanin

David: No, definitely not. There is much more than that. But then it falls down in the structure that we have. The daily and weekly meetings. We’re exploring something new, with Bill Macaitis mentioned, which was what they used at Salesforce, the V2MOM model. We’re currently testing that out across the whole company, which is going to be interesting. We’re thinking, we’re going to have a one-page strategic document, with supporting V2MOMs for everyone. We’ll see how that goes. It’s constantly iterating. The way we structure and organize.

The thing is, the way we did it when we were with 20 people is completely different than how we’re now doing it when we’re with 45 people, and when we’re with 60 people it’s going to be different and with 80, 100, etc. The key is, with like anything else, there can’t be a plan and a system and that’s it.

Björn: It’s like a living organism.

David: Correct! We’re always splitting the cells and adapting haha. So basically, the most important thing next to the big north star, which the team is very much aware of, is we’re building a culture.

Now we have a culture, of a cultural handbook, with stories in it for each value from the company. Like, has culture changed and in what way? How are we employing and hiring for culture, and how can we become better at it? Because with the right culture, you can tackle these challenges with 20, 40, 60, 80 (team members). That is the bed rock there.

Björn: Let me ask you one final question and then I’ll let you go...

What is a controversial idea you have about building a great culture?

The only thing that I like, that we don’t usually do that much, is ideally when someone joins Hotjar (or any company), you should after some time offer them an easy way out. Saying, ‘Here is some money if you don’t believe and like what we’re doing’. We do it in a different way, not as hardcore as this, but the most controversial thing is that it’s nice to be nice and fluffy and everything with culture, but I think you need to be hardcore.

When someone does not match the culture, you have to act on that and take care of it very very quickly. It’s this whole idea of hire very slowly and fire very very very fast.

Björn: David, it was an honor talking to you.

David: Same here, I really enjoyed the conversation!

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Thanks to Douglas Holmes

Björn

Written by

Björn

Founder & CEO of Blindfeed.com - Radical Candor about startup life, leadership and meaningful work.

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