From Corporate VP to Startup CEO - Egil Østhus on Leadership, Culture, and Letting Go of Ego

Speaker A: Very boring software, meaning payroll. You just don't want to mess up every nobody's payroll. Right.

Speaker B: Brought many thousands of people to just a handful of people.

Speaker A: So you know, leadership is pretty much similar or the same. Uh, starts with you and it starts with me right now. Feeling very valuable. Uh, I was exposing myself uh, quite heavily.

Speaker C: Today's guest is Egil Oersthus, co founder and CEO of Unleash, a Norwegian open source feature management platform used by teams at companies like Wayfair, Allianz and T Mobile. Unleash has grown to over 40 people and raised more than $16 million in funding over the last few years. Before founding unleash, Ergole was VP of Engineering at Visma, a massive European SaaS company with over 6,000 developers. So he's seen both sides leading transformation

Speaker B: inside a corporate giant and building a

Speaker C: high growth startup from scratch. In this conversation we talk about what changes and what stays the same when you go from big company to small, from corporate to startup. Egil shares how he and his team built a culture of trust, humility and frugality and how that sometimes made them a little too caut. He talks about learning to adapt his leadership style, how he balances coaching with decisiveness and how he's tried and sometimes failed to import corporate processes into startup life. We get into remote work, loneliness and how he's learned to show vulnerability as a founder and why that's one of the most powerful tools a leader can use to shape culture. Let's jump in starting with how Egil discovered the problem that led him to co found Unleashed.

Speaker A: Well um, today I run a founder then run a small ah startup moving as or a scale up uh it's called Brick software. We sell Unleash which is a feature management platform so very short. Feature management is a tool developer are using together with product management to release or decouple release to production to release for customer Meaning I can put my source code in production but I can decide at the later stage, later time who is going to see that new feature. Is it going to be 100% of the population, 50% of the population or the full population of your end user? So quite, quite handy tool to have in these uh, software days obviously. So prior to starting and funding my own company together with my co founder I was in corporate world uh so I came from a European based company called Visma. I tend to say it's uh, Visma creates a very boring software meaning payroll, accounting, HR systems which is sort of not the most uh, maybe most interesting uh Software to build. But it's super critical and really crucial for everybody because I mean you just don't want to mess up every nobody's payroll. Right. So I was in this corporate, having a super great corporate life. I was uh, VP of engineering working with products and very short Vispa is uh a large SaaS company. I think there is like 5 uh 6000 uh developers when I left.

Speaker B: So while you were there you were obviously working with software development and things like that. So this is a. So Unleashed is a very topic of.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Uh and I was sort of uh, uh asked to go down and do the full DevOps transformation with that companies now I have a 4, 3 or 4 months approval uh cycle before you can turn anything on. So that was sort of catch 22 for me. I really. We all knew and we all know uh the benefits of going to production at any time. So they put a lot of risk uh mitigation strategies in place which is delaying and sort of double checking and triple checking rather than sort of doing what is difficult and doing that more often to you know uh, trying to improve uh, that we were sort of uh saying that this is the way to go. So that's, that's sort of where the feature management came into play for for me. So like this is an eye opener. This really creates this benefit um for me to do what I need to do at the same time sort of have this uh stakeholder management with my customer and sort of building trust over time which is um, what you want to do right?

Speaker B: Yeah. So then you started unleash with your brother and this became a piece of software that helps solve that problem, enables people to release and control and do controlled releases and all that sort of stuff and turn features on and off for different populations. Um so that was a big change from the corporate world. You're going from this large corporate, many thousands of people to just a handful of people. Um in M 2019 M. Did you find that challenging?

