Chapter 1
A first day on a new job is typically filled with a mixture of excitement, nervousness and a healthy dose of imposter-syndrome. Take a deep breath, and know that we recognized something great in you. And we're here to help you achieve it.
The purpose of this book is for you to understand how you can best thrive at Helcim.
Every company is unique, and most people join organizations without a manual on how they can do their best and grow - so we decided to create such a manual for Helcim. These lessons found throughout this book may not work everywhere - every organization has different expectations of what excelling means. However, these reflect our expectations here at Helcim and they will provide guidance and help you find alignment with the organization.
Ultimately, culture is the way people behave and make decisions.
This is especially true when no one is looking. If people behave in similar ways even when isolated from one another, then we can say that they share a similar culture. Culture is also always evolving, and so is this book. As you learn your own lessons and find clarity, we invite you to share your insights with us. We also invite you to reach out in times of difficult decisions so we can find direction together, and then share those discoveries with the rest of the team through this book.
In this book you'll also learn about our core values - the foundation behind our decisions, actions, and ideas. Our values form our identity - we stick to what we think is right over what is easy and, as a result, we've attracted like minded people full of passion, integrity, and talent.
So welcome to Helcim, we're thrilled to have you join us on this adventure!
Chapter 2
Our mission is to build the world's most loved payments company. Our vision is a future where small businesses are empowered to compete on par with giants.
As an organization, we need to collectively aim for a greater purpose. Beyond a paycheck, what makes us get up in the morning and bring our best to our work? What is our purpose as an organization? A concise mission statement helps us define who we want to be. The vision statement communicates the impact that we hope to have. We filter our decisions through those statements and they give us a clearer idea on the right path to take.
At Helcim, our mission is to build the world's most loved payments company. Love is a bold word to use, but bringing humanity and heart behind our decisions has always been a huge part of who we are. Love also encapsulates so many aspects of our service that we strive to make great. If our customer service isn't great, if our payments are not fast, if our software is not seamless, then merchants will not love us.
We're passionate about small businesses, and the giant impact they have on the economy and our society. We care about how they are treated. We care about them not getting dragged through the mud by an unkind payments industry. We care about their experience with us and the value they get from our service. Ultimately, we truly care that our merchants love the choice they made in picking Helcim.
We're also very ambitious, and we want to build a giant payment and technology company right here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We want our mission to reflect that, and we feel that by aiming to be the "world's most" helps solidify that goal. We want to show the world that you can build big, successful companies while never losing your heart.
Often misspelled as Helium, Hellsim, Helcium, it has six letters "H E L C I M" and is pronounced "hel-sim". When we started the company, we picked an old latin word with little meaning so that we could mold the world's understanding of this word to be singularly and entirely our own:
Helcim means doing things right, even when it's harder.
At a young age, doing the right thing seems obvious. Be honest, be kind, be fair. Those lessons are repeated throughout our childhood and children take pride in seeing themselves as stewards of these values.
But when you enter the business world, things blur and those values are constantly being questioned. "They screwed everyone over and they're now rich - does doing the right thing get in the way of success?" As we built this company in an industry known for deceptive practices, we constantly faced those decisions. "Do we take the easy way, but erode trust? Or do we take the hard way, and hope that our team and our customers will appreciate our decision?"
We decided early that the hard way was our way. That short-termism and profit-at-all-costs is what ultimately leads to the downfall of companies. We believe that the 21st century is bringing a new generation of companies that will rise above the old ways of doing business. That this is the era of companies with values and character.
People want to be part of something they believe in, whether that is as a team member, a merchant or a shareholder. By being that company, we believe that we will continue to attract the best people. These passionate and talented individuals will continue to create the best products. Our merchants will feel appreciated and spread the word about our brand, and we will ultimately build a wildly successful company that will outlast others.
So when facing a tough decision, we continue to ask ourselves "Is this the way of the Helcim?" That question will help us determine how to proceed.
Be honest, be kind, be fair.
Do things right, even when it is harder.
This is what Helcim means.
Chapter 3
We build things ourselves and we build them well. We use technology and our creativity to overcome challenges that would seem beyond the capability of a company our size. We improve what is already there, invent our way out of problems and we never stop dreaming of better.
As an organization, we're constantly faced with the following question: should we build, or should we outsource?
We choose to build, because greatness is achieved by builders. Great companies, great products and great experiences are built. We cannot outsource our way to the quality that we want to deliver to our merchants - it is only achieved by rolling up our sleeves and pouring ourselves into the work. It allows us to be our most creative and to take bold steps.
Building is also key to learning and the growth of our team. By building things, we learn by doing and we're therefore more likely to remember lessons learned and be able to apply them in our next iteration. It also gives us a better understanding on how things work, and on what works and what doesn't. Even when our first iterations fail, we learn so much through the exercise that it is worth the pursuit.
So what do we build at Helcim? We build software, we build products, we build our brand, we build trust, we build relationships, we build our people, we build our talent, we build our skills, we build our future.
