Part one of this interview as posted last week. It received and overwhelming response so I wanted to get part two out quickly. Enjoy!
Can you think of a situation where you were really feeling ‘deflated’ and going to work actually helped change your mood?
It may sound corny, but the time when I notice it the most is during the Friday meetings. When Scott gets up and talks about how we are doing, and what the plans are, it makes me feel proud to work here. During one of the meetings recently we had an in-depth discussion of the privacy policy (which we’ve just updated, by the way) to make sure that everyone understood our position and answer any questions. Things like that are very motivating, so even if I’m tired from working hard all week, it peps me up.
The other way I get jazzed from work is reading a really good answer to a question on the community. Seeing someone help another person through their technical problem, taking time out of their day to help a complete stranger, makes my happy. Being able to facilitate that altruism is what makes me get out of bed every day.
Spiceworks is obviously growing at a fairly quick rate at this point it it’s product cycle, what do you think drives that energized development?
The saying is “nothing succeeds like success” and I think that is part of it. Even though we are growing quickly, there is a lot of focus on making sure we hire the right people. We are actually slightly behind on the hiring plan because of us being careful about it. Because of the success that Spiceworks has had so far, we can attract a lot of good people, fortunately.
In terms of the product development, I think the drive comes from wanting to build a kick-ass product that people love. Part of the challenge is managing that growth, and the complexity of the software. One of the things we are focusing on right now is simplifying things. How do you add new features while preserving the easy of use that got us to where we are?
So many companies claim to have a unique culture. From your point of view, how does Spiceworks step the game up to another level?
I have to give props to our CEO again – one of the things he told me when I interviewed was that after the last company he worked at, he realized that the bottom line on whose values ran the company came down to the CEO. If you aren’t the CEO, you can have influence, but you aren’t the person with the final say. This time around he wanted to have his values be the ones that were the foundation, and I think what has been created in Spiceworks is a testament to the truth of that. He really walks the talk, and is very open about everything we do. Everything we build is designed to create value for everyone involved, not to exploit one group of people so another can gain. We make money, our vendors make money, and our users get free software, a great community and better deals on products.
I think if you look at other companies who are doing really well because of their culture, like Google, Amazon, Zappos, Woot, ThinkGeek, etc., you’ll find that the values of the people who started the company are what put them head and shoulders above the rest. Once you put someone else in charge, that is when things can start to slip.
I don’t think that we necessarily are better than any of the companies I mentioned, but maybe what makes us unique is that we are very aligned with the values of IT professionals, the “hacker code”.
Those of us who get and are fascinated by technology see it as a path to building a better world, built on a meritocracy, with more fairness and equality, and less politics and exploitation.
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