People Over Perks podcast ep. 9 – Vanessa Stock, Co-Founder & Chief People Officer at Pitch

On this People Over Perks podcast episode, we have Vanessa Stock. Vanessa is the Co-Founder and Chief People Officer of Pitch, a platform for presentations to enable every team’s best thinking. In this episode, we cover topics including her career path en route to co-founding Pitch, how the People team at Pitch help scale the company, and how she is passionate about creating a people centric organization.
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Notes

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
• Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness by Frederic Laloux

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Full Episode Transcript

Andy Parker (host)

- Okay, Vanessa, thank you so much for joining us on the People Over Perks podcast today. 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Hi, good to see you. 

Andy Parker (host)

- I'm really excited about this conversation. We at Leapsome are users of Pitch, and yeah, we're looking forward to hearing all about your story as to how Pitch was founded, the HR team of Pitch, and some of the things that you're working on.

To kick off. I think it'd be really interesting to hear from you about the founding story. I believe there was a sort of a long history in terms of your co-founders working together at a previous company called Wunderlist. So yeah, maybe you could start there, please. 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- So yeah, we are eight co-founders, all of us worked at Wunderlist, parts of the group were already founders there and yeah, all of us, we’ve basically known each other for 10 years, worked together for most of the time, and just had a really strong connection as humans and really just respected each other's work. After the acquisition of Wunderlist, just everyone did their own stuff. Some people stayed at Microsoft, some people, like me, went into the startup world in Berlin and met a lot of people, and after a few years we got together and said, “Hey, let's do something again”. For me, it was a no-brainer because I think from all the people I worked with, we have similar ideas of how to build a great company or what we consider a great product or what we consider a healthy work environment and all these things. When we got together, I didn't really think about it too long, so it was really good. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Really cool. And can you give the audience an overview as to what Pitch is as a product as well? 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Yeah, sure. So we basically started Pitch now three and a half years ago, and we are building a competitor to Keynote and Powerpoint. Basically, it's a new generation of presentation tool that basically focuses on collaborating, rethinking the whole way out, like building up the deck or a presentation and also sharing it and consuming it and adding life data and all these things. We really feel like this whole market has been somewhat stuck in the nineties.

There were not many companies at that time, willing to tackling that space. In a way where we felt like “yeah, we’re really solving these issues”. And so we focused on really building a product in which non-designers can build a beautiful deck without worrying too much about the format and how to do this and how to do that.

And so yeah, that's the focus. We are now 120 people already sitting across the country and Europe and the world and yeah, we launched seven months ago, so I hope most of you listening have tried it at least at this point. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah, very cool. That's a very cool story. And I'd love to dive into your role specifically, because you are the VP of people. I think it's fair to say that it's somewhat unusual to have a VP people as a co-founder. So, perhaps you could tell us what your role looked like in the very early days of Pitch, and then obviously how that's evolved over time and what your role looks like now. 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Yeah. I think in HR, there's never a too early stage to have HR in the team. I think it's very important to have a strong HR leader in the team very early on to really think about things. So I hope that in the future, people don't say it's unusual to have an HR co-founder, I think it's actually the right way to really change working environments and really build innovative companies and create healthier work environments for people.

And yeah, for me, obviously being part of a team very early on, we were eight, then we were 10, then we were 25, I was basically by myself until we were 60 people. So I was hiring everyone until we rose to 60, and now the People Team is finally also growing. We have wonderful people in a team that helps with talent, acquisition and onboarding, and all these things. But the good thing is to have someone owning this from very early on who is also experienced, so you don’t make any terrible mistakes, like people who usually see hiring as a side thing or onboarding experiences or employee retention and all these things. And yeah, I think having an HR co-founder also just sends a strong signal, I would say, to the team and the future team that we really pay a lot of attention to like work environment and people and don't see it as an afterthought, which is usually the case in a lot of companies. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. And so did I hear you say that you then hired the first person on your team when you were 60 people? What is the structure of your team look like now, then?

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- So we have two people doing talent acquisition, one person doing employee experience, one person is going to join and do learning and development, and the talent acquisition team is going to grow throughout the next year, like every quarter, we're going to add more and more recruiters because we're gonna double the team, I think, again in the next few months. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Interesting. And I imagine that that recruiting has been perhaps helped by the level of investors in PR that pitches has received.

Would you say that's fair to say?

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- I think we already had a very strong employer brand before like recent announcements. And then we already had like really a lot of amazing people applying without us making a lot of noise. I think it's also related to the past success of the team and people are already trusting the founders and knowing the quality standard and all that.

