The role of company culture in scaling startups with Wiebke Schmidt

Thomas Kohler:
Today’s guest, Wiebke Schmidt, VP People at Linearity.

Sometimes what I saw is that maybe you don’t check on cultural values or cultural feed or ad in an early conversation, but for some functions, for instance, where, you know, okay, in this company, for instance, there is an environment which is super relevant to us, what we would like to build. For instance, they already went through a certain stage and we need to go through this stage like we now prepare for a series b and grow from 100 to 250 people. So also target and focus on people who maybe shape this phase in another company because we would like to have this experience, but also maybe this type of thinking and behavior in our company in a certain function. Do you also have that Linearity, that approach, that for some functions, for instance, I think you need to really build a customer friendly product. So I think product development, product design, product marketing maybe is a big thing. Do you also then have a certain approach or target companies where you say, okay, this is what we really like to go after because we know we need to build something that is near to a user experience, what a certain company built, for instance.

Wiebke Schmidt:
Yeah, absolutely. So when we source candidates, or also when we screen candidates specifically for product marketing, product marketing, we mainly look for candidates that come from product led growth companies, from other SaaS companies, also from competitors like Canva, Figma, Miro, because exactly as you said, they already went through that experience. Also from moving from a startup to scale up. They understand the industry, they understand product led growth. So therefore, in most of the cases, also the onboarding is way faster and they bring in experience that is very valuable for us because they worked for very successful companies where we can only learn from. So, yeah, therefore, for certain roles, we focus on specific companies.

Thomas Kohler:
And I think that can also be a super asset. But I think it can also be limiting at some point, right…

Wiebke and I talked about their experimentation with remote work versus in office versus hybrid. And then what the conclusions are then also how they did a rebranding and connected that with cultural transformation, why they did it. So a lot of practical insights into startups. People function, then you can build trust and then you can spend less time communicating and more time just getting shit done.

Today’s guest, Wiebke Schmidt, VP People of Linearity. And yeah, I’m looking forward to this episode. I think we met one and a half years or two years ago at an event which was hosted in your office and it was really a cool vibe, cool office. I really felt the startup energy there in Mitte in Berlin. And now I’m looking forward to talking with you about the journey of Linearity and what you did there. And then also we talked about some topics in more depth. So maybe we started with a short introduction about yourself.

Wiebke Schmidt:
Yeah, sure. So first of all, thanks for inviting me, Thomas. I also still remember how we met for the first time. So yeah, I’m Wiebke, I’m the VP of people here at Linearity. I joined two and a half years ago and when I joined I took over the role as a talent acquisition lead and then I got very quickly promoted to the head of HR. And yeah, now for more than one year I’m in the VP people role. And I would say my role is a hybrid role. So I am taking care of operational and strategic tasks.

So the focus is on leadership and executive consulting, performance management, compensation and benefits. A huge project was also the rollout of our new company values, which we did last year with our rebranding. And we also went through several restructuring processes over the past months where I was heavily involved. And when it comes to the more operational tasks, also like onboarding, off boarding recruitment is not the focus anymore. But yeah, I think that’s in a nutshell what I’m doing. And yeah, I’m super excited about the topic that we are talking today.

Thomas Kohler:
And what’s Linearity about.

Wiebke Schmidt:
Yeah, so what’s Linearity? Linearity is a graphic design software and you can create very stunning marketing design content, static content, but also animated content. I already mentioned the rebranding. So the company was founded in 2017. Back then the software was called Vectornator. Linearity was always the legal name. And then with the rebranding last year, we also changed the software name from Vectornator to Linearity. And yeah, we are targeting…

Thomas Kohler:
Do you know why?

Wiebke Schmidt:
Why? Because we thought, yeah, it’s time for a new era, so to say. We also realized that Linearity matches or what we have in mind for the future. So Vectornator was not the perfect name anymore for it. And we also launched our second software, Linearity move. So Linearity curve is for static content, Linearity move for the animated content. And Vectornator was not the right name for both softwares, so to say. So therefore we changed it. And with the rebranding, we also changed the logo, we changed website and yeah, I think it looks super nice.

