One of the most important things for any startup to consider is its most efficient method of communication both internally and externally. The days of email being the default option should now be gone.
Many people don’t realise that email is a 40-year-old technology. So when we complain that email isn’t optimised for business today we need to remember that it wasn’t designed to serve contemporary companies. Instead it was built for sending and receiving letters in electronic form, as that was all that was needed in the 70’s when work was done in highly hierarchical organisations.
Today businesses thrive and create through teamwork and collaboration. So we need new tools to support this way of working, tools that are optimised for conversations, like modern messengers. The market is responding with a range of disruptive and innovative alternatives now making waves. At Skype we revolutionised voice and video calling, now a range of new tech start ups are trying to do the same for the way we communicate with text.
Messenger apps are already proving to be attractive alternatives for internal business conversations. US firm Slack made news last month when it became the fastest start-up to reach the $2 billion valuation, helped by its fast growth and 750,000 active daily users. At the same time the Japanese start-up ChatWork, an enterprise social network used by 66,000 companies raised £2.5 million in venture capital funding. Facebook has also entered the fray, with the announcement that it is developing a business-focused version of its messenger service.
This is great for ensuring more productive talks for teams, but still leaves a gap for external communications. This is where Fleep aims to make a difference, by being a messenger that integrates with email networks, so you can include email users into a conversation without the need to force them to sign up to a new service or download a new app, they can participate via email and switch over whenever they like.
Integration with email is something we learned from how mobile phone networks were introduced alongside landlines – first mobile phone users were able to call to all landlines and vice versa. Now many people only have a mobile.
Start-ups can develop a lean, efficient and winning culture by choosing to reject email as the tool for all electronic communications. Instead they should test out the range of modern messengers available and find one that suits their needs and aids productivity. Then they need only use email where it still excels, such as for one-way communication like sending invoices and bulk marketing emails.
How to build the right culture and take on the world
The success of Skype showed me that you really can make a global impact with a relatively small team, no matter where you are located in the world, as long you have a shared vision and understand your users. You can even take on Silicon Valley and win!
As well as having the right vision and attitude – I think the culture of the organisation makes a big difference and is a living thing that has to be nurtured. Culture defines everything from how developers write code and fix bugs to how we treat our users and other team members.
What I also learned at Skype is that it is very easy to align culture while the team is small and close together, but it becomes a job in itself in itself during the period of fast growth. I expect it to be pretty much my main job for a while.
Everyone’s company culture will be different. At the end of the day it all boils down to staying true to yourself, to your team and to your users, as everything eventually comes back to you, good and bad.
I’m really enjoying being on this journey again.
Henn Ruukel, CEO of Fleep and former Director of Site Operations for Skype