We rebuild the whole company every six months | Olivia Elf, VP Ops at Sana

is build a new company almost every week. You shouldn't shape your strategy based on the org. You should do it the other way around. should shape your org based on the strategy. Because otherwise you end up in these local maximums.

Just literally we've been... You should...

Olivia Elf joined Sana three months before its series A at 20 people. She then went on to build out their London office, and five years later, the company was acquired by Workday for over $1 billion. If you've ever been in the situation that you had the feeling your orchard no longer fits your strategy, Olivia today walks us through how the Sana team rebuilt the company every six months. She also tells us about the one hire she would not do again when entering a new market. And the principles she uses every week to stop the team from drifting into mediocracy. Enjoy!

If you joined the company, Christian, I would expect you to change it. That's the expectation. It's a very different framing to what are the things that we need to... Never hired leaders in Tuzana, almost. We've... ...is that grew into leaders.

hurt it. I've always fired. I see.

If you would give that younger self like one advice, what would it be?

The thing we did... ...do or... ...is...

wrong and I wouldn't do it over again.

This is Melanie.

And this is Christian.

You're listening to Follow the Gradient, the weekly podcast with actionable insights about how to build a business while staying safe.

So Olivia, welcome to the show. So you joined Zana three months before the Series A closed. What was the company not doing back then that really surprised you?

Thank you so

Christian. I'd like to, I always think back at this moment actually, because I did an interview for SANA now five plus years ago and it was a small company of around 15-20 people back then. And I remember during my interview process I had received a bunch of data and actually, and I reworked, you know, I worked through that data and so on and I actually thought that was dummy data. And

a task to create a

Bye.

Then I came into, and then into of course went well. I was really excited to start and then I joined Asana. And the first thing I was about to do was then for the board meeting that was about to come up. And then I accessed the data and it was actually the same data. And I realized like, I think I remember my first thought being like, crap, not at all dummy data. It's actually, that was definitely my biggest price coming in. How

create a reel.

is this was a real deal. So I think that's. early

this actually was. And I came in from McKinsey, so I had, I don't think I've ever, I hadn't ever been in touch with a company that was at an early stage, except running a small company by my own. that surprise. But I think on the other hand, the thing that surprised me was the other side of the coin was

That was the big

I was surprised how little the product

was ready and so on, but how defined the company already was. You could go around and ask every single Sanyan about what are the principles we build on, are submission, why are we doing this? And every single person would tell the same stories and they would explain the same things and so on. And then we product and you got a thousand different answers. So

So I would.

the

You would ask what it's

So I was very surprised by how extreme...

extremely strong principles this early stage companies were built on.

how everybody was.

knew exactly what kind of company I wanted to build, but everything else was basically chaos.

So like on that second point, so was that that do you mean the company was defined in terms of its processes or really on the vision where you wanna go? And everybody knew that and then the only thing the product kind of had to do is to catch up.

Yeah

think that's a very good way of putting it. I would always say that the foundation was extremely wet and then everything on top was...

built out. chaos. So it felt already very, had already thought very hard about.

somehow tight. felt like a company that people had so

What kind of companies is going to be and so on before any of it all existed?

And did that so if you now cast forward to today, did that did that vision from back then did that turn out to be the actual product you guys built, or was that then something different?

I would say so. We always had this belief that you

very similar at

could advance human intelligence with machine learning. I think that was always a backbone of SANA.

how that would apply to reality.

has changed throughout the years.

But that thesis, that would be poss-

in the very near future. That was the excitement that I would say.

of people.

Can you dive deeper there how you guys arrived or the company even before you joined arrived at that kind of specific vision? Because especially in the early stages, startups do sometimes so many different pivots because simply you go out with a hypothesis, you are proven wrong, you talk to customers, you have sales feedback, so you pivot, pivot. Was there a specific recipe you guys applied that you could nail down the vision in a way that it actually turned out to be true? And that worked out.

I wonder if the answer to that is...

that our vision has always been like abstract enough in a way. That it's too abstract to be wrong in a way. And I'm partly joking, but.

So I think we were all excited about that. That we would.

like abstract vision. In the near future, almost live in a world where we collaborate with machines in some way. And then I think from that we can derive a bunch of different products. And we've also pivoted multiple times. We of course, from that derived our everything starts with learning basically. Like if you in an organization can learn quicker than anybody.

