Working at a start-up is one of the most exciting, fulfilling, and difficult journeys you can embark on during your professional career. You’ll immerse yourself around big ideas, brilliant people, and face unique challenges along the way.

When you’re on the sales team, it’s an even different ball game. You’ll get the opportunity to drive the business to new heights, while working with some of the most energetic and smart minds around.

At Sawyer, we’re building technology to connect parents with providers of the best enriching childhood experience, and our sales team is run by Arianna Maglio. She’s a leader, mentor, and has grown the team to new heights — all while still feeling like the underdog for most of her career.

We sat down with Arianna to chat about her experience, her hustle, and why you need a beginner's mindset to succeed. If you’re aspiring to join a sales team, you won’t regret learning about her journey.

Thanks for taking the time to chat, Arianna! Tell me about your career? How did you start?

Before graduating from Fairfield University in 2014, I went to a career fair on campus and was introduced to a recruiting company called Insight Global. Luckily, I was able to nail down the job before the end of my senior year and started working there shortly after I graduated. After about 6 months, I decided recruiting wasn’t for me and came across a company (ironically from another recruiting company) called SinglePlatform, which is where I learned the foundation of how to sell SaaS software to small businesses.

Do you think there are similarities between recruiting and sales?

Recruiting is basically sales, you are selling a candidate to a company and vice versa. It is a lot about building relationships and finding new opportunities.

Was sales something that you always wanted to do? What was your first sales job?

I majored in Communications and minored in Psychology, so I really had no idea what I wanted to do after graduation. I actually started taking GRE prep classes the summer before my senior year thinking that I might want to get my Masters in something related to psychology/social work. Luckily, I was able to land a job with Insight Global, which is an IT staffing company that works with Fortune 500 companies and connects product managers with candidates in the tech industry.

How did majoring in communications and psychology help shape your career and what you wanted to do?

Important to learn the behaviors of people — sales is all about selling a service and doing a service for others. In a world that is so digital, having successful human communication and understanding the behavior of why people buy.

It’s interesting that a liberal arts education helped you succeed in a role that’s typically considered quite distant from that discipline. So, what do you think makes a good salesperson?

I always felt like the underdog. For example, when I started at SinglePlatform, I was the last person in my training class to schedule a demo. I always felt like I had to work harder than everyone else around me in order to achieve my goals. That being said, a saying I live by is “hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.” As long as you are putting intentional effort into everything you do and every call you make, you will become 1% better every single day. If you are making 10 more calls than everyone on your team every day, that’s 50 more calls a week, and 200 more calls a month, which is essentially 1–2 more selling days in the month that you now have over the rest of the team. Be willing to put in intentional effort, get gritty, learn from others around you, make mistakes fast, ask questions, and always have a “beginners mindset.”

Do you have any quick tips for up-and-coming sales reps?

It takes a lot of work outside the 9–5. Also, use your commute to pump yourself up. I did, and it helped me make 200 cold calls a day.

How did you land your job at Sawyer?

I actually heard about Sawyer through Megan Riley, who was the Sr. training manager at SinglePlatform previously. We ran into each other and she was telling me about Sawyer and how she was looking to start scaling the sales team (back in 2017) and shortly after, I sent her my resume and became the 4th sales rep to join the team in Feb. 2018.

How have you grown to be the sales leader you are today?

I always felt that it was important to lead by example. When I think about leadership, I think about serving others and producing leaders on your own team. Another thing that has been instrumental in my growth has been mentorship. I’ve had many mentors who’ve taught me, challenged me, and guided me through the process.

Could you tell me about one of your mentors and why they have been so valuable to you?

Megan, who was never my direct manager. Being able to see how she leads and her professionalism was really inspiring. She gave me all of her knowledge and helped me learn how to report to leadership.

How have you grown to be the sales leader you are today?

She taught me how to give feedback to reps. Feedback sandwich — what they did well, what they need to improve upon, and end on a positive note.

What is it like to be a woman in sales?

It’s very empowering. It takes a strong leader — you don’t necessarily have to be extroverted but you do need to be your authentic self. You don’t need to be like a man, find your own way and your own path. You don’t need to be overly assertive, you need to be true to the type of manager you are.

How do you manage peers? What are your management tips?

Set boundaries between a friend relationship and a manager relationship. Show people that you have their back, by showing up and advocating for them. Also, make it clear you would never ask for something from your team if you did not do it yourself. Empowering people to give feedback in a structured way. Showing empathy and professionalism

How do you motivate the team? What are ways you incentivize and help the team grow?

