On April 10, 2024, we sat with Eke Urum of Rise to talk about how he set up a team that’s so successful. Here are some of the takeaways from the conversation.
Don’t be too big on titles, pay more attention to job functions.
We are not very big on titles at Rise. Words mean things. I get called Chief Executive Officer because there’s no other name to call me but I describe myself as a Team lead. To be a CEO means you are leading a team of executives who are all senior level staff but at the start of your company, you’re not really a CEO because most people at the start of your company are in the thick of things trying to build.
If people try to index on titles early, that’s not really a good sign. It’s best to index on clarity of what you’re to do and what you’re not doing, so everyone knows the role they’re to play and goes ahead to execute it.
On hiring people with financial context and insight being a FinTech
Subject Matter Expertise (SME) is important for you to do your job well, but for functions like Engineering, Marketing and Design, you don’t need SME, you just need to be able to do your work well.
We identified early enough where SME was very important. In roles like Customer Experience, it’s a nice to have but you can learn enough with training and in some roles like Marketing, Data analysis and Design, Subject Matter Expertise is not a requirement at all.
On challenges faced when building a team
- Assuming that everyone works the same way you do: Not everyone can always be constantly “on”. You have to adjust the structure of the work to ensure that people are able to operate at whatever level they are on, if not, there’s a tendency to burn people out.
- Hiring for roles that you don’t have direct experience in: It can be difficult to figure out who is a high performer for roles you don’t have experience in. This is why People who have the right context on roles have to sign off on the new hire. For example, Designers sign off on Designers and Engineers sign off on Engineering hires. We also have a 3 month probationary period that lets us know if you are able to do what you say you can do.
- The right culture: Interviews are not a perfect process because some people may interview well and even have technical skills but don’t align with your culture and you won’t know it upfront. Knowing that people come from different cultures and trying to manage cultural nuances even while keeping people at their best performance is a challenge you constantly have to navigate.
Setting up a successful team is a continuous process because you learn and iterate and get better as you go. You can watch the webinar replay by following this link.
Watch out for the next webinar in the Norebase Startup Growth Series.
