Scaling Operations at ElevenLabs: Work in Progress - with Operations Lead Victoria Weller

* Musik * Startup Insider. Herzlich willkommen zum Startup Insider Podcast. Mein Name ist Jan Thomas. Ich freue mich sehr, denn ich darf euch kurz begrüßen zu unserer neuesten Reihe. Und zwar Startup Insider Work in Progress. Damit übergebe ich auch schon das Mikro an unser neues Traumduo. Denn Paula Wehmair ist bei uns Partner bei General Kettelist. Ihr kennt sie als regelmäßige Expertin, und mitgebracht hat sie Helena Meyer Schönherz. Sie ist Managing Director bei Tenmore in. Und ich glaube, viel mehr muss ich gar nicht verraten, worum es in den Format geht, was der Gedanke und die Mission dahinter sind. Das hört ihr jetzt am besten von den beiden selbst. Hier sind Paula Wehmair von General Kettelist und Helena Meyer Schönherr von Tenmore in. Viel Spaß dabei. Hallo, everybody. Welcome to a new category of Podcast at Startup Insider. Called Work in Progress. Wir sind sehr leid, um zu starten. Wir haben schon gesagt, dass wir es für einen langen langen Zeit lang verstanden haben. Das ist meine beste Helena. Sie ist ein Format, das "Scale-up HR" und jetzt die euren Female-Liedership Academy in Tenmore. Daher schreibt sie sich das. Helen ist ein großer HR- und Operationsnerd. Sie kann sich viel von den Hautex von HR von ihnen aus. Wir haben diese Konversations. Sehr gut. Und mein Bestie auch auf der anderen Seite ist Paula. Sie ist ein Venture-Captainer. Sie ist auf der callen, um die Tech-Founders zu helfen, sie sich auf den Team schalten. Das ist so eine gute Idee. Sie haben die Alltag in den Rollen und die Leute inside und ich bin sehr leid, dass wir es finally und finally haben. Sie hat alle das nicht, was du siehst. Ich glaube, ich bin auch sehr leid, um die Kinder in den Tech-Jobs zu finden. Wir haben alle das nicht wirklich zu tun und wir werden alle das Interesse mit uns auf der Tour auf der Seite. Wir haben uns auf der anderen Seite zu tun. Was ist das denn in den Progerien? Es ist ein Tech-Koreer-Education-Pot. Es ist eine Job-Kath-Log, die du kannst, die Leute in den Tech-Rollen machen, die sich in den Schleiden machen. Wenn du dir selbst hast, was die Leute in den Seelen machen, was die Leute in den Finanzdepartment machen, was die Engineers machen, dann ist das die Podcast für dich. Wir wollen einen Talent-Navigaten-Kath-Log, aber auch die Founders, die sich in ihren own Organisations machen. In order zu dem MISO, wir werden die Sorcerer und Experts, die nicht in den Einsatz zu sehen, wir werden die Freundin von uns auf den Fällen verwendet werden. Wir werden auch dort sehr, sehr kleine Begriffe von den Arbeitern machen. Wir werden die 60-Komponieren von uns verwendet werden. So, let us know if you are interested in any specific jobs, we will start building our catalog today, you can find us on all the Podcasts-Platforms under "Startup Insider". Let's see where this work in progress will take us. Noch ein kurzer Hinweis in eigener Sache. Wir machen diesen Podcast für euch und hoffen, dass ihr dir gefällt und dich auf deiner unternehmerischen Reise unterstützt. Deshalb freuen wir uns sehr über euer Feedback. Gibt es Themen, die du vermisst, Gäste, die wir einladen sollen oder Dinge, die wir verbessern können? Dann schreibt uns einfach unter www.startup-insider.com/feedback. Den Link findest du wie immer auch in den Show-Nodes. Wir freuen uns auf deine Nachricht. Wir sind in den Progressen. - Wir haben einen sehr spätten Gast mit uns. Wir haben einen sehr spätten Gast. Ich bin sehr glatt und wir haben es von mir im Podcast mit dir. Es gibt viele technologische Gehörungen, nur jetzt. Danke für die Patience. So, Vicki ist eigentlich ein der meiner besten friends. Ich habe sie in den letzten Jahren 2016 oder sogar lange. So eine sehr lange Zeit. Nicht nur ist sie ein sehr fremdannes Freund und sehr sehr viel. Und sie ist auch ein sehr großer Freund. Sie studiert Astrophysics in Edinburgh. Ich weiß nicht, wie es passiert. Das ist nicht enough. Sie hat dann zum Universität der Columbia-Kollombien zu studiert. Also ich glaube, gerade am Topf der Klasse hat sie in New York in meinem großen Mal in den letzten Jahren, weil es von Deutschland und am Tag als Test-Engineer hat. Und dann, sie hat sich zu dem Palantir geholfen. Sie hat es am besten als Produkt- und Produkt-Reliabilität. Und jetzt, der Grund, der 11-Labs, ein sehr sexy Company, ein der fastes, scherziger E-Suit-Kurren. Und sie hat es von der Stiftung von Staff und jetzt ist sie in die Operation. Aber bevor wir alle in den letzten Jahren getrennete, wird es wirklich sehr kassisch. Wir haben es schon vor dem langen Zeit geschehen. Wie hattet ihr, wo hattet ihr, was wir machen? Vielen Dank, Helen und Paul. Ich bin so erinnert zu sein, wie du hier bist. Ich liebe die Runde von meiner CV. Aber ich weiß, dass du nur hier für unser Band hattest, die ich immer sehr appreciate. Wir haben uns sehr viel geladen. Ich hoffe, wir werden uns heute zusammengekommen. Ich bin in Munich, jetzt bin ich in London, aber ich war in der Winter-Holidays. Und bevor die Kekke auf, das ist sehr heftig. Denn alle der Dinge, die wir hier für die Arbeit und dann bin ich auch in der Mission, zu versuchen, alle neue Fitness-Studio in Munich zu tun. Und ich bin im Plan der Welt, die wir auf der Welt und das hat ein Projekt auf der Top, wo es heute sehr viel Zeit für die Inventation zu erreichen, aber es geht aus, ich war klingelt durch zwei quickly, ein bisschen etwas tiefer. Und das war ein bisschen tiefer für die Inventation. Ich habe immer die Vorbereitung von der Akkorde von der Erste. Ich habe immer die Inventation von der USA zu tun. Ich habe immer die Vorbereitung von der USA zu tun. Schloss Shaymas, du musst die Bug herücken! Es ist nicht venular auf. Dasacioen der Turigintestelle hat Idiote angem Pocket. Dasöllste Liste Boy sc NATITRA dieACK 무� Turk. Sie hatten wirklich nicht DV ist. ciller sind seit DF dije sehr spät obscure. Ich nenne Präbe SCP-öl mit my concerts. Sagen wir die LP und tu eine Mittelfbee in opposavour. Ich nenne File Col Im Lamке. Werizing war in der etwa editante都是 da. Ramen?! Ja! Na poetisch absch bloomesianisch! n Expertisch! Wie wir hier hier sind. Der erste Job, die ich hier zu dir gebraucht habe, ist die Job des Operations. Ich bin eine Operation, die ich durchführen kann. Ich bin sehr leise, dass ich das erste. Es ist eine sehr leise, dass ich das erste Job in der Firma starte. Ich bin auf die Topana über die Frage, ob ich das erste Job habe. Ich denke, der erste Job war ein bisschen mehr über die Komponie. Ich denke, die alle in der Start-up-Kommunity sind in der letzten 11-Lafte. Aber viele Leute aus der Seite nicht. Ich bin ein Venture-Kapitalist. Für mich ist 11-Lafte. Das ist natürlich ein der meisten, sehr leise Komponie. Wir haben als GC wirklich lieb. 11-Lafte, ihr founder Mathe ist sehr leise. Vicki, vielleicht hast du die Audien gesagt, was 11-Lafte ist, von deinem Venture-Komponie. Ja, ich bin sehr leise. So, von einem operierten Perspektiv, nicht nur von einem Perspektiv, aber auch von 11-Lafte. Ich denke, das ist das das erste Job, die ich am Moment habe. Und von einem ganz komischen Abitur. 