We

else and you are likely to

To change the world, can change the way that researchers discover new medicine, all of those things.

So, yeah, I think we had a very broad...

Yeah, I think that overall vision that we could derive different product ideas from and then just run on it. But this was, as I said in the beginning, I think I would even literally walk around in the first few weeks in my time at SANA and ask everybody. I actually did, I did a one-on-one with every single person when I joined SANA. We were only 20 people. And I of course asked, what are we building? What problem are we solving? And I didn't have the same answer from them.

to people.

Now, fast forward a little bit to I think May twenty twenty two, you guys then or also you made a move to London, you guys opened the UK entity and you were tasked to build out that new UK branch. So if you take us back to the first days or the first hire in London, like who was that? Why exactly that person or that role?

nature of building in a smaller European country and that you're like, you know that you're going to have to go very soon. then, right, the US and UK and the broader European market. But nobody tells you, but I think people actually told me this, but it's very hard to internalize before you've done it, is it sucks building a new market and

global. That's also what we raised on. We could take over.

So I would like to say...

It really

I actually, even now, when I think back at it, I think of it as... it was only fun. But I know it wasn't.

So I think it was very hard with the Toast Fur.

First weeks and months in a new market is experiences both in US and the UK.

is that you've

of traction even if you're on You have the 10x attraction from earlier stages and in your home market and everybody knows who you are, what you stand for and what you're doing. Then you come to this new market and nobody knows you. So you have to start over and experience that in the UK. So I think the most important thing there.

Yeah, we're

What we try to do is to first people who would have

find the first of course, to be able to build momentum every single day, although in reality you have none. Of course there are wins because otherwise you're doing something wrong in that market, but in reality don't have maybe it was months or even year or let's say months before you even close it. And you don't have that energy from the headquarters and so on. So yeah, I think we've tried to find a very generalists who would

Tell it. Go.

and so on.

You people who

run through walls, had fire in their eyes and wanted to be around. And we found a few of those. Most of our first joiners in the UK market are still in the team today, which is almost like a dictionary of the past of that market.

who people truly want.

most

pool there.

Can you dive deeper on this building momentum? What you mean by that? Was that something internally facing so that the team keeps on pushing, although there is not a crazy success story every single day? Was that externally to generate demand? What was that?

I would say...

Internally is what I meant. Externally, can put into any situation who will make a mark basically. But internally, it's a hard thing. You're sitting in a small room, probably in a co-working space.

to you and to have people who

three or four or five people, every...

Every day you have to come in and feel like this is the day that's going to matter for the future of this company and for this world. It's like it's a big task to do that.

So, yeah, I think what we, we worked with very, like, tools to use a lot of whiteboard, whiteboard, we didn't use ICL.

hands on to do that. Like for example, are doing it with RM, whatever, people get a big list of things that they or accounts that they should work or whatever. said, okay, the whiteboard, these are the 10 accounts that or companies that we would like to get a foot in the door with. And then we just decided to run on only that. So I think you have to find things like that that are quantum building enough and that takes down

This is.

moment that breaks.

this huge thing and endeavor that you have to do into

to tasks

when you wake up in the morning basically.

Super interesting. And I think it's a kind of a recipe or guideline for the early days of any startup, right? Because it's very similar in a sense to building a new market to building a startup. There is a lot of things in common. Yeah.

Yeah, but we all.

have in our company we have a lot of things built in for the one of the first things I did when I joined SANA was the of the company basically the heartbeat so we have a rhythm that we call 66 which is six years six months six weeks yeah six years is basically we just dream and try to make bets about the future which is more like a fun exercise than anything else but then on the six month

to build momentum.

to set this.

This means that every

We set a very

very ambitious company strategy based on all of the beliefs and bets in the company. And we may create missions around that. we basically organize our whole company into around those missions and that strategy. And this meant that every six months is almost like a lifetime in itself. And we would call it something this and yeah, so it becomes an era. And I think that's what's fun too. Like you, then you can think back in that era and you can say, that's when I built

This is.

The

UK with this person or and so on. So that life doesn't just become this ongoing sort of struggle. And I think that was one of the things that we stuck to and we did really well.

