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The Executive Guide to Growing Your Business

How 20 Business Leaders are Growing and Managing Great Teams

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Your team is your greatest asset. As a leader, it’s important to set a strong

foundation for growth. And while you’ve probably been focused on the growth of

your product, you may not be sure of the best ways to grow other areas of your

company. From recruiting the best team member, to knowing what kind of equity

to offer, and dealing with remote employees, many of these growth issues fall onto

your plate. Luckily, you aren’t the first to deal with them.

We’ve compiled the top 20 growth challenges that touch every corner of

people operations, as well as unique ways that different CEOs, cofounders, and

executives have tackled them. We also offer tools, apps, and systems that can help

you manage, analyze, and improve on your growth challenges.

While growing pains can’t be altogether avoided, having a roadmap of issues that

arise as you develop can help you take charge when they do hit.

Introduction

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Table of Contents

T H E E M P L O Y E E L I F E C Y C L E

In today’s competitive hiring environment, how do I help my company stand out?

How can I build a more scalable recruiting process?

What’s the best way to approach job titles?

How do you know which candidate is the right one?

Why is it important to build an onboarding process for my growing team?

Should I fire or demote low-performing employees?

Given all that we have to focus on, is it even worth worrying about performance reviews?

C U LT U R E A N D M I S S I O N

What role does culture and mission play in growing our business?

What role do our founders play in creating a strong culture?

Everyone values transparency, but how transparent should we really be?

E M P L O Y E E E N G A G E M E N T

How do I keep my employees engaged during periods of rapid growth?

When is the right time to hire HR?

As our company grows, what’s the best way to train first-time managers?

C O L L A B O R AT I O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N

How can we build strong (but lean) processes for our growing team?

Are our meetings making us more productive? Or less?

How do we fix our internal communication problems?

C O M P E N S AT I O N

How do I make my compensation package competitive?

When do I start offering equity? To whom, and how many options?

L O C AT I O N

When growing quickly, is allowing for remote work a good idea?

What’s the best way to make sure that our distributed team feels connected?

C O N C L U S I O N

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When you first started, your recruiting process may not have

been much of a process at all so much as just figuring it out on

the fly. But as your company grows, knowing exactly who to hire,

who to let go, and how becomes absolutely essential.

Issues like how to stand out to recruits, who might make a good

team fit, or how to handle low-performing employees are now

constantly on your radar, and you need to have solutions ready.

Luckily, we have some words of wisdom from fellow leaders to

make sure you’re prepared.

The Employee Lifecycle

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Hiring the right employees is essential to building your company—even if you

have the most innovative product on the market, you still need to find a way to

attract employees to build, manage, market, and sell it.

With hundreds to thousands of companies out there trying to recruit the best

of the best, it can be difficult to differentiate yourself. In this situation, taking a

minute to define what makes your company a unique and challenging place to

work can take you far.

“Growth feeds on itself. Growth is how startups put a stake in the ground

about their vision of the future. It’s how you say, ‘Listen, we’re right, this

is the shape of things to come.’ And it’s how you prove that to the world.

When you’re growing there are a lot of challenges, but [those challenges]

also attract the best people.”

– PA R K E R C O N R A D , C E O A N D C O - F O U N D E R , Z E N E F I T S

B R A N D O N H A L L R E S E A R C H B R I E F ( 2 0 1 3 )

In today’s competitive hiring environment, how do I help my company stand out?

T H E E M P L O Y E E L I F E C Y C L E

Companies that invest in employer branding are 3X more

likely to make better hires.

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Finding the perfect person who has the right combination of skills, experience,

personality, and work ethic can grow your business in new and exciting

directions.

As your team grows, adding referrals to your recruiting process can help you

find high-caliber candidates in less time.

Tools: Modern applicant tracking systems like Lever can make the referral

process a bit easier. One example: they have their own Chrome extension that

allows all employees to source and refer candidates and easily send information

to the recruiting team.

– E R I C F E N G , C T O , F L I P B O A R D

B E R S I N T A L E N T A C Q U I S I T I O N F A C T B O O K ( 2 0 1 5 )

How can I build a more scalable recruiting process?