It’s also a big advantage for our hiring, actually, because usually people don’t have Linearity on their radar, but when they then go to our website, they’re like super fascinated how it looks and yeah, that is super helpful.

Thomas Kohler:
I also see the picture on the backpack background. Yeah, exactly right bottom corner there is also a Linearity.

Wiebke Schmidt:
Basically. So here you can see the logo and here you can see also our signature colors. So the orange, the little illustrations, you can find them everywhere on our careers page on the website social media. It looks very cool and cute. And yeah, the applicants, but also our users really like it.

Thomas Kohler:
Nice. And maybe because we already jumped now into this topic, why did you then also needed to change, or wanted to change the value structure or maybe the culture with the rebranding? Because it can happen, but it’s not always the case. Right. So what’s the reason for that?

Wiebke Schmidt:
Actually, there were several reasons. So I think back then we had eight company values or so it was like very difficult to remember eight values. And we also had them never included in our onboarding. We were also never talking about them, so they were not really present. I think back then, when you would have asked one of our employees, what are our values? They couldn’t tell you. And we believe that values are very crucial because they show us the direction, how we work, how we collaborate as a team, how we make decisions. So therefore, we find it very important. And also because we were moving from a startup to a scale up, so we hired a lot of people throughout the last month, a lot of international people, a lot of people with different cultures, different backgrounds, different experience and skillset. And therefore we also saw that the culture was changing. And yeah, we thought that is the perfect time also to introduce new company values. And, yeah, that’s what we did then.

Thomas Kohler:
And was there also a certain purpose or a certain hypothesis behind that, but you would like to get out of it, or was it just like, okay, there was trigger event and now it makes sense because we have too many.

Wiebke Schmidt:
Yeah, I think the trigger event was basically like the rebranding, when we also sat down together to revamp the careers page, but also like eight, nine months ago, also the leadership team changed. So we hired a new CTO, we hired a new vp of marketing. And for them, it was also really important to have values, that the team has a direction, what to focus on, what to prioritize, what is important for our team collaboration, but also when it comes to the people team, when we look for new talents, what is important, what kind of skills we want to see what kind of behaviors does it align with our behaviors? So in the end, everything came together and yeah, then we started to create new company values. Unfortunately, we didn’t have so much time and we decided to go with an approach that the leadership team is working out. The company values. They in the end, based on four pillars, customer centricity. What has the highest priority for us right now? Then it’s about execution because we are still a startup, so we have to execute very fast. We have to meet all of the deadlines.

Then it’s about ownership, and then in the end it’s also about team collaboration. So we are always looking for kind people, nice people, team players, but at the same time also people who are brave enough to share their honest opinion, to give candid feedback, because we highly believe in feedback, because in the end, that is super important for further development and how we work as a team.

Thomas Kohler:
In case you like my show, please subscribe. I would really appreciate it. How did you then take the approach from translating this from a leadership brainstorming session or from pillars into what is now on the career page? It just set it in front of me. So I think it’s written like, empower our users, push the envelope, take ownership and grow together. Right? Is it that?

Wiebke Schmidt:
Exactly? Yeah. So yeah, how we came up with. So we had a few brainstorming sessions with the leadership team and then we also came up with that framework. Then we also included our copywriters to come up with a nice narrative, but also with nice headlines, so to say that are very captivating and easy to remember. And then we shared the values that we came up with in the company call with the whole team. But then of course also workshops were necessary because just like communicating them in a company call and then having them on the careers page doesn’t make so much sense because then we would end it up again with the same values that we had some years ago, that there were just blank words on the careers page, but not really integrated in our day to day life. So what I did then I did, I think in total ten workshops with all of our employees and what we did. So first of all, for each value, we were defining people who are embody the values very well already.