To like build on that point, because I think this is super, super helpful for many companies out there. Do you start with that exercise on a company level? And then so you break down what you want to achieve in six months or what these six months are about on a company level, and then each team kicks it and translates that into what does it mean for me, or how do you approach that?

Yeah.

So every six months we actually do something we call DIMMS. It starts with data and insights. an insights member around the whole company. write them, super unstructured actually. And we've done this since the beginning. We just basically start creating a document where we ask every team a few questions and then they decide who and how they answer those. And based on those data and insights, we

So we build a bit of So we, the team, we do.

be asked.

the whole company to submit, I believe some vets submitted.

basically beliefs about our future, world.

the company, the competitors, the company, anything. And then we have some debates about that and then so on. And most of time when we do this, I remember, I think last time we did it, we got a few hundred beliefs and bets from everyone. And it can be anything from I,

So you say.

I believe the future of software will be like, we should call that is this or this.

where is XYZ, but you can also have a ritual very high and low. then based on the beliefs and bets and insights, then set our strategy. And then from that strategy, missions, the whole organization, every six months we throw it up in the air and then we'll bring it back to these mission buckets. So in a way you could also, it's like you have a new job basically every six months. And

those beliefs. Wee.

We create a... So we take the...

to see that.

This this we created based on a belief that you shouldn't shape your strategy.

be based on the order to do the other way around. You should shape your org based on the strategy because otherwise you end up in these local maximums where you say, Christian is really wants to do this thing. So then he should do that. But that might not be the most important thing that the company should do. So that was the real strategy.

from belief that we've shaped this rhythm.

How has that evolved as the company grew from a small team of twenty to more and more hundreds?

We saw the structure of the dibs. I would say static that we

is exactly the same, would say. Maybe there are few more like elements. take into account, but I think the weakness of it, the fact that a lot of folks actually change what they're doing completely every six months, that hasn't changed. So you can look at any, you can look at so many Sanians, as we call the Sanai players, you can look at some of them and go through eight different teams throughout their time.

unique that we take along teams.

get

So that is so like deep.

ingrained in how we do things so that it's become almost normal for us. But yeah, like some things have become a little bit more, more like... ...not as aggressive throwing everything up in the air anymore. But when we started this, we were 20 people. Didn't have many customers. We didn't have anything that like held us to anything, so to say.

static or you sort of, we don't.

We

To now just close the loop on opening a new market. if you would now give your younger self who's back then f in in in London task with hey, let's open the UK market for Sana, if you would give that younger self like one advice, what would it be?

The thing we did...

wrong and I wouldn't do over again.

or is we we've always hired

I never hired leaders in Tuzana almost. I ceased, I grew into leaders. For some reason, when we came into these new markets, we to that, oh, maybe we should hire leaders into them instead of growing them from within. And I wouldn't do that again. And we're not doing that again now for other markets.

We told our s-

I-

I the way I would do it now is I would take...

Like a core team.

from an existing market that's working well. We would ship them over, ask them to stay for one, two years or so, or longer if they want, of course, and just ask them to build it out. And we did this to some extent, but I think we also thought that we bring one person over who can be there for six months just to set up the first one, two, three months and then they can back off. That was not correct. And the reason why that did

like three or five people.

for five people

The reason why it is so

doesn't work. One is because we stepped away from our role leaders from within, which is one of our strongest principles. The second reason, the reason why it doesn't work is because culture is not culture exists in one place. It doesn't mean that it's automatically going to replicate into another one. If you don't have any of the common pieces, you can shape it with the same rituals and the same language and you try to hire, right? And so on.

and was that we, work is. because

this.

But like core of transferring what it means to do SANA or be a SANAian, like that doesn't transfer, just do a call everyday together, let's say.

day to day, that's because you're in the video. Yeah, I have a fairly clear idea what I would do.

If I did it all over again, and then of course, the cliche, we would run into so many different problems, right? That's, you never get away from challenges.

Now in the preparation call we had before, you you told me that you guys have a philosophy on hiring, which is that you only hire generalists. Can you dive deeper in that? What's your take on that philosophy?

Yeah, I think we probably...

around the most extreme version of this. So I think it's important, depending on how extreme one is, it might be important to take with a little bit of grain of salt.