T H E E M P L O Y E E L I F E C Y C L E

It takes 52 days on average to fill open positions.

“Highlight open positions during weekly huddles or all-hands meetings,

like, ‘Hey, the data science team has two open reqs, and they’re looking for

people with this kind of experience.’ That goes a long way.

“During a referral’s first week on the job, during our all-hands, we will not

only welcome the new person, we will recognize how that person came in.

We give the referrer their bonus on the spot.”

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At a growing business, particularly during the early years, employees do a bit of

everything, no matter what they were technically hired to do.

This makes determining job titles a bit difficult. When employees wear so many

different hats, what’s the best way to write job titles and descriptions?

Of 1,500 office workers who were surveyed, 70% would opt for a decent job title over a pay hike.

“At an early stage, everyone is a crucial team member, everyone should be

a performer and the job title should reflect that. That said, you can be Chief

of All You Survey but if your startup goes nowhere, who cares what your

title is.

“In my opinion, your title should help you perform your function better.

If you lead a team of engineers, calling yourself engineering intern will

not help you instill confidence in the engineers you lead. If your job is to

deal with enterprise customers, give yourself enough title so that those

companies know that they should be dealing with you and not someone

above you.“

– P E K P O N G PA E T, F O U N D E R , I M P E K A B L E

O F F I C E A N G E L S S U R V E Y ( 2 0 1 5 )

What’s the best way to approach job titles?

T H E E M P L O Y E E L I F E C Y C L E

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How do you know which candidate is the right one?

T H E E M P L O Y E E L I F E C Y C L E

With so many qualified candidates vying for the same position, it can be difficult

to determine who will best serve your organization.

There are a number of things to consider before taking on a new employee—

experience, qualifications, how they’ll fit into your culture. That said, how

actually do you know who is the perfect candidate for a job?

On average, each corporate job opening attracts

250 resumes, 4-6 people are interviewed, and 1

gets the job.

G L A S S D O O R G U I D E ( 2 0 1 5 )

Tools: To make your hiring process as efficient as possible, try using recruitment

software like Entelo. They offer unique ways to analyze resumes and rank

candidates, so you know that your short list of people has the right set of skills

and experience. You then get to spend time where it’s needed most—seeing

which of your top tier candidates is the best fit.

– G R E G B R O C K M A N , C T O , S T R I P E

“We apply what we call the ‘Sunday test’ to every candidate. If this person

was alone in the office on a Sunday, would that make you more likely to

come in just to hang out with him? We only make a hire if the answer is a

strong yes. Not only should working with your coworkers be tolerable, it

should be something you actively enjoy.

“This principle is easy enough to espouse, but it took me a long time to

become comfortable with sticking to it in practice. We have often needed

to make a hiring decision on an otherwise great engineer who failed this

test. And I sometimes have to remind myself that no matter how talented an

engineer might be, if I know in my gut that our team would be less happy

with this person on board, then it’s not worth it. Bringing someone on board

who isn’t a good fit will only make it harder to hire other talented engineers

in the future.”

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Why is it important to build an onboarding process for my growing team?

T H E E M P L O Y E E L I F E C Y C L E

You know that your onboarding process should do more than just ensure that

new team members know where their desks are. But knowing what a complete

onboarding process looks like and creating one are very different challenges.

What should you consider when building out a robust onboarding process and

how do you ensure it will scale?

Organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82%.

B R A N D O N H A L L G R O U P R E S E A R C H B R I E F ( 2 0 1 5 )

Tools: Zenefits makes onboarding a snap by automating the entire process.

Employees can sign contracts and enroll in benefits in just a few minutes, so

that you can focus on creating strong training programs for your team.

“On the recruiting end, we encourage our hiring managers to look for

people who bring new perspectives to the company, and we focus on

building teams with a variety of voices and experiences. From training

and onboarding onward, we invest deeply in our employees and their

career paths. Every employee goes through MailChimp University, an

internal education program we developed with help from professors from

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

“When we invest in employee development like this, our growing teams

are able to work better together, managers are being more deliberate in

developing their people and individuals are taking more ownership over

their success and career paths.”