We are builders.
We believe that the right decisions are usually the harder ones, so we embrace the challenge and endure when others quit. We choose what is difficult because it is more rewarding in the long-term, and makes us resilient, so that we not only survive but thrive.
"Easy" oftentimes means winning in the short-term at the expense of building for the long-term. Too many companies are a house of cards, with artificial short-term wins masking their long term problems. Those few people at the top may exit unscathed, while their customers, their partners, their shareholders, and their employees bear the ultimate burden of their fall.
We instead choose to be a 100-year company, to denounce short-termism and instead aim to build something that will outlast all of us. Most quit when things get hard, which means there is reward waiting for those that persevere.
Choosing transparency instead of hidden fees is hard. Building amazing experiences for our merchants is hard. Always committing to honesty instead of excuses is hard. Outworking our competition is hard. Staying creative is hard. Training and investing in the people around us is hard. But we will continue to create a successful and long lasting company thanks to those hard decisions.
We choose the harder path.
We earn trust by striving to be our best selves every day and by lifting those around us. We recognize that trust is hard to earn, easy to lose and is tested continuously over time, so we make trust our way of life.
Trust is in short-supply, and continues to remain scarce in many aspects of our lives such as our trust in our government, in politics, in companies, in people choosing to do the right thing. As consumers, we're constantly exposed to companies that break our trust. We experience poor quality, hidden fees, dishonest practices, bad contracts, terrible customer service. Trust is so easily broken and so hard to earn.
But because trust is in such short-supply, those that are trustworthy have become a sought-after commodity, who will clearly stand above the rest. We always aim to be that company, that brand, that employer.
We build trust with our merchants by honoring their choice in our service with honesty, great tools and great customer service. They continue to trust us when we make hard decisions instead of easy ones. That trust in our brand ultimately results in them referring more colleagues to our service.
We build trust with our team members by continuously investing in their growth, empowering them to make an impact on our company and our merchants, choosing transparency over opacity, and creating a company for which they are proud to work. This results in us attracting and retaining the best talent.
And we build trust with our shareholders by remaining focused on executing our vision without succumbing to short-term thinking at the expense of our long-term goals. That results in bringing in investors and partners that are also focused on our long-term prosperity.
We are trustworthy.
We are stronger because of our collective passion, diversity, and fellowship. We believe only great teams can accomplish great things, and we ask the very best of each other. Together we create our own future.
As an organization, we believe that our individual team members, not our merchants, should remain our number one focus. That is not to say that we don't obsess over the well-being and success of our customers - it is only to say that in order for our merchants to be well-served, we first need to take care of our people.
Of all the companies that claim that their customers are #1, how many of them are able to deliver on that promise in the long-term when their staff members are underpaid, under-resourced, and unmotivated? By failing to take care of their people, they are ultimately failing their customers and themselves.
Amazing people create amazing companies, and amazing companies create long-lasting relationships with their customers. That's what we aim to be every day.
We also believe that diversity and having an inclusive culture is not only the right thing, but key to our long-term success. Diversity brings more experience, view-points, knowledge and insight about our future. It also brings understanding and compassion for others, which results in team members who better understand our merchant's needs and are empowered to meet them.
We are a company of many.
Chapter 4
How do you feel when you walk in the office in the morning? Are you excited about working with a bunch of passionate people on something meaningful? Or do you get a pit in your stomach because of disgruntled co-workers, bad bosses or unchallenging work? Our collective goal is to make sure that it is the former, and we're all responsible for creating a supportive environment for everyone that joins our company.
We don't hire assholes at Helcim - no matter how talented or smart they are. If your intentions are to hurt others for your own sake or put your ambition in front of the needs of the team, then this is not the company for you, and we will promptly show you the door.
This is very much a "we" company, not an "I" company. People that thrive at Helcim and advance their careers are those that devote themselves to helping their peers succeed. Regardless of age, gender, orientation, ethnicity, background or even technical ability, when a new team member is introduced the immediate reaction for everyone around them should be to build up that person, help them learn and help them succeed.
Conflict is healthy - we don't avoid it and we do it right
We're an organization that builds people up, but that doesn't mean that we avoid conflict. You'll often find team members wholeheartedly disagree on topics and debate on the best course of action, but this is always done professionally, respectfully and with the right intent - to make Helcim better, our team better, our product better, and our merchants happy.
Further learning: Book: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
We believe that in order for you to do your best work, you need to feel trusted.
Trust is a two-way street - we must trust you, so that in return you can feel comfortable trusting the people around you. As a Helcim team member, you will be entrusted with a lot of responsibility and information. All our livelihoods are dependent on you honoring that trust. As a financial technology company, the stakes are high. Our merchants put their trust in us to keep their information safe, their businesses online and their transactions flowing.