We, so we really believe that you.

It is the same thing almost like running any type of problem. And in the beginning, you're in an early stage, you basically, I mentioned it before, but you're constantly searching for the global maximum, right? And

I believe that specialists risk...

It's not certain, but they risk pushing you toward the local maximum because they're going to optimize for what they already know. And the problem to fit and know how to solve. And this is normal. It's like this resistance, right? So if you get a problem, you're going to say, where does that fit into all of the times I've solved this problem before? And then you're going to jump to a conclusion. And the one most one point.

And they're gonna like, reframe... ...what they already... So, passive.

The second one is almost what I came back to earlier.

There is like, is a deeper risk that the strategy, specialized skills.

It becomes whatever you already have in the company. So I can run like the most, a very simple example of this is, you have enterprise team. And then of course your strategy is going to be, we're going to go up market, we're to sell enterprise, even if that is not your strategy. So there are like thousand examples. This is just one. Yeah, that was our bet from the beginning. just said, we know basically what company we're running.

You have a big sales

So, but then

That's why we're

and what we're building for and we know what we want this company to look like in five, ten years, twenty years, but we don't know exactly what we're going to build. Would we hire a bunch of, for a bunch of specialized skills? And back to this point that, back to the point of, we found that running any function or any sub problem is basically the same. You find the North Star, you build

to.

know exactly. So then why would

took a little bit of a detour.

building machine

remove the friction and then we do that over and over again. And we want people to just jump around and solve the biggest problems we have all the time and not be like stuck in their own thing. However,

However, will say we've hired great specialists as well.

You just ask them to do general listings.

I would always say to people out loud

allowed when I'm in an interview with a very strong specialist, would say, learn everything you know and a lot of people

Are you ready to unlearn and to relearn it? That's also the beauty of it, right?

A lot of people are curious to just become a polymath and unlearn and relearn things.

How do you identify these people in the interview process?

We would look for people who previously have solved very difficult problems.

difference. and who have been obsessed with and not like domain.

Almost like the most difficult. So we believe if you con...

constantly look. Yeah, you constantly just look for the hardest problems there are and you navigate towards that. That's like a person who would very likely be obsessed with with Sana and be able to contribute.

you We're a lot.

And I guess what's your because if we connect this with AI now, right? My my take would be that you actually generalists are then better placed with AI or specialists with a generalist mindset leveraged by AI to to work in an organization. So so how are you deploying AI now in your corporation generally, internally and not in the product itself?

Yeah, so

The funny thing is, so first on your statement on like generally being able to live, yeah, just like anybody, right? I have no idea what's going to what the world will look like in two years. And I think there is this, me there like, opposing like forces when I'm thinking about how an organization will be built or will run in let's say six months, one year or so.

for me too.

Wongle is like, I...

I believe that this is about

But generalists get only stronger. Like everyone's a polymath, a generalist with AI can basically execute like a specialist and with all experiences to some extent. But also it means that like

So with AI.

through the...

everybody leveraging the same models for execution, you can never reach like a competitive advantage solely by being a generalist who like leverage. And basically like, course, knowledge work is, is commoditized. And if you only, you end up in like identical solutions to everybody else.

employee.

but we follow clause.

So this will be true for both generalists and specialists. they're just hit in different ways. Specialists can maybe find more leverage with this and generalists can have better judgment and use that to solve bigger problems.

to dance.

One, take it to answer your question, but I'm getting there now. But I think what was very fun with Sana and the way we understand building is this very generalist, the idea of you're a generalist builder, anything that you don't get specific leverage from using your brain, you should automate, outsource or delegate and has proven a very good for using AI.

built we had

That was a good foundation.

Because we'd already done that work. Our principle was always, Christian, if you don't get the specific bridge, you are not unique. You should not do it. And that's basically the principle that most companies now run when they are deploying these AI tools. So the idea of we outsource the right things, we automate it.

clever or if you did to do this

We had always used. a lot way before AI as well.

And we eliminated a lot of work. think that's...

That's also key here. With these tools, it worked before.

now and the way we are you should only do things that you do, you also eliminate a lot of things. You just say, okay, but then if should I automate this? And then after you get to your head, it's like, maybe I can just eliminate this work.