Ultimately, you’ll find what’s best for your team. For me, I incentive my team with monthly bonuses. One month everyone won iPads, AirPods another — we just needed to hit our team goal. If you’re really performing you’ll win a free trip to the key market you’re selling to!

How has the Sawyer sales organization changed since you became the leader? Do you think sales have been impacted by your leadership?

In 2020 we hit or exceeded our goal 9/12 months of the year, which never happened prior to my leadership. In 2021 we are on the same pace.

How did the Covid-19 pandemic impact sales and your strategy?

We had to pivot online. It was a massive shift. Due to covid, we had to sell an entirely new product feature and way of teaching classes. Being remote was a challenge — not having music, being next to other sales reps. Being alone and getting rejected all day. It took a bit of time to adjust.

What are the type of providers and sales targets you are going after now?

We’re focusing on key markets now, with an emphasis on enterprise and franchise businesses. We’re also selling providers on value with new enhanced features

Let’s finish with the biggest question there is — why is Sawyer a great place to work?

The people are amazing. The product is so strong — I have never sold a product as good as Sawyer. The belief in the company and the belief in the mission. It’s so valuable for both educators and parents. We are not just selling software, we are selling a community. Also working for a female-founded company. Different vibe — transparency, community.

Ready to dive into a sales role at Sawyer? Explore a range of open roles here. You’ll get to work with Arianna, and find similar beliefs in our mission.

Sawyer Stories: Sitting Down with Director of Sales, Arianna Maglio was originally published in Sawyer: Childhood Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As schools shift to digital programming, you can apply the same process to adapt your business in similar ways. You might need to spend some time learning the basics of video, livestream, and all things digital media but many of these tools are available to educators for free!

If you’re feeling nervous about going digital, take a deep breath. Every service we’ll cover has detailed documentation on how to use these digital resources to teach online.

Find these articles and more on the Sawyer Tools blog.

Tips for Educators Going Digital

Teaching online will require learning — and that’s OK.

You’ll have to navigate lesson plans and build relationships online, which can be different than when you’re teaching face to face in a classroom or studio.

Think about class size.

What activities do you currently offer and what is your enrollment capacity? When teaching online, you’ll have to be cognizant of how many students and caregivers can attend your video classes.

Think about whether your content is better when interactive or prerecorded.

Think about your content. Do your classes require students to learn a recipe? Are you teaching language in a group setting? Are you teaching songs that require call-and-response? Depending on the role that interactive elements play in your lesson plans, you can decide whether a live class or prerecorded class suits your needs.

Think about questions.

How do you plan to take and respond to questions? Is your program reliant on students engaging with one another? Make sure that your digital methodology takes these into account with time for Q&A and a chat option.

Create a framework that encourages at-home participation.

This involves adapting your lesson plans to a digital space. Paint a picture of what you want to accomplish, the tools you want to use, and notes on how you can use those tools.

Test, collect feedback, test, repeat.

Digital classes are new and might require testing. Remember that this will be a learning experience that will help you grow your skill set, community, and business down the road.

Resources for Educators Going Digital

The resources below are articles written by industry experts, esources published by universities, and crowdsourced Google Docs from educators around the world. Explore their pages to discover how educators around the world are working together to make digital classrooms empowering and impactful.

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Going Online in a Hurry: What to Do and Where to Start

Michelle D. Miller, Professor of Psychological Sciences at Northern Arizona University, explores the resources available to educators to help them adapt to the COVID-19 outbreak. Read this for an expert introduction to online education.

CUNY and Dartmouth: Teaching in the Context of COVID-19

This is a co-authored and ever-evolving resource started by academics. Use this document to discover resources organized for educators, general information about digital education, open source tools, and inspiration for assignments.

Stanford Technology Specialists on Teaching Effectively During Times of Disruption

This resource is especially helpful for educators who teach courses with core learning objectives and benchmarks. Although specific to Stanford, there are great videos and information on digital resources available for educators.

Vanderbilt University: Resources for Just-in-Time Online Teaching

A quick shift to teaching online can feel disruptive. This article from Vanderbilt University has resources on how to carry continuity from your in-person classes to your digital classes. It also highlights video conference programs, screen capture tools, and other resources that are accessible for educators.

University of Oklahoma: Be There with Blogging: A Guide for Teachers

If you’re not comfortable with video, this blog post will help you understand how blogging can help you communicate with students and bring your courses online. If you already have a blog, read this to see how you can leverage it as a class communication channel.

