The German Journey
In October 2018, Germany became the third country to launch the PayFit rocket.
Fast forward a year, and here we are sitting in our large Berlin office with 50 PayFiters and over 300 customers!
But how did this happen and what have been the highs, challenges and lessons learnt over the last twelve months?
Phase 1: Construction of the German product (November 2017 — October 2018)
1 — Just the beginning…
Founded in France in 2016, PayFit’s company headquarters are located in Paris’s 17th district.
Right from the outset, PayFit and its founders — Firmin, Florian and Ghislain — decided that they wanted to have a product that they could pitch to an international audience.
Key to any international launch would be JetLang, PayFit’s revolutionary programming language that was developed by Ghislain, the very first JetLang “Master”.
JetLang Masters often come from an engineering background; their role is to use JetLang on a daily basis to further develop the product by coding complicated local payroll and accounting laws, as well as tax and social reporting regulations.
The foundations for the PayFit Germany app were laid by Stephan, Head of Product.
Stephan’s PayFit journey began in Paris all the way back in 2017 on one cold November morning. Armed only with limited French but bags full of ambition, he was greeted enthusiastically by the first 40 PayFiters. Since then, the team in Paris has grown to over 300.
“All my expectations were exceeded — the team welcomed me with great enthusiasm. I felt at home from day one as I was doing something that I had always wanted to do — to be working in a meritocracy with ambitious people who weren’t interested in any internal politics.”– Stephan Weber, Head of Product @PayFit Germany
After Stephan had settled in and started building the German PayFit app, the search began for an additional team member to support him. He quickly found what he was looking for; his friend and former colleague, Niklas.
Niklas, now PayFit Germany’s Head Engineer, started his journey in early 2018. Charged with helping to build the product, he fully immersed himself in the French office thanks to not only his footballing skills but also his willingness to integrate with his new colleagues.
As payroll was not something that either Stephan or Niklas had any prior experience in, both began to receive professional payroll advice from PayFit’s first German payroll specialist.
2 — The first customers & the first payslip
By April the first payslips ready to be drawn up. The team started thinking about the various designs and formats that they could use. To do this, they looked at what their main competitors were doing and began analyzing the legal requirements of German payslips.
“We’d worked so hard over several months to produce a good product. The moment that we were able to produce the first payslip was particularly satisfying.”– Niklas Prieß, Head of Engineering @PayFit Germany
The workload was beginning to mount and there was still a great deal to do before the official launch. So in May, Erik boarded the PayFit rocket and started taking care of everything that was not directly linked to the product.
Erik’s job was a diverse but important one. He was responsible for the translation of the site, looking after the beta testers and acted as a customer care representative. The first PayFit Germany customer was signed shortly after.
Before leaving the Paris nest, Samira (HR Manager) and myself (Country Manager) would join to ensure that everything was ready for the official launch.
Phase 2: Ready to rumble in Germany (October 2018 — January 2019)
PayFit’s first office in Berlin was a co-working space at Potsdamer Platz.
When PayFit launched in Spain in April 2018, it initially took up a lot of resources and time to find a suitable office space. Conscious of the fact that it could also be a lengthy process in Germany, the team decided that the best option would be to find a reliable co-working space.
The move away from the Paris office was emotionally challenging. For the likes of Stephan and Niklas, who had been working in Paris for a considerable length of time, moving from a large office with 100 PayFiters to a small office with just 6, was never likely to be easy.
“Overnight the team shrunk from 100 to 6 PayFiters. We were basically starting again from the beginning, which meant that we had to create our own culture.” – Stephan Weber, Head of Product @PayFit Germany
An international company must have an international culture. In the French office, it was common for PayFiters to greet each other with a double high-five. We thought that it was essential to introduce this to the German team too as a way of encouraging people to become immediately immersed within the PayFit culture.
Stephan and Niklas also thought it would be a good idea to introduce the BBQ Test to the German office. This was already a standard part of the recruitment process in France.