In exchange for that trust that we place in you, we ask you to trust that we will support you in solving issues and learning from them. It is ok to make mistakes; it is part of the process of learning and trying new things. We ask that you're upfront about those mistakes and communicate them early to your fellow team members so that problems can be fixed quickly before they become calamities. We're in this together.
As a Helcim team member, you'll also become a shareholder through our equity / stock-option program. Understanding how our business works, how we survive and prosper, and how we make money, is an important part of learning how you can contribute to our collective success. Once again, trust and transparency are key to that, so we practice open-book management.
The company's financial statements are open and accessible to anyone at the company. These financial statements are extremely sensitive and impact our ability to do business, establish banking relationships, access capital, and reveal a lot about how we operate - so treat them with care.
Further learning: Book: Open-Book Management by John Case Helcim Summary: Open-Book Management
Taking ownership is the most important action you can take at Helcim - not just for your career growth, but also to build trust with your teammates and develop as a professional. If you look at any leader at Helcim, this is the common trait that you will find and serves as a major factor for all career advancements and hires. It's impossible to cover all the scenarios, but this is what ownership looks like:
Taking ownership makes you trustworthy and dependable, and this translates well to any role or task that you take at Helcim. Ask yourself: who would you rather work with - someone that takes ownership, or someone that is negative, delivers shoddy work, and blames others or the environment for the shortcomings of a deliverable? So follow things through to completion, pay attention to the details, actively increase the effectiveness of your function, and admit your mistakes. This never goes unnoticed, and is one of the biggest factors when making major career advancement decisions.
Demonstrating true ownership in your work makes you dependable, and dependability translates well into all roles - both current and future.
Further learning: Video: TED | Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink Book: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
Chapter 5
Bringing affordability to the small businesses that we serve isn’t just a business strategy; it’s a cornerstone of our mission and values. Ensuring that there is transparency and affordability in our pricing is one of the fastest ways to build trust with our merchants, especially in an industry notorious for hidden fees and dishonest pricing.
Affordability doesn’t necessarily need to equate “free” or having rock-bottom rates. Instead, we are driven by the belief that every product we make must create true value for the small businesses we serve. Affordability isn’t just about lowering the costs of running a small business; it’s also about creating a service that fosters lasting relationships and trust with our merchants.
We always negotiate with vendors.
This belief in affordability extends to the way we operate our own business. We’re constantly negotiating with vendors, making sure our costs stay competitive so we can pass that affordability on to our merchants. Therefore every dollar we save matters, and frugality is woven into our culture. We’re thoughtful and deliberate with each purchasing decision—whether deciding to build or buy a technology, or finding ways to streamline our processes. Every choice is made with the long-future of our organization in mind, because we believe that true affordability starts with us.
Our culture book sets the foundation for who we are and how we work horizontally as an organization. Yet each of our departments operate with their own unique challenges and responsibilities that also require a tailored approach. You will find that every team at Helcim has their own internal mission statement and guiding principles. We empower our department leaders to create these with their teams based on their own uniqueness, and find ways to align them within the larger mission of Helcim. We also encourage our teams to regularly review their guiding principles as they scale and continually evolve their approach.
You will find that the team’s guiding principles are written in a way that clearly defines both the positive behaviors as well as the opposite behaviors we want to avoid. This approach ensures that our principles are actionable and practical, not just vague aspiration statements.
For example, here is one of the guiding principles of Helcim’s sales team:
We build trust by educating first and selling second. We don’t lie or obfuscate to convince a merchant to sign up on the spot.
This method of writing helps us prevent misinterpretation and ensures that everyone understands the tangible expectations behind each principle.
We’ve found that team-specific guiding principles help us foster consistency in how work gets done within each of our teams. When everyone knows what the guiding principles are, decision making, accountability, and collaboration becomes easier, and teams are more capable of achieving their best.
Adopted from Netflix’s culture book, we subscribe to the concept of “talent density”. It means that in order to achieve great things, our organization must have a high concentration of amazing individuals.
As part of our bottom-up hiring culture we don’t limit our “talent” label to only experienced senior professionals, we also recognize the potential in junior professionals with strong work ethic and an appetite to learn from high-performers. Ultimately, we measure talent as those with a passion to grow their craft and are willing to work hard, bring their best and collaborate to achieve great things.
We don’t settle for adequate
In order to achieve talent density, we expect our managers to bring this mindset to every team in every function of our organization. We do not subscribe to the notion that a team can be composed of both high-performance individuals mixed with “adequate” performers - our experience has been that even just a few adequate performers brings down the entire team.
The power of being surrounded by great people
We believe something amazing happens when you become surrounded by talented, hard-working, and kind yet passionate people. It brings out the best in yourself and you start aiming higher and achieve a level of excellence that you didn’t know was possible.
Simply said, talented people want to work with other talented people. When you are surrounded by top talent, you are more likely to be inspired, motivated, and challenged, leading to better work and better outcomes.
Everyone says that they love small businesses, yet the actions of most companies actually suggest otherwise. Compared to enterprises, small businesses typically get worse pricing, sub-par customer service and are treated as just another number on a spreadsheet.