You are uniquely positioned.

Not to me.

Yeah, and I think you I th what I found interesting is what you said. It's almost there is a fine line between what is your own understanding based on observations you have in the world and maybe data and feedback you gather with help of an AI, and then you reason about it and it becomes a belief, a bet on the future, versus I'm just gonna aggregate the data points with AI and ask it to derive what I should do, right? There is a line and you somehow, like somewhere in that process, you need to have an understanding coming from your own, because this is where you make the bet, which gives you a chance to be an outlier and not average, because you have to be non-average in a positive sense to beat the market.

And I think the question is exactly

that, like what will build the... what will be the competitive...

the edge basically of a person or a company and like of any company or person compared to another and lot of like judgment or taste or craft right or and a lot of

people bet that would be.

people better would be like probably

defining a problem and so on. I don't know. I think all of them are possibilities.

Yeah. Now September sixteenth last year, twenty twenty five, you guys made an announcement about your acquisition by workday. In that time between when you joined Sana for the first time and then really that announcement, and you guys are now at operating with more than three hundred and fifty employees. When was a time, if there was a time, where you thought, Okay, we are not a startup anymore, we are something different.

So I would always see our

journey as like it was never binary in any sense. always saw Sanl as like ERS. We were a specific company, were in 20 people and 50 and 100 and so on. So it would have, to me, it was always just like a very natural evolution of what we did. think, ask, what about our culture? Should we never give up or what's on? And I always thought it was like almost the wrong way.

So.

And people would always ask, what do you?

BAM

being like, oh, we aren't this, but we are this. And it's just a new company almost every weeks. Having said that, yeah, I don't think it was like this binary thing of like, we are a startup or we're not a startup. The one moment I can remember was like, when you don't, you no longer know everybody's name and on top of your head and like, I know everything about them. Like we came from a very extreme, right? We would always spend time with everybody and their families and the partners and travel together and all of that. So you knew each other so well. And then of course, that's hard to keep up when you're in the 350 school. And then eventually one day you walk into especially another office where you don't spend a lot of time and you don't know everybody's name. And that was, that's probably the most, it probably is the one that like hits the hardest.

And so now across all these different offices a around the globe and with more than three hundred and fifty people in the company, you it gets harder to put things on a whiteboard in a room. You still can, but sometimes you have to reach people across different offices. So what are your kind of guidelines to keep the culture as it's supposed to be and all that you have so many people?

Yeah, I used to say they're

Every single Sanon who joins is responsible for changing Sana and building the Sana that they want. I think that is a very different feeling to joining a company where it's like, this is the culture and now you have it. And even if you didn't create that culture, now it's like, it's not your job. And I think that's a very stressful and strange thing to jump into. I think it's much more empowering.

or

to see.

to look for.

for a new person to know that it's like, you are now responsible for this direction that you want. And I used to tell people in their first week,

to them.

Taking. people. I tell them that.

Every single thing, when I look at Sana, every single thing I see, the process, it's a culture piece, it's a saying, whatever it might be, I know, I remember who that came from. And I remember every single piece of Sana, I remember who built it. And I know from, for the first hundreds people would know, I know, I remember the pre and post of that person joined.

Whether it's a part of the product, it's a process.

I

So I want to see things become different. If you joined the company, Christian, I would ask you to change it. So very different framing to what are the things that we need. And I find it much more empowering and I find it much more fun to operate within because people also come in with ideas that probably never do if they didn't have that principle.

That's like the... that's the... Yeah, it's a very to her kid.

to create this stuff. Feel that.

Yeah, interesting. Now the in terms of the announcement with workday and then the kind of months afterwards, were there specific challenges in c terms of keeping that culture which you faced internally after doing that communication?

Yeah, for sure. So we went from a 350 person startup to 24,000 public company. And even we're operating as a startup within this context. It's acknowledged and that's not an era for everyone. And some of the best people with Edsana knew when we were going to announce this that they would not necessarily love this chapter or like, even not even the day, like the actuals, but maybe not the idea of it.

appreciate that. But I was... I knew...

it's

And it's not because the chapter is bad or they signed up for a different game.

This is it's just because. So it is... it is psyche.

