RALEIGH – This week is finishing as another good one for fast-growing software startup Pendo, which is demonstrating quite quickly the payoff of treating employees as valued team members, not just cattle.
Rick Smith, WRAL TechWire’s editor and a cofounder
First, on Thursday, reviews posted by employees at jobs website Glassdoor led to Pendo being named a top company to work for in the extremely competitive cloud computing industry.
And today its CEO and co-founder Todd Olson is one of the winners in the Triangle Business Journal’s annual top CEO awards.
But as much pride as Olsen and company might take in his selection, there likely is more joy in the selection by Battery Ventures, a high-profile Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm.
Why? For one thing, talent is in short supply with 31,000 open IT jobs alone in North Carolina, according to the NC Technology Association. And unemployment in this state as well as across the country remains at record lows.
Don’t think for a second that talented workers check out Glassdoor for guidance from peers about whether a company is worth joining.
Then there is employee retention. As Pendo grows and its reputation spreads, the head hunters are looking to poach from the team Olson has built.
Pendo topped the 50 privately held firms on the list which is based in part on a minimum of 50 employee reviews at Glassdoor. Its rating of 4.9 was just short of a perfect 5.0. And Olson is a major reason. He received a 98 percent approval score, Battery noted.
Pendo’s “pink dino” mascot on its way to the firm’s new Raleigh HQ in early 2018; Laura Baverman is on the right.
Employees also are excited about Pendo’s future with a 98 percent positive business outlook.
Joel Chernov, who recently joined Pendo as vice president of marketing, also worked at HubSpot which topped the Battery Ventures’ list for public companies. So his perspective on Olson’s leadership at Pendo is certainly worth noting.
“Leadership holds themselves accountable for building the kind of company that they, themselves, want to work for,” he wrote in a blog about Pendo’s award.
“This aspiration manifests in ways ranging from quirky (everyone at Pendo gets a hand-drawn avatar when they join) to life-altering. Both, for example, value ‘athleticism’ (overall ability, intelligence, curiosity) at least as much as experience or specialization.”
He cites several key factors: “Weekly executive meetings and bi-weekly, full-company town halls (which, as an aside, is another common trait—these companies are unwavering about getting staff together regularly to ensure information doesn’t get trapped in leadership’s pockets) begin with a recitation of Pendo’s values.”
Pendo’s values
‘Pretty cool’
Pendo’s Laura Baverman tells The Skinny that the Battery Ventures selection is “pretty cool.”
In a blog post, Baverman notes that Olson “likes to quote Simon Sinek when he talks about company culture: ‘Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.'”
Amen to that.
Yet Baverman acknowledges that putting priority on employees in difficult to do when growth is driving up demand for time and resources.
“Maintaining that focus through two years of exponential growth has been incredibly exciting, and challenging,” wrote Baverman, who as a veteran journalist and former editor of Exit Event here in the Triangle is well acquainted with covering booming as well as failing companies.
“The Pendo team has tripled in size and expanded from our Raleigh headquarters into five global offices. We now serve more than twice the number of customers.
“Though challenging, the key to managing this growth is the Pendo culture.”
Take a look at the chart (above) that spells out Pendo’s values.
“A lot of effort has been spent emphasizing Pendo’s core values and translating culture across locales and time zones,” Baverman explains.
“We’ve maintained a biweekly company-wide Town Hall and adjusted the content and logistics to account for our growing team. We’ve expanded our people team to cover employee experience and culture, and people development. We have a variety of cross-office affinity groups formed out of a diversity and inclusion initiative.
“Importantly, Todd has remained accessible to all members of the team. He continues to participate in the interview process for nearly every role and conducts 90-day check-ins with all new employees. At least quarterly, he visits our teams in Israel and London, and monthly, those in San Francisco and New York.”
Aaron Hayslip and Jeff Altneu are playing ping-pong in Pendo’s break room on fourth floor of the Wells Fargo building in downtown Raleigh. (WRAL TechWire)
About the awards’ criteria, Glassdoor CEO Robert Hohman noted:
“Glassdoor is on a mission to help people everywhere find a job and company they love through greater workplace transparency. For the third year, Battery Ventures found in an independent study of Glassdoor data the top cloud companies based on employee sentiment. We are proud to help shed light, through our data, on employers that work hard to create and grow strong company cultures. In today’s competitive hiring environment a strong company culture can make all the difference in attracting and retaining top talent.”
(We should note that Neeraj Agrawal, a Battery general partner, is a Pendo board member.)
The TBJ honor
As for the TBJ award, Olson drew praise for Pendo’s growth from reporter Lauren Ohnesorge:
“Pendo, which has raised about $106 million since its 2013 launch, recently promised the state of North Carolina it would add 590 jobs, part of a $34.5 million pledged investment in downtown Raleigh. In recent months, it has prevailed in a patent lawsuit filed by a competitor, opened a new office in London and secured a spot on Forbes’ ‘Next Billion-Dollar Startups’ list.”