Speaker A: I did find that, I would say challenging. I find that also uh, some of my key takeaways is leadership is pretty much similar or the same. Uh but of course there is different um, techniques, different type of things you want to apply at different stages. Maybe I can also share some of what I've felt like a success. Uh the first day we two things we did. Number one we decided we need to build a very strong culture. So we sat down and said what is the type of company we want to build? So define the values and sort of start building what does those Values mean and all of that. And that's still with us and that's really strong in that sort of when you have that really kind of on the forefront of your head, it's sort of, it just increases uh, in power, if that makes sense in English. The second thing we did was sort of okay, um, coming from corporate cost controlling is something that is definitely on your top of mind. So we built a kind of a forecast for okay, what are we spending? What is this money look like? Uh, well done, uh, months down the road and sort of have this, this sort of cost control mindset which is very unheard of in startup world. I would say. Sort of. Um, and sorry, yeah, I was just

Speaker B: gonna say at what stage was the company at this point in time? This was like not 2019, it was pre funding. So it's 2019, 2020 and you had like a handful of people just like,

Speaker A: yeah, so, so we were, myself and my co founder, my brother, uh, even before we had a core team in place. So and, and I think uh, in retrospect it sort of led to two things. It's sort of, it's, it's great to have the customer flow because you know where your money is spent and you know that you have money and you're not of money. Which is sort of my responsibility as the counter side to that is also, um, because of culture. And when you start doing building culture, culture is about a lot of uh, habits that you do every day. I would say that is one way to describe culture. So everybody's sort of really instilled with we don't want to spend money, um, that isn't really giving us a return. And at the same time as a startup you need to take some bets, right? You need to put some money in place to see if it works. So maybe that is also in retrospect, uh, maybe I've over pivoted towards kind of the cost control side, which is good in the sense that we definitely know where we spend money. At the same time I see this sort of risk, uh, averse mindset, uh, instilled in everybody's mind saying, uh, I don't have a clear return of this investment, so I'm not sure we want to spend this money. So that's sort of a uh, risk of world. I wouldn't say a lot of risk average, but it's sort of every now and then that is something I observe and it's sort of, you need to go in and sort of adjust saying okay, it is actually allowed to spend this money because we need to take this risk. But I'm not sure if it's uh, if it was a mistake or not. Um, I think it's uh, in retrospect it was good in hindsight because the macroeconomics have changed dramatically since we started.

Speaker B: So that probably set you up well for the uh, post pandemic, uh, crash.

Speaker A: 100% cost, uh, of capital has changed, uh, a lot. So it allows we, we have in. We are in control of our own destiny, which is. Is great. Um, but then again, you can always start thinking about this opportunity cost what, what if. Right. And, and you don't, you know, you never know.

Speaker B: So we did say when you're doing, when you're going through this process, there was initially this sort of reluctance to spend money and just very uh, conscious, conscious process and so on. And then you sort of tried to push it to be a bit more risk, uh, tolerant.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and then you real. Then presumably after that then you had a bit of a capital cris. You then had to sort of come back again and you've been able to navigate these changes is causing this change. Like a lot of people talk about changing culture in companies. Like how do we go about changing culture? Um, when you're doing this, like, you know, you know what you want to do, what's the key action that you think worked, worked for you in making this change one way and then the other way and then back again, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah. I love your question. And I think this comes back to what is a company culture? And as a leader, can you actually build and create the company culture? And uh, I think that it's um. In most leadership type of conversation there is seldom, um, yes or no answer. Uh, there is always, um, possibly yes, possibly no. So what is culture? I think that culture is basically, as I said, a lot of uh, those habits is what we are talking about, what we're doing, what we're not talking about, what they are not doing. The story we tell, the story we tell to our friends. Yeah, um, it is sort of. The quote is sort of. It's just what. How we do things around here.

Speaker B: But how do you, how do you go about changing how we do things around here?

Speaker A: And how do you sort of start building that? Because first you need to understand what it's called and then you can start. So, so what I say to, to what I always been. Been. Been uh, telling my, my, my peers and, and direct reports and my, My um. We need to understand what type of culture we want to have we need to be very vocal about that. Meaning we need to be. Or not vocal, but we need to be very clear for ourselves. What are the behaviors that we want to foster and what are the behaviors we want to kind of course. Correct.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And we need to start with that in our team.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So I'm, um, seldom going out and saying, hey, guys, you're all of your ICs. That is doing the daily work. This is what you need to do. I start with my team, and it starts with myself. So I'm having this sort of talk to my team, and it always comes back to this one slide where it's sort of. It's myself looking myself in the mirror and say, it starts with you and it starts with me. Right. So, uh, if you want to have a trust, trust is one of our values. So what does trust mean? It means that I trust that you are a skilled worker to come up with the best solution. And if I'm, if that is the culture I want to. Want to create, it's an obvious, uh, example. But if you are coming with a proposal and I'm saying, no, that's not how I'd like to do it. I want to do it this way. And I may have good reasons for that is the better answer. But that doesn't foster the culture I'm trying to create.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So, uh, I think it's, uh, what

Speaker B: do you do instead in that situation? Like when someone comes to a thing and you think this is a terrible idea, what do you didn't do? Well, what did you do?

