A sharing of experiences, tales and rants of the path leading up to and including my 6th startup company. 6 startups = 1 IPO, 2 acquisitions, 1 failure, millions in venture capital $, hundreds of employees in cities worldwide and the building of my latest venture, the Rubicon Project - one of the fastest growing advertising companies in history.
I decided to try doing a video blog post. Here is a tour that I did of the Rubicon Project headquarters and all of the thought that we have put into things like culture, communication, efficiency, team development (and a little fun)... We have woven these things into our environment and I thought I'd share our thinking with you.
Some highlights to look out for:
Furnished on a low budget (IKEA furniture, etc.)
"No Office Policy" - everyone sits out on the open
I receive an overwhelming number of meeting requests and would like to accommodate as many requests as I can. So I am organizing a monthly event called “Pay It Forward” that will give 10 students and aspiring entrepreneurs with common interests the chance to sit down with me and discuss the following:
Entrepreneurial Lessons
Team Development
Building Companies
General Brainstorming
Whatever is on your mind!
The setting is informal and will be held at the Rubicon Project’sHeadquarters in LA (fun fact: It is the original set of the TV show “24”). To make sure we can organize the groups accordingly, if anyone is interested, please kindly answer the following questions and respond by end of day this Sunday, April 12th as we are looking to potentially host the first event next Wednesday, April 15th. If we can fit you in the event, then we will.
Please tell us a bit about yourself
What are you looking to get out of the meeting?
One of my favorite quotes is: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Please describe your life dream.
Please describe how you would take the information you gathered from the event and pay it forward.
The event will be video taped and shared with other entrepreneurs and students on this blog.
We will review all responses carefully and although we can’t promise we will be able to sit down with everyone who responds, we certainly will do our best!
Recently, I was asked to present my philosophy and methodology toward building what I call A++ teams at the Startonomics conference. Below, you'll find the video recording of the presentation and the actual presentation itself.
My apologies for the lack of posting to my blog -- I broke my arm snowboarding six weeks ago which makes it hard to write. :-)
My (now former) assistant, Mallory Portillo, was the very first employee outside of the founding team at the Rubicon Project. We’ve grown quite a bit since she started just over a year ago. With our strong commitment to team development and culture, Mallory is now moving on to a new role. She’s going to be responsible for culture, training and communication (see our Cultural Values.) I did a Twitter post about how we do culture surveys and I got a lot of requests from people asking about the process and the questions that we asked. So, I asked Mallory to write a blog post about it, so here is her contributed post…
Cultivating, maintaining and growing a motivating culture at a fast growing start-up company is not a simple task. When I joined here, we were a small office of six and now we are rapidly approaching 75!
As we got bigger, one of the major things we wanted to focus on was gathering culture development feedback and learn about areas for improvement. We knew our team was relatively happy, but we wanted to know what exactly we could do to make their daily experience better and not feel like “work.” We developed a survey to be administered to our entire team using a great survey generator and delivery service called Survey Monkey (you can access the survey builder and deliver it to your team at www.surveymonkey.com). We kept it completely anonymous because we wanted honest, valuable feedback and not what people think we “wanted to hear.” The survey asked our team to describe their daily experience, including why they get up for work in the morning, what they value about coming here, and what they would do to improve communication and the feeling of appreciation among employees at the company.
From the results of the survey, we learned that our team feels our overall company culture is high but wanted to improve on specific areas like communication between departments and employee appreciation. From this feedback, we improved interdepartmental communication with the adoption of Yammer, a new micro-blogging tool which allows everyone in the company to discuss ideas, post news, or ask questions to the entire company. We even devoted a large plasma screen in our office to the feed, which is constantly broadcast to the entire team and anyone who visits our office. It has become a great way for people to interact between departments, remote offices and traveling team members.
From feedback on employee appreciation, it became apparent that the feeling of appreciation across departments was the lowest. In order to encourage people in different departments to show that they value others outside of their own departments, we developed a program called Rubi Rewards. Each employee gets a $75 Rubicon Visa gift card each quarter to show their appreciation to one or more people in the company who they feel stood out in the organization. Examples of why people have given Rubi Rewards includehelp/assistance on a project, having a really positive attitude or inspiring them in some way. Both of these programs, which came as a direct result of the survey, have been in effect for only a few months but the feedback from our team has been extremely positive.
There were, of course, things that surprised us about the survey. We expected our team to rank our company culture a 7 out of 10 (I even thought it might be a 6!). Our average was an 8.44, which while is not close to the 9 out of 10 that we are someday hoping to achieve, it does mean we are headed in the right direction (we will never rate ourselves a 10 because that means we are no longer trying to improve). It is great to know that the time, effort and resources we are investing into maintaining our culture is valued by our employees. However, just like our technology, we are never going to stop improving and innovating!
These were our takeaways from this experience:
Culture is something you have to cultivate, reflect on, and constantly improve.
You cannot be afraid to ask tough questions and confront things that aren’t working.
The only way to know what would make people happier, more effective, and ultimately keep them around is to ask for their feedback.
Every group is different, as is every individual. Culture is driven by reaching and inspiring individuals to act together as a team. What works for some may not work for others.
A strong company culture is not mandated but rather created by the very people who live and breathe it everyday!
We have included the questions we asked our team for reference, in case you were interested:
Culture section: 1. Please pick four words that describe the term “entrepreneurship” 2. Please pick six words that you feel describe the Rubicon Project. 3. Please pick three things that you like most about working at the Rubicon Project? 4. Please pick three things that you like least about working at the Rubicon Project? 5. What motivates you to come to work each morning? 6. How would you rate our culture, on a scale of 1 to 10? Consider 1 to be the lowest and 10 the highest. 7. How do you describe the culture of our company to your friends and family? 8. How would you like to be able to describe the culture of our company? 9. If you were in charge of improving culture, what changes would you make? 10. Please suggest 3 activities for company bonding events (ex: bowling night or wine and cheese tasting). 11. Do you normally attend company events? 12. What suggestions do you have for improving company events?