And then we defined what behaviors do they show in their day to day life, and then also vice versa. What are anti behaviors to each company value that we don’t want to see? Because sometimes it’s also a little bit easier to talk about what you don’t want to see or what is the behavior that we don’t tolerate that instead of what we want to see. So we went through that exercise, and actually, that exercise was also very nice because people gave kudos to each other. And yeah, it was really nice to see how they also value each other. So we received very nice feedback for that. And in the second part, we also gave a scoring to each value, how we live it right now. And then we also defined, like, further actions. So what do we have to see that we live that value 100%? Is there anything, what we have to change in our day to day cooperation or how we define the roadmap, etcetera? Yeah, that’s what we did with every employee.

And we also have that incorporated now in our onboarding process. So we don’t do that, of course, in the first months, but after three to four months, that the people also get familiar with our working environment. And yes, therefore, we make sure that we really have that integrated in our day to day life. And what we also do is we have a Friday kudos. So we share kudos via Slack, and we always connect the kudos to the company values. So, for example, like Tom, a very nice job during my onboarding. He was always supportive and approachable. So therefore, we talk about the values each week and then also everyone has that on top of their minds.

Thomas Kohler:
Nice. What I see often is when values are being touched, is when, for instance, the company went through a massive growth stage. It can also be just like doubling from maybe 50 to 100 people. Right? This is maybe not just 50 people, what you add, but 100% in growth, which is a fundamental different organization. And suddenly, I think you see very different types of behaviors which were maybe not seen before, but now when you add so many new characters or so many new people with maybe also not a structured approach in hiring, and that you just need to get the hires done because it’s so critical that after some time, you realize that it doesn’t feel right anymore. That’s not the same. That’s not what we wanted to do initially. And how do we fix that now? And usually, often that’s a lot of attrition that is then happening and some frustration because expectations are not clear up front. Right. 

And I think when you have something already upfront through a hiring process, through an onboarding process, and also in your day to day work on where you really, as you said, just appreciate behavior that should be happening, or let’s say that is encouraged because the mission, what we want to achieve, and the things we want to build, these behaviors are helping us towards getting there. If you encourage this, I think that’s a very positive thing. And if you then really call it out also to give feedback directly and not just after six months or so to say, hey, I’m in that situation, I saw that this was happening in that way. Maybe what we would do based on our values would be that. Would that make sense or whatever, right? You also have this open conversations directly attached and you start with this upfront. Also in the hiring process, I think you can also really anticipate a lot of situations where a company is behaving like a lot of headless chickens that are just running around in different directions, which can happen here and then in some phases, right? When there was too much chaos and too less maybe principles to rely on, because I think a process cannot really anticipate this behavior, but principles can do and then the process can follow to it to make sure to work in some principles.

Wiebke Schmidt:
Absolutely, completely agree with you. So we also have that as part of our hiring process. What we have implemented some months ago is that we have one cultural fit interview. It’s a 30 minutes chat where we ask questions, refer to our company values, so we already can see if they share the same values, if they can also adapt to our values. And then we also make it very clear during the onboarding, because also the performance during probation time and also after probation time is always connected to our company values. So execution, ownership and team collaboration. And I think that is super helpful because when you start a new job, you have new people around you, like a new working environment, I think it’s super helpful when you have clarity and a direction. What is important for the company? What should I focus on and what behaviors should I show to be successful? So therefore, we received very nice feedback also from the new joiners, but also during the hiring process.

Even when people or applicants go to the careers page and they see the company where they like them a lot, but also then to discuss them in the interview process. And then maybe in the interview process, you realize, okay, maybe that’s not the way I like to work. And then you can also already filter out those people who are maybe not the best fit for the company. So I think in the end, it’s a win win situation for everyone.

