Fortune Joins Iterable, Vercel and Encord for a Future of Work Executive Roundtable at CRV’s San Francisco Office
By Krista Canfield McNish
With the pandemic squarely in our rearview mirror, and an AI dominated world barreling towards us, the future of work is entering a new era. Given the inflection point we’re at, it made perfect sense for us to pull some of the best and brightest together from across the CRV family for a frank discussion with Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle. (CRV has invested in over 600 companies since our firm was founded back in 1970.) Not only does Allie write Fortune’s Term Sheet, a daily deals newsletter, she’s also an esteemed senior finance reporter who delves into important topics like venture capital, private equity, startups and M&A. You can check out Allie’s story on our round table here, For startups, remote work versus return-to-office is a balance — and an experiment.
The focus of our discussion was on how the world of work may shift. We selected a number of our portfolio companies to speak with Allie about how they’re adapting to the changing landscape, some of whom are expanding globally and others relocating their teams to tech hubs like the Bay Area. We decided to match Allie with:
- Andrew Boni — Iterable’s Co-Founder and CEO
- CRV joined Iterable’s board and led Iterable’s Series A round. CRV also backed Iterable during its B, C, D, E and E-1 rounds. - Jenny Molyneaux, Vercel’s Vice President of People
- Our firm proudly led Vercel’s Series A, sits on Vercel’s board and backed Vercel During its B, C, D and E rounds. - Ulrik Stig Hansen — Encord’s Co-Founder and President
- CRV led both Encord’s seed and Series A rounds. Our firm also backed Encord during its Series B. - Murat Bicer — CRV’s General Partner
- Murat focuses on early stage high growth companies in the AI and enterprise space including Voyage AI and LanceDB. His other interest areas include security (Signal Sciences, Doppler, Impart Security) and e-commerce infrastructure (Iterable, Gorgias, Loop, Arena).
Some fun facts about these three CRV backed businesses: CRV sits on Iterable, Vercel and Encord’s boards and led all three companies’ Series A rounds. Combined these three companies share nearly two decades worth of partnership with CRV. One consistent uniting factor across the board for all of them is that their primary goal is to be where their customers are.
CRV’s specialization is in leading seed and Series A rounds, so we’re by our companies’ side for the long haul. By bringing together a cadre of senior level executives and founders from across our powerhouse companies, Allie got a chance to pepper them all with questions during the dynamic session. Here’s a recap of how the discussion went.
Vercel provides the developer tools and cloud infrastructure for customers like Under Armour, The Washington Post, Stripe and Wayfair to build, scale and secure a faster, more personalized web. Vercel currently has three offices and execs come into the San Francisco office on certain days of the week. Vercel is committed to San Francisco, but also has a flexible remote-friendly work style across the organization. One of the pet peeves Jenny flagged during the chat was the polarization that is often brought up in terms of “office good” / “office bad.” Jenny noted that workstyles are extremely personal… what can be perceived as disruptive by one person may be collaborative and helpful to another. Andrew agreed with that statement and noted that it’s important to treat employees, “like adults.”
Allie asked our guests how they build community in hybrid offices. Andrew responded that tools like Donut have been helpful in terms of cross pollination across Iterable’s large, and growing, organization.
“We’ve meaningfully ramped up offsite budgets.” — Jenny Molyneaux, Vercel’s Vice President of People
Offsites are one of the ways that Vercellians have been able to get to know one another. Jenny mentioned to the group that she finds this enormously helpful because when she knows someone, asks are a lot easier. Other marquee moments, such as all hands, keep the around 500 Vercel employees all united behind the company’s mission to enable developers to build and publish wonderful, high-performant apps and websites.
“It’s all about fostering, and giving folks, opportunities to be in person.” — Andrew Boni, Iterable’s Co-Founder and CEO
Andrew noted that Iterable has its annual kickoff once per year, in February, which is just one of the many opportunities Iterable employees get to connect with one another. This year Iterators will all be meeting up in Vancouver.
Another hot topic during the CRV roundtable was how these growing companies onboard their employees overseas. Iterable is an AI-powered customer communication platform that has over 1,200 customers across over 50 countries including brands like Wolt, Cinemark, Box and Redfin. Iterable has six offices globally — San Francisco (headquarters), New York, Denver, London, Sydney and its newly opened Lisbon, Portugal, so this was a perfect time for Andrew to lend the group his thoughts on the topic.