So that was definitely helpful. But yeah, the new round and the new investors obviously are not bad and definitely a good help now, moving forward, hiring more people, especially C-level and all the experienced leaders we are about to hire. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Excellent. And pitch is a fully remote company. Is that right? 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Yeah. That depends on what you define as fully remote. We have an office in Berlin, but we have more than half of the team not being based in Berlin. 

Andy Parker (host)

- How have you thought about that, then? Was that a decision that was made right at the start or was that influenced by COVID? Perhaps you could walk us through that process as to how you thought about the choices and the trade-offs for being a remote team.

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- I think it was basically dictated by the talent we wanted to hire. So when we started Pitch, we were in Berlin, we had an office. I think we were not married to the idea to have everyone in the office, but after we hired one or two people that we really wanted to get on board, they just didn't want to move to Berlin. And we were like, “okay, then stay where you are, and let's just work together”. And those were remote workers and taught us so much around remote culture, how to communicate, how to document and how to really set the ground for a healthy and productive remote culture. So that was basically part of our DNA then very early on.

And so we grew into this along the way. So when COVID hit us, it wasn't a big change. I think for the Berlin people who never run remote before, I think for them, it was obviously a change, but as a company, process wise, and for the other half, it was as usual, basically,

Andy Parker (host)

- I guess that must have helped then, obviously, to things keep things pretty smooth throughout that time.

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Yeah. And I think when you, as a company, want to think about remote work, really make sure you hire experienced people cause they can. Always teach you also things and are really mindful about, what are the communication rules and what rituals and habits to establish. And I think if you would do it as just with juniors, I think it wouldn't work.

And I also think you could train juniors really well, if you will be distributed, having different time zones. Yeah. So I think it bleeds down to the workforce you have, whenever it's going to work or not. 

Andy Parker (host)

- I think that makes a lot of sense. And maybe you could dive into some of those habits and rituals, then? Is there anything that you think has really helped pitch remain in a productive company while being remote. 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- It's probably a mix of things, I would say. I think we always had the rule that when we have meetings with more people and everyone dives into their laptop, even though they are in the office or so they are, everyone is equal on screen and doesn't have these like side conversations in a meeting room and does this something we always did. And we have coffee meetups. People rotate every week to meet other people. I think in terms of being productive, what helped us was we use Notion basically for everything. So everything that's company related and everything that's been written is stored in Notion and everyone who joins can basically really follow through the history of things. And we've been really determined from day one to really document decisions, document product roadmap, document anything that's related to the company in Notion and make it accessible for everyone, and I think that really helped us to make sure everyone who joined this finds the information they need, and they don't need to ask 15 people to get the info that they want. And having a transparent culture, in which channels are open people that can contribute to whatever topic they hear or see, and really making sure you live a transparent open door policy, remotely, obviously.

Andy Parker (host)

- Interesting. You mentioned that you're obviously going to double, the team size potentially over the next year. What are some of the other topics that are on your mind for the people team? 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Yeah, we’re growing the workforce. We doubled the team every year. I don't think we will finish this year with double the amount, but going somewhat into the direction of 180, and then next year we'll continue with that pace, I think, to some degree. And I think with growth always comes a lot of challenges that are people related, right? It's about how do you orchestra everyone? How do you make sure people know what they are supposed to do? How do you make sure they know who to talk to and where the communication flows? Making sure there are good guidelines in place to really support this growth, right? Because you can't just add people and think it's going to work. You as a leadership team need to really have strong methods and provide conscious guidelines to help everyone grow and own their work, basically. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah, absolutely. And then in terms of processes for making sure that everybody has the feedback they need, could you maybe talk about some of the things that that you as a people team help facilitate? So whether that might be installing one-on-one meetings between managers and reports, performance reviews, things like that. 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Yeah, I think we are not a good example for that because we actually don't do much of this. We have a normal one-on-one routine for everyone and we have a career framework, but we didn't want to introduce this performance culture where we have regular performance reviews that are centralized in a tool and everyone puts in their thoughts. We really want to make sure that people talk to each other immediately. So when I have a problem, I go to this person immediately and try to resolve it and not write it down and then tell the person six months later when they can't act on it.

I'm a fan of immediate feedback, I'm a fan of really helping people to find their voice immediately and establish a good relationship to the manager or to the team without necessarily having this yearly or bi-yearly performance review, I'm I think maybe one day we will need it, so far we made the conscious decision to not have that in place like that. There are, as I said, regular one-on-ones where people can address growing topics and also address how they want to develop and we see how we can bring people there. But we don’t do this review where we say, “okay, this is bad. You have to change this.” We do this more in a dialogue on a regular basis.