Speaker A: I think that as a leader, you need to listen more than you speak. Uh, uh, and I find also that you need to ask more questions than tell. And actually, when you go into a particular organization and the best leaders I work with, they tend to ask a lot of questions. They don't tell. So, uh, when you are coming with me with a terrible idea and I want to kind of, okay, face that, I need to start asking you some questions. Did you think about that? What if this is the context or what if this happens? What do you think that will cause? And did you sort of consider this other consideration or have you taken this into account and with empathy? Uh, because if you ask questions in a way that sort of, you are stupid and go away. Um, you can feel that in how you interact with the person. But if you come from, um, a position of respect and that you want this person to really be great, um, I think that the question that you ask is sort of more as a coaching approach. Rather than saying, uh, you didn't do this well enough, go and do it one more time.

Speaker B: I was going to mention that because I'm actually, at the moment I do executive coaching, but I'm also actually studying executive coaching at Henley Business School. And a lot of the content there is really about respecting the person. And um, how do you, you know, how do you let go of your own beliefs? And as a coach, obviously as a professional coach, I'm not in the kitchen. Right. So I am by nature of the case, not responsible for the result. You as a CEO, we often talk about like the CEO role or the leader, the manager role, the leader role and coaching mindset is really helpful, but at the same time you are deeply involved and the result is your result. Right. How do you separate yourself from it? How do you deal with this situation where, um, uh, you feel like you really want to tell them something or you ask a question and they've had to have a realization or you've got through, but they haven't quite got there. They haven't quite got to. But what do you do in that situation that balances growing that culture and the coaching mentality?

Speaker A: Uh, it's a good question. I think maybe this is where running a smaller team difference, uh, for a, uh, large organization. Large organization, usually you have more time, um, at a smaller company, you need to kind of move fast, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, and obviously at some point in time, um, it's sort of if by challenging, responding with questions doesn't really take you to where you need to be fast enough. Uh, also you need to sort of step up and just say, okay, I think this is the way to go because of, uh, and sort of, um, cut through the noise, if that makes sense. Uh, and I would say also I think the danger here is to say that, well, as a leader you always need to ask questions. You should never show the direction because you are the one that is responsible for making sure there is progress, making sure that you are aligned, making sure that you are. So it's always this balance of sometimes you just need to kind of cut through the noise and say, this is how we do it. And yes, there has been a lot of debate. Yes, there are multiple options at the same time. And I think actually that is a good, good, good, uh, thing that we are sometimes seeing in our organization that we have a lot of really smart people, but we have a lot of analytical, um, people, meaning they wanted this explore. They want to go to details, they want to kind of see, seek more information. Yeah, um, and, and also if you want to, um, sometimes that is okay, but at the same time that takes a lot of time and we don't have time. Time is maybe our most valuable asset. Right. So, so I would say, uh, it's a delicate balance. And actually there is one M method I keep coming back to as a leader. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. It's called social styles. It's one of many ways of what type of person are you and how you act. So basically it's um, 3 or 360 survey and there's a lot of books that are written about this. You can kind of put everyone in four different uh, quadrants or like categories. Um, and the theory behind it is that um, this is sort of core to your personality and every, every quadrant is equally good. It doesn't say that you need to be in this in order to be SEO or you need to be that to be SEO. It's sort of. These are the core characteristics of how you are perceived that is important. It's not who you are, but how you are perceived by your surroundings. So that's the one dimension of that. The other dimension of that is saying when you interact with a person in this category, this is the type of interaction that this person, uh, excel from.

Speaker B: Can you tell me what are the categories or what.

Speaker A: Yeah, so, so you have the analytical guide. That's the one quadrant. You have the driver, which is sort of the action oriented, that is sort of just moving forward. Um, and then I can't remember what is the third.