It comes with lot of, it's come with incredible things. And of course it has a bunch of trade-offs. And I think the hardest thing is that narrative of we're building something on our own, completely uncompromised based on our own principles. It's quite easy to build a company narrative based on that and based on being the underdog.

the

Now one of our themes at the podcast is or basically our theme at the podcast is how to scale a business from Europe while staying sane. Staying sane because obviously it's a tough place to be and it's a tough journey, which you guys did. So so what's your guardrail or recipe for keeping a long term balance in work life or a harmonious setup there?

how we deal with

personally I would be very interested and if you have specific kind of embedments in Zana, that would be nice to know as well.

Yeah.

don't know that I'm very sane, so I'm not sure if this is the right person to answer this, but I love what I do. And I've loved what I do for beyond five years back, but especially five years back.

really love it.

For me, it's...

I've decided, I personally want my, what I'm building and my, my like job in lack of a better word, big part and important part of my life. And I'm never ignoring that or pretending that it's not. So

to be a very

I truly feel

Like building a company is one of the most significant positive impacts you can have on other people. And I don't mean that through the product or like changing the world. mean it like only every single person who comes there every day to do what they're doing. And that motivates me a lot.

to

to just.

like basically make at mark in every person's life. So that's like big enough and important enough for me.

to let that be a huge part

part of who I am. And I have a bunch of things personally that help me stay sane or keep me energized in both work and home. But I think in the big thing is like if I'm doing what I love and there's no weight in them, I'm going to be like ecstatic and energized in the weekend and whatever it might be. But I run a lot. I do a bunch of things that I love. I have a lot of friends who don't do similar things, which also helps you realize sometimes

Yeah

even if you think something is the biggest thing in the world and then you speak to them, you're like, yeah, they don't even know what this word means. And I love that. So that's one. And then at SANA what we do is I try to acknowledge and appreciate that it's very individual. So I think there are certain blanket things you can do. I think it's mainly about the culture of curiosity and kindness and humility and the fact that I want

to

Sauna to be a place where you walk in on a sunny morning and like people have done crazy things over the weekend and you just you can hear about it and so on and I think

Yeah, so it's more very deep.

ingrained in the culture more than having... but we have a... but I think it's much for me it's more than that it's like... it's yeah kindness like knowing that people are always going through things that you can't see and...

course, a few specific tools for it.

is deeper curiosity for each other pain.

Now, last section before we close off, the rapid fire questions section. So I'm just gonna ask you three short questions and you can answer with whatever comes to your mind. The Sana leadership principle you reach for most often.

I would say define. It's basically.

gravity. Assuming everything would become mediocre if you don't fight it each and every day. And that inspires me. Sorry, this is rapid fire. probably This inspires me very on a personal level too, that it's like things will not. Life is interesting in itself, but it will not. It will not do.

should be sorted.

do it all for you, right? You have to fight the the

and yeah, and at sauna, think that's something that every

It's a deep payment, you it's good.

The European city most underrated for building an AI company.

He wanted me to say Zurich, but I would probably say...

Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense.

I don't know if it's underrated, but it's a very fun city to be in.

The

Yeah. The one product you wish Sana had built three years earlier.

I remember when we started leveraging OpenAI models and those before GenAI and we created basically a forest material based on a prompt. I have, I will never, like their jaw drop. You imagine you get

was way He does.

Forget people's reactions. to demo. Basically, Chachi Petit

It was incredible. I'm not, and I don't think like Markeit wasn't very ready for it because most people didn't prepare this beforehand. It was like, no, I wrote it now. But I don't know if this answers the question, but that's just one thing I will never, ever forget.

People would go, super.

Last question, Olivia. So if people want to learn more about Sana or you and your journey, where can they reach out to you?

Yeah.

I'm always available on LinkedIn. love hearing how other people build and if there is a specific thing you want me to talk more about, I'm very happy to hear about it and I will do my best in making something up.

topic.

Thank you very much for joining and for giving us some insights into that very inspiring journey and hope to see you soon again.

Thank you so much, Christian.

Thank you. Bye. And this was another episode of our Follow the Gradient podcast.

And now we would love to hear from you. How did you like it? What should we improve? Do you have any suggestions, ideas or dream podcast guests? Please let us know.

Thank you and see you again next week.