Growth Hacking, Impostor Syndrome & Uniqueness: the Story of my First 2 Months at Mindee

Discovery

ome by the impostor syndrome: “Why are there engineers in my team ?”, “What do all these acronyms mean ?”, “Should I start to learn how to code?”. As a sales team member, and especially as a growth hacker, it was a strange experience…

I have worked for several classical SaaS companies, but it’s the first time that I was seeing a really tech-oriented organisation from within. Leaving the office at the end of the first day was like finishing last in a contest for the biggest hot dog eater: you’re full and you wonder why you did it. But stay assured, as you are never left in the jungle without help, but I’ll talk about that later.

One of my first source of surprise was to discover an organisation that was totally different from what I knew. In the sales team, for example, the workflows, the objectives, the closing deadlines, the team structure are all totally different from what I could have seen elsewhere. Each customer has a different expectation of Mindee with unique use cases and projects. There is no particular type of client so each project is different from the last one and certainly from the next one. The mission is mainly focused on accompanying the customer in his needs which can, in some cases, take a lot of time and completely transform the sales job into a project leader.

One metric is really demonstrative about the uniqueness of Mindee, we simply have no-churn. No clients ever left … That’s not unusual, that’s unique. In the SaaS or the tech industry, I’ve never heard of such a thing. So when you hear about it, you kind of feel like, “OK, I’m not in a classical tech startup, It’s something else”.

Understanding

The first week at Mindee was a succession of personal onboarding, product training, and meetings with different collaborators. This week may seem like an obstacle course to a layman like me, but it is the most important part of the process. The most important thing is not to understand all aspects of the technology (that will come soon enough): the goal of this first week is to get a feel for the passion that drives each person and the common vision of Mindee.

It is this infectious passion that carried me through each week of my first month and gave me the effect of being in a one of a kind environment and having a different experience. It is this passion that makes you feel every day like you are in a unique and visionary project. And naturally, this business environment pushes you to go further in your understanding of the technology, of the issues, and that, beyond your job mission and objectives. In the end, I think that this is the secret of good onboarding, to make the future employee want to continue to develop their knowledge, and not just related to their job.

You recognize good onboarding when it’s also about social integration. In this area, Mindee is again a little bit different from what I knew. I had the opportunity to meet in video conference calls almost 80% of the company employees during the first two weeks even though we were in the covid restriction period. It’s extremely pleasant to see everyone take time to explain their jobs and introduce themselves.

Then I had the chance to attend the second Mindee Offsite, only 1 month and a half after my first day of work. This really special week concluded the convictions I had about the overall friendliness of the company’s employees. I could see in person the proximity that exists between employees, despite seniority or hierarchical levels. It’s really unique and enriching. It helps you feeling part of the team really quickly and you start to think “we are on the same ship”.

Evolution

The first question that a business profile like me can ask himself is “what is my future in Mindee?” and “how can I evolve in this company?”

The answer is in the Mindee vision and ambition. You realize that you are in a robust start-up with a really good foundation. It means that there will be a lot of room for anyone to grow and some really exciting projects to be done and you kinda want to be part of that.

Everything moves so quickly, for example, the sales team is going to grow a lot in the next few months. A lot of really good profiles will be needed and it will be a real challenge for our hiring teams to find good fit. From what I have seen, Mindee is the perfect place for people who want to work in a different kind of environment, people that want to be driven by a vision and play with a model that is quite different from what we’re used to in more classical SaaS companies.

But let’s get back to my day-to-day experience at Mindee. First, my plate is always full: I always have something to do. I have real ownership of my missions, and I can experiment with my ideas without asking anyone. I really feel the full confidence of my manager, and I think that’s not usual to have this kind of autonomy as a intern.

Being a growth hacker at Mindee is also different from what I knew, because it’s a quality-based growth whereas a growth hacker you’re more likely to work on a volume base growth strategy. They want surgical precision!

The variety of tasks is also quite surprising. I’m writing this article 51 days after my first day at Mindee and I’m very happy to say that no two days have been the same. I don’t know if it’s the same reality for everyone at Mindee, since as you can imagine, there are many different roles. But for the sales team, the specificity of what we are selling and how we sell it, allows us to work on many different topics every day.

I hope that my personal experience will influence your decision to embark on the Mindee adventure: we have multiple open roles right now!