According to Andrew, their new Portuguese post opened with eight employees including an existing Iterator who took a two year relocation assignment. Having an existing employee who was up for an international challenge has helped Iterable’s new office quickly absorb some of headquarters’ culture while simultaneously enabling the new office to develop its own flair. One of the biggest challenges the group mentioned is getting new employees ramped up on corporate lingo and acronyms like LLMs. The group agreed that stitching a workforce together rapidly helps employees gain a familiarity and comfort level with one another so that conversations flow freely in newly developed judgment-free zones.
“I think we’re so back.” — Ulrik Stig Hansen, Encord’s Co-Founder and President
One of the ways Encord has been able to lure its employees into the office has been via FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Earlier this year Ulrik relocated from across the pond in the United Kingdom to San Francisco. A month ago Encord unveiled the company’s new standalone office in Jackson Square. The number one reason the company relocated was to be closer to its customer base. Another reason the company came to the Bay Area was because of the high density of successful companies and because the concentration of people who have scaled companies is much greater than in the UK, increasing the likelihood that the Ulrik and the team could garner key learnings from those who had already been there and done that.
Another fun, albeit unexpected tidbit, is that real estate in San Francisco was significantly cheaper than in London. Ulrik and the team were able to nab twice the square footage of their London office for half the price. Fun Fact — The lease signing on Encord’s new San Francisco office took longer than it took to close the company’s Series B! (It appears real estate just isn’t as fast paced as tech.) One of the other items up for debate was whether San Francisco is hot or if the broader Bay Area has the same halo.
“We’re seeing more and more companies in person.” — Murat Bicer, CRV General Partner
Murat agreed with Ulrik’s enthusiastic commentary on the golden city getting its glow back and also noted that while San Francisco is undoubtedly back in action, that the CRV team is also seeing an uptick in Palo Alto based companies.
“As investors, location doesn’t matter. We pick the best founders and don’t second guess them.” — Murat Bicer, CRV General Partner
The peninsula is getting trendy again as a headquarters location for startups, he said, largely due in part to Palo Alto’s proximity to Stanford and AI’s rise in prominence. (Side Note: CRV has offices in both San Francisco and Palo Alto making it easy for founders anywhere in the Bay Area to pop by.)
“Being in the office with our employees gives me energy.” — Murat Bicer, CRV General Partner
Whether it’s San Francisco or the peninsula, our guests agreed that the Bay Area ecosystem has a magical combination of talent and investors that enables dreams to go from just an idea to reality in the span of a heartbeat.
“It’s not just 7x7, it’s something special in the broader area. The Bay Area has an energy, an enthusiasm and a culture of wanting to build.” — Andrew Boni, Iterable’s Co-Founder and CEO
COVID-19 may have wreaked havoc around the globe, but it sure didn’t dampen Northern California’s rebellious energy and spirit nor its high concentration of successful founders.
“One of the reasons I moved to the Bay Area is because of successful companies like Iterable and Vercel — to learn from founders who have done it (built big companies) before.” — Ulrik Stig Hansen, Encord’s Co-Founder and President
Jenny noted that the key to any workforce operating smoothly… regardless of whether the company is fully in office, remote first or hybrid… lies in a Venn diagram. If you put communication in one circle and transparency in the other, she said you’ll find that successful organizations, like the ones at our table, hone in on the sweet spot where those two circles overlap. Another thing the pandemic taught us is that being flexible is key.
“We listen to our employees and iterate on Vercel’s working style.” — Jenny Molyneaux, Vercel’s Vice President of People
CRV frequently hosts gatherings like this for its companies. This was our second Future of Work Executive Roundtable (here are details on the first gathering), but we also throw our annual Beaujolais Bash, host a regular pickleball tournament and even get our founders together for cycling and other peer gatherings. Are you a founder who could benefit from our 54 years of startup experience and wants in on the action? Our area of expertise is early stage software: enterprise software, consumer, SaaS, infrastructure, AI, security and developer tools are all areas of interest for our team. In DoorDash’s case CRV invested just nine weeks after the young company launched. Cribl partnered with CRV before it even had revenue. No startup is too small for our team to talk to, so feel free to reach out and get to know our team!