Speaker B: It's uh, expressive and amiable.

Speaker A: It's sort of.

Speaker B: Sorry, expressive and amiable. Is that right?

Speaker A: Yeah, expressive, exactly. It's uh, it's sort of very action oriented but very kind of uh, extrovert. So the driver is more introvert, action oriented. And then it's uh, extrovert, interaction oriented. And then it's the ambul, which is sort of people first. Uh, and so I'm a typical driver. I need to see execution, I need to see progress. Uh, and when I have one person on my team, which is an um, ambul, which means very, uh, much um, empathy for people. So for, for this person, if the person thinks that not everybody in team is okay, that person cannot get anything done because that is so important. Right. Uh, so in interaction with her, um, I need to make sure that are you okay today? Uh, and I need to tell, okay, I have had a good day or I'm feeling a bit lonely on my home office. I have no problems with that. I talk to my, my, my wife, I talk to my friends, but this is how I feel. So you can sort of put that to rest before you go into the action move. And, and it's a very strong, strong uh, theory or method because it also tells what are the typical behavior that you'd expect to see when these people are under stress, meaning under a lot of pressure. And, and it also been, been a very useful tool of understanding. Where do you kind of, as you said, when you know when to, how to act, when you need to have something to happen because you need to adapt the styles to who you work with. Uh, and what are the core ways of operating, uh, as a person, if that makes sense.

Speaker B: Yeah, it does make sense. It sounds like a very um, conscious, uh, act of acting.

Speaker A: I would also say before I started to really understand this, I remember one, one, one very good example. Uh, I was with my management team and I did this horribly wrong, right? I was in my management team. We were sort of setting out, that was in my vismatizing corporate. I was sitting in this management team. We were sort of saying, this is the strategy, this is the direction. Now we're sort of building the action plan. I was really ticking. I was super excited because everything, uh, just go, go, go. And we had a small break and my HR director came to me and said, well, are you okay with some feedback now? And I said, well sure. This is going great, right? And she was saying nobody is understanding a shit of what you're saying because everybody is just trying to figure out what is happening in there and nobody dare to speak up because you are the manager. Uh, so I think you need to slow down a bit and make sure that everybody's aligned because this is going to go so badly for you guys if this is not really kind of, uh, if you don't get everybody onto the same page. And so we, we basically based on that, I trusted her. Uh, she's a great, uh, great, great, great, uh, HR person. And I said, coming back to the meeting, I was saying, this person has some feedback to me. Is that okay if that is shared in public? And I allowed her to tell in public and everybody's like nothing. I've, I can recognize this. Okay, let's uh, let's uh, take two steps back and go through this step again. And of course, um, it felt as a person, it felt like um, maybe a mistake, so to speak, feeling ah, very, very vulnerable. But at the same time, coming back to your question about how you build that, that, that company culture, it always starts with myself. It's. I'm not. If I don't dare, uh, to fail out or fail in public, uh, how can I dare my, or trust my team to be able to come to me with an error saying, oh, I made, made this mistake. So it was not a horrible mistake, maybe, but it felt like, uh, uh, I was exposing myself, uh, quite heavily to the team and it was a very, very good learning experience, I would say, as a leader.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a really interesting one because it's like the act of doing this is an act of humility of like, I think I screwed up. Um, and someone else is telling me I screwed up in front of my team. Yeah. And uh, and I'm asking, but I'm asking them to do so. And then your team's really saying, yes, you did, but I'm not ready to say that out loud, but I'm glad someone else said it. And then you're, but then it's like, okay, but here's how we rebuild this. And so you go after that, I presume you, I presume you went through a different process of somehow of like, how do we actually resolve this?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Did you know what you're doing?

Speaker A: Because you sort of going back to sort of what is the context of this? What are we really trying to achieve and why is this important? Or then, and, and what. How does everybody come in together here to really play their, their particular role in, in making this happen? And, and, and everything was going too fast. I was already. Everything was. As, uh, a leader, you tend to kind of go, go through this process of you, you think, and you think, and I think about all of this and you have sort of played out all these scenarios in your hands. So when you get into execution mode, all of that is clear for you, but that process hasn't necessarily been part of rest of the team. So it may be very, very difficult to uh, to jump onto that train. And um, yeah, you know, by the end of the day, you, you are, as a leader, you are uh, measured on the success of what your team deliver and not what you can deliver.

