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Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,

Today’s guest is Olivier Gaudin, Co-Founder and former CEO of SonarSource, a company he bootstrapped from a small room in Geneva into a $4bn+ global powerhouse used by 70% of the Fortune 100. Olivier ran the company for 15 years, scaled it to 800 employees, and famously did it without managers until they hit 200 people.

🎧 Tune in now on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and share your thoughts! In the meantime: Follow the Gradient and stay tuned!

🫶🏼 Melanie & Christian

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Why you should listen

You should listen to this if you want to know what strong customer focus looks like first-hand, and and why “structured chaos” can beat process any day in the early stage.

The longer we listened to Olivier’s story, the more it became clear: there is a difference between being chaotic and operating in structured chaos.

What we talk about

• 01:50 - How SonarSource got started

• 08:05 - When to hire, when not to hire, and why staying profitable shaped every decision

• 10:23 - Why they stayed maniacally close to users

• 11:46 - How to maintain organizational structure after scaling

• 24:08 - Building a cohesive team across locations

• 29:33 - Balancing customer growth and product development

• 37:13 - The do’s and don’ts of management, from someone who avoided it for as long as possible

Our main take away’s

1. Start with your own pain, not market trends: Olivier and his co-founders didn’t chase market gaps, they solved their own development frustrations. This authenticity created a product that resonated with other developers instantly, without needing a sales pitch.

2. You don’t need funding to scale if you build something people actually use: SonarSource grew profitably from day one, only raising money years later to support U.S. expansion. The focus wasn’t on valuation, but adoption and usage - measured by downloads, forum conversations, and genuine traction.

3. No managers until 200 people (and it worked): Instead of adding layers of hierarchy, the team operated as a high-trust collective. All decisions were direct and collaborative, with communication flowing from founders to individual contributors. When cracks appeared at scale, they introduced structure intentionally and thoughtfully.

4. Don't just listen to customers, understand their use case: Rather than building features based on loud voices, the team dug deeper into the “why” behind user feedback. A shift from configurable dashboards to fixed ones sparked outcry, but deeper conversations revealed only two real use cases were missing, and those were addressed. Vision led the roadmap, not volume.

5. International expansion requires cultural embedding, not just hiring: The decision to embed U.S. hires in Geneva for a month wasn't tactical—it was cultural. These immersions built trust, alignment, and a shared foundation, making cross-continental scaling possible without diluting the company’s values.

6. Push early, observe fast, iterate often: One of Olivier’s key lessons: don’t wait until something is perfect. Shipping smaller, imperfect versions helps uncover what truly matters, avoiding wasted effort on features that don’t resonate once they’re in the wild.

From our Partners

Inside Kraft Heinz’s Talent-to-Value Playbook

When you're leading talent for a $20B business with 200 brands and 31 manufacturing facilities, HR becomes one of the most powerful levers of scale.

In this session, Andrea Rickey breaks down how Kraft Heinz is transforming its talent function — from modernizing hiring systems to building leaders faster and aligning talent decisions to enterprise growth. We’ll also dive deep into Andrea’s journey from HR Trainee to Talent VP.

Whether you’re leading a team of 50 or thousands, this candid conversation will challenge how you think about talent infrastructure, the role of AI in hiring, and the shift from reactive HR to strategic impact.

Save your spot

How to reach out to Olivier

• LinkedIn

Exclusive from Olivier

What is the one advice you can give to keep Product and Revenue teams aligned?

I would say 2 things:

• Do not build technology, build a product. Productizing a technology will fail 99% of the time

• Release early and often, based on value generation and not completeness

What was the biggest mistake you made when scaling internationally?

Because we were inbound only, it took us a while to understand that having someone local would help sell/convert more.

What’s the one decision or process you’d repeat exactly the same way if you had to build Sonar all over again?

I would do the same mistakes again 🙂

What is success for you?

Success to me is adoption, everything else is a side effect

What books, podcasts, articles inspired you?

For the book, I would say Getting Things Done (GTD)

What’s one advice, founders should actually ignore?

Any advice that is about what you should build, coming from someone who has not built something similar in the business should be ignored.

What are habits, activities or rituals that keep you sane (while scaling your business)?

The annual company event, a moment every quarter to measure the progress and adjust the priorities, and the weekly 30 minutes to collect (manually!) business data.