How Focusing on People and Culture Helped this Startup Company Scale

Nick Jones (founder and CEO) and Eddie Robb (Commercial Director) are part of the team at a startup company, Zumo, founded in 2017. They’ve been making waves in the exciting and upcoming cryptocurrency space, where there’s been a growing consumer acceptance in recent years.

During my time with them, I got to understand how their past entrepreneurial experiences in the startup world, has contributed to their success today. A key factor we kept coming back to was how they built and scaled Zumo with a culture-first mindset.

What does this mean?

For Zumo, this meant from day one, they understood the importance of prioritising the value of culture and people, fuelled by Nick’s past experiences. They put a lot of time and effort into defining their purpose and values, making sure that the culture they have is one in which people can choose to buy into or not.

How did they do this as a startup company?

They had an honest purpose and goal - a picture of success that they’re were working towards. And they were very open in sharing this vision with the team to ensure everyone had a shared vision of success. It wasn’t just a marketing statement for them, with their values originating from behaviours they observed in their own team when delivering their best work. From there, they decided these were the behaviours and values they need to be living by every day.

The benefits

• It helped them to attract and hire the right kind of people who align with the company’s desired behaviours and common purpose.
• A strongly embedded culture meant people in the team are already exhibiting the right behaviours as a reference point for new starters.
• With the workforce becoming more diverse, motivations go beyond financial incentives making it more important to make it an enjoyable place to work.

“If you want to hire and retain the best talent, then you need to be able to prove that culturally you are going to be somewhere attractive to work.” - Nick.

Nick and Eddie spoke in-depth about how they expanded their startup company across borders and into emerging markets. Listen to the podcast episode here and don’t forget to give it a like.

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