Crowdsourcing: Teaching Online With Care

This document is unique in that it can be edited by any educator. It contains narratives from educators, notes on teaching online with care, links to the social media of leading digital educators, and notes on non-technical challenges and how to overcome them. This resource is great for educators looking for a sense of community.

University of Massachusetts: Online Tools for Teaching and Learning

This site empowers educators to discover tools that are perfect for teaching and learning. Every page details a different product, pricing, ease of use, and ways to use a specific tool to teach. For a running list of tools, bookmark this page.

Frequently Asked Questions About Virtual Classes

If your business is considering offering virtual class options for families, we’re here to help you find the best low cost resource for your needs.

What are virtual classes?

Virtual classes are pre-recorded or live demos that you can create to supplement or extend the reach of your offerings. You can share and host virtual classes in a variety of ways whether pre-recorded or live. We’ll cover some of the most commonly used options.

What kind of content is appropriate for virtual classes?

Almost any kind of learning can happen on video. Just grab a smartphone or laptop, test your audio and video, and — once you’re happy with the way things sound and look — press record. If your program requires supplies, you may want to create a resource list for enrollees or create a supply kit link to purchase.

Why should I consider offering virtual classes?

In the case that your business needs to pause in-person offerings or scale down on activities, virtual classes offer another touch point for families seeking out-of-home education opportunities for their children. It also provides a much needed employment opportunity for your hourly or contracted employees. You may need to offer virtual classes to meet heightened demand in your area, accommodate customers who are sick or unable to participate, or foster a sense of community at times of distress.

Additionally, you can consider investing in virtual classes as a way to create another source of income for your business! It’s never been easier to record video and distribute to an audience — so we’ve put together some resources to help you test virtual classes at little or no cost.

What equipment do I need to offer virtual classes?

To run a virtual class, you’ll need to have access to a few different pieces of equipment! We recommend testing with the following items first before investing in more expensive options. If you find that virtual classes are a hit, you can always expand your offerings!

To start, here’s what you’ll need:

A recording device with a camera and microphone

You can use your computer, a tablet with a camera, or a smartphone. If you or a member of your team has access to higher quality video recording tools feel free to use.

If you want to purchase a microphone, there are plenty of low cost USB microphones that will plug into your computer. Here are some under $60 options: Samson Go Mic, Blue Snowball Condenser Microphone, and the Plug ‘n Play USB Recording Microphone.

A tripod

Consider buying a tripod for your smartphone. Here are some of our favorite under $25 options: the Merkury Smartphone Tripod and Mount, Joby the Griptight One GorillaPod Stand, and the Insten Portable Mini Cell Phone Tripod. If you’d rather not buy a tripod, consider having someone film you from a distance.

A clean and well-lit space

You’ll want your recording space to appear bright and clean. Make sure to double-check the way your space looks on camera before starting a class or pre-recording an activity. Remember, clutter becomes very visible on camera.

Lesson plans

Educators, you’ve got this part down! Make sure to practice your lesson with a video to get used to teaching on screen.

You and your team

Your business is special because of your passion, ideas, and desire to grow hearts and minds. When you offer classes online, your community will grow far outside your zip code.

What resources are available to help me run virtual classes?

Great question! Here are some of our other favorite free and low cost services:

Video Hosting

Please note that when you host a video on one of these sites, make sure to tell parents to set parental controls on their account!

• Youtube — Free to use with a google account
• Vimeo — Basic and Pro plans available
• Dropbox — Basic and Pro plans available
• Google Drive—Up to 15G storage for free
• Skype — Free and paid versions available

Video Recording and Live Broadcasting

• Zoom
• Facebook Live
• Google Hangouts

Learning Management Systems

• Google Classroom
• Schoology

Other resources

• Loom Pro
• Google Drawings
• Skype in the Classroom
• Stoodle
• Scholastic Learn At Home

This content has been adapted from a few different sources including Howard Rheingold’s Resources for Teaching Online and The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Going Online in a Hurry: What to Do and Where to Start.

Tips for educators making the switch to virtual teaching was originally published in Sawyer: Childhood Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I joined Sawyer a few months ago and set out to understand if there were any areas that needed improvement on the Engineering teams. During my early conversations with our software engineers, one area of the product kept coming up: the shopping cart. Every new product feature requires making modifications to the shopping cart code base — but there was a problem. Only two people were familiar enough with the existing cart architecture to make changes with confidence. This stood out to me as a huge opportunity to use knowledge sharing to solve a problem.

