September 5, 2011 at 19:21New business in 50 days
Fast Lane Ventures is an atypical investor. Unlike most business angels and portfolio investors, the principle of the company is to deeply interact with managed projects and participate in their operational management. Most of the company's current startups were initiated by her and, in fact, are the “daughters” of Fast Lane Ventures. At first, they, like in an incubator, even grow together - in a business center on Savelovskaya. Of course, such a large team must live by its own rules and laws.
About how to launch a business project in 50 days, how it is formed, by what principles and laws the Fast Lane Ventures team lives and what requirements are presented to managers and supervisors - an interview with HR director Olga Gavrilova .
Is Fast Lane Ventures a business incubator or not? How would you describe the organizational structure of the company?
A classic business incubator provides a place and a certain level of expertise to already completed projects. We carry out operational functions, fully sharing responsibility with projects and at the same time taking on a significant part of managerial tasks.
Tell us about the principles of management in your company
. Fast Lane Ventures has a truly unique team of high-level professionals with the most diverse expertise and knowledge in management, entrepreneurship, e-commerce, marketing and PR, web development, investment attraction, financial management and HR. Each team member is directly involved in the business and plays an important role. Each of us has three key tasks:
It is often said that the essence of the corporate culture of Fast Lane Ventures is the philosophy of checkpoints. We hold regular meetings between the project team and company management, usually every two weeks or less often in more developed projects. In fact, this is a great time to make decisions, get expertise, exchange opinions and get support on key business issues.
Do you work for the result?
The main mission of Fast Lane Ventures is to turn the idea into a fast-growing successful business. Therefore, I would include speed in the success formula of Fast Lane Ventures - the ability to quickly move from idea to business, entrepreneurial skill - the ability to innovate and create, responsibility - based on operational discipline and exactingness to achieve results, interaction - based on the trust and cooperation of all participants teams.
You are a fairly large company. Can you say that you are organized in the same way as all large corporations?
The values of a young venture business are very different from established corporate management. Large companies are characterized by a long study and decision-making, work on the process, narrow specialization of employees and a long multi-stage career path. Our principles are often diametrically opposed: we work for the result, make quick decisions and the principles of our teamwork require more initiative, responsibility, participation in making common decisions, and the dynamics of development allows us to grow from a junior to a leader in six months.
What does it look like? Where do you find employees, how do you choose and how do you train them?
The system of growing future leaders of Internet companies Junior Project Manager is our very successful find, which solves two problems at once: talented and ambitious young managers are trained in practice as managerial entrepreneurship in order to lead one of the new Fast Lane Ventures projects after a while, and the company is timely receives operational support for projects at an early stage of development.
Last December, together with HeadHunter, we made a joint project aimed at searching for young professionals - future managers of Internet projects, received a response from more than 500 candidates, selected the 50 best resumes, conducted interviews and tests, then the business game revealed the 10 most promising candidates who have joined our operating team Fast Lane Ventures. For several months, they performed various operational roles, moving from project to project, thereby gaining versatile managerial experience.
As a result, in a short six months, two of them have already taken the helm as project leaders. In my opinion, this is a very good result, and we will continue to seek and grow talented young managers. Moreover, our initiative received a great response, and every day we get dozens of resumes of specialists who would like to work in Fast Lane Ventures.
How do you imagine the career path of a Fast Lane Ventures employee? Given the specifics of the company, is it even possible to talk about career advancement inside Fast Lane Ventures?
Of course, in such a dynamically developing company it is more likely to make a career take-off than in a stably functioning one, where all positions are distributed. Over the past six months, we have been actively recruiting people from the foreign market, because we built projects from scratch, and there were practically no internal resources. Thus, in less than a year, we attracted more than 500 employees to Fast Lane Ventures and projects.
Our employee, as a rule, is 25 - 35 years old, he has a university degree, experience working in Internet companies or in companies in the FMCG sector. Many employees came to us from Western companies - they are closer to us in corporate culture and business processes, and we welcome employees who have worked in both Russian and Western companies, preferably abroad, because such people have a broader outlook, which is not limited to any scope. They understand Western culture, they speak English, the knowledge of which is also a prerequisite for us.
