What Is ChartHop And How Does It Work?

ChartHop is the world’s first org management platform. ChartHop empowers leaders and team members to understand the past and present of their organization, giving them the context needed for managing the needs of today’s org and designing its future. Through seamless integrations, customers centralize all of their People data in one place. ChartHop then adds visualizations that enable a deep understanding of the organization in ways that were previously impossible. These visualizations include dynamic, auto-updated org charts, maps and robust reports that anyone - from the CEO to the intern - can leverage to be more productive, make data-informed strategic decisions and understand how they fit into the larger organization. Within ChartHop, leaders can then to collaborate on plans for the future, without sending spreadsheets and powerpoints back and forth. There isn’t another platform that provides a comprehensive view of an organization the way ChartHop does.

What Is Your Background? What Led You To Starting Your Own Company, And How Did You Choose This Space?

Before ChartHop, I co-founded the personalized-email platform Sailthru. We grew from two people to 200, and $100k to $20m, all in only three years. By the time we reached 50 people or so, our early processes started to break down and I learned the value of organizational structure and transparency the hard way. I learned that organizing a company fairly – creating a great place where talented people can do their best work – means, more than anything, giving everyone clarity. I learned that to run and scale, organizations need to view and understand their most valuable resource — people.

But great software for understanding and managing people didn't exist. Why was it that I could go into Datadog to get a dynamic real-time visualization of the state of our servers, but to get basic information about our organization, I had to spend all day pulling information from our HRIS and building pivot tables in Google Sheets? There had to be a better way. So, I spent two years building the platform I wish I had: ChartHop.

What Have Been Both Your Favorite And Least-Liked Parts Of Your Entrepreneurial Journey? What Have Been Your Most Challenging And Most Exciting Moments For You And The Company?

I believe a company’s most important asset is its people. Because of that, it’s not surprising that, as CEO, my favorite part of the entrepreneurial journey is actually building the team and the enduring relationships that form as you build something together. Case in point - half of the people I’ve hired at ChartHop worked with me at a previous company. It has been so much fun to work with colleagues I personally hired at Sailthru again and it’s been very rewarding to reconnect with others who I haven’t worked with in over 10 years.

I know there will continue to be a special bond between these early team members, even as we continue to grow. Wanting to actually visualize this evolution of the team over time is actually the reason I built one of ChartHop’s flagship features, Time Travel. A couple of years from now, we’ll be a much bigger company and we'll look back to see how far we’ve come -- and be amazed!

On the other hand, being a CEO is sometimes like being a janitor.

The reason I’m an entrepreneur is because I love the creative work - creating new solutions to problems, discovering new ways to implement technology, building a diverse team. But as a CEO of a small startup, there is a lot of stuff I have to deal with that isn’t any of that - it’s reading through legal documents, it's making sure payroll gets paid on time, it’s repetitious stuff that needs to happen to keep the business running. Some of this can be automated, but some of it is just stuff the janitor needs to clean up.

When you hire an A+ team, you can feel confident that everything is getting taken care of. This also means that the stuff that you do get pulled into is the stuff the rest of the team can’t resolve on their own -- it’s the most challenging situations. As CEO, I have no one else to escalate to - the buck stops with me - so I have to clean it up myself. The great thing about starting a fast growing company is that things don’t stay the same so, as we grow, my job will continue to evolve. Today, a lot of the job is empowering my team and just making sure the (virtual) lights stay on.

What Was The Fundraising Process Like For You?

We announced our first fundraising round, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and an incredible group of supportive investors, back in February 20, 2020.

I had been working on ChartHop for over two years and waited to fundraise until I felt the platform was ready. The bar for a new SaaS company today is high and I wanted to thoughtfully build and test the platform before officially launching.

I showed the product to the a16z team and two things jumped out at me:

1. David Ulevitch, the partner who ended up leading our deal, immediately understood the problem we were trying to solve and shared the vision of what we could accomplish.

2. The a16z talent team, a group of experienced HR / People leaders who work with some of tech’s most iconic companies, was really excited about the impact ChartHop would have in companies of all sizes - from small startups to large enterprises.

As we filled out the round, as a technical, product-oriented founder, I wanted to prioritize investors who could help accelerate the business in meaningful ways beyond my core expertise. I looked for investors with industry-specific knowledge, GTM expertise and strong networks who could help with customer intros and recruiting.

Can You Walk Us Through A Work Day? What Does A Typical Day For You Look Like From When You Wake Up Till You Go To Sleep?

I used to be a night owl - staying up until the wee hours coding. Now, I have a baby son, Ace, who wakes me up at the crack of dawn. And I love it.

One of the few good things about this pandemic is that now I don’t have to commute or go into an office, which means my family can spend more time together in the morning and even throughout the day. My wife, Ali, and I complete the NYT crossword puzzle together every day - we’re on a 6 month streak!

As I’m having my coffee, I go through our team’s #standups Slack channel - every day we post about what we did yesterday, what we’re working on that day and if we need anything from other team members. Then, I review my day and choose the couple of things I want to focus on for that day.

Usually, my time is split 25% across prospect and customer calls, 25% across investors and recruiting and the rest is internal meetings. On any given day I may have 4 to 12 meetings.

I try to alternate heavily external-facing days talking to customers, prospects and investors with internal days where I can work with the product/eng and GTM teams. I carve out Wednesdays as a no-meeting day to ship product features and contribute directly to the codebase. This isn’t something I’ll be able to do forever, but it helps keep me connected to the product at this stage in our journey.