We take a different path and aim to always empower our merchants, no matter how small.
First, we are empathic to the uphill battle that is the life of a small business owner.
The odds are against them as they compete in a world ever more dominated by monopolies and giants. We realize that every one, no matter the size, represents the sweat, blood and tears of individuals pouring themselves into creating a successful business and transforming their economic security. Small business owners create the vast majority of jobs in our economy, give their employees a chance to gain experience in the workforce, and ultimately these businesses keep our communities running with the products and services we all need.
Our empathy and appreciation for the struggles of small business owners is in-part why we are so focused on bringing pricing affordability to our merchants, as well as ensuring that everyone, no matter the size, gets access to amazing customer service.
Second, we put as much value in our existing merchants as we do in potential new ones.
It is so easy for companies to get overly focused on enticing new customers while taking their existing ones for granted. We recognize that our existing merchants are our most powerful advertising channel, and how we treat them everyday ultimately will determine our ability to attract more of their peers. We also recognize that it is much less costly to retain a merchant than it is to attract a new one.
With each of our actions we must first ask ourselves how it will be perceived by the merchants that have continued to put their trust in our company, year after year. We keep them in mind with every line of code we release, with every pricing decision that we make, and with every change to our operations that ultimately impacts their business.
Chapter 6
We want Helcim to have as little organizational barriers as possible when it comes to communication and solving problems. You can talk to your manager, your manager's manager, you can talk to executives, and you can talk to Nic - without the need to ask for anyone else's permission to do so.
If you believe that there is a communication breakdown that is stopping a problem from being resolved or have a new solution that could benefit the whole company, we encourage you to break hierarchical structures or department silos and find the right person to communicate with.
We find that writing is critical in taking blurry ideas and turning them into clear concepts. While a board full of sticky notes has its place and is a great way to capture a wide-range of possibilities, the format does not enforce constraints. Writing down a plan in a document takes that world of possibility and forces you to make choices, construct arguments and ultimately the process serves as an important first round of decision making with yourself. Getting good at writing takes time, but the investment is one worth practicing as the skill will help articulate your vision and goals more effectively.
We also believe that some of the best collaboration and debates happen in shared-documents, allowing a wide-range of stakeholders to asynchronously learn, debate and become part of the decision making process.
Reducing unnecessary meetings
The ability to asynchronously absorb information through reading is also key in reducing unnecessary meetings. You will be hard-pressed to see meetings at Helcim where teams simply "present" information; we instead encourage that information to be put in the form of writing for it to be read prior to a meeting. Meetings at Helcim are focused on debate and decision making.
We also find meetings to be an ineffective structure for "brainstorming" or idea generation. While it may seem like a cliche that the best ideas come when you are in the shower - our experience has shown that there is very much a truth that the best ideas come from moments of solidarity, often when we are doing something outside work.
We believe that a strong reading and writing culture fosters collaboration and ensures transparency through the ability to share information more broadly across our organization. And just as importantly, our reading and writing culture reduces unnecessary meetings (something we can all rejoice in).
Based on Sam Walton's "sundown rule", all emails, voicemails and phone calls should be answered within the same business day. This is especially important when dealing with merchants and partners, who should never be left in the dark for long. The sundown rule is important to remaining a fast and high-functioning organization.
There are roles that require you to always be on top of your emails and other methods of communication, such as Customer Service, Risk Analysts, PR, etc. For these, you should be trained by your manager and peers on how to manage your daily workflow, including emails.
The sundown rule is more relevant to roles that do not revolve around frequent email communication, such as developers, videographers, designers, etc. These roles typically require high-focus on a single task at hand - emails, calls and chat are distractions that break concentration.
Our minimum expectation is that you check your email three times per day: first thing in the morning, at noon and at the end of the day.
Doing so will allow you to stay in the loop with any internal and external communication, while allowing you to do focused work for the majority of the day.
When the communicated items or requests need more time to resolve, the expectation is still to reply within the same business day, and communicate a clear timeline on when an answer will be provided. We implement this within reasonable limits - it is ok to respond the next day if the communication is non-urgent and came in late in the day.
In most circumstances, we believe that point form is the best format when writing emails. Point-form emails are easy to write, but most importantly, easy to read and absorb by the receiving party - this should be your goal if you want a good outcome from the communication.
You should shy away from writing long 'essays' with large paragraphs, as these require a lot more energy to read and understand, and therefore decrease the chance of your message to be understood. Point-form emails force you to extract the important data that you want to communicate, and force you to make sentences short and clear.
Point-form emails should still have proper sentence structure. We recommend for them to be written in the following structure:
Introduction to what this email is about
conclusion and thank you
Tone and politeness
It is also important to remain professional and polite with all of our communication, both internally and externally. We should clearly communicate when things are urgent or when errors have been made, but we should never personally attack or be rude.
