Our scale up turnaround year at WeTransfer
This has been an amazing turnaround year for WeTransfer. A giant leap forward. Something we didn’t expect a year ago.
I am looking back on this to praise the team and to remind myself of the great accomplishments of this year. And share our experience with others managing a startup to grow into a scale up.
The lead up
2015 was a hard year. Not in trying to survive, not hard in the traditional startup sense. We were way past that. We were growing fast, we were profitable and well funded.
It was hard in a scale up way. To get from running to flying.
In 2013 we proved our monetization and turned profitable. 2014 was hanging on to the scaling up in usage, revenue and operations all at the same time. And 2014 was the year we met Tony and Irena from Highland Capital Europe that we ended up raising our $25M Series A from.
2015 was great, in the sense that we were growing fast in usage as well as revenue, while being profitable: we achieved all these goals we had set. But we also needed to find the path to the next level of organization and product.
With the product we wanted to take a big leap with a product that was working really really well. We needed a big redesign to make room for new functionality. We needed to re-build and re-design this thing from the ground up to make that possible.
We also needed to scale our operations. When we made the product into a business, most of my time went into streamlining the operational things, such as Finance, legal and HR. Way too much work for the few people doing the work.
And we wanted to grow even faster in the US. We are loved by the same core audience of creatives there, and our users there convert really well to Plus. So we have have a lot of untapped room for growth there. And flying in and out wasn’t enough anymore to create enough opportunities.
Meanwhile we were transferring a billion files a month.
To fix all this while we were growing faster than ever required a change we couldn’t figure out.
We were organized to deal with our growth, and scaled organizationally like that. But not to drive growth, and take it to the next level.
The way we were working had given us a fantastic product, a close knit team, and profitability. But it was holding us back now.
This is where we were late 2015. Seemingly great results, but as management team we needed to make bigger changes in the organization to make the next step.
The choice
We knew we could go two ways. We could go on like we did. Grow, be profitable, it would almost be comfortable.
Or we could grab the opportunity out there. Make a big leap in product and operations and supercharge our growth in the USA. But we would not be able to achieve this new ambition level going on like we did. We would have to make hard changes.
For me, having Highland on board as an investor and Troy on our shareholder board really paid off then. It really exists, constructive shareholders that can help a founding team navigate the next growth leap.
Troy Carter made it clear again how big our opportunity is in the US, and how we needed to make a step change, and be in LA.
And away from the office we talked for a day to decide. With Tony and Irena to help us in our discussions and offer an outside perspective.
We realized a new ambition would require tough organizational decisions. It would require one of us to move from Amsterdam to LA. It required changed that would impact ourselves big time as well.
That day, we chose to go for that ambition. To go from running to flying. Not just take another step, or run, but take a giant leap. To first decide that ambition level, and to do everything needed to make that happen.
Making it happen
This was the year we made that happen. And we succeeded. 2016 was the year of those changes.
To step up product design we decided we needed not to add more legs and run faster. We needed to make a giant leap and bolt a rocket on our backs. So we decided to acquire design agency Present Plus. To bring in the complete outside team we had been using on and off to lead our design team permanently.
To create the faster US growth we aim for, Damian made it clear that we should open an LA office. Close to the music industry and our network and Troy’s.
Damian said he would move to LA to set up the team there to grab the opportunity out there.
Operationally, I would build a stronger team in Finance and legal/HR. Bring in people to take processes up one more notch and then scale further. Move towards being able to delegate more and spend more time on our SAAS part of the business, but I’ll write more about that in a post looking forward.
Bas decided that, “Running a small startup is completely different from running an international company of more than 80 employees. There are people out there who have the experience and who like the operational part — I don’t ;-) I am a creative and a marketeer at heart”. So he decided to step up to a new role as Executive Chairman, and we would recruit a new CEO.
We found Gordon, who had an outstanding reputation at Amazon. We lured him in to lead us in the next step, starting January. He’s got great experience, is a great critical listener, and building great teams has always been his legacy.
Meanwhile we created a more professional meeting and decision structure, making it more clear who can give the go ahead on decisions like hiring, and which gave more visibility to the leaders in the company. Splitting the management into day to day (the Leadership Team) and Strategic (Executive Meeting).
We did it
I won’t pretend this year has always been smooth. And we did lose some great people on the way. But we did it! Together!
What makes this year so special is that the end result has been not just a much stronger and broader team, much less dependent on a few people. That team also delivered fantastically.
The new design team (Thijs Remie and team) redesigned the site. The tech team (led by Bastiaan Terhorst) built an entirely new site. New design and entire new code, front to back.
This has given us a new foundation to build on. In terms of code and design. Solving technical debt along the way that was squeaking under the ever increasing scale.
AND we redesigned our brand.
AND we started doing the first cross departmental projects to further iterate on the new product. Not just a new starting point, but a new speed of creating in a structured process involving everyone.
AND we launched our LA office with a fantastic event.
It worked
But we achieved even more than that. This work delivered what it is all about: we impacted people: it resulted in faster than ever growth of users.
Not just a wider stronger organization, not just a new product, not just solved tech debt, not just a redesign brand, but business and user impact as well.
Who would have known last year. When we were struggling on how to take this next step. It turns out it was not a step we needed, but a giant leap with a rocket bolt on our backs.
If there is a lesson in here for other scale ups, it is this:
Even after you’ve found market fit, revenue, scale and profitability, you will still need another radical step, to take the next leap in growth. You will need to unlearn and relearn yet again.
And in our case, the people on our board were enormously important in helping us decide that direction.
I can’t say often enough how happy I am about this. It feels almost unreal that we stand here now today. After where we were late 2015 and how hard some stuff was this year. We pulled it off!
Which means: we’re ready for the next giant leap ;-) Things are looking really really really bright. And the team we’re doing this with is stronger than ever.
Team, I am so grateful for 2016. And I can’t wait to take it to another level in 2017, and show everything we have in mind…