Toward the end of the day I try to knock out some emails, make some dinner and then put my son to bed. I’ll end my day either by knocking out a couple of fixes in the product or by disconnecting and reading a book.

What Are The Top Three Most Important Skills A Modern Day Entrepreneur Needs In Order To Be Successful? What Advice Do You Have For Entrepreneurs Who Are Just Starting Out?

There have been three phases of successful enterprise SaaS companies.

The first needed to evangelize the SaaS model - convince the market that it made sense to pay for software as a subscription - and were heavily driven by sales and marketing (i.e. Salesforce).

The second was driven by great advances in technology - it was companies like Stripe, Twilio and even Google that reimagined what technology was capable of. This wave was engineering led.

Now, great engineering still matters - but what matters more is product sensibility. It’s being able to connect the great engineering capabilities to problems people have. This wave is now product-led.

With this context, I believe that the three most important skills an entrepreneur needs to be successful are:

1. Empathy - you can’t solve big problems or build great products without it -- not in this wave.

2. Communication - you need to be able to communicate what you’re building and what problem you’re solving.

3. Drive & Dedication - this remains a constant throughout the waves. everything takes longer than you think - you need to make sure you’re excited about solving that problem for at least 10 years.

   
   
   
   

Can You Tell Us About Some Of Your Numbers? How Has Growth Been Over The Past Couple Of Years?

Revenue has been growing at over 25% MoM since we raised, even through the pandemic. As companies move to remote work and headcount plans need to be adjusted, having an up-to-date org chart along with a platform to build and iterate on plans is needed, and companies have been investing in ChartHop throughout the last couple of months.

We have dozens of organizations using ChartHop including Peloton, InVision, Masterclass, Figma and many more.

How Did You Come Up With Your Company Name?

My wife, Ali, came up with it.

I believe in the power of visualization to help people understand complex data and make decisions. The org chart is a fundamental part of visualizing an organization so we knew the word “Chart” had to be in the name.

I looked for domain names - an important part of the process when committing to a name - and found a lot of options that had to do with data and visualization. One of the options was ChartSight. Another was ChartLast. But they both felt dry, impersonal.

People are a company’s most important asset, yet people software is usually boring and ugly. I want to change that by bringing a feeling of joy and fun into org management.

After a lot of brainstorming we kept on coming back to the imagery of a bunny. It communicated speed, growth, the act of hopping over challenges and obstacles - all of the excitement of building a company. And thus, ChartHop was born.

Tell Us A Story Of Something That Happened To You, Something You Heard, Or Something You Saw, That Either Made You Laugh Or Taught You An Important Lesson.

A couple of days ago, Ace, my 10 month old, sat at my father-in-law’s piano. I watched as he immediately started exploring this new, unknown, object; being delighted when new sounds emerged.

An adult would have sat down and started to think about how to do this the “right” way. But Ace didn’t care. He just played and explored without fear.

It reminded me that as adults, we’ve been socialized to control our behavior. Oftentimes it’s necessary, but it also comes with the side effect of second-guessing or questioning our intuition.

Little kids do what they want to do without any fear. When I see the world through my son’s eyes, it reminds me to question whether I’m holding myself back unnecessarily.

If You Can Have A One-Hour Meeting With Someone Famous Who Is Alive, Who Would It Be And Why?

Bill Belichick.

First -- because I am a huge Boston sports fan (I built the first online version of a local newspaper, Barstool Sports!).

More importantly, because Belichick is probably the most successful team builder in any industry in the past 30 years. He thinks differently in a highly competitive and ever-changing environment and has found different kinds of ways to win.

The hallmark of his teams has been intensive preparation, out-strategizing, and adaptation to all kinds of changing circumstances, which is a winning combination for any team in the tech world.

One of my very favorite quotes is from Belichick: “Talent sets the floor. Character sets the ceiling.”

How Do You Think Your Industry (Or The World In General) Will Change Post-COVID?

There will be an emphasis in ongoing contingency & scenario planning. This is actually one of the main reasons I started ChartHop in the first place.

When I was scaling my last company, we were changing so quickly and I had such a hard time keeping track of our team - who was reporting to who, who we were hiring, how many people we could hire based on our revenue, etc. When we were small, I knew it all. But as we grew the data became hard to wrangle and understand.

So, I wanted to build a platform that took the pain out of understanding your organization as it scales today and gave everyone the context you needed to plan for the future.

My thinking was that if you took out the need to plan to plan, if you didn't waste time making 100 copies of the same spreadsheet for each manager and then emailing different versions of the plan back and forth, then you could actually plan much more often.

COVID has taught us that this is no longer a nice to have - the ability to plan continuously it’s a must have. Right now, we’re seeing our customers plan for many possible futures, we’re seeing them iterate on plans on a monthly, weekly, even daily basis.

And this is behavior is here to stay.

This work is IMPORTANT - it’s the work that will ensure the next time something like this happens companies are in a much better position to respond. Hopefully, that means we won’t see the massive job loss again because companies will be much more intentional about hiring and growing with sustainability in mind.

What Does Success Mean To You?

Success means building something meaningful with a great group of people.

When you build anything, you build it one day at a time. It’s all incremental. Sometimes, it doesn’t even feel like you’re making progress day by day.

But then, you look back and see how far you’ve come. This is success, it’s looking back on that journey and seeing how nothing became something.