11-Lafte ist in Audio-Ai. Wir haben mit Text-Aspeite, die man in die Words innen kann. Und sie sind sehr leise. Und wir haben auch andere Dinge in Audio-Ai. So jetzt haben wir Soundeffekte. Wir haben einen backgrounden Noise-Removing-Model. Wir sind im Musikmodell, auch. Und so ist es wirklich komposing die ganze Spiele von Audio-Ai. Und als ich als Erste habe, habe ich gesagt, oh, das ist so ein Miesch. Das ist ein great Text-Aspeite. Ich habe das gemacht. Und dann realized, dass es eigentlich immer. Und jetzt, ein der großen Prioritys oder Dinge, die wir annehmen, ist, zu verstehen, was die Auskunft nachdenken, weil es nicht mehr in der Welt kommt, dass es nicht mehr in der Auskunft zu tun ist. Und wie die Internal-Kustomer-Training oder das Teil der Produkte ist. Das ist also led zu 11 Labs, zu wirklich being an einem sehr stebten Projekt. Händen die VC-Lavars, zu einer der großen User-Numbers, der Produkte und die Revenue-Krisse. Und als auch das auch eine andere Komponiesise, die ich in meiner Zeit habe. Ich möchte mich natürlich gerne sagen, ich glaube, dass ich das erste 10 Employee habe. Und jetzt ein Jahr über 100, die auch wirklich interessant sind. Und jetzt ein paar Jahre über 100, die die 10-Jahre-Kommissionen, die die 10-Jahre-Kommissionen haben. Und die 10-Jahre-Kommissionen haben die 10-Jahre-Kommissionen, die die 10-Jahre-Kommissionen haben. Und jetzt ein paar Jahre über 100, die 10-Jahre-Kommissionen haben. into the later as well. But Helen mentioned, my background is actually in physics. And I kind of segueed from physics through data encryption into the tech world. And a patent here was within a tech company working on operations and using my physics background only in terms of problem solving. So in operations, there's also a lot of structured thinking, limited data that you have, and you want to get somewhere else. And then you just find the easiest way to get there, which is essentially what physics problems boil down to as well. But there's not a clear path really from physics obviously going into operations. And so that segue into the tech world was really through that data encryption startup that had physical components by having quantum random number generators with lasers and everything. So there was that physics side that I was working on. But they also were building a mobile app and with that tech piece, I was project managing a lot on that side as well. And then heard about Palantir and really wanted to work for that company because I had heard such great things from the inside. And at Palantir, I met Matti. So I knew the co-founder of 11 Labs before he left Palantir to start this company. And as part of knowing him was close to the initial trajectory of 11 Labs. And for the last couple of years at Palantir, I was already thinking about what's next for me. I was going through kind of iterations of getting a little bit bored and maybe coasting and thinking that I want to have a new bigger challenge. And Palantir is great at just shifting your role in being very agile and I kept getting that new challenge there as well. But when I heard about 11 Labs, and I really knew that it was providing that next challenge as well. But I knew that at some point I would want to go to a much smaller company because there you can operate at a much broader level and get your hands on at the company level rather than just the team level early on. And as I was looking around for startups, I knew that when 11 Labs launched in the product in beta, that the uptake of it was incredible. They had thousands of users within just a few hours or days. And so I caught up with Matti and kind of explained that I want to do something that's high pressure and high velocity. And he was like, I have just the thing for you. And now it's really-- 11 Labs has definitely delivered on the high pressure high velocity. And I really love it. That's awesome. I love that whole framework of pretty much saying, look for the high pressure high velocity and look where you can actually get your hands dirty in a lot of different fields because there's still so much ground to cover. Yeah, especially for operations, I think. There are some roles that are more niche and targeted. But if you are into operations by nature, you're quite a generalist. And getting into the biggest broadest set of different things and setting them up from 0 to 1 is something that a startup offers like no other size of company. And I think that's also a really important point which we'll dive into later. It's like, what kind of character do you have to be for certain roles, certain industries, but also certain company stages? And once you have that matrix a little bit on what you like, what you're good at, what you prefer, it's quite easy to find the realm of company you'd like to work for. So we already, I'm going to put in pin in operations. It's already something generalist and also getting your hands dirty, which also relates to the early stage part of a company. For sure. Awesome. Maybe we use this. This is the perfect segue because you already said operations. What is operations good for? Can you maybe explain to us what does it actually mean to lead operations? Like, what does that role entail? Yeah. Maybe caveating right up front that operations looked completely different in different companies, especially if you would be in a company that has like logistics as part of it. I think the operations are mainly concerned with like, how do we get our physical product into the stores and to the consumer? At a tech company, it looks a little bit different, but again, like different companies have different definitions of it. So I'll speak mostly to how operations looks at 11 labs, which has overlap with other companies for sure as well, but wanted to start with that caveat. At 11 labs, it has shifted from the very early stage, where I was acting very much as a generalist, having my hands on multiple things, being the only one on our compliance function, on our legal function, on our finance function. At some point, I was the person doing accounting for a level of labs, which in hindsight is pretty hilarious. And that was like the early stage operations shape. Now that we've grown a bit, these individual responsibilities have turned into their own functions. So now we have a leader within the hiring function and a team under that, and same for customer support, et cetera. So it's a little bit more focused on the scaling of that infrastructure. How do we go from like 10% of me doing this thing to actually 10 people doing that same thing? And then I think the next stage after that is like the more mature startup, where it's running smoothly, it's