Communication section: 13. Overall, do you feel that people in the company are supportive of each other? 14. How often do you feel valued and appreciated as an employee in your department? 15. Do you feel valued by others outside your department? 16. Do you feel comfortable approaching leaders in your department to discuss ideas or problems? 17. Do you feel comfortable approaching leaders of other departments to discuss ideas or problems? 18. Are you motivated by other people in your department? 19. Are you motivated by the other people at this company? 20. Are you motivated by the overall leadership at this company? 21. Do you feel that you always do you best to be positive and motivating to others? 22. How can we improve the process of getting feedback on company culture? (ex: this survey, anonymous suggestion box, etc.)
Given our commitment to transparency (also a key part of our Culture Values), below I have included the results of our survey (it's the exact presentation that we delivered to the team). It is a Culture Roadmap (just like you would have a business roadmap or a product roadmap)
Last week, our office manager, Lindsey Mitten, instituted Green Week. One of our Cultural Values is Community, which includes environmental responsibility. I thought I’d share with you what we did for Green Week(I'm actually re-purposing the email that Lindsey sent to the team.)
Each morning Lindsey sent out an email letting everyone know about the small “green” project for the day. She also posted some friendly reminders around the office.
So, staying with the theme of this blog, what’s the business lesson here? Well… First, going green can save you money (something critically important during today’s economic times.) Second, it brings the team together for a common cause and builds pride, mutual respect and purpose. Third, it’s simply just a good thing to do.
You could feel the energy (no pun intended) in the office change every day when Lindsey announced a new green initiative.
Rubicon Green Week Initiatives:
Monday:
Changed all of our light bulbs to CFLs (Compact Fluorescents)
Did you know? “Compared to general service incandescent lamps giving the same amount of visible light, CFLs use less power and have a longer rated life. In the United States, a CFL can save over US $30 in electricity costs over the lamp's lifetime compared to an incandescent lamp and save 2000 times its own weight in greenhouse gases.”
Tuesday:
All disposable paper products that we usually use were replaced by 100% recycled or alternative paper products.
Wednesday:
Passed out individual recycling cans for every desk next.
Thursday:
Carpooling, biking, or walking to work. Everyone who did it got a prize.
Friday:
Switched all office cleaning products (general cleaner, dishwasher detergent, dish soap, hand soap, glass cleaner) over to eco-friendly products which will eliminate toxins in our company’s waste water. If you are interested in any of these products, please check out www.buygreen.com.
From Here on Out:
All paper in the office will be 100% recycled
All cleaning products will be eco friendly
CFLS will be used in place of regular light bulbs
Better recycling system (cleaners know that recyclables go in the white dumpster and trash in the gray dumpster)
All paper products (towels, napkins, plates etc) will be at least 25% recycled if not 100%
More recycling trash cans will be placed around the office
I will try to use more of the reusable bags for groceries
Looking Towards the Future:
Commercial composting
Setting up carpools
How to Help:
Consider printing out internal documents double sided
Shut down your computer! One computer left on overnight equals the use of an entire 60 watt light bulb.
If you are the last person leaving an office or conference room, remember to turn off the lights!
Try to eliminate “Vampire Energy” by unplugging devices that you aren’t currently using
Use those recycle bins I gave you and the ones placed around the office
Go green on your way to work
It was such a huge success; we will be doing a “Green Week” once a quarter from here on out…
I did this video interview for Dog and Pony (below) about Creating a Culture of Innovation. Many of the viewers asked that I share our list of Cultural Values here at the Rubicon Project. So, here they are...
the Rubicon Project Cultural Values
Innovation: We invest our thinking and resources into change that will propel the industry and this company forward.
Transparency: Knowledge is powerful. Transparency keeps us honest. We believe in the highest level of transparency possible with our team, investors and customers.
Active Communication: Communication makes or breaks relationships. We will devote time and effort to make communication a priority.
Humility: While we enjoy winning, we will not let our success get to our head.
Respect: Team development is top priority for us. We hold in each other in high regard and have zero tolerance for disrespectful behavior.
Community: We consider ourselves to be fortunate and believe in paying it forward to those in need.
Competition: We are driven to win and are highly competitive; externally not internally.
Pride: Personal pride in our work is the number one criteria for our team members.
Speed: We go fast but don’t hurry.
Do More with Less: Constantly find ways to do twice as much with half as much time, money and resources.
Mistakes are OK: If we aren’t making mistakes, we aren’t moving fast enough. Making mistakes is key to innovating and learning.
Fun: We will celebrate our wins together, big and small.
I had to put together a video introduction for The Lobby conference again this year. I can't say much about The Lobby other than it is a get together of industry thought leaders to talk about the future of the Internet. I can't say much about it because it is supposed to be "off the record" and blogging, micro-blogging and reporting about the conference is strictly forbidden.
Anyway, everyone attending the conference is required to put together a video introduction about themselves. So, I wanted to share mine with you here... It's a "behind the scene's" look into the secret to our success here at the Rubicon Project... Enjoy! =)
Click here to see my video from last year (and the thought process behind it), the "L.A. Video" that seems to have made it's way around the Internet with over 10,000 views...
Special thanks to my friends Ryan and Wayland for helping me put these videos together... If anyone is looking to produce a video, let me know and I'll happily introduce you to them - they're amazing! They also did our famous "Golden Eggs" video for us at the Rubicon Project explaining the Ad Network Optimization problem.