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah, that sort of speed of feedback is obviously critical, isn't it, to make sure that everybody has the information that they need at the right time, rather than waiting for a performance review. 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- And it's also, yeah, proven that feedback is only effective when it's given immediately, so the brain makes this connection to the situation. If you write down “oh, six months ago, you've done this in that meeting” and it's obviously so far away that you can't really attach this to any learning. Yeah, so I think immediate feedback and constant conversations is probably more the mentality I would support, but I guess when you're like a thousand people, you probably don't speak so openly anymore to each other, I don't know. But I hope we can grow as much as we can with that mentality. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah, absolutely. And as a People & Culture team, then, what are the other processes that you're helping to facilitate to help the company create a high-performance culture?

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- I think in the end, I wouldn't say that it's the People and Culture team driving these things. I think what's very important at Pitch is that everyone from various teams can drive initiatives and put stuff forward. It's not just like the siloed, it's doing everything that's related to this. Or like tech is just doing tech, but I think we have a lot of remotees, and some of them have ideas. And then we have work groups that think about remote work and how we can improve things, I think it's a shared effort to make this culture tight. And not just what people do, what the People team thinks is right, but really involving the team and how we do things and how we should change things and really get them involved. I don't believe in these yeah, detached people teams that just come in and try to come up with processes that somehow are a super disturbance to the team and don’t makes sense. So I think I preferred to do this with the team and to really, as a people team who can be like a facilitator, you can pick up these topics and make sure they're getting the right attention and that they get done, but I don’t think the people teams should necessarily decide all these things because it's the team that needs to work with these things. So I think they should definitely be involved in finding the right way. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah. And so you mentioned that you have these work groups set up. Can you tell us a bit more about those and how you structure that?

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Yeah, I think it sounds as if there is a super crazy approach behind it. We just have topics that come up and I really look for people that are having an interest or a background in it and want to put things forward. And then we say, okay, so remote work, what does that mean? What are the processes we should consider in the future? What are the things we need to consider? And then people from different parts of the team, different departments, different backgrounds can just join and be, yeah, impactful also on different levels. And not just the daily work, but I think it's important that they feel like they are also creating their work.

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah, absolutely. And so you're thinking about the rest of the year ahead then? What are some of the key initiatives that you and your team specifically are working on towards. 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Yeah. The biggest one is still growing the team. That's always been like the biggest focus, obviously making sure people arrive well and like that the onboarding flow is top-notch. And now that we have so many people, we are now in our fourth year of company existence, to really think about career development. As I said, we hired a learning and development specialist and are now thinking really about growth, about leadership development, and to make practices more explicit and to just grow a strong culture, which has been working out naturally so far. But now, since we are scaling, we really need to manifest in this culture that we want to protect and help that when people join that they really know how they should lead people or what's expected of them, or how can I be an impactful IC as an IC, you can also be a leader, you don't have to be a manager to be a leader, and all these things, yeah. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Interesting. Cool. Very cool. Thanks for sharing all of that. And I'd love to jump back to your career history, specifically. So if I'm not mistaken, am I right in saying that before you worked at Wunderlist, you worked in a kind of different career path, and then you took a change into HR. Maybe you could tell us about that journey?

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Yeah. My background started off my career was in PR and comms. I studied that and then worked in an agency in London for a few years. And before that in Hamburg, and I think what I just felt like I didn't really like the work environments, the traditional ones that were existent up until then.

And I really always questioned how teams are run and organizations build. And I didn't like this mindset where the boss ist the boss, kind of does less and less work, earns more and more money. And then all the other people do all the work and then stay late. I don't know, it's just like this weird dynamic that really old businesses still have existing.

And I was just challenging this organizational style, how work has been distributed there and what dynamics have existed in. And I basically studied business psychology and organizational psychology and wanted to really think about how you can create an environment in which everyone feels like they own something they can contribute, and that there's an equal. And then there's not this fixation onto a boss or like just C-level. And so I studied that and wrote my master thesis around self-organizing teams. And yeah, so that's why I landed in the startup world, because that's basically where you can play around with these topics a lot without going through too much politics, as in bigger companies. 

Andy Parker (host)

- That's a really interesting change. And when you then started in HR, were there any particular challenges that you felt like you had to personally navigate through and things that you had to unlearn from your previous experiences? 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Not really. I think I was just naturally curious. I think what's interesting is just, especially when you're new to it, I think you observe so much around culture and like how leaders behave and what impact it has on the employees. What kind of unwritten culture people set in the way of how they treat others and things like that. And I think for me, it was a little bit in the beginning when you asked the younger, I was always like, couldn't understand why people don't see these things and if you waste them by they're not changing it. And I think it's a tough job in HR to try to do the right thing and try to be supportive to the team and being also like the strategic advisor to the leadership team, but also realizing you're not always getting heard depending on the culture or the company and You need to really yeah. Just find your right niche and find your way that you work with where you feel like, okay, we can really do something great together. I think if you aren’t on a human level, on a values level, then I think it's difficult to work with a CEO or a leader. That's having much different human values because I couldn't support that.

