Welcome to my session about scaling culture and how we at IO in the past years nurtured a coherent company company amidst changing growth and I still see people joining this session.So I think some of you might know the like the pains and pleasures of growing up as a company, as an organization. And I want to share some insights about the journey that we went through at IO. So um uh yeah, let's go here. Um So if this wouldn't be a virtual setup, but I would stand in front of you, I would assume seeing a lot of question marks in your eyes. So who is this? I or she is talking about? So, um again, I can't get a raise of hands from your side. But um if you think about um whether you on your own, on your desktop or on your mobile device, whether you are using an ad blocker, if that's the case, then probably you might have encountered some of our products because with adblock plus and ad block at IO, we create the most popular browser extensions for ad blocking and ad filtering worldwide.

So this technology is available in all major browsers and platforms, both on mobile and on desktop. And I assume a couple of people in this audience might have encountered and used our products already. So um this is in in general uh a quick overview on a block and users users around the world. And um overall, it is quite huge. So this is why at IO we call this the kind of biggest boycott in history. So um what is it that IO does about it? Um We are not only focusing on the user side, we understand that users want an annoyance free web. Um But on the other hand, we also care for creating a balance in this online ecosystem, providing value to the advertisers and publishers as well. And we are doing this by our um but by um getting them on board as our partners in um complying with the acceptable ads standard, which is governed by a um uh independent committee. And if the um the the ads that are uh uh uh shown to the users are complying with the acceptable ads standards, then um they are shown to the ad blocking um audience and we allow for monetized of this audience as well, which means that at IO not only about ad blocking, but in creating a fair and prosperous internet for all of the participants in this online ecosystem, users, publishers and advertisers alike.

So um this overall business model, it made us quite um quite quite uh successful over the last 11 years. And like we went from 2 to 14 products, um distributing our uh our reach on mobile and desktop alike. We went from 16 million users in the beginning to know our over 250 20 million users worldwide. We grew the organization from 6 to 250 people and they come from all over the world. Um more than 35 nationalities, but ad blocking in itself, it's also something that is quite debated and um where a lot of companies tried to sue, sue us to make sure that ad blocking isn't the right of the user anymore, but we won all of them. So we went from 0 to 10 1 lawsuits on that topic. And um we were quite successful with our business model going from one to over 700 partners today, both on a profit as well as on the nonprofit side. So um why I am telling you the story to start into my, my um uh sharing of the journey of scaling culture at IO because when you are successful as a, as a business, um over time, you come to a situation where you see that your structures and processes, your business model, your offerings and also your culture, it does not fit anymore to um what you are aiming for where you want to succeed.

So this start up needs to scale. And at IO when we look at scaling, we look at four different areas. We are scaling our business. We are scaling our product portfolio. We are also scaling our organization to make sure that this growth in terms of head count is still a productive uh uh organization. And for sure, we are looking at culture and this is the topic of my talk today. So what is it about scaling culture if you are a start up of about probably 1010 people in staff, you don't need to think too much about culture. Culture just permits the organization. Um It is something that you don't need to codify or anything, it is just there. But when you are growing and you have turn over new people come into the company. How do you make sure that the the input, the key facets of your culture are still growing with you making sure also that this culture keeps coherent across the whole organization. So some subcultures might be valuable. But overall, you want to keep that culture coherence and also make sure that the culture is growing with you so that the changes that you need to stay successful are implemented. And you know that culture is not something that you can like instill into an organization that you can um uh uh um put onto your organization. Top down. It is something that you can only nurture and guide.

So I want to share some thoughts about how we scaled a culture to 250 more people. So it starts with providing clarity because in the beginning, you don't need to be very explicit about what you, what you expect people, how to behave and how to collaborate, how to lift your work ethics. But over time and with growth, you need to provide clarity in terms of becoming more explicit, writing down your vision, your mission, your values and I will come to that a bit later as well. Um Just putting stuff on paper also will not cut the chase. You need, you need to have good stories around this. Um why your culture is the way it is and why you want to have it that way. So especially with new joiners, they wanted to hear the stories from back in the days and um understand how this time connects to their day to day work life. Another very important aspect of growing is that diversity will grow as well. So I shared already that at IO, we have people from more than 335 countries on on board. And um we also want to make sure that we have a good gender ratio and also for sure you will uh get diversity in behavior.

So um a strong sense of of how important this diversity is for your business access and also making sure that inclusivity is lived on a day to day basis is key here, but also having a good understanding how to provide guard rates for the inclusivity. So if um people show behavior that does does not meet your values or your general cul uh company culture, you might want to make sure that this is where it stops. This is the code of conduct that you want everybody to um to, to act on. And the last item uh in terms of scaling a culture is breaking down silos because as your organization grows, people cling to the the area that they are working to. This is totally normal and human. You, you want to, to be a part of, of your, your tribe, of your team. And um but to, to create this coherence across the organization, you need to um to create um structural means, like for example, for example, committees of practice or getting people together on a regular basis, both like in a structured manner, like on uh the company events, but also on a certain bit is um a way to make sure that people across the whole organization stay in contact, communicate and share their stories.

