7y
Thank you for your feedback. I sincerely feel awful about how you felt. There is nothing more important to me nor more valuable to Deeplocal than the people that work here. I have a responsibility to the staff here, and I’ve felt that since starting the business. I’ve watched my peers at Deeplocal grow up, buy houses, start and now raise families—all since founding the company. I feel that responsibility perhaps now more than ever. We are a client-service business and that does make our clients very important to us, but never more important than the happiness of those that work here.
I work hard to improve myself as a CEO and as a friend, a father, and a son. I try to use the many mistakes I’ve made as opportunities to improve. Growing from three people to almost sixty hasn’t been easy, and one of the biggest changes I’ve had to make is in my own behavior. At three people, I did a lot myself. Growing from a start-up means that my knee-jerk reaction is to jump in and do rather than delegate and steer. Now, I need to provide feedback and allow others to make mistakes and grow like I did. At sixty people, I’ve stepped away from most of the day-to-day work. Talented teams own projects and I am available as a resource. Every once in a while, that start-up instinct to jump in comes back, but I’m doing my best to keep it at bay.
As we faced challenges that all start-ups do as they grow, we looked for help from a growth consultant who had successfully grown a larger organization. During our first meeting with him, we defined Deeplocal’s core values. Our growth consultant asked each person in the room (there were 8 of us) to write down the name of the current Deeplocal employee who we felt best represented us and our values. Nearly every one of us wrote down the same person—a creative engineer who is kind and humble, yet quietly brilliant. Our core values grew out of those that he represents. Fast-forward to today. Every Monday during our team meeting, we call each other out for displaying those values in our work.
A long response to say that I’m truly sorry that you didn’t have a good experience, and that I’m (and we’re) working hard to improve.
Best,
Nathan
CEO, Deeplocal
nathan@deeplocal.com