Pluspunten
BOLD has had A LOT of change and turnover in the past few years. It's obvious that "the going was good" when Bold was one of the top Shopify App Developers in their early years (2012-2018). Around 2019 the company started to shift it's products to integrate with eCommerce platforms other than Shopify. To capitalize on this shift, near the beginning of COVID, the leadership team hired a lot of people when in hindsight, maybe they didn't need to. After a lot of what I would presume were "heavy conversations", in the fall of 2022, the board and the founders (Yvan, Jay, Eric) agreed that they needed help building a company that people could thrive at. Peter Karpas (former executive at PayPal, Intuit and FirstData) joined the company as our new CEO and was a big reason I came to BOLD to help the company move up market and begin positioning our "tailored checkout" suite of products to Mid-Market and Enterprise-size customers. I started here in December and here are some of the Pros that I've noticed since I arrived: PRODUCT FOCUS - For a long while, it seemed like Bold did a lot of bespoke and custom work based on what was important to the customer. Which had our product and engineering teams scrambling in all kinds of directions. In the last few months, Peter and his executive team rolled out a product strategy that got the whole company aligned in 1 direction. Now that our product strategy is focused primarily on eCommerce platform integrations and checkout flows, we're starting to gather momentum. Lots of cool opportunity to iterate and build here. TENURE IN eCOMMERCE - Again, Bold was formerly just a Shopify App Developer. In large part, the way the company recognized revenue for most of its existence was through Shopify app installs. And we built GREAT apps for Shopify stores. At its previous height of its business, Bold had 10s of thousands of Shopify stores using its apps. Translation = the product and engineering teams have spent A LOT of time in the eCommerce world and focused specifically on problems around checkout, pricing and subscriptions. Outsider looking in, we've got a long history and solid foundation of experience to build on. LEADERSHIP - BOLD has made a lot of strategic executive hires in the past 8 months that are fundamentally changing the culture of the company for the better. We've also restructured the company hierarchy to align more closely with a bought-in-company-strategy. CEO (Peter), VP of People Experience, Head of Sales, Head of Tech Partnerships, Head of Agency Partnerships have all started here in that time and Peter has everybody marching in the same direction...toward more sales and more wins. COMPENSATION + BENEFITS - As far as I know, compensation for sales people is competitive with the market. Jodi (VP People Experience) and her team have spent a lot of time this year reviewing salaries, job responsibilities, and benefits to ensure that we're moving in a more "competitive" direction (i.e. people want to work here, people like working at BOLD, benefits are great). We have a lot of room to improve on the Benefits and compensation front and it seems like we're taking the right steps to get there with our TIP program and exploring new benefits to be added this year and next. SALES PATH - Fortunately, we hired the "right" sales leader to get us to the next level and help the company become more "enterprise sales" focused. Noel Hedgecock came on at just the right time. Since he started here it's become clear how BOLD is going to win in the composable, headless, checkout space with agency, tech, platform relationships driving leads and net new business. Noel is an "action man" and he's set the tone for the sales org. Lots of momentum right now. IT's LIKE A STARTUP....again - Even though the company has been around for 10+ years, the folks who have stuck around may or may not be noticing that Bold "feels like a startup"...we're building new product, we're going after prospects that we previously never approached, we're building new processes and we've got a hyper focused engineering and product team delivering on milestones. To me, it just seems like there's lots of upside and opportunity to innovate on all fronts. TRUST - Since I started here, the leadership team seems to inherently trust their employees to get their work done with minimal supervision. There's a lot of autonomy. The company is "remote-first" and it seems like most folks generally enjoy working with each other.
Minpunten
Like I shared up top, there's been so much change. I feel for my BOLD colleagues who were here when the company headcount was 400+ (now we're closer to 200). Lots of folks have had several managers, different executive leaders, lack of direction, benefits have changed, teams that were once large are now small, and everybody has had to take on more work (not less) due to downsizing. For the founders and some of the "grizzled" Bold vets, it probably feels like we've got our share of "battle wounds" and that we were barely holding on there for a bit. With new leaders in seat though, the tide has shifted. Here are some of the CONS I've noticed: DEGREE of UNCERTAINTY / CONSTANT CHANGE - Because we're taking the product strategy in a new direction, there is a concern present like "Will this work?". Me? As a sales person, I'm the quintessential optimist (maybe to a fault) AND I get the concern. There's risk involved for sure. That's also part of the excitement of building something new. With SO much change in such a short amount of time, I understand that there's probably some residual "trauma" there for some. HEAVY WORKLOAD - We're building a lot of product and processes from scratch. If you come to work here, expect to wear a lot of hats and to maybe pull more than your share of the "work weight" to keep the company/your team moving down the right path. RESOURCES ARE TIGHT - Like I said, it "feels like a startup". Until we start putting some more wins on the board, the company (understandably) is being careful about where it allocates resources. I think we've got the right people in the right roles for now AND this isn't a cushy startup with unlimited resources. Not necessarily a terrible thing but just recognize that working here right now is a "hustle" in and of itself. DIVERSITY - This is an area that could be evaluated and improved. It'd be great to see more women and minorities in leadership roles. Having Jodi in the VP People Experience role is a great start. And it'd be awesome to see us focus initiatives here.