Speaker B: So if, yeah, none more so than as you're. As a founder, right, where you, you're. It's not even someone measuring you. It's just the success is dependent on the team.

Speaker A: And it's always in smart startups and larger corporates that's always the case. And you are never, never better than your team. And the team is more important than every individual.

Speaker B: So yeah, it's exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You talked a little bit about this situation which is at visma with a larger organization. Um, and so then you made this transition into leading the small organization. Um, I'd love to explore were there situations where you brought something from your large company background that you then have tried to apply in a small. There's a lot of people that I work with have had this transition and it's a constant struggle of like this

Speaker C: is how we do it at Google.

Speaker B: Uh, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Have you had that experience?

Speaker A: Yeah, no. Uh, and, and I think that is, that is always the problem. And I think, I think uh, in general, um, how one, one of my sayings is sort of uh, junior uh, leader is sort of. You have seen something that works and is starting to understand the playbook and you think you can apply the same playbook to every kind of company and situation. And that is definitely not the case so far. It's, it's always right. So coming um, from a large corporate, one of the things that I was super obsessed about when we were starting up as a core team and sort of okay, we need to have like really documented processes. How do we sort of do the things in our company. And, and I was really persistent saying we need to document our process. We need to build up our kind of directory of process descriptions and policies and all of that. Not, not because I love policies, it's really boring. But at the end of day it's sort of. It describes how we work and it sor. Reinforces you to do. And, and, and so I think everybody gets the picture. At the same time I met a lot of resistance from my team doing so and, and I think for, for good reasons. Um, the pushback was coming from saying we are not the corporate, we cannot be a corporate yet. Uh, we are a small team. We are in this explore phase where we need to understand and really have. Everything needs to be loose and a bit of chaos. Um, and I would sort of keep pushing and as a leader and I think this is also good having experience in the past that you understand when you are pushing for something and at some point you can just say this is how it needs to be and everybody will uh, half heartedly, uh, follow that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, but it doesn't really give you the result you would like because nobody really believes in it. So for me that was sort of um, an area where I decided to back down because the arguments coming back was sort of fair and I can relate to them and they were rational and it makes sense. And in retrospect, I think. I'm not sure if it was a mistake or it was not a mistake. I think in retrospect, one of the things that we lost, uh, by not doing more thorough processes is the fact that when you do a process, there is a good description. These are the steps you take, and this is sort of documentation that you also, uh, take along the way. So maybe, uh, 612 months down the road. The fact was we did, um, progress quite well, so that was great. But at the same time, a lot of the data points that could have been there because of that process were not in place. So I think we lost some time because of that. I think, um, when I rethink and sort of the learnings to take of this is sort of. I think I should have been more thoughtful of what are the processes that, that you want to lock down and what are the processes that you want to keep loose?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: For me it was sort of saying, okay, everything is equal. We need to just lock it down. We need to just kind of document. And then we need to. And that was sort of coming over as a lot of wasted time. Or maybe there was one or two processes in particular in that sort of customer, uh, conversation type of process.

Speaker B: You kind of went from all to nothing.

Speaker A: There is something in between them. And in retrospect, I think that is one of my key learnings is, um, as a earlier stage company, certain areas is more important, and these are where you focus on locking down and be very consistent than other parts. When you think about it, it's so obvious. At the same time, in the heat of the moment, uh, it's, um, in retrospect, it's obvious.