Thomas Kohler:
And you also started your career actually as or in the recruiting field, in sourcing, I guess, right at Yalando. How did this shape your experience? Because I think Zalando at that time, from 2015 to 2018, already did a lot of things right, especially when it comes to hiring and when you were sourcing back then. Did you also focus on values in sourcing already? And if somebody would fit early on or how did you deal with that?

Wiebke Schmidt:
My time at Zalando was actually a long time ago. No, not really, because when I was in the sourcing department, I really source people on LinkedIn or also on different platforms, so I was reaching out to them. Then I did the first introduction call, but that was not really focused on values or on do a proper assessment of the skills. It was rather than selling Zalando as a company, and then we moved on the candidates to the recruiter and then they took over for the cultural fit assessment. And so I was not really involved in that. But yeah, my time at Zalando was great because it was completely new for me, like having a sourcing department, recruitment. And I think Zalando was always like also a pioneer on how they did recruitment. They really shaped it. A lot of company startups still can learn from Zalando, so therefore the time was very valuable.

Thomas Kohler:
Can you mention, because sometimes what I saw is that maybe you don’t check on cultural values or cultural feed or ad in an early conversation, but for some functions, for instance, where, you know, okay, in this company, for instance, there is an environment which is super relevant to us, what we would like to build. For instance, they already went through a certain stage and we need to go through this stage like we now prepare for a series b and grow from 100 to 250 people. So also target and focus people who maybe shape this face in another company, because we would like to have this experience, but also maybe this time of thinking and behavior in our company, in a certain function. Do you also have that Linearity, that approach, that for some functions, for instance, I think you need to really build a customer friendly product. So I think product development, product design, product marketing maybe is a big thing. Do you also then have a certain approach or target companies where you say, okay, this is what we really like to go after, because we know we need to build something that is near to a user experience, what a certain company built, for instance.

Wiebke Schmidt:
Yeah, absolutely. So when we source candidates, or also when we screen candidates specifically for product marketing, product marketing, we mainly look for candidates that come from product led growth companies, from other SaaS companies, also from competitors like Canva, Figma, Miro, because exactly as you said, they already went through that experience. Also from moving from a startup to a scale up, they understand the industry, they understand product led growth. So therefore, in most of the cases, also the onboarding is way faster and they bring in experience that is very valuable for us because they worked for very successful companies where we can only learn from. So, yeah, therefore, for certain roles, we focus on specific companies.

Thomas Kohler:
And I think that can also be a super asset. But I think it can also be limited at some point if you’re just going down too much one road, and at some point maybe you just get a certain set of thinking and not get maybe a lot of, I would say, innovation through interaction of different, maybe thinking or experience types of people. And I think that’s also the question, okay, when to stop and when to focus on exactly that. Because sometimes it totally makes sense, right, that you need to build, you know exactly what you need to build, and then you also know exactly what environments or companies build, what you need to build, and then get at least maybe one or two people from there to get to de risk. Also mistakes what you would possibly make otherwise.

Wiebke Schmidt:
Yeah, absolutely. So usually the first approach is that we target certain companies, but still we also always make sure that we don’t exclude applicants only because they didn’t get a product like growth company or another successful SaaS company, because, yeah, I think that would also be like very biased and we would limit ourselves and we would exclude candidates, candidates who have the potential. So therefore, our recruiter also always pushes to have candidates in the process with a different background and also push the hiring managers that they speak to them. And what we also face quite often. So we come from the graphic design industry. When we look at canva, at Figma, at Miro, of course, now they are corporates, they are way bigger than us. Usually they also have the headquarter in Australia or in the US. So therefore, it’s also very difficult for us to pay those salaries.

So sometimes then there is already like a natural selection that we can’t make those people an offer because they are out of budget. But for certain roles, it’s important that those people understand our business and also understand product led growth. What does that mean? Because when we have the people on board, they really have to be onboarded, like very quickly. They have to take on the projects as soon as possible. We don’t have right now so much time to onboard. And when we have to explain everything like or what the corporate has time for, that would not work out in the stage that we are. But we always try to find a balance.