in steady state. And you're thinking about how to make it more lean. You don't no longer need to scale up as quickly, but you need to think about how to optimize the processes and increase your margins and be really effective across the different teams and individuals. And for me, currently, and I very specifically in this stage at this company, I lead the operations function, which means that within like, if you think about the org chart, there's the engineering side, which has research and product and backend engineering and infrastructure within it. And then it has the B2B side, where we do our consumer and business sales and marketing. And then there's the operations function, which is targeted or like concerns itself with the back end of the company. Like how do we make sure that the company runs well? And then there's the legal side, there's the finance side, there's then the hiring side, how do we make sure that we have an employer brand and bringing people, there's the HR side, like how do we ensure that we're compliant in all the different jurisdictions that we've hired into and our people are happy. Customer support is also within operations. So the end user support via tickets, ensuring that they are unblocked in using our product. And then one very specific thing at 11 Labs is that within operations, we also have audio engineering. So a team of audio specialists that jump in and help out in our video creation, in our professional voice cloning to ensure that we always have top-notch audio. But I think that's a very unique 11 Labs operations piece that doesn't necessarily exist at other tech startups. - I mean, operations just from what I'm hearing is like a black belt thing. Like a lot of different functions come under it. And essentially you look out that everything the processes, the tools, everything runs smoothly and that you can plug in and out of functions, depending on how the company's set up. Which is what I personally think makes it super interesting, but also a bit more hard to grasp than the niche classic function that has a very strict focus. - Yeah, you have to be very good at learning new things. So my first project at 11 Labs was our SOC2 compliance. And I had never thought about compliance before. I have no background in it nor did I ever have any intention of getting into compliance. I actually remember when my first friend that for the first time told me that she's doing compliance at the XYZ company and explained what it was. I was like, "Why? Like why do you choose this?" - Why would you want to do that? And then I joined and Matthew was like, "Oh, no one has been looking at our SOC2 compliance. Would you please take this?" And I was like, "Oh." (laughs) - You're just, yeah, take a lot. - I have a lot of respect for people that own compliance. - One question, would you agree that it's fair to say, they're sort of the side of the typical tech company that's selling the product? And there's the side that's building it. And operations is somewhat the rest that is enabling those two things to happen. - Yes, I think that is true for the operations function. I think there's like these, I'm a very visual person. So I think about like the ops function as like its own entity, where we have those vertical pieces, I said of like hiring HR customer support. But I also think that there is an element of operations that spans across everything else. Not just the operations function, but also touches the building side and also touches the selling side because essentially we define how the company operates, like making the operating principles for how 11 labs goes about quarterly planning, impact reviews, those types of things. And that's something that affects all teams and doesn't like stay contained within the operations function. - Yeah, you're very much enabling the other two sides to operate and get them all like a guiding principles. And I also think it's fascinating or one thing that I find very rewarding is that determining the operating principles actually defines what it's like. like to work at the company. And I think company culture, I used to think of as a very fluffy term, but now I've realized that that's such a core piece for making a company what it is, because it's just a collection of people. And then having a certain type of person working in a certain type of way at the end of the day makes like the DNA of a company. And operations has a huge impact on shaping and ensuring and scaling the culture of a company. Yeah. Should we maybe continue? We, I could double click on culture for about another two hours. But maybe, maybe to to understand just one last thing about operations broadly, what are like the two to three KPIs you would get measured on measured on or where you say like this is what I care about the most as an outcome to my work. I think because operations is essentially building a product for the people, the KPIs would be very people centric. And we want to make sure that the people are happy. So looking at like retention values that we can grow the the people. So looking at like hiring values and then we stay like lean. So I think if there's one top KPI for operations, it would be revenue per head count. At our stage, we haven't been like paying that much attention to revenue per head count because it's just so much focus on growing quickly enough to stay and stay in tune with our revenue growth. And so for me, there's a change of like priorities from quarter to quarter, if not even faster. And the recent focus has been on hiring. So we've scaled from like 30 to 100 for the first half of the year. Now we're around 120. But we have so many open roles that's hiring further and we're likely going to double or triple again in the next year. And hiring is such a core piece that requires a sturdy machine where we can just funnel through thousands of applicants. And find the best ones and really have like that set of definition of what does it mean? Who are the best ones for 11 labs? Because that also looks different at every company. And so my recent goal focus KPIs have been all in the in the hiring space. Yeah, thank you so much for that. And just to link on to the overall because we were talking a bit about broadly what does operations mean. And I think let's just double click a little bit into what your week or your day to day looks like. Plus I also have seen some LinkedIn posts by you on some special projects you're working on. That might be not controversial but like interesting because they're new. And so let's focus on the kind of week day to day first and then let's dive into some projects. Yeah. So mostly what my week looks like. Get up in the morning, brush the teeth. Yeah, do work out. Do work out. Cross. Two hours of guided meditation. I don't have that much time in the morning. So there's a I think I spent most of my time as speaking on like in async communications to make