And I think that we would just probably discuss why this is not how you do it or why you should feed people like this or whatever. So I think For me in the beginning, it was just a little bit interesting to understand. Okay. Just because I would see these things happening and I noted it.

I know good doesn't mean anyone would change them. It's a process and takes a lot of conversations and a lot of time also for the organization to learn and to work. 

Andy Parker (host)

- And then in that time period in between joining Wunderlist and starting Pitch, can you walk us through that timeframe and some of the learnings that you picked up along the way that you're now implementing a Pitch?

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Yeah, I was doing some HR consultancy. I worked at Clue for years, two years as an HR director. I think also a lot of stuff about myself. I think it was the first time I wasn't in a leadership role, everything was new. And it was like an interesting company in many ways. Just because they’re are very creative and very different from how they did things.

And it was like a very interesting stretch coming from a tech, purely tech driven company to like the more female health environment, where everyone feels like a community or like a political statement team. And it was interesting. I think I learned so much. I met a lot of lovely people.

I don't know, I think what I took away from that time is that I think it's interesting how different organizations are depending on the founders and what tone you're setting as a founder. And I think when you have these conservative FinTech startups, how they function, but then you have, like, Clue, super led by these inspiring hippies in a way? No, I wouldn't say so, but just very creative and how different the company was. And they almost created more of a hype. And everyone who joined was really into this hype. And I think it was interesting to see how different the work life gets. If it's healthier, I don't know, but I think it was just very interesting how different teams are working in how different, yeah, the structure is affected by the type of team you're bleeding, basically. Does that make sense? 

Andy Parker (host)

- It does. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. And so obviously with your personal journey, you've gone from a slightly different career path, transitioned into HR and then into like the senior level roles and overseeing our co-founder.

Do you have any sort of nuggets of wisdom in terms of career advice? Have you come up with any frameworks or or ways to think about your own development as you've progressed through your career?

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- I think for on the agenda, you really neet to stay true to yourself and what you want to stand behind. You obviously have a company to grow and to influence people, you have a lot of responsibility to these people. And I think as an HR leader, you just need to have a strong core and really make sure you're acting on those, and also just be very mindful of your communication, when you also work with your leadership team that maybe has different opinions or your team, and just being like, really, I think it's also sometimes hard to detach yourself from your emotions or what you think is right, but always still, even though you're in a business you're still promoting, but use as humans. And I think you should just stay strong behind those and not let yourself get carried away by an opportunity. And I think I was always following my gut and my intuition, if this is not really what I want to do. And if this is really like a healthy environment in which people can really be there and live good lives, but also have a great career.

And I was always quite skeptical of a lot of companies that haven't been speaking to me in the past and I didn't join in the end. So I think as an HR leader, I think, yeah, you just need to develop a strong core as a human and, yeah, ask yourself what you want to achieve. And for me, it was always like really building a great organization, in which people really just love doing what they're doing and feeling like they can still live their normal life. They can work when they want and how they want. Some people have families, some people don't and everyone has a different routine, and this is fine. And that you really create an environment where everyone feels like they can be their best self, truly. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah. And so it sounds like you're saying that you really need to have your strong personal values and ideally find a company where there's a good match with the company values as well.

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Exactly. And then you can create amazing things as an HR leader, if you follow your intuition on these things. 

I think in the end as an HR leader, I think we should always strive for building people-centric organizations, and really putting the human much more into the center, not revenues and all that.

I know this is a controversial statement, but I think as an HR leader, I think you can create a winning business and still be good to your people and still build a people-centric organization. Shouldn't be either or. 

Andy Parker (host)

- And do you have any sort of tangible examples of how an HR leader could try and do that within their organization?

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- You need to challenge the leaders. You need to challenge other stakeholders that make decisions to this. You have owners that want to save money on the, I don’t know, the whatever role that — I'm just making roles up — whoever decides how much people should work, or people making these like last minute changes at 9:00 PM and like people burn out.

And I think it's a systemic thing and you need to really be in good contact with the leaders and the leadership to really make sure what, why are we doing this? What is this leading us to? And to be really good at challenging, you have to sometimes have disagreements and be fine with them.