A good rule-of-thumb is to assume that all emails are public and could be read by anyone. When dealing with an especially frustrating situation, ask yourself "How comfortable would I be if this email was on the front-page of a newspaper?" Always communicate in a way that you can be proud of and stand behind, especially once emotions have calmed.
You might think that design does not impact you because it is unrelated to your work (unless you're a designer) - but design is more than just making things pretty.
Visual design is about effectively communicating ideas, tone, and how others perceive the quality of your work.
Regardless if you're composing an email, creating a report, outlining a sales proposal, or preparing a company-wide presentation, how your document is visually presented will impact its ability to convey its message. It's easy to say "I suck at design", or "that's the design team's problem", but as Helcim team members and professionals, we set a high-bar for ourselves in everything that we do. For those that feel they lack visual design abilities, learning the basics will have a bigger impact than you might expect. Just like grammar and sentence structure, everyone is expected to be an effective communicator, and visual design is part of that.
The expectation isn't for everyone else to become great designers. The Helcim design team is ultimately responsible for our style guide, brand identity and making sure that every major design we publish elevates our merchant's experience. The expectation is for everyone to show effort in understanding the basic principles and therefore become better communicators.
Further learning: Video Series: Beginning Graphic Design by GCFLearnFree.org
Chapter 7
Everyone has a different idea of what they want out of their job and work. Some people aim to be the top expert in their field, others simply aim to be great at their work. Some aim to run the entire company, and others want to put greater focus on work/life balance.
Ultimately, you need to make the decision of what you want out of your career. And remember that the people around you are making different choices about theirs and we, as leaders of Helcim, must evaluate how we build and evolve our team based on all of those choices (yours and your peers).
You need to be in the driver's seat
Helcim is a teaching organization - we're all committed to sharing our knowledge and teaching what we know to those around us.
When it comes to professional development, the initiative needs to start with you. You will learn a huge amount on the job from company training and your peers, and Helcim is committed to supporting our team members seeking professional growth (both financially where we can, and by creating space and opportunities for you to do so). However, the responsibility of continuous professional growth is ultimately on you to seek and explore. Over the course of human history, we have never had more knowledge available at our fingertips than we do today. Books, online courses, technical training, etc. are more accessible and affordable than ever before. It is your responsibility as a professional to stay atop of trends and to keep your skills sharp.
Taking ownership of your career means putting in extra on your own time to build your skills - just like holders of professional designations are required to do continuous professional development to retain their membership. It also means making better use of your regular time with Helcim by leveraging the resources around you to better yourself and to take on new challenges.
When it comes to onboarding new talent at Helcim, we don't only hire experienced professionals but also find value in hiring juniors and giving them ample opportunities to learn and grow their careers - we call this “bottom up hiring”.
While many companies disproportionately focus on hiring experienced pros, we believe that having a strong concentration of juniors professionals brings us unique advantages.
First, we love the eagerness, high energy and adaptability that junior professionals bring.
Their enthusiasm is contagious, driving momentum across teams and inspiring others to push boundaries. This high energy also fuels the creativity of our team, as juniors are often willing to tackle problems with fresh eyes. This vibrant energy not only enhances productivity but also cultivates a culture of continuous improvement.
Second, it builds trust and loyalty within our team.
We pride ourselves on the number of Helcimers that started their career at our organization and grew their roles and responsibilities over time. We give juniors a chance to start their careers at Helcim, we invest in their growth, and we provide ample opportunities to take on more challenges and grow their career quickly. The benefits of long-term staff retention far outweigh the ongoing investments in training. By investing in the development of our junior talent, our company creates a pipeline of homegrown talent that is deeply aligned with our values, contributing to long-term growth.
Combining the right balance of junior and experienced professionals
While bottom-up is a key part of our culture, it only works if our junior professionals have the support and leadership of veterans that have seen it before. Helcim also invests in recruiting experienced talent and placing them in all functions of our organization. As part of that recruitment, we look for professionals who are passionate about training the next generation of talent in their field regardless of their position; every person can be a leader.
We believe that teams across our company will typically thrive when they have the right balance between juniors that are eager to learn, and experienced professionals that can teach and help guide them. Overtime we’ve found that this balance is typically a 3:1 ratio, although it will vary from team to team. We’ve also found that seasoned people leaders are key in accelerating the development of our team members.
A company-wide commitment
Bottom-up hiring demands a strong commitment to the approach. It requires the courage to entrust less-experienced individuals with a lot of responsibility, and acknowledgement that failure will happen as team members learn how to succeed. This approach also requires an organization-wide focus on continuous mentorship. Everyone at Helcim is a teacher.
In the end, bottom-up hiring is a choice that we've made and committed to - it is part of the way of the Helcim. We are builders - this not only applies to our products and processes but, most importantly, our people.
We believe in achieving great things at this company, for the small businesses that we serve and for all of our team members entrusting their careers in our organization.