sure that the functions within operations are enabled. But also that I keep a pulse across the the orgs and make and identify like new areas of friction where we need to jump in and allow for that as you mentioned Helen smooth operations. I do a lot of that but I also join weekly team meetings. So we have that for example customer success. I joined that one for support hiring company operations. And in those ensure that like the the priorities of the week are clear. And so that's a lot like the majority of time is with other people and and talking to them and enabling them and aligning. And then I definitely make space as well for my own projects because I love the execution parts of it as well and getting my hands on and and to spend like then like scope of work for my own projects. One of those has been like headcon planning. Vicky for for the listeners who are less familiar with with your with your role. Can you maybe walk us through what happens for example in a customer success meeting or in the HR meeting like what what would you roughly talk about what are the types of priorities that are going out. So each team also approaches their weekly meetings in a different way. I think it did there's many ways that that work. One flow that I've found very helpful that for we are using in many meetings but for example let's go with the talent weekly. We start with metrics. So we look at how many candidates are we putting through the pipeline. Is it healthy? Are we getting the right numbers at top of funnel to get to the bottom of funnel. Hires that we have as a goal for the openings that we have. And identify like who is at the founder stage or who is at the offer stage just going through all the metrics at first to level set and then also identifies often like key focus areas of problems over the last week and then go around the team and speak about like wins and challenges and blockers so that we can like celebrate the successes that we've had over the last week but also have an opportunity for each person to say like I'm really struggling with this thing. Can the rest of the team help me write like compelling outreach message for this type of persona or something like this. That's what our hiring weekly looks like. That's really interesting. It reminds me a lot of the Amazon meeting culture right. So Amazon has these weekly business reviews where they're hardcore focus on certain set of KBI's that they measure and then you really look at the deviations but then you also look at the you know wins and losses and what to work on which I find a very interesting cool way to run a company and also to run meetings and maybe also something for our listeners if that's interesting to them to look into Amazon weekly business reviews which is kind of the same style I would imagine. I think one thing to keep in mind for all meetings is like to ensure that they're useful which seems like such an obvious thing but I think in many businesses you end up with like just recurring meetings that are maybe even an hour long which I'm already allergic to having an hour block on my calendar where then you just kind of fathom around and speak about things but afterwards if you ask someone is like was this valuable of your time? I don't know if the answer would be yes and so even like once you instantiate operations mechanism for your meetings I think it's great to check in on like is everyone who's in the meeting really required to be there? How can we prepare it so that we can get right in and don't need to like create the agenda on the fly and then maybe also do like a quick check with some of the contributors of like do you think this the setup is valuable? Should we increase the cadence decrease the cadence change the agenda bring in other people things like this? I think that's important not wasting time of meetings there's an incredible number of how much hours are wasted in meetings so like we with that. I've also recently heard someone who said a great exercise is killing all meetings and then seeing what goes wrong and adding one or two meetings back rather than having to even discuss the usefulness of individual meetings kill them all but especially backup probably not in an early stage company but I think if you've like gotten into a meeting right over the years that could be an interesting way to do it and maybe also you guys are remote so that would also be interesting in the remote setting I think meetings are an interesting topic because you want to have that touch point with each other that you wouldn't get if you're in an office but at the same time we're spread through all times once you can think of so when do you have a meeting where everyone can participate and so what we actually do is stay very meeting lean and do most of our communications in in Slack and so everyone has to be good good with 10 finger typing system to put information either in the Google Drive or docs or in Slack so that people can stay aware one final meeting question just quick answer how many hours a week you think you spend in meetings four four in oh that was a fast and competent four that's very low that's no that's good especially as a lead we love the number 11 so the fact that I didn't respond with 11 hours is means that it's probably less it varies a lot from week to week I think there's like four hours that are just recurring that are like in any given week I will have these and then I add a lot of meetings based on the need and like sync up with individuals or join other team meetings or also I have a bunch of meetings with externals like reaching out to someone that knows a lot about recruiting and then just doing like a great dumplings changing of notes getting that knowledge they have a lot as well yeah let's look at the most recent projects you've been working on and your LinkedIn posts so one of them was we're removing all titles there's no head offs or whatever offs anymore which also we were like oh we're interviewing the VP of operations but suddenly the title was probably like a whole range and then we don't know And then the second thing was I saw just yesterday, I think about recruiting and saying, if it's not for you, it's not for you or something like that, which I thought we'd go self-like out of the process. So pick either or or give us a quick overview on what those things are. Yeah. For the titles piece, we're following very much a similar pattern as what we know from Palantir, because a lot of us are ex-palantarians. And their titles don't really exist. And that creates a lot of liberties around just going where you're needed most, because you're not in that lane of a specific title where you need to progress to the next level in that very narrow ladder. But you can jump over and just say, oh, there's a need to be working on safety. I will now join the safety team and be there. So getting rid of titles is like a way to level set