100 Stories of Growth - Insights from Entrepreneurs

After the language-learning global leader busuu relocated from Madrid to London in 2012, its team grew rapidly from 10 to 50 people in just a year. But problems were brewing. So too were a huge amount of emotional and business challenges for founder and CEO Bernhard Niesner and his team. One of the problems was that the company had grown in an organic way without proper cultural alignment. A technology shift played its part too. The company launched before mobile apps had taken the market by storm. So its online platform had to be completely redesigned. And it was back to the drawing board for busuu to create a mobile-first business. Revenues were tanking, its fundraising process fell through and busuu had just three months of cash left. “Not only did we have to cut team members but a lot of people decided that the company wasn’t for them, and rightly so,” says Niesner. “Then we suddenly went from 50 people to 15 in a couple of weeks. It was a tough time when we had to basically build up the company from scratch. I got coaching to really define our values for myself and for the business.” Niesner says that he “probably underestimated” the importance of the right culture for the business. As the founding team grew the company, its culture wasn’t articulated well enough, he says. Today, busuu has ingrained a solid culture to help guide its 100-strong staff. It has grown 67% year on year and is at cash breakeven. Niesner has been on a big professional and professional journey. Back in 2014, his CEO approval rating struggled at around 35%, but now he has a 95% rating on Glassdoor. BUSUU How to achieve cultural balance Public sector: could do better Before we examine how some companies have worked to create impressive cultures, it’s interesting to examine how much business leaders in our research see support from the public sector on their growth journey. The findings suggest there is a communication disconnect between companies and government agencies. It would appear that publicly funded organisations have more work to do as positive scale-up supporters for company founders. Equity-backed respondents scored these groups more positively than either debt-backed or all respondents did. But focusing on equity-backed respondents, the levels are very low. None of them cite the British Business Bank in our research as a known beneficial source. Just 5% of this group agree that Local Enterprise Partnerships are supportive, and almost double the number (9%) – still a very small proportion – choose international trade missions as beneficial sources of SME growth. Why cultural alignment in your team is crucial The human capital journey runs most smoothly when shared values and cultural alignment have been defined early on, the majority of entrepreneurs tell us. Their collective challenge is to surround themselves with talented, diverse groups of people who share their vision and desire to make their ideas into a success story. But as Matrix APA (page 43) and busuu (page 45) show, sometimes company founders have to take several steps back to move forward to achieve great cultural alignment and to find the people to help them grow. 47 46 INSIGHTS FROM ENTREPRENEURS HUMAN CAPITAL of entrepreneurs think international trade missions help them scale 9% THE EXPORTERS