— M A R T I W O L F , C H I E F C U LT U R E O F F I C E R , M A I L C H I M P

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Handling low-performing employees is a difficult but necessary part of growth.

Many leaders choose to work with the individual in an attempt to improve their

performance, but sometimes the best thing to do is to demote them or let

them go.

How do you know what’s the right move?

Should I fire or demote low-performing employees?

T H E E M P L O Y E E L I F E C Y C L E

46% of new hires are let go from their jobs within 18

months of being hired. Only 11% of these are for lack of

skill, while 89% are for attitudinal reasons like motivation

and lack of coachability.

F O R B E S ( 2 0 1 2 )

“The truth is the data tend to work in a pattern. The people who don’t work

hard are devoting their time to tasks like gossiping or complaining, while

good employees tend to spend their time on getting work done. Even

though we’re going over the finer parts of when to let someone go, deep

down, the vast majority of times, you already know the answer.

“Therefore, to keep the great employees happy, remove the poor

employees quickly, and evaluate low-performing employees by taking a

hard look at their attitude and whether they’re trying. If low-performing

employees are trying hard and show a positive attitude, work with them to

help them improve. If it’s clear that they’re not trying and their attitude is

negatively impacting other people, then talk to them about their future at

the company. Many times, both the employee and the employer are happier

once they’ve moved on from one another.”

– B R I A N H A M I LT O N , C H A I R M A N A N D C O - F O U N D E R , S A G E W O R K S

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In the early days of a company, organizing formal performance reviews might

not be the most efficient (and certainly not the most cost-effective) method of

managing employees.

Instead, focus on hiring the right employees and keeping them happy. Be clear

about what exactly you expect from them, support them, do your best to keep

them motivated, and check in frequently on goals. It’s important to track their

personal progress, but the format needn’t be traditional.

Given all that we have to focus on, is it even worth worrying about performance reviews?

T H E E M P L O Y E E L I F E C Y C L E

CFOs estimate that 30% of their company’s

performance potential is lost due to ineffective

performance management processes and behaviors.

Tools: Try a product like Glint to assess employee engagement. Glint creates

quick, customizable surveys that you can send to your company so you know

when you need to enhance feedback or set clearer goals.

T A L E N T M A N A G E M E N T 3 6 0 ( 2 0 1 5 )

“If you’ve hired the wrong people, I personally don’t believe you can do

anything to make them the right people. It’s not an issue of skills, rather

it’s more about personality and work ethic.

“Wisely use your money to make the team happy and productive. Buy

the good chairs, good laptops and displays, etc. Make sure you do things

that you can only do as a startup because you have a small team busting

their asses together. Get drinks, have BBQs, whatever your team likes to

do, encourage them to have fun. Make sure that you people are not just

slaving away.

“Your team is everything. If you hire the right folks, keep them happy. That

should be one of your top priorities (perhaps the very top).”

– E R I K C A S O , C E O , E N T A N G L E D M E D I A

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At a growing business, your culture, mission, and

values are vital to establishing a strong company

identity. But it’s not enough to simply define them:

remember that you have to work by them, too.

Your employees often look to you to lead by example.

Showing your dedication to these elements of your

business not only benefits your current workforce,

but sets a strong foundation for future growth. Here’s

how other leaders have fostered a positive company

culture to inspire their employees.

Culture and Mission

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As a growing company, mission, values, and culture all seem like projects that

you can focus on later on down the road. While they may be important, there

are more pressing matters, right?

Justin Moore, CEO of Axcient, argues that culture should be considered early

and often because it drives the success of your company from day one:

What role does culture and mission play in growing our business?

C U LT U R E A N D M I S S I O N

37% of non-management employees say they know

what their organization stands for and what separates

it from its competitors.

Tools: Culture Amp is one of the few platforms out there tracking and tackling

culture initiatives. It allows you to survey your team and then offer data-driven

actions in response to the results. Knowing what your employees want and

need puts you in the driver’s seat of your company’s culture, so that you can

focus on alignment.

