It’s not every day you get to cruise down the Spree in Berlin with a a select group of super smart founders. Boris Lokschin, Co-Founder & CEO at Spryker, joined One Peak and a number of talented software CEOs to share his insights into U.S. expansion and senior hiring strategies. Spryker is a leader in commerce infrastructure software, and a One Peak portfolio company.

Check out conversation highlights from the fireside chat here.

7 takeaways from Boris’s experience at Spryker:

1. Start with the executive hire that can free up mental capacity, most.

For Boris, that was Spryker’s CFO. Often, founders’ strengths skew towards sales and marketing, or technology, and getting senior operational leaders in early can help founders focus on what they do best.

2. Over-index on potential, not experience.

Boris believes that functions like sales and marketing will be vastly disrupted over the next five years, having little to do with the sales and marketing organization of the past ten years. The team at Spryker challenges candidates to imagine the future of the organization, so they can double-click on potential, intellectual curiosity, and what they call triple-A criteria.

3. The shelf-life of experience may be shorter than people think.

When thinking about future potential, Spryker assesses a three to five-year horizon. Often, senior hires from established companies “download their experience into the business, especially in the first six to nine months, achieving quick wins,” but they may reach a point “when they open their experience book and the page is empty.” In Boris’s view, that’s when the learning really begins and their potential gets tested.

4. Triple-A criteria can move beyond static words on a page, to policies and practices that boost the entire team’s performance.

Grounded in the belief that “culture is never top-down, it’s always bottoms-up,” the team at Spryker embraces the concept of “herd contributors” — talent who demonstrably add to and improve on the culture. At Spryker, herd contributors are recognized internally and given veto power on all hiring panels.

5. Impact and retention — not necessarily seniority — should drive compensation frameworks.

Spryker chose to break with hierarchical assignments of ESOP (Employee Stock Option Plan) eligibility by rewarding any expert or specialist who is demonstrating significant impact, who they want to retain with a certain added element of equity compensation.

6. Over-invest in getting leadership over to the U.S. early.

It is likely most impactful to have executives on the ground who are focused on sales and marketing, whoever that may be (whether the founder or another senior leader), to integrate the team’s culture from the outset. “Depending on how important the U.S. market is for you, I think the earlier you start to move the center of gravity there, by having not only C-level functions but also VP-level functions, the better it is,” Boris shares.

7. The U.S. market is more competitive in many respects, especially product marketing.

The U.S. market is incredibly crowded and sets a high bar when it comes to product marketing; an important skill to go big on and not shy away from by “being too European.”

To get in touch with our team or to learn about future founder events, contact platform@onepeak.tech.