Among them there are many talented managers who came to leadership positions for Fast Lane Ventures projects for the first time, because we saw in them the potential and huge motivation for professional growth in the Internet industry. There are a lot of such living examples in the company.
How do you select people for managerial positions in the company?
We have several stages of assessment, including several interviews, often we give an additional test - work task, and also check recommendations.
Regarding the ideal candidate - if you quote the full set of qualities that we are looking for in the right candidate, then this is professionalism (a transparent career history), energy and initiative, focus on development and results, the ability to exercise patience in difficult situations, the ability to adapt to changing conditions, stable experience without unmotivated work shifts and long breaks and, of course, motivation to work in our company.
We are actively looking for people with international experience and training, since such people usually have a more versatile view, most often they are business-oriented, they understand the expectations of investors, they know how to correctly present information, and they organize processes well.
The most successful startup Fast Lane Ventures: online shoe store Sapato.ru.
In this process, one cannot diminish the importance of the ability of recruitment managers to search for the right people, to know in what ways and where to find them. And I am pleased with how and with what quality we were able to organize this work. In our case, the HR manager acts as a salesperson who knows how to competently build communication, correctly represent the company, and also reveal the motivation of the person.
Are there any features in the corporate culture of the company that new employees find it difficult to get used to? Do you have adaptation programs in this regard?
Of course. It is often difficult for people to maintain a high level of their own work at high speeds in the superfast growth mode of the company.
We have high demands on working discipline and operational quality. Having interviewed many candidates, I know for sure that we are more demanding than other companies in this regard.
We have a difficult combination, when, on the one hand, the company expects the initiative and gives decision-making to the teams, but at the same time there is investor control over the effectiveness of the projects.
We openly discuss with candidates at the stage of the interview the features of work in our company, then when the candidate becomes an employee, we conduct adaptation trainings for beginners and before the end of the standard trial period we meet with everyone and discuss mutual motivation for working together.
Why is the company intolerant, why are you firing people?
Dismissal is not easy and individual. Dismissal is most often associated with a mismatch of the professional and personal qualities of the employee with the work for which he was hired. And there are a lot of variations, including rejection of the rules and style of the company. A person fired from one company may be ideal for another. Everyone has the right to make mistakes, but if he is not able to analyze the shortcomings and repeats the same mistakes, it is better to fire him. If, for subjective reasons, an employee does not regularly meet deadlines, does not fulfill duties, violates discipline, then, obviously, the contract with him must be terminated.
What is your attitude to dress code and corporate events?
We have adopted a dress code - and we understand that this is not typical for an Internet company. But our main employees in the office are managers, and in the center of our corporate culture is business.
The dress code in our company is not the result of someone’s whim. Our main office largely performs a presentation function - this is the face of the company, including for potential foreign investors. When projects move to a separate office, a freer style is possible. On Fridays, for example, we have announced a casual style for everyone. But everyone decides for himself.
As for corporate events, our company is still very young, in fact, we have only one more year and 100% of our time has been spent on active growth. So far, there really hasn’t been time for corporate events, but of course we plan them. At the end of the year, we want to have a great corporate New Year's holiday and celebrate our achievements. What do you think about the Upladder.ru project? A very relevant project at the right time. Now the recruitment market is changing dramatically. He is very active online. Previously, top managers looked for work in most cases only through agencies or “their” headhunters, but now job search, even for them, is increasingly moving to the Internet. Upladder Task
- to attract people who are not looking for work on the network into the Internet search. I am sincerely confident that Upladder is a great success in the online recruiting market.
And yet, from your point of view, what attracts employees the most in Fast Lane Ventures?
Our company is the right combination of emotional business and a pragmatic approach. Everything happens with us very quickly and clearly. We set ourselves the goal of doing working projects in 50 days, and from the idea to its launch in implementation, less than a week can pass. This is the style of work that attracts, perhaps, not all, but just the people we need.
About how to launch a business project in 50 days, how it is formed, by what principles and laws the Fast Lane Ventures team lives and what requirements are presented to managers and supervisors - an interview with HR director Olga Gavrilova .