“Look, when I’m five employees, I don’t need to invest in that culture stuff.

I need to focus on product. I’ve got to get the product right. Then, I need

to focus on sales strategies. This stuff can come later. The problem is

that, even at a startup, you do have a culture and a values system, but

you may not be in control of it.

“It’s easy to go off and only think about product and sales and marketing

with all the pressures you have as a CEO, but make sure to make time for

culture. Make time for values. Make time for creating an incredible place

to work, which has ruthless focus on a mission. Get everyone aligned.”

– J U S T I N M O O R E , C E O , A X C I E N T

G A L L U P S T A T E O F M A N A G E R R E P O R T ( 2 0 1 5 )

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As the founder, you are responsible for many aspects of your company’s success.

You set the rules, build the tools, and, like it or not, set the tone for how your

current and future team members will work together.

How should you think of this central role you play in the formation and

maintenance of your company’s culture?

What role do our founders play in creating a strong culture?

C U LT U R E A N D M I S S I O N

52% of software engineers are likely to accept less money

to work at a company with great culture.

Tools: When you start growing in numbers, consider doing AMAs (ask me

anythings) at all-hands or via Hipchat in order to make sure that all your

employees know where the company is headed and have the opportunity to

voice feedback and questions.

“Companies tend to reflect everything about them—their personality,

strengths, weaknesses. So when you start defining culture in an

intentional way, first look at yourselves. If you’re not a founder, look at your

CEO and the people who were there at the very beginning.

“This might sound obvious, but to a lot of people, it’s not. Regardless, self

awareness (or awareness about your founders) is a really good starting

place. It brings up a handful of helpful questions that can be useful in

thinking about the DNA of your culture. Fundamentally, it’s an exercise in

self-awareness.”

— M O L LY G R A H A M , F O R M E R M A N A G E R O F C U LT U R E A N D E M P L O Y M E N T

B R A N D I N G , F A C E B O O K

G L A S S D O O R S U R V E Y ( 2 0 1 4 )

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Telling your team members the details of every meeting might feel like

transparency, but isn’t very efficient or prudent. What is transparency, and where

is it really vital? How do you find and draw the line between transparency and

information overload?

Matthew Bellows, CEO of Yesware, advocates for a radical form of transparency,

but limits the transparency to opening up relevant and useful information:

Everyone values transparency, but how transparent should we really be?

C U LT U R E A N D M I S S I O N

50% of employees report that a lack of company-wide

transparency is holding their company back.

Tools: Tools like Dropbox and Google Drive make it easy for employees to

put all their shared docs in one place. You can put all your relevant company

information, like Bellows suggests, in a single folder so that all employees can

read it on their own time.

“With meetings, email and other channels, we push out a certain level of

detail about what’s going on with the company. Beyond that threshold, it’s

not efficient and probably not effective to share more.

“But anyone can come at any time and pull information out of me or the

rest of the executive team. We have an explicit understanding that if the

topic is too sensitive, we can just say, ‘That’s a personal issue that I really

can’t share with you.’”

— M A T T H E W B E L L O W S , C E O , Y E S W A R E

F O R B E S ( 2 0 1 4 )

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Once you’ve hired the right people, it can be challenging to know

what to do to retain them. Having a talented workforce is great when

trying to grow your company, but all the talent in the world means

nothing unless your employees are engaged.

Employee engagement is no simple task, and indeed involves a

number of people and processes. From HR to performance reviews

to management, these business experts have advice for you on how

to keep your employees engaged, loyal, and motivated.

Employee Engagement

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When your company is on a hiring spree, employees can quickly feel lost in the

shuffle. The more employees you take on, the more difficult it is to acknowledge

everyone’s contributions individually, which inevitably leads to disengagement.

Letting your employees know that they are valued is the key to keeping them

engaged. But with so many employees on your hands (and still more to come),

how do you let your workers know they’re appreciated?

How do I keep my employees engaged during periods of rapid growth?