So I wanted to highlight one item that I shared before in terms of providing clarity because it shed some light on one aspect of how we codified our culture. And as I said in the beginning, when I was a small start up, our culture was implicit. Everybody knew that this is a developer centric company. It is that it is remote first that we focus on creating open source and that we share the libertarian spirit of the open source community that we want to provide full transparency about everything. And because all of the staff was pretty young and not having their own families, work was the family, the colleagues were the family, but with growth of the company, um we, we understood that we need to become at least a bit explicit. So what is like the core, what are the core values that we want everybody to align on? And we, we, in, in 2013, we started to set up the core values and make sure that everybody red signs those. And then with further company growth, there were other aspects that we understood. We need to to codify and to write down and share on our internet and also share stories about that. So we put down on our communication guidelines. We um we, we set up our leadership principles and made people tell stories about that. So all the people in leading functions at IO they shared on a specific principle, what they think is important about that one.

And then um after that step, all of this needs to evolve because when you grow also, when you grow your business and evolve your business, the same uh uh applies to the culture as well. So you need to uh regularly check in and see whether everything still matches. So after uh seven years, um after we set up the first set of our core, we decided that they need to receive an update and we wanted to make this as participatory as possible. So we set up what we call the Culture Council pulled in people from all of the different areas and functions in the company and let them identify what should be the new set of core values for IO. And we did the same as well for our mission and vision statements. Now let's look at what came out of that participatory process. So this is the set of our new core values and they are the basis for now scaling our culture. They are empathy, trust, experimentation, inclusivity, ambition and balance. And I want to highlight the last one because I think many of the other values you might have seen on other lists of company values. But for IO balance is so key because it's not only for our business model because there in in this online system between providing value for users, providing value for publishers and providing value for advertisers, we want to find a good balance in that ecosystem of extremes and make sure we provide value to all of the participants of that online ecosystem.

And the same applies to our culture because finding a good balance, there is key and if you drive cultural change and if you want to scale your culture, you will recognize that there is this pendulum swinging all of the time. So for us, it was swinging, for example, between, should we become more remote or should we become more coated? Should we focus on short term success or more on long term sustainability? Should we go for a rapid change or should we stay with an iterative and participatory approach?

And in scaling the culture, the pendulum is swinging, it is key to make sure that it it can be in one ex extreme for a short amount of time. But then you need to make sure that you find this good balance, this sweet spot where you want your culture to, to be and to stay. But all of this, it, it, it it doesn't happen by itself and definitely it can't be put on the organization top down from management. So there's a lot of scaling people in that. But is that possible? Can you scale people? So let's look a bit at um how people grew with IO um in the last 11 years. And you see here looking a bit at what we call the old guard and still after 11 years in business, we have still 10% of the staff on board. And um but then we have a third of our staff which was hired like in between and the vast majority of our staff was just hired in the last three years. So this means that the old culture, we, the stuff that we want to stay with us, we we really need to nurture that in the storytelling, it keeps with A O but also that we enable the people that came in the last years can have their footprint, can make an impression, have, can have an impact on, on Ayo culture as well.

And it is key to use the old girls as the multiplication for the old stories. But also make sure that they support the new way of the company with that you will be able to find and keep talent. So it's key to have a good people vision to understand who you want to have on board. And um the third item here is that to make sure that people can cope with change, resilience needs to be instilled into the organization. And that there is a strong trust that change is something that is here to stay and it is something that people can accommodate with and that they can also have an impact on the change that the company company is leading to all of this will lead to some kind of identity crisis.

And one of our colleagues expressed this with a sentence in the past that I we were pirates and now we are the Royal Navy. So being at the Royal Navy is not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely different from being a pirate. And if you signed up for the company to be a pirate, then there's something that you need to cope with. And um yeah, you will need quite some resilience to move through this change and grow with this change. So how we address identity crisis is first with empathy. And you might remember that this is also one of our core values because you need to explain the scaling. You need to take people with you on the journey. And this also needs, it means that you need to listen a lot to where they are standing and take them with you. You need to repeat that process again and again, explaining very clearly what is in for them. Then, as also mentioned, uh before clarity here is really key so that people understand where the company is heading and um how this affects the culture and whether they still um meets uh with their own values and which behaviors is um uh expected from them. And um you need your leadership to be really committed on the, the way that the company is going um to help people through this identity crisis as multiplications and by leading, by example. So the last item here we talk about scaling people.

It is also about scaling yourself as a leader as the the senior management. So, are you able to lead a company through a, a time of scale up and and through scaling culture? So um what I learned is that it is really key to let go to let go of what was before and step out of the operational uh uh uh uh work and make sure to empower the teams to find their way and to um to create the culture that you want to have and that you need for success. And yes, they're back and relax in the end. So just a brief look into the next 10 years at IO. So I shared a bit of a success story now. But there's one thing that I want to highlight about how to keep this erupting when you move from a start up to a scale up because that I would definitely want to keep disrupting this industry. And I think there are what I call the four horsemen of the apocalypse there. What can happen when you are quite successful in your business model is that complacency starts creeping into your culture, that if you scale the organization bureaucracy starts to take over the flexibility, flexibility that you had before.

Also that with more people adding to the team mistrust starts growing and you need to address this head on and there might be some timidity to speak up freely and provide open feedback. So that's what I wanted to share in a quick nutshell. Only 20 minutes left for me, but I hope you had some nuggets in, in that that might help you scale your culture. So just let me briefly wrap up with my main three takeaways. First. Definitely growth comes with pain. Second when you want to scale culture, like when you want to scale your organization or your whole business you need to build for scale. It needs to be a strategic approach to that topic. You need to embrace change and you need to allow people to grow with the company. And last but definitely not least enjoy the ride. That's it from my side. And I think we have one minute for questions. There doesn't seem to be any question in the chat. Thanks for attending. Um I hope this provides some value for you and I wish you a very great rest of the day and hopefully a lot of more great session to attend. Bye everybody.