Keynote by Hanno Renner, Co-founder & CEO at Personio, from #SaaStock17, RDS Dublin, Growth Stage, Tuesday 19th September 2017

1. © Personio 2017
10x headcount in 12 month
how to minimize growth pains through early
organization design
SaaStock 2017 - Dublin

2. © Personio 2017
About Personio - The HR Operating System
2
‣ Founded in 2015 in Munich
‣ Building the HR Operating System → a SaaS solution covering all processes along the
employee life-cycle
‣ Bootstrapped for 1,5 years until raising a $2,5M seed round 2016 and a $12M Series A this July
‣ Grew from 5 to 50 people in less than 12 month

3. © Personio 2017
Headcount Development
Seed
Round
Bootstrapping
Growth
Phase
How to prepare for a phase
of fast headcount-growth?
3

4. © Personio 2017
Overview
4
Deliberately focusing on hiring the right people
Designing a scalable
Organization and
Team Structure
Setting up processes
for Goal setting and
measurement
Formulating Core
Purpose and
Company Vision

5. © Personio 2017
In small teams everyone knows why they are here and what you
jointly want to achieve, once the team grows this changes
5
‣ Transparency of…
‣ The reason we are here → Core Purpose
‣ How we want to achieve this → Strategic Vision
‣ When have we reached it → BHAG
‣ Important for alignment and goal setting
Formulating Core
Purpose and
Company Vision

6. © Personio 2017
You can’t predict the future but you should make a best guess
for a structure that you might need for the future
6
‣ Forces thinking ahead
‣ Educates hiring plan
‣ Every (SaaS-)company is different → don’t rely on “standards”
‣ Mission-based teams
Designing a scalable
Organization and
Team Structure

7. © Personio 2017
As the organization grows goal setting is besides hiring the
biggest lever you have on the progress of your company
7
‣ Concept of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)
‣ connect daily tasks with strategic vision
‣ create transparency among the organisation
‣ help employees to prioritize
‣ Bottom-up goal setting → ownership
‣ Output-driven goals → autonomy
Setting up processes
for Goal setting and
measurement

8. © Personio 2017
Despite being always behind the hiring plan, never compromise
on quality or culture-fit of your future employees
8
‣ Design a standardized recruiting process
‣ Avoid urgency-bias
‣ Define ideal candidate
‣ Trust your gut-feeling
Deliberately
focusing on hiring
the right people

9. © Personio 2017
Deliberately focusing on hiring the right people
Designing a scalable
Organization and
Team Structure
Setting up processes
for Goal setting and
measurement
Formulating Core
Purpose and
Company Vision
Summary
9

10. © Personio 2017
hanno@personio.com