How could I get the ball rolling? During my time at Meetup, teams managed code ownership transitions with an exercise called the Architecture Game. This activity was well-regarded for being useful and enjoyable for every engineer involved. I never sat in on one, but was curious to recreate the game at Sawyer.

I asked around and discovered that Ken Shih, a software engineer at Meetup, had designed the game. Ken was kind enough to have a call with me to walk through how to plan and play it.

Unlike a traditional architecture walkthrough where a subject matter expert whiteboards or presents diagrams, the Architecture Game flips the knowledge transfer around. The students — in this case, the engineers learning the architecture — dictate what gets covered and when. This fully interactive approach to learning interested me. In past experiences, I had seen presenters spend too much time on one area or gloss over something important, resulting in the audience missing useful information.

Next, I set out to clarify the goal of the game:

Uncover the current architecture of a system, subsystem, or area of a feature/functionality that only one person or a small number of people have solid knowledge of.

The reason I wanted to focus on the current state is so every engineer would start with a consistent baseline understanding of it before attempting to improve it, add to it, or refactor it.

After talking to Ken, I wrote the rules to Sawyer’s version of the Architecture Game. I defined five roles: the Facilitator, the Architect, the Players, the Scribe, and Observers (a new role that I wanted to experiment with). The subject matter expert assumes the role of the Architect. The Players are the ‘students’, in charge of asking questions and guiding the discussion. The Scribe is a Player tasked with documenting everything uncovered. Observers, an optional role, could sit in on the game. The gameplay consists of players asking questions, with the goal of teasing out the full architecture for that area of the system.

Not knowing how much time we needed, I scheduled 2 hours for our first game and decided to be the Facilitator. The Architect and Players were chosen ahead of time, a couple Observers were invited, and I left the selection of the Scribe until we were all assembled.

How did it go?

We had two engineers join remotely for the game without any hiccups because we used a physical whiteboard in our office and pointed a camera to it so that everyone could see it. To kick things off I re-stated the goal of the game and went through assigned roles. One of the players volunteered to be the Scribe. I then handed things off to the Players to start asking questions and begin the knowledge share.

During the first hour, the group covered a lot of ground about the cart implementation. They soon discovered there were related topics that required a deeper dive at a later time and designated them ‘Parking Lot’ items. Tangents weren’t unproductive — instead, they were often tools to inspire future sessions. As the facilitator, I also nudged the group back a few times from conversations that took them away from the current architecture.

After one hour, everyone took a short break. When we re-assembled a different Player took over as Scribe and the discussion continued through the next hour. By the end of the game everyone had a complete picture of the overall cart architecture and a great list of follow-up topics.

In order to see how the team enjoyed the game, I sent out a brief survey to everyone who participated. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and everyone said they would want to use this format again. One participant wrote, “I enjoyed the collaborative effort to understand a portion of the codebase that can be quite confusing. I also enjoyed hearing about the design decisions around the cart. The team asked some great questions that I haven’t asked myself.”

The Architecture Game will be played again at Sawyer, but a few things will change.

In our next iteration, I may eliminate the use of Observers and instead allow more Players to participate. The original thinking was to limit the Players to people who had the least exposure to the topic. Since I hadn’t defined the Observer role well, one person wasn’t sure whether they should chime in if they had information to answer a question. During the game I clarified that we want everyone to get accurate answers to their questions so anyone that can contribute to that should.

I also want to experiment with a “taking a turn” approach for questions. In our pilot Architecture Game, one participant noted that the more experienced engineers in the room were doing most of the talking. Everyone in a room should feel empowered to ask questions, share answers, and explore discussion topics.

Want to play the game with your team?

The Architecture Game proved to be a very fun and useful exercise. If you’re interested in implementing this for your team, here are instructions for running the game:

• In advance of the game, select one topic or area of existing architecture. This should make it clear to the group what the scope and boundaries are.
• There is one Facilitator who keeps the game moving and focused. This person should also ensure the environment and tone of the session are blame-free. This is not a time to criticize past decisions or suggest alternate approaches.
• There is one Architect designated for the game. This person should be able to accurately answer the most questions about the selected topic.
• There are 1–4 other Players
• One of those players is chosen as the Scribe. This person is responsible for documenting and whiteboarding during the game (on-the-fly) and publishing documentation after the game concludes.
• Additional people may join in as Observers. They will not play and should be expected to not distract or harm the game
• The Players (including the Scribe) take turns asking the Architect questions in order to get a complete picture
• The Scribe draws/writes as answers are provided, and adjusts diagrams as needed
• The Architect is not allowed to go deep into previous versions of the architecture or into alternatives or abandoned/future plans. This should be deferred to follow-up conversations. They are encouraged to explain why the current architecture exists if needed.
• The last 5–10 minutes of the game should be reserved for cleaning up the documentation and sending it out to everyone who attended. If you’re using software to create the diagrams during the game, this is easier. If not, just take photos and designate someone to convert it to digital graphs afterwards.

