How to scale a team and culture, from Seed to Series C | Graham Cooke, CEO of Qubit

The Balderton Podcast: Tech Investment | Venture Capital | Startup Funding

Graham Cooke is the Founder and CEO of Qubit. Graham set up Qubit alongside three former colleagues from Google, and has piloted the business through its Balderton-led Series A, it's Accel-led Series B, and its most recent funding from Goldman Sachs, Salesforce Ventures and others. Ben caught up with Graham on the subject of how building a team scales throughout a period of rapid growth. 0100 Qubit have a founding team of four, which Graham is comparatively large. This has great benefits due to the range of skills within the founding team, but also a few negatives. Graham explains why multiple founders should not look to constantly achieve consensus. 0230 Larger founding teams need to be like a band: you need vocals, guitar, bass, and drums. Not vocals, vocals, vocals, and vocals. 0520 A piece of advice from Graham to larger founding teams: multiple founders should not work towards a single, consensus-driven nirvana; instead, they should each have their own goals which are inexorably linked to their particular skills. That will drive the business forward. 0620 Graham talks about the difficulties and challenges faced when making his first hires 0725 Allowing your early hires to 'scale as the company scales' is a fine art - Graham shares how needed all of his early hires to be able to reinvent themselves. 0830 Graham talks about the importance of getting your CFO hire right 1005 Compromise is very important when making hires. Graham explains that Qubit used to look for the 'bionic man' or 'bionic woman'... and that is just doesn't work. 1150 Specialists vs. Great Generalists 1240 Graham zeroes into how and why a company's hiring strategies will change after raising Series A, B and C. 1610 How did Qubit you scale the hiring process while maintain a constant company culture? 1820 Graham talks about something that is often forgotten: the review processes that happen after a hire. How does it work? What does that process actually look like for Qubit? 2030 How has growing from 10+, 50+, 100+ people changes Graham's role as CEO? 2230 Offices are intrinsically important when it comes to company culture.