The BBQ Test (in Germany it is called “Meet the Team”), is an opportunity for prospective candidates to meet their future PayFit colleagues over a few drinks and snacks. The idea is to encourage current PayFiters to become part of the recruitment process, but also to allow candidates to gain an understanding of the cultural fit of the company.
The product was also continually evolving and the company was taking precautions to enable further scaling. In October 2018, we founded the German GmbH, the equivalent of a limited company in the UK.
With the team continuing to grow, the number of job functions also increased. The recruitment process was beginning to become more and more established and the onboarding of new PayFiters was taking shape.
“Every working day was full of lots of new experiences. We were really starting from the beginning.” – Samira Helbig, HR Manager @PayFit Germany
As time passed, it was becoming more and more apparent that we had outgrown our office. Samira set the wheels in motion for us to move into a more suitable working environment. In December 2018 we had a new home in Berlin Kreuzberg.
By the end of 2018, we had over 20 customers and 11 PayFiters. We were also beginning to receive feedback from the early adopters, which enabled us to improve the overall quality of the product.
At the turn of the year, our team had grown to 18, with new PayFiters working in the Marketing, HR and Sales teams.
Phase 3: Hiring ramped up (January 2019 — April 2019)
The stream of new PayFiters and the staggering growth brought along its own challenges.
“The teams were small, which meant that it was difficult to give the candidates a picture of what the departments would look in the near future. Furthermore, we couldn’t really provide any concrete plans for the company. In the beginning, there was little in the way of processes in place. This meant that people often went about doing things in their own way.”– Samira Helbig, HR Manager @ PayFit Germany
Many of the challenges that we faced were similar to those that other fast-growing organizations experience. However, the fact that PayFit already existed in France and Spain meant that there was a solid base.
For us, it was really important to ensure that the corporate culture that was already well ingrained in the French and Spanish offices, was transferred to our office in Germany.
We wanted PayFit to transcend borders and to do that, we understood that the company’s values needed to be implemented into our way of working.
This in itself was a challenge as it meant that we often had to make tough decisions. For example, if we didn’t feel that someone was integrating well with the team, we would ultimately have to make a decision regarding their future in the company.
To ensure that events like these were kept to a minimum, we decided to refine our recruitment process further. We wanted to grow quickly as a team, but equally, we wanted to preserve the values and mindset that were beginning to define us as a company.
“It became clear to us fairly quickly that as a SaaS company, we had to have a strong focus on processes to make customers happy. Creating new steps and ensuring that we maintained our ‘startup curve’ was not always easy. There was no certainty to anything we were doing.”– Stephan Weber, Head of Product @PayFit Germany
As the team continued to grow, so did the number of customers. Between January and April, we grew by over 400% and saw our customer base increase to 80. By the end of May, we had reached over 100 customers.
Phase 4: Building the Customer team (April 2019 — August 2019)
At PayFit, we were quick to realize that a key element in helping us to retain customers was making sure that they were onboarded correctly. Doing this to a high standard would mean that our customers were knowledgeable about how the app worked. However, because the app was always being improved and added to, we decided that it would be best for us to provide continuous customer support.
Up until April, our Customer Care team consisted of just one member. As a result, we decided to expand this team and added Sarah, Head of Customer Care.
We now found ourselves in an operational position to allow both the Product and Customer Care teams to go and nurture our new and existing customer base.
What was the biggest challenge for us? Integrating similar processes into different teams in order to create strong and stable operations. We knew it wouldn’t always be perfect, but we believed that it was important to get the necessary procedures in place as quickly as possible.
The Customer Care team continued to grow quickly over the following months. We worked hard to allow the team autonomy and always looked to ensure that the customers remained our top priority.
By the end of May, there were four new additions to the team.
The challenges at the time
April
- Maintaining a happy customer base while also implementing new processes.