The Architecture Game: An Approach for Learning was originally published in Sawyer: Childhood Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The first data hires at an early stage startup face numerous challenges — an infrastructure built to run the business but not analyze it, an organization hungry for information without a process for requesting and prioritizing it, and little documentation on how anything is done. What should they do first?

I recently found myself in a position like this at Sawyer. There are good resources for startup founders hiring for analytics — I highly recommend Tristan Handy’s post — but not much has been written for data leads at a new organization.

In this post I share some ideas on tools and processes that have been helpful for me. Of course, you should also be thinking about business analysis — defining key metrics, generating financial reports, and doing strategic research. You will also have to think about data infrastructure — databases, pipelines, ETL, BI tools. Those are big topics that are better left for other posts. Here I focus on building a data practice which will form the foundation for all your analysis and infrastructure work.

There are a few principles woven into the suggestions below:

• Don’t worry about making things fancy. Do the simplest thing that works now.
• Keep an eye on how things will scale, but rein in your impulses to optimize them. Analytics should be lean and agile, too.
• Documentation, transparency, and reproducibility are interrelated and fundamental. Start good habits in these areas now, but expect to iterate on them and change how things are done as the organization matures and grows.

With those principles in mind, here are my recommendations for what to do in your first weeks at an early stage startup.

Map the data infrastructure

Start documenting all the places where data is stored, processed, and accessed. Does your organization have multiple databases? Does it have external data sources? Are there systems moving data from one place to another? How are people interacting with data? Write this all down, and include links and information about how to get access.

Of course, not all data sources are equally important. If your salespeople use software for calling sales leads, it’s probably enough to make a note of the software name and move on. The depth of documentation should be roughly in proportion to the value of the data and its role in your work.

Eventually this information can be part of an internal wiki with illustrations showing a dependency graph, but don’t bother with that yet. Just make a Google doc for now.

While mapping the data infrastructure, start thinking about what’s missing, what you would like to change, and what the future infrastructure might look like. These ideas can go on your roadmap, which I cover next.

Plan your roadmap

One of the perennial Data team struggles is balancing the short term and the long term. You’ll be busy right away, pulled in multiple directions, but you should take the time to form opinions about the future. How would you like to evolve data tooling, infrastructure, processes, and people?

Think about what’s missing, what can be improved, and how they align with the organization’s priorities. Are you using Google Analytics for tracking? That might be fine for now, but many businesses will eventually need something more powerful. How are reports being run? If data is primarily accessed and explored in spreadsheets, you should think about options for BI tools. Who should be hired next? A data analyst? A data engineer?

Form opinions about your roadmap now so you will be prepared to advocate for it whenever it comes up. What will you say when someone in marketing decides they want to integrate a new service, or when an engineer starts to build a data tool in house, or when the founders raise more funding and ask you how to spend it?

Create a data dictionary

As you learn things, especially things that are surprising, write them down. Think about what the next data hire will need to know. You can start by getting alignment and clarity on key terminology in your organization, like the definition of active users. Avoid the urge to make this fancy — a Google doc is fine.

The concept of a data dictionary is a bit controversial. What do you include? What don’t you include? How do you maintain it? For more mature organizations, I recommend considering Carl Anderson’s suggestions for using a data dictionary to create a shared understanding around key metrics and vocabulary.

In the early years of an organization, though, a data dictionary is primarily for you and future data hires. Even though the business and its data will change over time, there are still key pieces of information that are useful to document. Are timezones in UTC or your organization’s time? What are some core pieces of business logic? How are key metrics calculated? Are there important database tables or column names that aren’t self-explanatory?

Do not set yourself the goal of creating an exhaustive data dictionary. The completionists find it challenging to leave all those columns undocumented, but not only will it be time consuming to create, a pain to manage, and seldom read, but despite your best efforts it will get quickly out of date.

At Kickstarter, we called this document Common Data Gotchas, which is a good way to think about it.