E M P L O Y E E E N G A G E M E N T

Companies with engaged employees outperform those

without by up to 202%.

Tools: If you don’t have time for weekly meetings, Wooboard is a great way to

give your employees frequent, public encouragement. You can highlight your

team member on their social space or use it to gather nominees.

“The more employees a company has, the less likely anyone gets

noticed. And when employees don’t feel individually responsible for the

company’s success, things slow down. If you want employees to feel

appreciated, you need to celebrate their achievements regularly and

publicly.

“At Lyft, we have an all-hands meeting every other week, and we always

call out the most badass, heroic accomplishments of team members

since the last gathering. Sometimes we celebrate an individual, like the

support team member who helped manage a project to automate toll

reimbursement for all Lyft cities. Sometimes it’s a group, like the analytics

team that revamped our growth model.

“Before each meeting, we ask managers to submit nominations. We love

reading through all our people’s achievements.”

– L O G A N G R E E N , C E O , LY F T

G A L L U P E N G A G E M E N T P O L L ( 2 0 1 5 )

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As your business grows, so do the number of human resources challenges

you will face. Early on, the founders and company leaders can handle most

of these, but as you add more employees, that becomes much more difficult.

When is the right time to hire HR?

There’s no magic number. No matter when you bring on an HR specialist, and

no matter how you handle HR administration work in the interim, it’s vital to still

give thought to HR problems and processes like engagement and benefits from

day one.

When is the right time to hire HR?

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects 15.5% growth

in HR employment before 2022.

“Popular opinion will suggest hiring someone in HR around employee

number 10-15, yet others suggest to wait until there are hundreds of

employees. The answer likely lies somewhere in the middle for your startup.

“Once you get to around 10 employees you will start having to deal with

questions about overtime, breaks, paternity leave, health leave and so on.

Having an HR employee will offload that from one of the founders so they

can focus on building their business.

“Deciding when to hire someone in HR is not a simple question to answer.

For us, the tipping point was 35 employees and I was extremely happy to

have an HR resource when we did.”

– S H A U N R I C C I , C O - F O U N D E R , I D E A L C A N D I D A T E

U . S . B U R E A U O F L A B O R S T A T I S T I C S , H R H A N D B O O K ( 2 0 1 5 )

E M P L O Y E E E N G A G E M E N T

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At many companies, your earliest employees will often grow into management

positions. While these employees will have the most knowledge about your

company, being a star employee and a star manager require very different

toolkits.

How should your managers structure meetings? Offer feedback? Ensure that

their teams feel supported—both at work, and in their careers? To prevent

disgruntled teams, it’s vital to train new managers on how to tackle sticky

interpersonal problems.

Tools: To build and implement a training program online, software like CertSpring

and Lesson.ly allows you to create a training program that fits your needs. Using

these tools, a CEO or HR leader can set up a management course, and scalably

implement it for all new managers.

As our company grows, what’s the best way to train first-time managers?

E M P L O Y E E E N G A G E M E N T

84% of

organizations

offered their

staff some form

of professional

development

opportunities.

“Management training is the best place to start setting expectations for

your management team. Do you expect them to hold regular 1:1s with their

employees? Do you expect them to give performance feedback? Do you

expect them to train their people? Do you expect them to agree upon

objectives with their team? If you do, then you’d better tell them, because

the management state-of-the-art in technology companies is extremely

poor.

“Once you’ve set expectations, the next set of management courses has

already been defined; they are the courses that teach your managers how

to do the things you expect (how to write a performance review, how to

conduct a 1:1, etc.).

“Managing the company is the CEO’s job. While you won’t have time

to teach all of the management courses yourself, you should teach the

course on management expectations, because they are, after all, your

expectations. Make it an honor by selecting the best managers on your

team to teach the other courses. And make that mandatory too.”

— B E N H O R O W I T Z , C O - F O U N D E R , A N D R E E S S E N H O R O W I T Z

S H R M E M P L O Y E E

B E N E F I T S S U R V E Y ( 2 0 1 5 )

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An effective team is essential to growing your company, and

communication is the key to an effective team. Gone are the

days of meetings in hushed tones behind closed doors. To

work quickly and effectively, growing teams must embrace

transparency and modern, scalable tools.