Andy Parker (host)

- Interesting. And what do you see as the role of HR and People Ops going forward? Are there some particular trends that are particularly exciting at the moment? 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- There are lots of trends, I know there’s a lot around AI. I'm still, I'm very skeptical. I'm not a, I don't want to be like the granny that’s against tech, I'm definitely not, but I'm just challenging how good AI can really replace the human interaction of like a personal a hiring process or when you’re talking to people and I think since people's interested to you. I think it's a relevant discussion. And I think probably for some companies and some big corporations, probably a great advancement. I feel like when you're still like quite early and small team and you're building this people-centric culture and organization, I don't see AI in that, but what I'm excited about is obviously this whole remote distributed work topic, all these future of work topics, four-day work week, all of these things. Creating a different work life for everyone. I think I'm very passionate about, and I love the idea that people can basically choose where they live and don't need to live where they work. And I think that's something I'm excited about. It really is like a lot of companies that were super conservative are now really looking into staying remote. And I think this is what will change our whole life. And Yeah, and I think that's great. So that's definitely something I'm excited about.

And obviously then also all the great software that comes out, that supports this, like Pitch, that and helps remote teams to stay connected and do great work. And yeah, I think that's something I'm really excited about. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah, absolutely. And throughout this conversation, you've talked about building a people-centric organization and creating a great culture where people can do great work and also have their normal life as well.

And I'm interested as to whether you have a particular way that you for yourself would measure your success in your role and whether you could boil down what you see your role as VP of people being within the organization into a short sentence or two. 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Okay, so there were two questions in this question?

Andy Parker (host)

- How do you measure success for yourself as a, as the VP of people?

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- First, obviously: A) what type of people do we hire? Do they stay, do they leave? And we were very fortunate the first few years that actually everyone we hired stayed. Now after three years we had a few people leaving that can go into business or like just wanting a break, but not because they went to another company, so I think that already shows that we hire really well and that we hire the right people for the right opportunities. And then obviously when you are really well in touch with your team and in dialogue, you can always obviously you hear how things go. If people are happy or frustrated and really, yeah, just stay connected to what the voices are, I think is important. And I think your team, people team, your founding team, your leadership team has a good, is doing a good job. Yeah. And as I said, I don't think all of these culture topics are HR. I think culture is everything. Everyone, it's the leadership team, it's the way everyone communicates and who gets promoted or whatever. And it's not just the HR basically carrying all this. And I think I would consider it a success that everyone at Pitch is, I think, very invested in contributing to this environment and helping us shape this, basically.

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah. Interesting. Thank you. And so just a couple of quick fire questions to finish off. Are there any particularly interesting training trainings that you've taken throughout your career that you think have been really impactful for your own development? 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- I think I really like one-on-one coaching with a coach and you can really dive deep into topics that are in your head, or maybe you are not even aware of, and you really get support on solving challenges and stuff like that. I think I have more noticed that you meet people and you have a great conversation and it sticks to you or they say interesting things. And then you changed the way you think. And I think for me, it was a mix of these things, I would say, just meeting interesting people that I felt had great stuff to talk about or also reading some books or yeah, I'm having like, here and there, some leadership coaching, but like one-on-one coaching was very helpful. I wouldn't say that there's one training you all have to do and just solve all the question marks, but I think, yeah, I think you need to hang out with really cool people that you think have a great message, and you can take away your own from that, and also evolve as a leader or as an HR professional or as an individual. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah, that's a great tip. And you mentioned books, and that was gonna be my last question. Do you have any particularly strong book recommendations for our audience?

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- I'm just thinking about it. I, yeah, it's always like a difficult question to answer when you it's always hard to say there's just one book that was like mind blowing. I think there's none I would say this is like the truth or the holy Bible, but I guess, yeah, I think every manager or HR professional should read this book around the Five Dysfunctions of Teams.

I think that it's very important when you think about cultures, team structures and all these things. And then I also found the book Reinventing Organizations pretty good. It's basically different organizationally concepts and how you can create meaning in a work life, two different ways than just adding hierarchies and all of these things. I think those two books I really liked in my career kind of made me think of. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Yeah. You're not the first person to recommend the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Yeah, it's generally a favorite amongst our audiences. 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- I should say another one, but I can’t of one. No. 

Andy Parker (host)

- Vanessa, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a fascinating conversation. And yeah, we'll be sure to link to all of your recommendations in the show notes. And yeah, thanks. Thanks again for joining us. It's been great. 

Vanessa Stock (guest)

- Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I hope there was some interesting stuff for the listeners.

Andy Parker (host)

- Absolutely. Thanks again. Thank you. Bye bye.