“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
That’s one of the mantras Senior Director Kate Scappaticci uses to motivate her team at GroundTruth. It inspires them to be “respectfully relentless” as they work to evolve the adtech space, she said.
Finding the right leader, office environment and team culture can be the deciding factor between similar job offers. Whether you’re looking for more ownership or the perfect mentor, each of the following eight companies offers something a little different to their team.
In adtech, fresh ideas are essential to stay ahead of competitors and relevant with market trends. Senior Director of Account Management Kate Scappaticci said a vibrant work environment at GroundTruth encourages employees to be their most authentic selves.
What's one thing that would surprise people about your company?
Employees are encouraged and empowered to find issues and solve them. This leads to countless opportunities for growth and has resulted in a vibrant culture rooted in ambition and innovation. There’s a saying that goes, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” We live by this mantra and put a strong focus on creating a dynamic, energetic and rewarding environment that enables people to be their true selves when they come to work.
Employees are encouraged and empowered to find issues and solve them.”
What's one trait all the members of your team share?
The team at GroundTruth is respectfully relentless. We are relentless in how we approach the location space, how we value and push forward the standards for privacy and how we maintain a high degree of respect for each other. Our core values have evolved over the years, though respect and relentlessness continue to be the common thread across the entire team.
The best way to move forward is to learn from your mistakes. CTO and Co-Founder of MaestroQA Harrison Hunter said a transparent environment where feedback is encouraged creates a better product.
What's one thing that would surprise people about your company?
Feedback is extremely important to us. We focus on both giving and receiving feedback effectively. Most companies focus on teaching people to deliver feedback better. We feel the real problem is that people do not provide enough feedback and people are not effective at internalizing it. Giving feedback is an essential part of being a good teammate and it is the responsibility of the receiver to assess the feedback and then decide to accept it or reject it. This is atypical, but we train and encourage people to focus less on the delivery of feedback and more on the content.
We train and encourage people to focus less on the delivery of feedback and more on the content.”
What's one trait all the members of your team share?
We are transparent in how we communicate with each other and make decisions. We won't always make the best decisions but we will try our best to be transparent. That means seeking people's perspectives on decisions that could impact them, sharing the complexities behind the decision-making process and explaining the “why” after we go with a certain decision. This helps not just with the decision itself but also improves the decision-making process going forward.
For CEO and Co-Founder Patrick Flannery, ambition and passion drive big data and fintech company Maystreet to land new clients like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It also helps them land new hires.
What's one thing that would surprise people about your company?
The value of data is immense and MayStreet helps financial firms capture, organize and make sense of mountains of information so that they can reinvent the way they engage with their clients. We’ve recently become the market data provider to the S.E.C.’s system for monitoring capital markets. It’s just one way we are playing a key role in creating a more efficient and intelligent financial ecosystem.
We’ve recently become the market data provider to the S.E.C.’s system for monitoring capital markets.”
What's one trait all the members of your team share?
We are committed to our vision. Behind that ambition is also our passion to ensure we are helping our customers to achieve their objectives.
At Cherre, the future means working with AI and big data. COO and Co-Founder Ben Hizak said his leadership team works hard to build a solid foundation of trust and support so that employees can develop their skill sets and take ownership of their work.
What's one thing that would surprise people about your company?
We put an emphasis on knowing the fundamentals. We are a company that believes in learning and growing throughout one’s career, and you cannot learn if you don’t have a solid foundation to grow from. It’s surprising how often people dismiss or downplay the importance of baseline concepts simply because we’re an AI-powered data platform.
We believe in “extreme ownership” where everyone has a stake in the success of our business.”
What's one trait all the members of your team share?
All the members of our team have a vested interest in our collective success. We believe in “extreme ownership” where everyone has a stake in the success of our business and people are trusted to take responsibility for themselves and their work. Our employees know they can have a direct impact on the company.
Two things people take very seriously: finances and privacy. For a company responsible for both, Chief Revenue Office at Payfone Kathleen Waid said that for her team to perform, it all comes down to focus.
What's one thing that would surprise people about your company?
Our company's name does not represent the value of what we bring to the market. We believe that doing business digitally is simply too difficult. Consumers are put through a triage system to authenticate themselves. Payfone enables over 20 billion authentications that fuel a consumer’s digital identity to reduce frustration with digital transactions while also making them secure for the business.
Every meeting we have, internal or external, starts with an end in mind so we stay focused.”
What's one trait all the members of your team share?
Focus. Our team is responsible for delivering revenue to the company, delivering valuable solutions to our current clients and jointly developing value expectations for potential clients. This team knows our success is dependent on making our clients successful. Every meeting we have, internal or external, starts with an end in mind so we stay focused on why we are meeting and what we expect to accomplish.
Creating a high-intensity fitness class experience in your living room requires teamwork. Vice President of Product Management at Peloton Betina Evancha shared how cross-functional teams collaborate to bring fresh perspectives on product.
What's one thing that would surprise people about your company?
I think people would be surprised by the amount of cross-functional teamwork we do to make an amazing product. For example, to create the bikes and treads in our studios, we involved mechanical engineers and industrial designers to make a special mount for the studio screen; electrical and systems engineers to integrate the screen with the hardware; software engineers, UX designers and UI designers to build an app designed for the studio experience; content production to ensure the units would work on camera and during live filming; instructors to ensure what they're teaching matches what our members are seeing; and many more. It's truly a massively collaborative environment with many people bringing different perspectives to the table.
People would be surprised by the amount of cross-functional teamwork we do to make an amazing product.”
What's one trait all the members of your team share?
We have many different approaches and personalities on the product management team at Peloton, but the one trait we all share is curiosity. As the team responsible for translating the voice of the member into buildable features and products, it's important for us to dig deeper into what our members are currently doing, why they're doing it and what they're asking Peloton to build next. The team uses a combination of quantitative methods, like data analytics, and qualitative methods, like member interviews, to turn that curiosity into insights and those insights into features and products that motivate our members to work out.
As any reader knows, diverse voices tell compelling stories. For podcast creation, editing and marketing platform Anchor, hiring diverse voices helps create a compelling product as well. Head of Product Maya Prohovnik said building a team with a variety of backgrounds unlocks the most creative content.
What's one thing that would surprise people about your team?
Something that continually surprises me about our team is that everyone has a huge variety of hobbies, hidden talents and life accomplishments. We’ve got musicians who can play every instrument you can imagine, people who run their own successful side businesses, builders, inventors and even Olympic medalists. Talk to anyone on our team for a few minutes and you’ll be blown away by how creative and multi-faceted they are.
We’re such a funny, weird group of people, which is useful when coming up with innovative ideas.”
What's one trait all the members of your team share?
Our team members’ sense of humor. We’re such a funny, weird group of people, which is useful when coming up with innovative ideas.
When a company’s mission is to streamline the home-buying process, creating great customer service is critical. At Orchard, CEO Court Cunningham said, “We have an intense (some might say obsessive) focus on customer delight.”
What's one thing that would surprise people about your company?
While we have a lot of people focused on the real estate side of the business, about 30 percent of our employees are engineers, product managers and product designers. We have an intense (some might say obsessive) focus on customer delight. Our product and technical teams are focused on developing digital experiences that make the process of buying and selling a home truly joyful.
We have an intense (some might say obsessive) focus on customer delight.”
What's one trait all the members of your team share?
We try to hire and reward people who drive hard for results, have low egos and are humble human beings all at the same time. While it is hard to find all three traits in the same person, we do it.