And in order to achieve great outcomes in a competitive and complex world, it means that we must take both a smarter and harder approach to the work that we bring every day.
The 2x2 quadrant
As part of our performance expectations, we use a simple 2-by-2 “Smarter and Harder” quadrant as shown below. The bottom row recognizes the effort of putting in more energy, effort and time to get the job done, while the left column looks at the investment in working smarter to produce great results. At Helcim, we value both of these things, the magic happens when we are working both smarter and harder.
What smarter means at Helcim
To us smarter means work that delivers great results for the organization.
Working smarter is working on the right problem and setting a high bar on the quality of what is being delivered. It also means being fearless in trying to identify the right problem to work on, scoping it properly, and not avoiding conflict when that fastest path to an answer is to pick up the phone and talk to someone, whether another team member, customer or vendor.
Nuance is a professional skill that takes years to build.
Earlier in careers it is easy to fall prey to dogmatic approaches to getting work done, but nuance is the true skill behind smarter work and it takes years of experience to fine-tune. Nuance helps discern the fine line between maintaining quality and meeting deadlines, knowing when it's acceptable to make compromises without jeopardizing the project's integrity. Nuance helps us recognize when a project is no longer viable and make the tough decision to halt it, or identify the moments when swift action is necessary to achieve a critical goal. Finally, nuance also gives us a better understanding of Helcim - our industry, our strategy, our goals - and how what we do (or don’t do) lines up with our success. This guides the way we have conversations, how we prioritize tasks and how we ultimately deliver on our work.
What harder means at Helcim
Hard work is measured by the effort, dedication, and amount of hours a team member puts into their work. And while hours is an imperfect tool, combining this with outcomes has served us well in identifying those that are driven to apply themselves.
Helcim is simply not a 9-to-5 company.
Anyone working 9-to-5, regardless of the quality of their output, lacks the ambition that we want to see at our company. We are a group of driven people that are passionate about the organization that we are building and the impact that our mission has on our small business owners, and we want to surround ourselves with others that share this drive.
We see hard work as a reflection of your work ethic, your dependability to your team, the initiative that you are willing to take and your commitment towards the important projects.
Bottom-left quadrant: while this may be enough for other companies, at Helcim we aim higher
The spirit of 50
While Helcim is not a 9-to-5 company, we are also not a 80-hours a week company and while we value and reward hard work, we also believe that building a company is a marathon, not a sprint, and that too many hours bring burnout, dissatisfaction, less creativity and diminishing returns.
We do not time-track, but instead lean into what we call “the spirit of 50”. An average of 50 hours per week is the sweet spot for our organization, and is one of the measures of “hard work”. We are unafraid to state this as our transparent way of removing ambiguity in the expectations that we have for our team members.
For some “the spirit of 50” means going home on time and catching up on their laptops for a few hours in the evening. For others it's about spending an afternoon on the weekend moving a project forward. For operational teams with more structured schedules, it means showing up 30 minutes early to catch-up from the previous day, taking shorter lunches to help a merchant, and staying an extra 30 minutes at the end of a shift to help out the team. It means raising your hand for on-call and weekend shifts, and always bringing an effort beyond the minimum.
We also train our team and leaders to practice oscillation. When demanding crunch periods occur, we encourage our team members to rest and reduce hours on the other side to even out.
We hire junior professionals driven to accelerate their careers
From athletes to musicians to web designers, what allows you to become great at your craft is your willingness to apply yourself - which includes dedicating long hours towards that mastery. Famous author Malcolm Gladwell coined the 10,000 hour rule - that it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of complex skills and material.
Therefore, if you are still within the first decade of your career the odds are that you are becoming better at your job, but you have yet to become great at it. There are so many experiences to be had, mistakes to be made, and amazing lessons to be absorbed from those that have come before you.
A 9-to-5 pace provides you with ~2,000 work hours per year. If half of your time (1,000 hours per year) is spent developing your technical skills (coding, data modeling, copyrighting, etc.) and the other half is spent developing your professional skills (collaborating, prioritizing, solving problems, leading, coaching, etc.) then it will take about 10 years for you to become a senior professional at your craft.
But junior professionals have an advantage; time is on their side.
We take pride in our bottom-up hiring approach and aim to give our junior professionals an opportunity to accelerate their careers. This is accomplished by pairing our juniors with experienced leaders as well as giving them big responsibilities and an opportunity to make an impact. It also involves us hiring people that are driven to achieve mastery in less time.
Bottom-right quadrant: our junior professionals as they apply themselves to build their craft
We value senior professionals that bring great outcomes
At Helcim, we also have experienced professionals that bring nuance to their function, and who teach our junior professionals how to do the same.
We also understand that some of these professionals are in different parts of their life and career, and that not everyone at this stage in life is able to bring the Spirit of 50 tempo that is Helcim. We’ve learned that the smart work, great outcomes and the positive impact that they bring to their teams makes them critical contributors to our success, even at a reduced pace.