and to reduce rigidity, we find. I think there's a huge caveat here, again, that this doesn't work for everyone and maybe not even for us forever. But at this time, we felt that it helps to re-level set and create those liberties and remove the distraction of saying, like, OK, what is my path forward to become a VP, et cetera? That's the one project. I think it got a lot of attention. Can I ask a question on that one? Vicki, can I ask a question on that one? Yes. How do you then go about decision making, for example? OK, yes, you should join that team and work on this. Or yes, you should now, because you've done amazing work, get a salary increase, which is, I guess, like what you do instead of promoting people. Who's taking those decisions or where do those things end up being decided when there's not one clear head of each function? So if there's-- removing the titles doesn't mean we remove the roles. It's still very clear who's on which team so that there's still the mobile team. And then there's the person that does growth on the mobile team. But there's not the head of growth on the mobile team. And so the responsibility still really needs to be clear. The progression, I think, you've hit Bullseye on the weakest point of this structure, where a lot of work needs to go in to remediate that. And the compensation increase, for sure, still needs to happen. I think this one's actually not that much of an issue. You just give the compensation rate and raise without giving a junior to senior change. And we have our own mechanism of doing impact reviews. We're going through it right now. I can share how we did it this time around, as well if that's interesting. But I think the compensation change is an element that can happen in the same way. It's just not coupled to a change in the name. But there also, for the happiness of high achievers, where we want to have a lot of high achievers, and we want them to be happy, is to see that progression and understand, like, OK, if I work really hard on this thing, my next step will be to own this new thing. And rather than coupling that to a title, we couple that to scope of responsibility, saying, like, you now are owning growth for this feature. If it goes really well, the role will increase to have a bigger scope, a bigger range, bigger responsibility, bigger impact, and couple the progression to that surface area, rather than to a name. Yeah. I mean, me as an XVP people, I'm going to have a lot more conversations with you about this, because I'm so curious on how to work, because I'm like, that sounds really complex, basically, on a-- because normally you have levels, you have key progressions, clear role descriptions, that kind of give transparency in security or whatever, or structure. So I find it super, super interesting. And I'm very curious to see how you guys do it. And maybe if you want to give it quick insight into the impact review, and then we can see-- if we keep it in or not. The way that we're doing impact reviews this time around is that we are doing-- it starts with the self-reflection, where you write up how your year was, on your impact strengths, where you want to grow. The lead does the same. You have a conversation about that. And the lead submits a recommendation on saying, Helen has been doing great. She's no longer just operating at this level. She's really stepped up to have her own a show. OK, wait, but there is a lead. So this is actually a key point. So there is a lead in each team that does the review for the others. OK, there are still managers. Got that. [LAUGHTER] No, but this is exactly my question. If I'm a junior person-- We have titles, but nobody knows them. Certainly, there is a lead. We just don't know who it is. So there are still managerial structures. There are still direct reports and managers and a reporting line. There's no wording associated with that. There's no head-of and junior and senior. But there's still structure. So it's especially like an external thing also that you don't have titles, so that it's not like striving to a title that goes externally, but more. It's both external and internal. Like we don't want anyone to call themselves head-of-ex internally. But it's very clear that there are people that have direct reports. And each person knows who their manager is, and that manager is responsible for making their impact review, and I'm blocking them, and helping them through their growth, and assessing them as well. And so in the impact-- That's really helpful. That makes a lot of sense. And so then the lead, the manager, that exists, was his recommendation saying, like Helen, is now operating at a higher level. I think she should get an increase of X. And then in a comp committee, which will happen tomorrow, we sit down and review all of these, and make sure that it's calibrated across different teams, and then apply them as appropriate. OK, cool. And then if they did well, they get just a bigger scope of responsibilities, and they can prove themselves, and so forth. Yeah, a bigger salary. Now that's super helpful. Thank you. We wanted to shift gears next to zooming out a little bit, learnings and reflections on your job. So if you were to start from scratch today, what would you say is your biggest learning about leading operations, or your biggest learning about this company, that you would tell your younger self, or someone else, who is starting in operations in a tech company? Yeah, great question. I think one thing that I've noticed much to lay it is how important network is. And I think part of that is because I've always heard networking as this very loaded term of just-- it seemed a little bit fluffy of you just going and speaking to people and what value does that really bring. Also, we see people love networking. Yeah. They love a good network. And it works. Yeah, but that's also their job. Exactly. You have to find it works. Yeah. Maybe that's why I didn't get into VC, because I always thought it's this thing that I don't really enjoy doing. And now I realize that, especially on the hiring side, it's so great to have a good network. I think it goes two ways. Now I do a lot of networking with other operators. So if I know that a company has an incredible hiring or incredible customer support, I will find the person that built that hiring team, or built that customer support team, and I get on a call with them and then exchange nodes. And that's incredibly valuable when you're building something for the first time to have a high mind of those that are a couple of years ahead so that you can learn from them or be inspired by them. Not saying that you should do it exactly that way, but having a lot of those inputs and stimuli is super valuable and something that has helped me grow a ton. And then on the other side, I think I started to late really understanding what all of my friends do. Like I had friends and I just liked