Early company building
The past eight years of my career were at Webflow and One Medical. In Silicon Valley, that feels like a lifetime. I know people who've been at 3-4 companies during my entire time at two companies. There is nothing wrong with switching jobs after a year or two. People have different reasons and circumstances why they decide to leave a company or stay. There was a time period where I stayed at companies only for about a year, but the majority of my endeavors have been multi-year hill climbs: My own company (5 years), One Medical (4 years), and Webflow (4 years). Why do this? Is it the standard vesting cycle? Fear of change? It's simply one thing...company building.
Defining company building
Company building is contributing to systems and structures in which a business operates and approaches its mission. Building a product and a company have similar parallels. Both require understanding the people who interact with your experiences, starting with an MVP and maturing over time, and growing it.
A company builder doesn't have to start it and be CEO. They are also early employees or coming in to help grow an incredible company—this is my sweet spot. When I joined One Medical, the product development team was fewer than 20 people, and became the high hundreds when I left. Webflow was about 100 people and I left saying goodbye to about 650 wonderful humans. As Andrea Conway said, "You have a (company) type."
There are aspects of company building you do not want me to contribute to, such as running Finance or the Sales function! It's important when contributing to growing a company you spend time in areas where you are highly skilled. In addition to building design teams, I spend a lot of time with Marketing, Biz Ops, Product, and Engineering. If you decide to continue in a management path or org leadership, the functions you work with are more expansive.
The impact of company building
I will tell you right now that early company building is not easy. It's not for everyone. It requires hard work and a lot of effort over time to make it successful. However, it is one of the most fulfilling things you can do in your career. Here are some of the most gratifying aspects of early company building that resonate with me:
Every year feels like working at a different company
What you build will have a lasting impact on hundreds of people joining the company
Recruiting and hiring people to join a special endeavor at an early stage
You build long-lasting relationships with incredible human beings at a large scale
Designers have the potential to be great company builders
We as designers have fought for years to have a seat at the table of a company. I'd say we've achieved that with more investments in design and executives. However, some of the tables are poorly built. What if we have to rebuild the table, or completely flip the table? Company building is the opportunity to build the table.
Design’s superpower is observing and understanding how humans interact with systems and then devising a solution that results in better outcomes for them. This is the core essence of what a company is. When company builders are also designers, magic happens. What often happens with designers is being too heads down, and not heads up enough. We sometimes fall into the trap of spending all this time focused on what we're doing vs. what the company needs. This isn't to say our heads-down work is not important. It's crucial. However, when we go heads up, we look horizontally and cross-functionally.
When you're a manager or operator at a late-stage company, it can be difficult to be involved in building the systems. At this point, the systems are already established. Though it's not for everyone, I encourage designers to consider joining earlier companies or becoming founders—allowing the opportunity to design the company culture, operations, and values from the beginning.
Company building is a multi-year effort
As mentioned before, company building is very hard and not for the faint of heart. I gave a talk about this at Figma Config in the past about scaling design teams and this is true about companies. To have a lasting impact in company building, it's likely a multi-year effort, and that's what I look for. When I look at new opportunities, I'm looking at not what the company is at this moment today, but at what it can become, and how I can help them.
Every time I leave a high-growth company, I say "I'm never doing this again," and yet I do it again. Company building is an incredible journey and the wonderful memories of working with incredible people is the reason I continue to do it. Until the next one.
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What a great article. I’m also a serial long-timer and you’ve managed to unearth something I’ve not been been aware of in myself. That I love to help design the company as much as the design team and product. Thank you.