Is Fast Lane Ventures a business incubator or not? How would you describe the organizational structure of the company?
A classic business incubator provides a place and a certain level of expertise to already completed projects. We carry out operational functions, fully sharing responsibility with projects and at the same time taking on a significant part of managerial tasks.
Fast Lane Ventures Management Culture Foundation - Checkpoints Philosophy
Tell us about the principles of management in your company
. Fast Lane Ventures has a truly unique team of high-level professionals with the most diverse expertise and knowledge in management, entrepreneurship, e-commerce, marketing and PR, web development, investment attraction, financial management and HR. Each team member is directly involved in the business and plays an important role. Each of us has three key tasks:
- run a business as soon as possible when there is nothing but an idea;
- support projects with expertise and practical assistance at various stages of development, implement common operational approaches, greatly facilitating and accelerating the passage of the organizational stage;
- and, finally, to monitor the effectiveness of projects.
It is often said that the essence of the corporate culture of Fast Lane Ventures is the philosophy of checkpoints. We hold regular meetings between the project team and company management, usually every two weeks or less often in more developed projects. In fact, this is a great time to make decisions, get expertise, exchange opinions and get support on key business issues.
Do you work for the result?
The main mission of Fast Lane Ventures is to turn the idea into a fast-growing successful business. Therefore, I would include speed in the success formula of Fast Lane Ventures - the ability to quickly move from idea to business, entrepreneurial skill - the ability to innovate and create, responsibility - based on operational discipline and exactingness to achieve results, interaction - based on the trust and cooperation of all participants teams.
You are a fairly large company. Can you say that you are organized in the same way as all large corporations?
The values of a young venture business are very different from established corporate management. Large companies are characterized by a long study and decision-making, work on the process, narrow specialization of employees and a long multi-stage career path. Our principles are often diametrically opposed: we work for the result, make quick decisions and the principles of our teamwork require more initiative, responsibility, participation in making common decisions, and the dynamics of development allows us to grow from a junior to a leader in six months.
In less than a year, we have attracted over 500 employees to Fast Lane Ventures and projects.
What does it look like? Where do you find employees, how do you choose and how do you train them? The system of growing future leaders of Internet companies Junior Project Manager is our very successful find, which solves two problems at once: talented and ambitious young managers are trained in practice as managerial entrepreneurship in order to lead one of the new Fast Lane Ventures projects after a while, and the company is timely receives operational support for projects at an early stage of development.
Last December, together with HeadHunter, we made a joint project aimed at searching for young professionals - future managers of Internet projects, received a response from more than 500 candidates, selected the 50 best resumes, conducted interviews and tests, then the business game revealed the 10 most promising candidates who have joined our operating team Fast Lane Ventures. For several months, they performed various operational roles, moving from project to project, thereby gaining versatile managerial experience.
As a result, in a short six months, two of them have already taken the helm as project leaders. In my opinion, this is a very good result, and we will continue to seek and grow talented young managers. Moreover, our initiative received a great response, and every day we get dozens of resumes of specialists who would like to work in Fast Lane Ventures.
How do you imagine the career path of a Fast Lane Ventures employee? Given the specifics of the company, is it even possible to talk about career advancement inside Fast Lane Ventures?
Of course, in such a dynamically developing company it is more likely to make a career take-off than in a stably functioning one, where all positions are distributed. Over the past six months, we have been actively recruiting people from the foreign market, because we built projects from scratch, and there were practically no internal resources. Thus, in less than a year, we attracted more than 500 employees to Fast Lane Ventures and projects.
Our employee, as a rule, is 25 - 35 years old, he has a university degree, experience working in Internet companies or in companies in the FMCG sector. Many employees came to us from Western companies - they are closer to us in corporate culture and business processes, and we welcome employees who have worked in both Russian and Western companies, preferably abroad, because such people have a broader outlook, which is not limited to any scope. They understand Western culture, they speak English, the knowledge of which is also a prerequisite for us.
Among them there are many talented managers who came to leadership positions for Fast Lane Ventures projects for the first time, because we saw in them the potential and huge motivation for professional growth in the Internet industry. There are a lot of such living examples in the company.