Use a project management tool

Start tracking all the work you do, even quick data requests. Write down the question, the results, and how you got them. Encourage others in your organization to interact with you in this tool, but be careful not to make using the tool overly burdensome. Sometimes the CEO has a quick request, and you should just do it and document it later.

Don’t get too hung up on the process now — the key reason for using a project management tool is documentation. It will help with reproducibility, so you can easily recreate a dataset or an analysis in the future. It will also make your work visible, demonstrating your impact on the business.

The process itself will be helpful as your data team grows. Handling data requests via email may be fine when you’re the entire data team, but what happens when you add more people? Where will they find documentation on how previous analyses have been done? How will they know about the work everyone is doing? Investing in a lightweight system now will pay dividends down the road.

My first choice for this tool is Trello, but use whatever integrates well into your organization.

Create communication channels for data

Strive to make all your communication transparent. Transparency, documentation, and reproducibility go hand in hand.

If you’re on Slack, create a channel for data. People will email or Slack you directly, but, when possible, move those conversations to open channels on Slack or on your Trello board so there’s documentation of what was discussed. A valuable by-product of this is others can learn about what you do. Slack and Trello can be valuable channels for data evangelism.

If you get reports or alerts emailed to you, move them to group mailing lists. I recently created a data pipeline, and rather than having error alerts emailed only to me, I set up a mailing list dedicated to data pipeline alerts. This creates a paper trail that others can search, and it enables people to subscribe to alerts on their own.

Start a code repository

Set up a GitHub repo and use it liberally. Save your queries. Save your code. Write comments in your queries and code — for your future self and your future colleagues. Add your commits to your Trello cards. You can even integrate GitHub into Trello to handle permalinking for you.

Don’t worry too much about what goes where. You’ll end up tinkering with the organization of your repo over time. The key thing is to get in the habit of committing everything and linking those commits to wherever you document your work.

Talk to everyone

Schedule time with at least one person from every team, if not the whole organization. Ask them how they think about success and whether they track any metrics. Identify the data sources they use. Find out if they’re running any reports, and consider creating the reports for them.

While doing this, figure out who is data savvy in the organization — they will be great resources and make your life easier. I have found that, outside of Engineering, the most data savvy folks at startups tend to be in Finance and Operations. Of course, you’ll want to get close with the Engineering team. They will be your partners in determining how data is generated, processed, stored, and accessed.

Embrace yes

One of the core values at Sawyer is “Embrace yes — always.” In my first 30 days, I simply said yes to every request that came along. I wanted to get a feel for a variety of projects, work with different teams, and use that experience to build my understanding of the business and its data ecosystem. I also wanted to gain the trust of my coworkers, proving myself to be a willing collaborator before showing my skeptical side.

After 30 days, I started the hard work of clarifying and prioritizing, asking questions like, “Why do you need this? What will you do with it? How will it impact your decisions?” I pushed back on some requests. I looked for faulty assumptions, sources of bias, errors in logic.

Was this the right approach? Frankly, I don’t know. I could see it backfiring, especially if you can’t switch gears to questioning mode. My plate filled up quickly by the end of the 30 days, and it’s hard feeling behind in a job you’ve just started. Ultimately, whether this is successful is dependent on you and your organization.

Build your network

You may be the only data person at your startup, but don’t feel you have to go it alone. Work on building your network of other data practitioners so you have a place to go with questions, to get feedback on your ideas, and to keep up with the field.

There are great communities out there to get you started. One I recommend is the Locally Optimistic Slack group.

If you find yourself in this position, congratulations! It’s an exciting time to be at a company. The work you do now can have tremendous impact. Don’t let that stress you out though. Take an iterative approach, trying things, reflecting, and changing course when necessary. Remember that documentation, transparency, and reproducibility are key principles, and they will pay dividends down the road as you lay the foundations of a successful data practice.

This post originally appeared in Locally Optimistic.

Building a Data Practice from Scratch was originally published in Sawyer: Childhood Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Startups are inherently a journey of discovery.

The whole point is that you’re aspiring to build something that hasn’t been done before — and implicit in that is an endless opportunity for learning and growth.

Childhood Development is an attempt to document the challenges, solutions, and thinking that goes into building products at Sawyer, so that maybe we can create some short cuts for the builders of the future.

Leaders from our Data Science, Design, Product, and Engineering teams will share their insights for a larger community so we can all learn from one another. Because, in the end, that’s what Sawyer is all about — creating the opportunity for learning.

So this blog is a way to follow along with us on this journey, and we’re so excited to share it with you.

Childhood Development was originally published in Sawyer: Childhood Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.