- Onboarding new team members who had to be quickly brought up to speed on the company values and behaviors
June — August
- Due to the rapid growth of the team, we were continually having to adapt operationally. While tiring, we understood that this was part and parcel of working in a growing startup.
- Autonomy for the team and customers remained our top priority. The processes and teams were becoming more and more established.
- Our next challenge was to understand how we could improve the PayFit customer experience.
Even though we will continue to face many of the same challenges today, we are proud of the fact that we’ve managed to overcome certain difficulties. The team is now much more balanced and many of those working within the Customer team have gone on to establish really positive relationships with our clients.
“The customers are happy! Our NPS and CSAT scores are good and the direct feedback we’ve received from customers has been positive. Internal processes are also beginning to be implemented and the cooperation between the individual teams is enabling us to move forward together as a company.”– Sarah Kwateng, Head of Customer @PayFit Germany
We’ve also had our first non-human addition to the team; our office dog Kira! She belongs to one of our product builders, André who joined the team in May.
PayFit is now a European-wide company and to help reinforce our position on the market, we successfully raised a further €70 million taking our overall fundraising to €90 million.
This latest round of funding will enable PayFit to continue its growth within Europe and will also help accelerate our expansion to new markets.
Phase 5: On your marks, get set, go! The growth phase (August 2019 — October 2019)
In August 2019, our team past the 40 PayFiter mark. In September, over 250 German customers were using PayFit as their payroll solution.
The Declarations team, who are responsible for social and tax reporting, grew from 0 to 9 employees. We also started further implementing other international PayFit procedures into the office. We created internal processes and made the scalable and started training existing employees to become payroll experts.
The Product Summit in September was an international highlight and a sign of cooperation between all the PayFit countries.
All product builders and product managers travelled to visit us in Berlin to take part in exciting workshops on international cooperation and development. The international exchange also provided an opportunity for the different offices to share a pleasant moment over a couple of beers.
Since the creation of our GmbH in Germany exactly one year ago, there have been a great number of highlights.
In October, the German team attended the first ever PayFit summit on the Île des Embiez. Nearly 400 PayFiters gathered together for a fun and sun-filled three-day break. We also reached another milestone when the German team passed the half-century mark! This was a significant achievement and had happened in just 18 months. We also finalized our management team where Eva (Head of Marketing) and Max (Head of Sales) joined up with existing managers Stephan, Niklas, Samira and Sarah.
In my opinion it is important to maintain a management style that on the one hand ensures that goals are achieved and framework conditions are set, and on the hand gives managers and employees certain freedom to take responsibility, learn quickly and innovate.
Phase 6: Together as one (October 2019 2019 — Present)
It’s been an intense year full of unbelievable highs and very few lows. Our key learnings have guided us on our journey so far and we think it would be helpful for us to share them for the benefit of other startups.
- Better done than perfect — Not everything has to be perfected before you put it out there on the market.
- Get feedback from day one — Customer feedback is the most important information you can receive. It really is the only way to help improve the service you provide.
- Be flexible — Make sure that your employees are flexible and that they can take on tasks from other departments within your business.
- Don’t be afraid to make mistakes — Making a mistake is okay. The crucial thing to remember is that you have to learn from it and avoiding doing the same next time.
We have worked tirelessly to create the solid foundations for us to grow further and reach the ambitious goals that we have set ourselves. Increasing our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) tenfold by January 2021. We also want to see the number of PayFiters in Germany grow to 80.
It is particularly important to us that our colleagues live out our values and corporate culture on a daily basis. Thanks to our well-established recruitment processes, we have managed to increase our knowledge base and skill set through the PayFiters who have joined us over the last 12 months.
We are very proud of the fact that friendships have been formed and that the personality of our teams has begun to emerge. All of us at PayFit Germany are passionate about the jobs we do, and we believe that we’re getting better and better every day!
Our goal remains to ensure continuous growth, surpass our objectives and celebrate our success together.
Thanks to everyone who has supported us on our journey thus far!