Speaker B: Right after you've been through this, you look back and you go, obviously, I should have done this. Why didn't I? Um, I'd love to ask you, when you were going through that process of, like, you had this ins, this belief that we need to document everything, and then there's this pushback. And I presume you understand you were pushing against that pushback for a while, and then you changed your mind, but you went back to zero. Um, and then with hindsight, you now think, okay, should have been like 10% or 20%. Um, but when you're going through this and you have that, um, uh, moment of change of mind, like, what is it that causes a leader who has a strong opinion to then go and change their mind? And how do you get comfortable with, um, I'm not this Is not what I want, but I'll do it.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think the honest answer is I don't really know. Uh, but I think also I have a few point of view. I would say. Uh, I think it's really depend on who you are. I mean I always say you need to be authentic to what type of person you are. Uh, and myself, one of the things that I'm really eager, um, I'm an introvert person, which is something not what you see in a leader. Um, I'm not super introverted, but that's sort of. I'm okay not to be in a spotlight. I don't need to take the spotlight. Uh, and the second part of what I really believe in is that the team is always more important than one individual person. So I always see myself as a team member. Um, I definitely understand my role of. I need to make the decision, a hard decision. And that's my responsibility to take um, those actions when needed. But at the same time, um, I think it's sort of uh, on my end it comes from a no ego type of mindset. Um, I play my role and my role is to make sure we are going in the same direction and that we have the best people on my team and everybody has the opportunity to be the best and sort of contribute to the bigger picture. Um, and if I need to step down on some of my beliefs, ah, in order to allow it to happen, um, I cannot expect you to do so if I'm not able to do so. Uh, and so it comes back, it starts with me, uh, and it also comes back to sort of what I believe in. And we are definitely building a no ego type of company and I'm really proud of that.

Speaker B: Yeah. Has this been something that like a lot of, you know, you've raised millions of dollars right. In terms of. In the process as well. It's gotten in quite a lot of big successes with Unleashed, um, and a uh, lot of founders. You know, the head gets big. Um, uh, it's not. Not insulting them but you know, is it. There's a, there's a occupational hazard, let's say. Um, what have you. Have you found, um, anything that supports you in helping, you know, helping contain the ego or helping to deal with it. What, what do you do? What do you. What, what in your life helps you do that?

Speaker A: Uh, it's a, uh, it's a good question. I think, uh, I think the, the uh, the culture. I'm from the Nordics in Europe, uh, which is a very down to earth type of uh, environment. So I think maybe that's an heritage that helps. Um, I think it's also good to sort of be very grounded to have people outside of this sort of world, uh, you know, uh, friends that is sort of doing different type of jobs, um, be grounded, to sort of roll up your sleeves and do your thing in other parts of your life. Um, and I think that that can go. I think it's way different if you, if you move into the US ecosystem of startup. Different. Definitely a different type of set. I would say I'm exposed to that, but I'm not exposed to that on a daily basis. And I definitely see and I have a lot of startup friends, co founders, CEOs in Europe, US uh based startups that is sort of just coming back and laughing about this. Everybody treats me like a God because I'm a founder and I'm not and it's sort of. But I can definitely see how the surroundings are impacting you and I think it's important to stay grounded and sort of just remember that everybody's just um, we are all human beings and we all play different roles and nobody's more important than the other.

Speaker B: I find said that one thing I noticed about Unleashed is that you're all remote, right? And so when you just talked about we're all human beings and all of that, that's one of the things that people find difficult with remote work is like feeling that human connection and sensing how people are feeling in these course. Have you found anything that helps you with that in the organization that helps you with that?

Speaker A: 100%. I think it's real and I think uh, this is sort of the catch 22 of today of the post Covid because um, it's definitely one of the things that I know multiple of our employees and including myself time to time feel you are kind of. It's very efficient to work over video, right? Because you don't need to commute in and out of the office. You are saving a lot of time in that and it just makes your life easier. At the same time you lose out of that sort of personal uh, connections that sort of, you know, the chit chat by coffee machine and all of that sort of stuff that everybody kind of jokes about. And it's, it's. I say jokes because I come from a place where I was really focused on, you know, the execution. Just want to get the work done. Super serious, very professional but yada yada. But being now firstly remote first I definitely feel that sort of loneliness. Not uh, coming into office every day and sort of, even if I'm coming to office, there is just that number of people in office and, and I misses out on that sort of having those sort of bigger environment where you can socialize and have the, the jokes and somebody that you don't work with in our daily life you really connect well with as a friend or kind of a closer to our friend type of relationship. So, so I would say, how do we do that? I. We have tried to do quite a bit of different things. What I do see is, is our engineering team, I think, has, uh, done that the best. Uh, they have this digital platform, uh, where they meet this sort of. And really looks like the 80s type of game where you have small avatars that is moving around in an office and they can go next to. And then it pops up a video and you can start having conversations. So it sort of mimics something closer to them. I think they're pretty okay with that. And, and also I think we try to be open about this, sort of sharing this, uh, on a personal level. It's also, uh, I've been much more active reaching out to sort of friends and past colleagues and sort of anyone in my network saying, hey, do you want to meet for lunch? And those meanings means a lot. Uh, and I really want to prioritize those really high to kind of make sure to get out of my home and sort of into the city and sort of see other people.