Even if you love transparency, creating teams that embody

such a value is much easier said than done. These leaders

have tips for how to keep things open and efficient.

Collaboration and Communication

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As you scale, your team will need new processes and workflows. The wrong

ones, however, overcomplicate projects and slow down your team. How do you

avoid bottlenecks while growing?

Peter Deng, Director of Product at Instagram, has his team collaboratively

reevaluate any process in place on a monthly and quarterly schedule:

Tools: Trello, a project management tool, can help you map out your collaborative

projects. When it comes time to reevaluate how you manage projects, Trello’s

tracking and display can help any team visualize what’s working and what’s not.

How can we build strong (but lean) processes for our growing team?

C O L L A B O R A T I O N A N D C O M M U N I C A T I O N

“We did a whole retrospective of the product process where we asked the

engineering, design and PM teams to sit together and talk about what

worked and what didn’t work during the previous year.

“We forced openness by asking questions that proactively pulled things out

of people. When we did this, we realized a lot of the things we were even

currently working on were broken. It led to a lot of change this year.”

– P E T E R D E N G , D I R E C T O R O F P R O D U C T, I N S T A G R A M

29% of employees believe that people in their

organization don’t collaborate enough.

Q U E E N S U N I V E R S I T Y O F C H A R L O T T E P O L L ( 2 0 1 5 )

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When you only have a handful of employees, you can reach consensus on a topic

easily. But as your company grows, you have to deal with more approvals, more

review, and more input.

Many business leaders will begin scheduling more and more meetings for every

new stakeholder involved in a project—but does this help or hurt your ability to

get things done?

Tools: Instead of scheduling meetings, put Sacks’ advice into practice using

project management and chat tools together to resolve questions as they arise,

preventing bottlenecks. Some favorites? Basecamp and Evernote.

Are our meetings making us more productive? Or less?

C O L L A B O R A T I O N A N D C O M M U N I C A T I O N

“An email culture is vastly superior to a meeting culture. A group of

people can make progress on dozens of issues simultaneously by email in

the time it would take to organize their schedules for a single meeting.

“Also, the quality of decisions made by email is frequently better because

there’s no arbitrary need to make a decision by the end of the meeting;

people can respond when they are ready, and easily pull in additional

participants and information as needed.”

– D A V I D S A C K S , C O O , Z E N E F I T S

26% of employees cite meetings as their biggest

productivity killer.

C A R E E R B U I L D E R P O L L ( 2 0 1 5 )

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When your company is small, it’s easy to walk over to an employee’s desk

to catch up on project progress. But as your team grows, it’s more difficult

to find the time and space to do so. How, then, can you stay on top of the

communication challenges that come with rapid growth?

URX CEO John Milinovich relies on constant internal documentation with a

company-wide wiki that anyone can read, edit, or comment:

Tools: Milinovich and his team use GitHub for their wiki. GitHub allows team

members to create public and private wikis that members can edit and comment

on. Leaders can start the wiki with the requirements for future posts to maintain

high quality.

How do we fix our internal communication problems?

C O L L A B O R A T I O N A N D C O M M U N I C A T I O N

“As we add more and more data, people and complexity to the org, we

need to make sure everything has been added and filed in a way that

makes sense and that is easy to find. There are things that everyone needs

to know, and then things that really only people in certain groups need to

know. We’re creating our documentation so that people have access to

the most relevant information to them at any time.

“Everything we put on the wiki has to meet a certain bar. It has to be

something that new employees will want to read and will understand so

much more about the company as a result.”

— J O H N M I L I N O V I C H , C E O , U R X

86% of employees cite ineffective communication for

workplace failures.

F I E R C E I N C . S U R V E Y ( 2 0 1 2 )

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Equity and compensation play a huge role in attracting and retaining

top talent. While it seems like creating strong compensation

packages simply translates to paying employees more, there will

always be another company that can outspend you.