hanging out with them and we were speaking about everything but work. And then as time progressed, I realized like, oh, it would have been great to hire this person, very good friend of mine, that does finance, but I didn't really know what they do in finance and that it's actually spot on with what we're looking for right now in our finance lead. So I think having a curiosity of work themes everywhere you go, be it with your friends or to networking events is something that actually pays off. - Bravo. - Who is a founder, knows the problem, education, education and the whole finance industry eat very fast, very much time that you actually want to have to work in the growth of your company. Exactly, that's why we work at Startup Insider for many years, with Konto. You get a smart business Konto with German iBarn and integrated finance tools, particularly practical, you can directly set up and adjust the app, just put it on very simple smartphones and have your cash flow every time, in real time, in view. Also the application date and flexber office were the whole thing super efficient, also for your employees. And that's Konto, the entire solution for business Konto and finance management. And that's all there is now. 0 euros a month, just look at the show notes or directly on Konto.de and don't forget Contour is written at the beginning with "Q" - you already know it. Unseren Newsletter Start-Up-In-Sider-Daily erzählt zu dem beliebtesten Newslettern der deutschen Start-Up-Säne. Jeden Morgen um 7 Uhr bekommst du die wichtigsten Nachrichten und Investments aus der deutschen und internationalen Start-Up-Welt in deine Inbox. Unsere Redaktion recherchiert dafür täglich auf über 800 Nachrichtenseiten. Für viele Gründerinnen, Gründer und Investoren ist Start-Up-In-Sider-Daily daher fester Teil der Morgenroutine. Jetzt kosten frei abonnieren. Der Link ist wie immer in den Show-Nodes. Ich mache immer die Jogh, meine Frau und meine Frau, die ist ein Founder. Sie geht zu Wettings und immer wieder siehensweise die Wettung. Mein Freund ist ein interessanter Freund, ich will mich alle treffen und dann sagt, oh, great, das ist mein neuen Einzelbewegung, ich schau sie nachher. Das ist mein neuen Ex-Wise. Weil es eigentlich in der Internet-Werte ist eine Grätschule. Es ist nicht so, wenn du ein Techtel einfach nur in die Wettung weißt. Aber das ist auch das Seig der always beheirigsten Wettwettung. Ja. Also für example, du und ich, Vicky. Wir waren die erste Person, die ich starte, zu über mein Job und deine Job. Wir hatten eine Summe. Wir haben eine andere Einrichtung. Wir sind also sehr viel geübt. Ich liebe das. Wir sprechen uns für die Hose, weil es nur für die Hose ist. Wir haben eine andere Hose, die für die Hose ist. Aber es ist einfach etwas, das du wirklich in den Flogen und eine gute Hose ist. Und das ist eine meiner favorite Dinge zu tun. Ich liebe, wenn wir einen Kaffee in den Haufen Park gehen und einfach 2 h bis zu gehen, wir merken uns auf die Hose. Und meine Nodes auf der Fone sind nicht mehr so gut, die andere Fremdreise, die du sehen hast. Ja, und es ist so hämtig. Ich denke, als Netwerk, aber auch als auch als Highring, als Schattartumack. Und als Konzentruf der Beine auf der Top-of-Mind, woher du siehst. Ja, das ist eine meiner favoriteen Fragen. Ich fühle, dass Leute mit mir etwas Hacks in den Lebensstunden haben, das nicht einfach, oder was für die Hacks ist. Ein Tool, was ich nicht, was ein Job, was du wirklich für dich in deinem Leben hattest. Ich habe nicht ein Job, das in meinem Leben in meinem Leben helfen, aber mein Favorite Hack oder ein bisschen, das ich mache, ist, eine Boomerangung. Du know, ein paar Dinge zu tun. Ich glaube, es ist eine A-Sync-Kommunikation, du hast immer so viele Dinge, die auf den Schlag auf den Schlag trinken. Und so habe ich es sehr attempten, um mich zu tun, auf die Hose zu gehen, und dann mein paar Tage auf der Bedeutung, durch die Hose zu tun, alle die Hose zu tun und die E-Mails und alles. Und so was ich so viel machen, ist auf den Schlag, das mich in 20 Minuten und 3 h zurückgekommen, heute wieder. Ich weiß, ich habe eine Art piece von meiner Hose, dass ich nicht vergessen habe, aber ich habe nicht mehr einen Job auf den Weg. Ich bin das auch für E-Mails, besonders für E-Mails, die nicht relevant sind, aber ich muss dann wieder nach dem Tag wieder nehmen. Ich sage, wie ich das nächste Tuesday, sie lieben die Inbox. Ich kann mich in den Inbox sehen, die sehr sehr schön sind, aber ich auch weiß, dass das relevante Information wird, wird die Pop-Backup in den Zeit. Und so Boomerangung und das ist ein bisschen eine Fake-Way von Clearing in den Inbox. Aber es hilft mir, dass ich das Space für die Inbox zu tun, die sich in den Fokus in die Projekte zu tun. Ja, ich glaube, wir haben 5 more Min. Und dann werden wir die Karriere von den Fokus geben, die wir haben. Ich glaube, du hast mir die Spiele von Laval von mir, das ist eine geheimene Frage. Sie sagen, du musst etwas etwas anderes machen, aber du bist offentig zu dir selbst. Du hast deine Schälte, die du dich eigentlich so machen kannst und dann du siehst in den Inbox. Und für example, ich habe die Management-Konsulte gemacht, ich bin nicht offentig zu, ich habe es schon schon ein paar Zeit gemacht. Und jetzt bin ich etwas, ich mag, die im Anfang des Hochbeats und die Operationen und all das. Aber es gibt verschiedene types in der Welt, die various types von den Dingen. So, kommen zu Operations, die ist das Job für einen Job, was solltet du, die Skilze, die die Schälte geben, die die von uns auf die Runde für die Menschen, die wir denken. Ich denke, Operations ist ein großer für die Menschen, die sehr gut organisiert und sehr hochgelegene Skilze haben. So wirklich, eine Chance zu haben, und auch eine andere Einheit zu bewerben, die sich auf die Runde zum Thema machen. Ich glaube, es ist ein Typ der Person, der sich auf der Runde auf der Runde zu tun hat, der schon schon schon gemacht hat, um das Motio zu gehen. Und wenn du ein Typ der Person, ich glaube, es ist schon schon mehr in der Operation Slant. Ich glaube, es ist nicht der andere, die andere Person, ich glaube, es ist sehr wichtig, in der Operation zu sein, ein Generalist zu sein. So, zu ein Zwisspocketknife. - Ja. Und es bedeutet, dass du etwas über eine lichtige, finanzielle, leise, wie alles, aber es ist, dass du eine neue Dinge schläftet, und dass du eine Interesse in der Leute auf ein paar Rente schläftet. Wenn du auf der Flippe wirst, du willst die Maske und dir die Refeierung in einer bestimmten Programme zu sein, dann die Operation ist für dich nicht. So, du bist ein Generalist mit einem sehr brechen Set der Abilität, rather than like your more like a teeth, rather than going deep into one thing. Aber der andere Teil, das Operation ist nicht glammerisch, du bist nicht immer wieder wie ein Star, das macht einen neuen Feature oder eine große Teile. Es ist sehr hittend. Das