Thomas Kohler:
And you also experiment a lot with your work set up, right from remote to in office to hybrid. What did you found after some experimentation? And what were the experiments?

Wiebke Schmidt:
Yeah, so Linearity was more or less always remote. First also before COVID and then, of course, also Covid has proven that remote working works out very well. And as we also always had like very niche engineering roles, we had to hire worldwide. We have right now one person in the US and two people in India. But apart from that, we focus on Europe due to the time difference. And then we moved into a new office end of last year. And then we were also reviewing our work policy. And then we did like an experiment, so to say.

So we have the headquarters here in Berlin. Back then, around 25, 30 people were working from the Berlin office. Mainly business roles, such as marketing people, operations, business development. So therefore we came up with the idea that for the Berlin folks, we will introduce a three days office rule. So they still have the flexibility to decide when they want to come to the office. And they also had the freedom to work from abroad for maximum 180 days. And when we announced that, of course, the Berlin people were very skeptical and critical. But also, not only the Berlin people, also the remote people, because from the remote people there was the fear, like Fomo, because there are maybe then two separate groups, the remote people, the Berlin people, they don’t have the benefits from the office.

On the other side, the Berlin people were like, yeah, why do we have to come to the office? Additional costs, we have to commute to the office, it’s extra time, etcetera. So, yeah, this was very challenging. Then we tried it out for a few months now, and actually the feedback was okay ish. The people also like to go to the office again, because you have like, social interactions. And actually the reason why we also have introduced it was like, of course, having the social interactions to benefit from that, but also to accelerate the creative process. Because when you’re together, like in an office, you can exchange ideas, you can brainstorm, you can make decisions faster. And back then we were convinced that for business roles, marketing, design and so on, this is super crucial. And yeah, like two weeks ago, we went through a restructuring process, so therefore some roads became redundant.

And yeah, we came also to the conclusion that right now it’s not the perfect timing to have the office rule, because still some business roles are distributed. Not all marketing people are located here, some the people, the team got smaller. So therefore, right now we don’t see a huge benefit of bringing everyone in Berlin to the office. But I assume, or when the team will grow again. And we also said, for hiring in marketing, we will always prioritize Berlin. Then at some point, I think it will become relevant again that we have an office rule. For the Berlin people and the rest remotely.

Thomas Kohler:
And what is your preference?

Wiebke Schmidt:
I love going to the office. Even though we don’t have the office rule anymore, I think I will still come three days a week. But I also have to admit I live very close to the office, so I can also walk here. I think that is a huge plus. I love to have the social interactions. I love to make lunch with my colleagues and also just to leave my house. So I love it. But I also love to have like the flexibility and the freedom that I can make the decision and not someone is deciding for me.

And I think this is also very important for all employees that they still can make the decision if they want to come or not and not that the employer is deciding. Okay, you have to come now. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes, that’s right. In case you have any feedback or anything you want to share with me, please send me an email on thomas@pplwise.com or hit me up on LinkedIn. And in case you really enjoy the show, please subscribe. I would really appreciate it. Cool. Do you have any final words?

Wiebke Schmidt:
Final words? I think it’s now a trend that a lot of companies go back to the office. So I’m also curious to hear what other people, folks, what they experienced, they made. But in the end, I love going to the office. I know a lot of people are remote advocates. I’m also, in a way, I think it has a lot of benefits, but I think right now a lot of people are bash about going to the office and forcing people to go to the office. But I think from a mental health side, it also has a lot of advantages. So yeah. Therefore, I’m also still an advocate of going to the office. I see a lot of plus points. So if anyone is listening to the podcast and wants to share our exchange experience with me, ping me.

Thomas Kohler:
Cool, thanks. So I also tag you on show notes so that they can find you on LinkedIn. Thanks for the call and it was nice chatting with you.

Wiebke Schmidt:
Thank you. Thomas.