Happy one year, Vanguards

Another chapter in my startup life 

It was exactly one year ago when we began an organization experiment at work. It all started with the hiring of two new sales reps and an account manager.

It wasn’t the happiest time here. While our business is growing, we are still far from the hockey stick moment that we’ve envisioned for ourselves. We’ve encountered endless challenges on both business and engineering ends. I complained tirelessly about the lack of collaboration internally between sales and marketing, and to a wider degree, the rest of the company.

My core responsibility then was marketing. While we worked really hard, I felt stagnant. We were still so far away, there is always so much to do, yet I didn’t feel like I was doing enough, I wasn’t making a difference to help us move forward.

Our sales team was a giant revolving door. People come and go within a matter of months and made it difficult to align any efforts between sales, marketing and account management. We had a VP of sales… but then he didn’t seem to care.

How it all started

I vowed to myself that things have to be different. Even if I wasn’t a part of the “sales” team, it is still my responsibility to make sure our new team members can integrate and become successful.

It started with spending an extra hour or two each day to help the new people learn the pitch and do product demos. But the efforts quickly snowballed. Within a matter of days it became a project to create an on boarding program to systematically train and develop new employees.

As the new team continues to ramp up, each new sales call or customer engagement raised more questions about our perspective on the market, and how we want to approach the market.

So within a matter of weeks it became a bigger project to completely overhaul and redefine our customer engagement approach, our sales strategy, our internal business processes, how teams are organized and how we want to operate moving forward.

This is the beginning of Vanguard.

Vanguard’s mission

The first mission was to get a very, very, very thorough understanding of our customers. How do we provide a solution? How can we add value within their day-to-day productivity and efficiency? There isn’t enough marketing magic or sales pitch or promotions we can offer if we’re not creating the right product that fits the market demand.

We called the team vanguard because we have to spearhead the business development efforts. Vanguard’s ultimate mission is to be the best customer engagement and market development team.

There’s so much to do. We hired even more people and the vanguard team expanded.

We spent week after week reaching out to all of our customers. We had in depth conversations to understand what they really want to do. No, not just an “I want to buy a product.” But to know the why’s — what are they trying to accomplish? Who is using this? Who are they using it with? What do they really need to do? What is the workflow? What is the business environment?

Very quickly, things started changing. Everything is fair game — any ideas can be discussed. Because at the end of the day if we can only achieve incremental growth, then what’s the point? From pricing packages to product development to marketing messages — we continued to iterate, iterate and iterate.

Vanguards went above and beyond every step along the way. First we learn and understand, and then we develop new ideas, iterate, and take it back into the market. Did it work? Yes? Good, let’s keep doing more. No? Then we restart the cycle all over again. Through the team’s persistent effort, we finally completed the feedback loop that aligns our market and product development efforts.

If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough

Throughout the endless feedback cycles, the team grew and matured.

At the beginning, my CEO told me that the organization of vanguard is an experiment, “let’s see if we can really make a change to how we work.” Everyday was a challenge for me. Although I was the head of vanguard, there’re a lot of things I didn’t know or haven’t done. There were many occasions where I felt like I was barely half a step ahead of my team — trying to learn on the job and figure things out just in time so I can help them. The learning curve was steep — for all of us.

We have a young and inexperienced team. Not everything was executed to perfection, and more often then not we made mistakes. Many mistakes. There were countless long nights at the office, or working from home on weekends. Some days we all want to pull each other’s hair out (or maybe just mine). I even locked myself up in a conference room to hide and cry alone in silence more than once.

But despite all the difficulties, we bonded. We bonded through overcoming challenges together.

Change is the only constant — how Vanguards adjusted and evolved

We learned how to work with each other, how to leverage each other’s strength, and how to think outside the box. We brainstormed and solved problems together. We (mostly me) yelled and disagreed, and then learn to talk through our differences together.

We keep finding ways to take steps forward together.

Each and every single vanguard flourished.

In less than a year, everyone on the team demonstrated tremendous growth, dedication, passion, creativity, and selflessness. Everyone welcomes a challenge with open arms. Everyone is a team player. Everyone delivered above and beyond services to our customers. Everyone have adjusted to every change and curveball along the way, applied all the collective lessons learned to devise better plans and execution every day.

Growing with the team

And for myself, the opportunity to keep growing with my team has been the best motivation. We can only have a successful company and successful products with a successful team.

And I am so grateful.

I am so lucky because I have a work BFF that I can bitch to, cry to and work on problems together.

I get to work and learn from an executive team who continuously mentors and supports me every step along the way.

I get to work for a founder that oh so fearlessly pushes our company and our vision forward. He allowed me to work through my mistakes, navigated me through the most difficult problems, trusted my decisions and continued to challenge me to become better everyday.

This is only the beginning

In just a short year, Vanguard has already been the most invaluable experience in my life. The journey continues to be both incredibly humbling and exciting at the same time.

Happy one year. Vanguards. I am so proud of all of you.

So here it is. Take a moment. I want you to know that I am so honored to have all of you with me, and I appreciate all the efforts from everyone day in and day out.

Good?

Okay. Moment is over and get back to work. We have a lot of work to do and this is only the beginning.

Love, Julia