Thinking about and creating equity and compensation packages that

remain fair and competitive is integral to ensuring your growth.

Compensation

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Growing companies in particular feel the pressure of finding the right

employees with limited time and resources. Offering equity is one popular way

to attract candidates, but what can you do to really stand out?

Buffer keeps competitive through compensation transparency, posting every

position’s salary, with the reasoning behind it:

How do I make my compensation package competitive?

C O M P E N S A T I O N

Salary = job type x seniority x experience + location (+ $10K if salary choice)

Buffer’s salary formula

Job type = base

Seniority = base multiplier

Experience = multiplier

Location = additional

Equity/salary choice

happiness hero = $45,000

content crafter = $50,000

engineer = $60,000

designer = $60,000

operations officer base = $70,000

executive officer base = $75,000

Senior + 5% base and 3k/$m revenue

Lead +7% base and 4k/$m revenue

VP + 10% and 6k/$m revenue

C-level +20% and 8k/$m revenue

COO +20% and 10k/$m revenue

CEO + 20% and 12k/$m revenue

Master: 1.3X

Advanced: 1.2X

Intermediate: 1.1X

Junior: 1X

+$22K (e.g. San Francisco, Hong Kong, Sydney, London, Paris, New York)

+$12K (e.g. Nashville, Birmingham, Vienna, Austin, Vegas, Tel Aviv)

+$6K (e.g. Tallinn, Warsaw, Bucharest, Santiago)

+$0K (e.g. Manila, Delhi, Hanoi)

Choice of more equity or more salary.

If you choose salary, you get +$10K.

S H R M E M P L O Y E E

B E N E F I T S R E P O R T ( 2 0 1 5 )

J O E L G A S C O I G N E , C E O , B U F F E R

Compensation is

the #1 reason why

employees expected

to remain with their

current employer.

26

Offering employees equity is an important part of creating a competitive

compensation package. Equity can help ease lower-than-market salaries, or

motivate employees to invest fully in the company’s mission. But, who gets

equity, how much, and why? How does this change with different rounds of

fundraising?

22.9 million American workers own stock in their company.

Babak Nivi, founder of AngelList and Venture Hacks, recommends the following

option pool:

T I T L E R A N G E ( % )

CEO 5-10%

COO 2-5%

VP 1-2%

Independent Board Member 1%

Director 0.4-1.25%

Lead Engineer 0.5-1%

5+ years experience Engineer 0.33-0.66%

Manager or Junior Engineer 0.2-0.33%

When do I start offering equity? To whom, and how many options?

C O M P E N S A T I O N

N A T I O N A L C E N T E R F O R E M P L O Y E E O W N E R S H I P S U R V E Y ( 2 0 1 4 )

“These are rough ranges (not bell curves) for new hires once a company has

raised its Series A. Option grants go down as the company gets closer to its

Series B, starts making money, and otherwise reduces risk.

“The top end of these ranges are for proven elite contributors. Most option

grants are near the bottom of the ranges. Many factors affect option

allocations, including the quality of the existing team, the size of the

opportunity, and the experience of the new hire.”

– B A B A K N I V I , F O U N D E R , A N G E L L I S T A N D V E N T U R E H A C K S

27

With the rise of increasingly robust group chat and

videoconferencing platforms, remote work is becoming

the norm. With more distributed teams, however, come

unique challenges—especially at fast-moving, growing

companies.

At one point, you will have to decide whether or not to

allow employees to work remotely—and, if you do, how

to help your remote team members feel connected.

Here’s some selected advice from business leaders on

how to manage a remote workforce.

Location

28

With videoconferencing and ever-improving project platforms, it’s easy for

employees to communicate with their coworkers without being in the same

building, state, or even country. Still, some argue that this presents too many

challenges and is counterproductive.

Blossom argues that remote work is a great idea, but amplifies existing

communication problems. Only tackle the challenge if your core processes and

tools work well.

Tools: With remote teams, using good tools and building strong processes should

be your top concern. When it comes time for face-to-face chats, find a reliable

tool that helps everyone focus on the conversation at hand, not tech problems.

