Running a Global Startup

As you might have noticed, we’re currently hiring for several positions. You can check out the details on our Careers page. In light of our search for the perfect teammates, we thought it would be a great time to tell a little more about our company culture.

"Karneval der Kulturen" by Alex Kuhlmann

Many new visitors to our office here in Berlin are a bit surprised when they first walk in and discover such a diverse group tapping away at multilingual keyboards. But Berlin is a city that celebrates it’s multiculturalism, and we follow the lead of the city.

Though we’re located in the German capital, we are an English-speaking office with team members from all over the globe. It was not by chance that the folks that stumbled into our interviews happened to be from far-reaching corners — it was our deliberate choice to be an international company from day one.

So why did we decide to do things this way? Why, pray tell, would we subject ourselves to the myriad troubles that can arise from bureaucratic tangle of attaining work and residence visas for our non-EU employees? We thought it might be nice to take a minute to explain what’s so awesome about running a global startup, and why we are committed to keeping our team global.

Fertile ground for innovation

We are a high-tech company operating in a fast-paced market. You have to innovate to stay on top. No surprise there.

So what can founders like us do to build a team that is most likely to think big and innovate cutting edge  technologies? Every management textbook will tell you that high-quality heterogeneity is key to assembling an innovative team, and we took this anthem to heart. People who grow up in different cultures naturally have very different perspectives on life — our cultures help define our ideas about everything from the way beer should taste to the way a country should be run. We believe that by bringing many disparate perspectives together, we enable our company see further and wider than we would otherwise — our diversity helps to broaden our company vision and helps to push our thinking outside of the box.

The benefit of this multifaceted approach is evident in every product planning meeting, when each team member brings new and different ideas to the table. By working together to reconcile the best parts of those ideas, we can consolidate them into something awesome.

International customer base

Generally speaking, cutting edge technologies are currently being adopted faster in the U.S., so America will be a key market for our high-tech services. Needless to say, by starting as an global team, we will be more prepared to send our satellites out across the world, including to the U.S.

By starting international, we are subtlely prepping for the day when we open the first sociomantic labs office in Silicon Valley, or London, or Tokyo. Yes, we’re thinking big.

Now seeking: Adventurers

The willingness and audacity to move to a foreign city in a foreign country on the other side of the world says a lot about the person who chooses to do so. Though we hate to overgeneralize, it’s seems safe to say that someone who’s willing to hop continents is someone who has an innate sense of adventure, and it also seems likely that this sort tend to be open minded, ambitious, cosmopolitan, and highly adaptive. Although there are certainly many people here in Berlin with these very characteristics, by hiring an international team we help ourselves to a pool of applicants who are already advertising these characteristics by their lifestyle choices.

Anyone who’s started a company before can tell you that startup life is fast and furious. To keep up, we need team members who are not only willing to jump on the ride, but excited about it. So far, keeping our team international has helped us to ensure that we’ve got team members that are ready for any sharp turn on the road ahead. (And as we’ve said before, for a bootstrapped startup, those turns can come at any moment!)

Plain & Simple

I think our managing director Tom Nicolai best summed up the final reason why we chose to run a global startup. When I asked him about his perspective on our strategy, his first answer was plain as day:

“Fun!”

Of course. It’s interesting and mind-expanding and inspiring and just plain FUN to get to know people from around the world, much less work with them. And if we’re having fun doing our jobs every day, in part thanks to the people around us, we’ll humbly count ourselves as some of the luckiest folks in the biz and do our jobs even better.

Think you have a one-of-a-kind perspective to bring to our diverse team? Check out our career openings and get in touch if your CV’s a match.