Why Transparency is the Key to Successfully Scale a Business

“Building a team from the ground up is hard, but scaling a distributed team is harder!” 

I’ve been on an amazing journey for the past 18 months, building Yugabyte’s presence in India from the ground up. With the foundation of the India team firmly established, it’s now time to embark upon the next phase of my Yugabyte journey as I take on the role of VP People and Places.

This new role gives me the opportunity to combine my experience in building strong global teams, with my vision for the future of Yugabyte.

My Story So Far

My career has been defined by the startup experience. Why startups? I love the sense of mission, the fast pace of innovation and growth, and the enthusiastic get-stuff-done atmosphere. I also enjoy working with wicked smart people!

In addition to the innovative products and pace of work, every successful startup I’ve been a part of has been defined by one other thing—company culture and the people behind the company. This is why I take a leap of faith each time.

In my past role at Nutanix, I participated in the full life cycle of company growth, from late-stage startup to post-IPO. I witnessed the first wave of infrastructure modernization (a generational change in itself) and how “scale” impacts culture. The most important thing I learned was that the people who work at a company are just as critical as the product or service produced.

Working at Yugabyte

At Yugabyte, we are building a generational company with the vision of YugabyteDB as the distributed SQL database of choice for mission-critical cloud native applications. After a decade of infrastructure and application modernization, we are now entering a new wave of database modernization. Yugabyte aims to be the database partner for enterprises on this journey.

As we scale Yugabyte, we understand that the entire company needs to be firmly anchored to a strong set of principles. These principles act as a guiding light for every decision we make. They also define our company culture.

We recently embarked on a soul-searching journey—an experiment to define who we are and what drives us. After extensive discussion and analysis, some core themes and traits appeared.

Almost everyone we talked to emphasized the strong sense of connection they felt to how this company operates. What drove that connection was the transparency and humility found in the interactions with peers and leaders. This transparency drives our broader cultural values.

Transparency Leads to Trust, Relationships, Outcomes, and Scale

Ultimately, we realized that everything boiled down to three points:

• We build trust through humility, integrity, and transparency.
• We value long-lasting relationships with our customers, colleagues, and community.
• Our outcomes are driven by impact, ownership, and the pursuit of technical excellence.

A long-standing tradition at Yugabyte is to discuss growth, challenges, and mitigation strategies in our bi-weekly company-wide call. The transparency of these Zoom calls inherently recognize that people are the most important element needed to scale a business. This openness drives a strong feeling of security across teams, and I have seen this cultural transparency take us to each new level.

The relationships we build with internal and external stakeholders help us create an ecosystem of innovation and inclusion. This open feedback channel increases trust and mutual respect with customers, our employees, and the wider community.

Razor-sharp focus on outcomes ensures that every team is aligned with the company’s broader vision.

Yugabyte’s Road Ahead and the Next Stage of Growth

As we move to the next stage of growth, we must ensure we maintain a steady pace, while creating a strong, globally distributed team of Yugabeings.

A people-first culture will help us build better products, elevate our customer service, and scale our business.

By keeping trust, relationships, and a focus on outcomes in mind, I know we will be successful.

I’m excited to be on this new journey, building global strategy for the Yugabyte People and Places team.

“Shaping your culture is more than half done when you hire your team.” – Jessica Herrin

Want to know more about Yugabyte and our current open positions? Check out our careers page or drop a note below.