At The Family, we believe that anyone can become a great entrepreneur. Find more info here: http://www.thefamily.co/ By Paul Schulz (https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulschulz/) We are super excited to welcome mastermind Paul Schulz CPTO at Perkbox, ex-Head of Mobile Technology at Yahoo!, at The Family, who shared with us 10 engineering lessons moving from a startup to a rapidly growing global scale-up. Paul has over 27 years of experience in the tech industry, 17 of which have been as a CTO. He has worked for companies such as Nokia, Yahoo! and also created an industry-leading Open Source video advertising product called Open Video Ads, acquired by JWPlayer. Most recently, he has been operating as CTO for very early stage tech companies in London. Successful ventures move rapidly from the state of startup to scale-up. Often, founders neglect to prepare technically for the scaling phase when building a business in the early days. The mistakes made early on can severely limit the ability of a company to meet demand and grow rapidly during the most critical time of its life. Paul shared his incredible experiences in helping ventures move from start-up to scale-up. At Perkbox, he helped the Product and Engineering team grow from a small team creating and supporting one product for one market, to a larger team developing four products across 3 markets. Perkbox is Europe’s fastest-growing employee experience platform aimed to enrich employees’ experiences. They have helped over 600’000 employees and some of their customers include Deliveroo, OpenTable, NHS, Wasabi, Rentalcars.com, and so on!

1. 10 Engineering
Lessons in Scaling
Paul Schulz, CTPO

2. A little bit about me …

3. Shifting expectations
Work and personal lives are integrated;
wellness is paramount
Introducing the era of employee experience
Changing demographics
By 2025, millennials will make up 75% of
the global workforce
As ever, great customer experiences starts
with great employee experiences

4. Our leadership team
Our awards
Trusted by
Our creds
Global leader
8,000+ customers across 3 countries
289 employees across 4 offices
Backed by investors & founders behind

5. A bit about our tech …

6. One Platform, One Code Base, One App -> Unified Experience
PerksGO | Perks | Reward & Recognition | Perkbox HQ
Our One App approach means that should you decide to launch Reward,
Recognition or Insights, employees will get a single unified experience instead
of multiple apps
MULTI-APP
EXAMPLE
ONE APP
APPROACH

7. A small part of our tech stack

8. About our P&E team …

9. Our Product & Engineering Tribes
● 7 Tribes - 16 Squads
● Around 102 heads split
across Product,
Engineering and
Partnerships
● 4 main guilds - mobile,
front-end, back-end,
design
● Nearly all in London

10. The 10 Lessons

11. Scaling is very tough!
(everything is magnified)
1

12. Think global not
local day 1
2

13. Tool up as you go
(and monitor everything)
3

14. Value Architecture
(and Architects)
4

15. Start with DevOps
5

16. It really is about the
data as you scale
6

17. Trust and autonomy is
core
7

18. Scale with leadership
focused on culture
(people, technical, thought)
8

19. Measure and Monitor your
Growth Efficiency
9

20. It’s always about the
Employee Experience
10

21. Thank you!