ist eigentlich, dass die Operation noch hittend ist, dass es besser ist. Du willst nicht etwas zu beinhaltigen, etwas wie die Defens an einem Soccer-Team. Wenn du jemand, der in der Leimleinung, oder der Gehre ist, ist viel mehr prästert, dann bin ich auch nicht auch auf den Spannern. Es ist sehr leise, sehr leise. Das ist nicht so, dass wir das nicht machen. Ich war auch auch über die Operation, die du einfach nur sagen hast. Ich denke, dass Menschen, die die Operation machen, weil es alles über die Optimisation ist und die Möglichkeit ist, dass es nicht möglich ist. Und du musst auch die Möglichkeit, die ihre Prozesse zu verbraten, und die Verwaltung von dir selbst in die Möglichkeit zu verbraten. Ich denke, das ist auch etwas, die Menschen nicht bewegen. Das ist das, was wir sagen, in Deutschland, was ist das? Die Menschen, die die zu beinhaltigen, die zu beinhaltigen, die sich in die Möglichkeit zu verbraten, die ihre Arbeit zu verbraten, in die Möglichkeit zu bewegen. Weil sie es so fast wie die Päse von der Chains, die auch in die Hypergroße sind. Ich denke, es ist immer eine Tension, durch das Manual machen, weil du siehst, dass du es nur als eine Zigur anbauen kannst. Und wenn du es okay hast, dass du das Manual machen kannst, wir haben viele Dinge, die noch in die Bedeutung, und viele Accesses, die du alle in die Bedeutung und die Gruppe in die Bedeutung sind. Aber bei dem gleichen Zeit, wenn du die Tallerinien für das musst, immer wieder, dass es immer wieder bei dir gibt, weil du es machen kannst, dass du es auch noch arbeiten kannst, wenn du es 500 Euro machen kannst, und dass du es auch noch arbeiten kannst, und dass du es auch noch 3 Euro machen kannst, und dass du es okay hast. als eine nächste dann, wie im nächsten Mal, ins Land und um die drei times, die das Land und ich will machen eine Automation, das heißt von 4 +, es wird fast weiter. now, wir love good content. wir love really tangible tips. so, what it would be, if you would give someone who wants to break in top relations, some tips on what they should be reading, communities they should join, something they should do with their CV, like something they can literally now put on their little to-do list, what would you tell them? I think one book that really helped me before jumping into operations fully is called Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson and it's like a manual for creating operations functions at companies. she is the COO, was the COO at Stripe, and has like an outline for how to create which operating principles and so that's like a cheat sheet, that's a really valuable resource. that I think is one that's great if you already know that you're going into operations. that would be one. I think one that is maybe more me specific, I don't know if everyone in in Ops would need this, I think because you're so in your Ops world it's hard to also track everything that's going on like more broadly in the tech world, but it's really important to stay afloat there as well, like be aware of what's being launched, what the development it's are, and the way that I found works for myself of of staying in the loop is one specific podcast called Hard Fork, because I think the guys are hilarious, they have even better banter than us, and they are always like up to date with the hard to believe. so that's also a podcast I would recommend. and then maybe I have one last one, if you're going, if there's like a company you really like and you're like I would love to do operations there or really any job there. for an inbound application that is speculative, like not for a specific role, what really makes the difference is if you put something actionable in it or something tangible or said like already do some work that helps. so saying like okay I so So on your website that XYZ, like the translation here is at grade, I've gone ahead and like found a translation service done it myself, something something like, here's an improvement. I've helped you and by that you've already kind of proven value and how you operate. And I think that makes a huge difference for someone reading an inbound app of just like say, I want to work here or yeah, to the job first. Yeah, do the job kind of do the job before you're hired to a job. Very good. Very cool. Thank you so much, Viggy. I think we're going to wrap up with two little things. The part that's coming now is we call it community part because we did do a post on Paula's LinkedIn and her TikTok because Paula has already 11,000 followers, my friend. And then so we collected some, so we said we're going to interview you and we collected some questions and the first question we wanted to ask is from Lucas who's saying, I imagine ups from 10 to over 100 in under a year is challenging enough. What processes or thought models did you put in place early to ensure intentionally to especially in this emerging sector of AI? Where to ensure intentionality, sorry, in this emerging sector of AI, which is true, there's no best practices. It hasn't been around long. Like you kind of need to reinvent a lot of the things. So what did you put in place there or what are the tips here? Firstly, that's an excellent question, Lucas. I think that's like so spot on. The thing that helped us or helped me here is one of the company values that we have, which is like work from first principles. So what we do very little of is like looking at like the industry standard and blindly following that. And rather we look at the problem at hand and think about like what exactly solves this. So by applying that rigorously, you always keep in mind of like, who are we, where are we, what are we facing and only solve for that rather than like going in a direction that's not really relevant right now. And I think within the evolving space, like within operations, there's so many tools coming up now that are like AI based, SDRs, AI based recruiters, AI based customer support. And so I think it's really valid part of that question of saying like, okay, how can we redefine operations to leverage that and be more lean or like higher execution. At the same time, what we also keep in mind or what has helped us is not to solve for a problem that you don't have. So when you see a great tool that does X, but you don't have any issues with X, there's no reason to implement that tool. And it's much better to go the other way around or saying like, we have a problem here. We're realizing that this isn't working well. What is a tool that can help us? And in today's world, it could well be like a new way of solving it. But only solve it if it's actually painful. Yeah. I mean, this whole AI, everything in everywhere gives me a little bit of anxiety, sometimes when I look at my company, I'm like, we should be doing much more. And it's just very overwhelming on where it actually is solving a pain and are we fast enough and so forth. So it's I think everyone is