Highfive is one favorite.

When growing quickly, is allowing for remote work a good idea?

L O C A T I O N

“At Blossom we’re often distributed over various cities and continents

so we really feel the pain points distributed teams face. This is super

fascinating because the challenges of distributed teams are often the

same challenges a co-located team struggles with. Just more extreme.

“Another thing I’m super fascinated about is the location independence that

working in software allows. So many people don’t really take advantage of

the fact that you can get stuff done from anywhere. It’s a mindset thing.”

– T H O M A S S C H R A N Z , C E O , B L O S S O M

Home-based employees are 13% more productive than

office workers.

H A R V A R D B U S I N E S S R E V I E W ( 2 0 1 4 )

29

When you first started out, every employee was in the same office. Maybe your

team members even shared the same desk. But now, perhaps the best person

for the job is remote. Maybe you even open a new office or two—domestically or

overseas.

As you grow, how can you make sure your distributed team still feels whole?

Tools: Google Hangouts is flexible and integrated with a lot of popular team chat

clients (or works well as a standalone tool if you use Google’s suite of business

tools). Project the hangout on your TV to get the full “Happy Birthday” singalong

effect.

What’s the best way to make sure that our distributed team feels connected?

L O C A T I O N

“We could have chosen to have everyone in one place, but we chose to

set up our model so that we could have personal connections with clients

and vendors. We believe so heavily in personal relationships, so it’s been

important to embrace collaboration tools to help us cross that digital divide

with our teams.

“We do video calls, group hangouts. We do an all-team sync on a video call,

where we’ll join and give updates across the country, celebrate birthdays

together. Recently we also took the full team on a retreat to Utah to build

relationships. We want to do even more of that kind of team building and

bonding.”

– A L E X L O R T O N , C O - F O U N D E R , C A T E R 2 . M E

3 out of 5 organizations allow some form of

telecommuting.

S H R M E M P L O Y E E B E N E F I T S R E P O R T ( 2 0 1 5 )

30

As we’ve seen, it takes a number of tools and techniques to grow a

great team, but learning how others have tackled growth challenges

can help guide you through the details.

In the end, you’ll never find the perfect time to stop and plan for

growth. That time is now. Make your people a priority. Choose the

best tools you can. And, when you’re lost, simply sit down and listen

to what your employees are saying.

In the end, it’s worth the effort—a talented and engaged team will

take you where you need to go, and beyond.

Conclusion

31

Now that you’re equipped with the best strategies to grow your team, choose a

tool that brings everything together.

Zenefits helps you manage all of your HR from a single dashboard and

eliminates all of your administrative work, so you can spend your time building

strong, scalable strategies instead.

Zenefits connects all of your HR systems, for you and your team, including:

Select and enroll in health/dental/vision insurance, HSA,

HRA, FSA, commuter benefits, and more.

Manage permissions, view organizational data, and

generate business reports.

Fee-free, truly automated solutions for generating and

filing reports for ACA, COBRA, and beyond.

Grow with Zenefits

B E N E F I T S

M A N A G E M E N T

C O M P L I A N C E

Benefits, attendance, and tax deductions, always in sync

with your favorite payroll platform.

PA Y R O L L

Manage time and attendance, set and track vacation and

PTO allowances.

T I M E

Conduct comprehensive performance reviews and connect

Zenefits to your favorite applicant tracking system.

T A L E N T ( C O M I N G S O O N ! )

Create, customize, and send job offers, with simple

onboarding and benefits enrollment.

O N B O A R D I N G

32

Experience it today.1-888-249-3263 | advisor@zenefits.com

www.zenefits.com

“When growing a company, there are often hundreds of action items to

complete, ideas to contemplate, and goals to achieve. All of the paperwork

and responsibilities can stealthily snowball.

“The best foundation for sustainable, scalable growth is Zenefits.”

– J A C O B D I N K E L , D I R E C T O R O F D E V E L O P M E N T, T O T A L A C C E S S U R G E N T C A R E