Again, there is no 9-to-5 at Helcim, but we provide greater flexibility to those that bring great outcomes for our company and the more junior professionals they help develop.
Top-left quadrant: senior professionals dedicated to great results
Leaders and managers at Helcim lead by example
Helcim’s leaders and managers are some of our most driven individuals, and they set a high standard for the rest of the organization to strive towards.
We expect them to have a deeper awareness and understanding of the bigger picture and bring this to their decision making. That means understanding the goals of not only their team, but the teams around them and how all of our efforts contribute to what we’re trying to achieve as an organization.
Our leaders make their work smarter by bringing a horizontal view to solving problems at hand and find efficient ways to use their resources to get them solved. They are also unafraid to set higher expectations for their team (both in terms of smarter and harder work) as they bring that same intensity to themselves everyday.
Top-right quadrant: where Helcim’s best lead by example
We are ambitious because our mission matters to the small businesses we serve.
At Helcim, we believe that great output leads to great outcomes, and that this is achieved by all of us working both smarter and harder.
Helcim does not have an official career ladder system, and it will probably be a long time before we do. There are both pros and cons to this, but that is the reality that comes with joining a startup. On the pro side, everyone at the company gets to have a large impact on the outcome and has an ability to learn and grow at a much faster rate than they would at a large company.
There are less "rules" about how one's career should evolve over time - you don't need to wait 4 years to become a Manager and 10 years to become a VP. Helcim makes its own rules and there are so many opportunities for our team members based on how they seize them. No matter what your role, your responsibilities are many and you get access to an amazing team full of talent and knowledge that is eager to share.
Getting comfortable with constant change
Startups are not for everyone. Less structure isn't always ideal for some - there are cons.
Fast growing organizations need to constantly adapt and change which means less structure and less clarity on the path ahead. When a company doubles in size every 18 months or less, it means that there must be a lot of structural change constantly on the go in order to make it work. For those looking for a clear path and clear structures on how to grow your career and progression, this may not be an ideal place. The reality is that we don't know what our needs will be even in the next six months. You have to learn to adapt and take opportunities when they present themselves.
Those that have had tremendous success at Helcim have taken their development into their own hands, and as a result have been able to experience hyper-growth - more than what might be possible at other companies.
1:1 meetings are a crucial part of your career development, and one of the best ways to explore ways to grow your career. These meetings are a safe place for you to vocalize ideas that you have for your future. If you are not using your 1:1s with your manager (and their manager in skip-level 1:1s) to build your skills and explore ideas outside of your regular work, you are squandering a big opportunity. Try using your meetings with your manager to:
Status updates should almost always be handled in a different setting, not as part of your 1:1s. Remember, having 1:1s is a large part of your manager's job. If you've taken it upon yourself to lead your meetings and your manager is not willing to engage in these topics constructively, then escalate the concern.
Further learning: Book: High Output Management by Andy Grove Helcim Summary: High Output Management
We want you to take on challenges that seem daunting and encourage you to step outside of your comfort zone. Most importantly, we will support you through the failures and the mistakes. And they will happen. You will poorly handle a customer call. A marketing campaign will fail. You will deploy buggy code. You will crash a server. You will hire the wrong person. You will mishandle a conflict. There is no forward progress, no learning, without trial and error. If you don't make any mistakes, you're likely not getting outside of your comfort zone.
Helcim is an organization that takes risks, like the way that we hire and develop talent through our bottom-up hiring process. It would be unrealistic for us to be focused on hiring junior talent, give them big responsibilities, and yet be unsupportive when they inevitably fail every now and then.
There are certain parts of our business where we are more risk averse than others. For things like our infrastructure, our security, and our core payment processing functions, we have little appetite for risk and so we put ample processes and protections in place to reduce those risks. But there are many more parts of our organization where we're very risk forward, and welcome the rewards that those risks bring.
So take leaps of faith and try things that seem daunting. When screw ups occur, be upfront and communicate those mistakes early to your fellow team members so that problems can be fixed quickly, and we can prevent those mistakes from becoming calamities. Trust that we will support you through the process, and that messing up is an expected part of this company.
How you respond to a mistake you've made will say so much more about you than the mistake itself.
Chapter 8
Leadership and management are often used interchangeably, but they are two different concepts. A manager must be a leader, but a leader is not always a manager.
At Helcim, we believe that first and foremost a leader is someone that builds up the people around them and positively impacts more than their role and their immediate responsibilities. This is not something that requires direct reports nor a management title, but instead is something that should be reflected in everyone's work. A leader:
Leaders are the north star of the people around them. They provide guidance and their actions serve as a constant reference point for our values. Every single team member at Helcim benefits from the great leaders all around them, and not just their managers. Being a bottom-up organization, we must all be contributing to helping and amplifying one another so that we can all keep progressing forward.
Every single person at Helcim needs to strive to become a leader. This doesn't mean that everyone needs to be a manager with direct reports, but we expect everyone to cultivate their leadership traits and the impact that they have on the people around them.