obviously thinking about that right now. Yeah. Transitioning to the second audience question from Anna. So I'm quoting her directly. But away was our intern. I noticed she was our loved intern at 10 more in the A. Yeah. I think she's actually, she's like kind of a mentee of mine because she went to our university. So she was excited. I don't know. She is well connected. That's here. Anna's question. It would be super interesting to hear her, I.e. Vicki's take on what is the most important thing to keep in mind when joining a hyper growth organization like 11 apps? I think one piece is that things aren't constant. Like what you're doing today might not be needed tomorrow, it will be like a much bigger need somewhere else. So like staying agile and going somewhere else and being open to shifting roles and responsibilities and having like that awareness and openness within operations specifically. I think it's very much that that piece I mentioned of what while you're doing something manually about like what can this look like in a year's time, but also don't shy away from doing it manually. I think many people are like allergic to doing things in the in the unscalable way, but you also have to do things in the unscalable way just to get yourself out of a bad state at times. So it's that really trying to find that right balance of manual work, unscalable work with an eye and bias towards automating it and scaling it so that you can stay ahead, not get drowned. Yeah. And one thing I feel like you guys have been doing quite well, I think often in hyper growth startups, you kind of throw people at problems, right? So you hire higher, higher, higher over and flat and then you have to make a lot of people redundant after the first wave. But I feel that you guys have been focusing on getting quite lean and getting the balance that you just mentioned quite. Yeah. Quite great. Yeah. I think that's valid. And also be true. Yeah. And this is something that I learned for myself. I love executing. I will like rarely say no to something as well. So my list was just like piling up and up and up. And so there was all the time spent on doing the things myself and very little on thinking about like where where will things break and and and delegating because I also didn't hire anyone to delegate to. And so it was like past you by the point where I realized like, okay, to be able to scale the machine, I also have to scale myself and to scale myself. I can't just like stop sleeping and put in more hours. I also need reliable people that can help me out on doing the tasks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We teach that in our leadership academy also like you need tricks in order to grow. You need to delegate. There's no way you can grow without. And especially for smart people that are like overachievers that kind of want to do everything themselves. That's because it's so much fun. It is fun. Yeah. And learning also where you're super power lies. So where is Vicki actually needed versus where can maybe someone else also solve it and Vicki can put her brain power and her superpower on the thing where she is the only one who can do it. Yeah. No one got difference. Especially when you grow from a junior ops to a senior ops, I think that's the biggest position, right? It will be super, super executive. And now the more senior you get, your alignment person, make sure everything's running smoothly and that's kind of the position. And also the shame of doing less content work I would say. And the first is also important for the latter. I think it's much easier to be taken serious as like someone helping out or like overseeing support if you've once done support makes it easier for yourself as well. There's actually a portfolio company of ours who measure the success of their managers by having like a yes or no question list that the direct reports have to answer. And it's really just yes or no, it's not a scale. And one question is, my manager is the subject matter expert. Yes or no? Like it's not like he's kind of yet. No, is he the expert? Like does he know what the hell your division is actually doing? Yes or no? And also, yeah, having this technical expertise, I always respected my managers a lot more when I knew they could grind me in it. That was always really important to me, like a personal style. Paula, what was the outcome? Were most managers were they the subject matter experts? I mean, they've been doing this metric for years. So yes, because they kind of manage people out or they kind of decide that that's not exactly requirement. Like you don't become a manager if you're not the subject matter expert. However, there's also people who will be great on that metric. And also great on other metrics. And they then work on getting those people back to being individual contributors. And what's interesting is they actually still pay them the same because they say we don't want manager to be a thing you do for the money. It needs to be something you do because that's something you excel at. And not oh, I need to be head off so that I get the salary. No, you need to be head off because you're a great manager. Yeah, I see Vicki's brain going like. I can send you this. I can send this to you. The list of these yes or no questions are public. So I can see. Oh, yeah, I would love that. Cool. I'm going to move us along. I think we've learned so much. So let's make this a really short one. What's your advice to people soul searching for their next job? I think try it out is my one sentence advice. I think there's no way of knowing what you like doing by thinking about what you might be like doing and then thinking that you will land bulls eye with the first time you try it. And even if you think about it for a long time and say, oh, I would love to be in operations, you won't really know until you try it out. So I think you're making progress by just like getting your hands on and like testing, testing a role and being able to say like this isn't for me as well. Awesome. So do internships even if you're 45. Great. Perfect. That's exactly what you're saying. Or listen, actually listen to this podcast because then you also get a much better understanding. that to go for what the different roles are. I think that's my number one advice. - Great answer. - Awesome, thank you so much, Vicky. - Thank you, Vicky. - This has been a blast. - Yes, thank you for having me. - I'm excited how this one's worth for now. It's the first try we've had. And Paul and I are sharing an airport. We're sharing the same microphone. We'll see how this whole thing goes. (laughing) - Thank you. - I'm honored to be part of the (laughing) - That's right. - Thank you, Vicky. (laughing) Bye, bye, love. - Bye, bye. - Bye, bye, bye. - Bye. (air whooshing) - Verbung. (air whooshing) (air whooshing) (air whooshing) (upbeat music) (air whooshing) (air whooshing) (air whooshing)