Speaker B: Um, do you think that's easier or different for people who are, you know, you're senior and you've had this long, this long career, you know, not, not like a, you know, you've had a decade or more, if it's your career before this, you know, so you're already established and you have this confidence when you look at the very junior people, um, do you see any differences?

Speaker A: I don't see any immediate differences. I. But then again, I'm not too much on a daily basis exposed to our more junior people. Um, I know that the manager that is running the most junior team is very active on making sure to at least check in with everybody on a daily basis and so forth. So I'm, um, super happy that he's so cautious about that.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's great.

Speaker A: Um, but I would say, and I think we sort of did this during COVID one of the. I think that for those people during COVID that was sort of living maybe a bit outside of the city where you had an opportunity to get outside in the garden, sort of have A family around you, there was more people in your daily life that you had some personal interaction, was sort of coping with this situation a bit better than those living by themselves in a smaller apartment, not uh, allowed to go around. So that was the extreme version. Uh, and for obvious reason I would say when you are a fresh out of college and you are doing your first gig, um, you are looking for a more kind of social life for sure. Right. So you want to hang out with your colleagues and that type of stuff. So I think there's definitely something to that. Um, at the same time I would say the catch side or the flip side of the same is more and more younger people I'm talking to in particular in the US they're upfront saying I'm not going to work for a company that's requiring me to be in office. I don't want to take, spend two hours uh, commuting in and out of the city. So, so it's sort of, I definitely have been discussing with my co founder a few times, should we sort of pivot towards more in office type of policy and sort of start building, building up that as a strategy which sort of makes um, sense. At the same time I definitely see more and more in the, in the, in the um, professional life. Don't want um, to be in office. And I see we also see that on social media people really not enjoying those corporates requiring them to be in office on a daily basis.

Speaker B: Yeah, so it sounds like the culture that you build with this combination of humility and being able to like you know, face up to mistakes and talk about things but then also being open about the fact that we're not together physically and so how are you doing? And all that sort of stuff is sort of like part of that compensation for this instead of like they fit together well and if you didn't have that culture it might not work so well.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's true. And at the same time you can just do so much. So obviously we also have company off sites, we bring people together occasionally. But then again it's like in a biennial basis we do, we do one company annually and then we do more kind of a team based media. Uh, so it's sort of it, it I know that everybody, that this is sort of a big, big event for everybody and everybody's like oh my God, we're going to this nice place and we're spending a full week together. I'm really going to get a lot of energy out of that. But then again, uh, you can. You can take that energy and that lasts for a couple of weeks. And so you need to sort of have a daily healthy basis, uh, which is super, super hard. I'm, I'm, I'm really open for feedback of, of improvements because I think we're doing a lot, but I definitely know we can do more.

Speaker B: Yeah. Interesting. Well, if anyone's watching this and has ideas for how adelhund other managers can,

Speaker A: I mean, please reach out on LinkedIn or whatever.

Speaker B: Excellent. Well, that's a good transition. How can we find you? How are you getting contact? How do we learn more about Unleashed?

Speaker A: Uh, unleash. We are of course on online get Unleashed IO and also on LinkedIn. You can find myself and our page there. So feel free to DM or get in touch. We would love to engage with you guys.

Speaker B: Excellent. And if there's something that the audience can help with, what would it be?

Speaker A: Remote work, how to get people enjoy, uh, working remotely. And how do you balance that with social life? And is there any hacks that really works? Well, I would love to know more about those.

Speaker C: Cool.

Speaker B: Well, thank you very much. Really enjoyed getting to know you a bit on this call. Um, uh, for having me.

Speaker A: It's been an exciting, uh, conversation. Uh, Richard.