Further learning: Video: Camille Fournier on Managing Technical Teams Book: The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier
We believe that a manager’s primary responsibility is to ensure their team’s success - not just their happiness.
It starts with fostering a positive, fair, and supportive workplace as a foundational requirement in you being an effective manager and leader at Helcim. Ultimately we see the manager’s role is to guide their team toward excellence, helping them reach their potential and contribute to the organization’s success.
We challenge a common pitfall where new managers can mistakenly see their role as shielding their team from hard work and difficult challenges. This is a leadership trap that often leads to burnout for the manager and deprives the team of opportunities to grow, learn, and prove their resilience. The reality is that challenges are a catalyst to your team’s growth, and avoiding these challenges will only hold the growth of your team.
A manager’s job is to create a culture of continuous learning, where you give your teams the room to be challenged and develop new skills. We focus on creating opportunities for growth, setting high standards, and holding everyone accountable. Managers are here to make the organization win, and when the team delivers, they win too. Success is our driving force, and it’s achieved through everyone embracing hard work, not by avoiding it.
Great managers are problem solvers and help bring clarity and direction in times of ambiguity. Building on top of a leadership foundation, a manager takes on the direct responsibility of a team and the ownership of their execution. They are enablers and empowerers, aiming to do everything they can to allow the team to bring their best work and execute on the objectives at hand. A manager:
Finding reward in leading others
When starting a career, it is common for people to shy away from management roles. They can seem daunting, with many fearing that they lack the interpersonal skills to navigate the job. But if you've ever experienced a poor manager, the reason is likely because they were a poor leader. Being a leader is one of the hardest parts about being a manager, but with that nailed down, management simply refers to a set of additional responsibilities. Everyone is expected to become a great leader at Helcim, and that leadership takes various forms. Forget the "charismatic" stereotype of a leader, and instead know that great leaders arise from all personality types.
No product, system or service lives in isolation of the great people that build and maintain it. For those that aim for greater ownership and responsibility, ultimately this will lead to managing the great people that make that system a reality. Said simply, you can't be responsible for the machine without also being responsible for the squishy humans that run it - they come hand in hand.
This can be a daunting task, but management like all other skills can be learned. We're here to help you develop those skills and empower you to take on what may seem like daunting challenges.
It is common in companies to interpret the term "individual contributor" (IC) as a career path for those that don't aspire to be managers. At Helcim we understand that management is not for everyone and that there needs to be viable career options for those that want something else. However, this is sometimes misunderstood as an individual contributor being a lone wolf, which is incorrect. Instead, everyone at Helcim needs to strive to be a leader to the people around them regardless of having direct reports. To better understand the IC path, there are a couple concepts to grasp:
Radius of impact - This refers to the sphere of people that are impacted by your work. Are you a lone individual working on a small feature, or are you building frameworks to enable others to work, build and create faster? Are you impacting the growth of a small team or an entire department?
Leverage - Leverage is the ability to achieve exponential benefit from your initiatives. High leverage activities are typically those that focus on coaching, training, building processes, building tools, and crafting a culture.
Regardless of how you want to build your career, you need to progress in one or both of the above to advance beyond a certain level. Both management and individual contributor streams require making the people around you more effective, but in slightly different ways. An individual contributor:
Our organization needs both individual contributors and managers in order to thrive. We want to encourage both paths, while removing the fears and barriers typically associated with management.
Chapter 9
Just like everything in life, your journey at Helcim is what you make of it. Every small step will contribute towards a bigger achievement, both in your individual work and the steps you take to develop your career. Through this book you will have seen opportunities for further learning and reading. We encourage you to dive in - you'll find copies of the books referenced in this document in the Helcim library alongside many other great books.
Ways to participate
Town halls - We have an all-hands-on-deck meeting every month. This gives us a chance to regroup all together, go over our financial statements, and discuss the most pressing items impacting our company and our future. We also have a Q&A section where all questions, no matter the topic, are answered - so ask questions that are most pressing to you.
Captain's log - Helcim's internal newsletter, appears in your inbox every Thursday. Everyone can contribute to its content, from company news to social events.
Coffees, chat rooms and lunch rooms - We’re privileged to work in a great office next to beautiful Prince's Island park. Take teammates out for coffee or lunch, or invite new people for walks and get to know them. We also have a ton of chat rooms, some company-wide, others specific to teams and products. Don't be afraid to raise your hand and lend your opinions, or simply say hello.
Passing the torch
While you may feel like a newbie now, sooner than you think you will be surrounded by fresh faces looking for guidance. We ask you to remember how welcome your team made you feel when you started, and for you to continue the tradition. Soon enough you will be seen as a leader and senior and will become part of the culture that is this company.
Lend a hand, and help the people around you discover the way of the Helcim.
Think Helcim is the organization you've been looking for? We're always looking for amazing people to help us build. Visit our career section and apply to join our team.