A person fired from one company may be ideal for another
How do you select people for managerial positions in the company?
We have several stages of assessment, including several interviews, often we give an additional test - work task, and also check recommendations.
Regarding the ideal candidate - if you quote the full set of qualities that we are looking for in the right candidate, then this is professionalism (a transparent career history), energy and initiative, focus on development and results, the ability to exercise patience in difficult situations, the ability to adapt to changing conditions, stable experience without unmotivated work shifts and long breaks and, of course, motivation to work in our company.
We are actively looking for people with international experience and training, since such people usually have a more versatile view, most often they are business-oriented, they understand the expectations of investors, they know how to correctly present information, and they organize processes well.
Matthew Lannengrand, head of the largest online store Sapato.ru never before joining Fast Lane Ventures has not led business. Here he was entrusted with the management of an entire company, and in less than a year he made it the largest online shoe store in Russia with a turnover of $ 2.5 million!
The most successful startup Fast Lane Ventures: online shoe store Sapato.ru.
In this process, one cannot diminish the importance of the ability of recruitment managers to search for the right people, to know in what ways and where to find them. And I am pleased with how and with what quality we were able to organize this work. In our case, the HR manager acts as a salesperson who knows how to competently build communication, correctly represent the company, and also reveal the motivation of the person.
Are there any features in the corporate culture of the company that new employees find it difficult to get used to? Do you have adaptation programs in this regard?
Of course. It is often difficult for people to maintain a high level of their own work at high speeds in the superfast growth mode of the company.
We have high demands on working discipline and operational quality. Having interviewed many candidates, I know for sure that we are more demanding than other companies in this regard.
We have a difficult combination, when, on the one hand, the company expects the initiative and gives decision-making to the teams, but at the same time there is investor control over the effectiveness of the projects.
We openly discuss with candidates at the stage of the interview the features of work in our company, then when the candidate becomes an employee, we conduct adaptation trainings for beginners and before the end of the standard trial period we meet with everyone and discuss mutual motivation for working together.
We have adopted a dress code, although this is not typical for an online business
Why is the company intolerant, why are you firing people?
Dismissal is not easy and individual. Dismissal is most often associated with a mismatch of the professional and personal qualities of the employee with the work for which he was hired. And there are a lot of variations, including rejection of the rules and style of the company. A person fired from one company may be ideal for another. Everyone has the right to make mistakes, but if he is not able to analyze the shortcomings and repeats the same mistakes, it is better to fire him. If, for subjective reasons, an employee does not regularly meet deadlines, does not fulfill duties, violates discipline, then, obviously, the contract with him must be terminated.
What is your attitude to dress code and corporate events?
We have adopted a dress code - and we understand that this is not typical for an Internet company. But our main employees in the office are managers, and in the center of our corporate culture is business.
The dress code in our company is not the result of someone’s whim. Our main office largely performs a presentation function - this is the face of the company, including for potential foreign investors. When projects move to a separate office, a freer style is possible. On Fridays, for example, we have announced a casual style for everyone. But everyone decides for himself.
As for corporate events, our company is still very young, in fact, we have only one more year and 100% of our time has been spent on active growth. So far, there really hasn’t been time for corporate events, but of course we plan them. At the end of the year, we want to have a great corporate New Year's holiday and celebrate our achievements. What do you think about the Upladder.ru project? A very relevant project at the right time. Now the recruitment market is changing dramatically. He is very active online. Previously, top managers looked for work in most cases only through agencies or “their” headhunters, but now job search, even for them, is increasingly moving to the Internet. Upladder Task
- to attract people who are not looking for work on the network into the Internet search. I am sincerely confident that Upladder is a great success in the online recruiting market.
And yet, from your point of view, what attracts employees the most in Fast Lane Ventures?
Our company is the right combination of emotional business and a pragmatic approach. Everything happens with us very quickly and clearly. We set ourselves the goal of doing working projects in 50 days, and from the idea to its launch in implementation, less than a week can pass. This is the style of work that attracts, perhaps, not all, but just the people we need.