There is a story told to every new Freshworks employee: It is 2010 & Girish Mathrubootham is very unhappy. He wants the insurance claim for his TV. It broke during shipping from USA to India. Despite 5.5 months of follow up, he has gotten no response.

In his frustration he goes to a forum popular for people moving countries & shares his story. Within a day the shipping company gives him back his money. He even gets a personal apology email from the CEO. Apparently the forum was where the shipping company got a lot of its customers.

I think this Origin story is shared because it showed: * The power users have in the new online world * The need businesses have for tools to navigate this world * That Girish got the idea for Freshworks from this incident * That Freshworks could win via great User Experience

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Yesterday’s IPO shows that they did pull off what they set out to do. The question is how ? They got many things right: market, strategy, product. But I think a big part is what @mrgirish calls their un-copyable competitive advantage, their secret: Their company Culture

Right from day 1 they showed an uncommon focus on their team & culture. And they have managed to scale it across thousands of employees, dozens of countries and a global pandemic.

——— I have tried to consume everything I could on their culture.

Here are the 3 things I pulled out:

INSIGHT 1️⃣: “CUSTOMERS WILL NEVER LOVE A COMPANY UNTILL EMPLOYEES LOVE IT FIRST”

This is a powerful Simon Sinek quote that is at the heart of Freshworks philosophy. They understood that they couldn’t build a great customer experience without a superior employee experience.

It started as a set of First Principles. They were un-written but spoken about a lot & used rigorously while hiring people, building culture & making decisions. But after 3-4 years and several hundred employees the culture had to be made explicit. So @mrgirish & made a list…

It was the things he didn’t want them to lose as they became bigger. This list of 8 things became their Culture Code. It helped them scale to more than a thousand employees spread across several countries. Then a few years ago they further simplified it into an acronym: CHAT

C – Craftspersonship H – Happy work environment A – Agility through empowerment T – True friend of the customer What stands out in these 4 things ? They are all about Customer and Employee experience. From day 1 they saw the link between the two. Long ago @mrgirish explained:

Freshworks has always gotten a love from its customers. Today it is getting a lot of love from investors, press and general public. The secret though I think is the love they have got and given to their employees over the last 10 years. Now for the second insight…

INSIGHT 2️⃣: THE FAMOUS SAYNG ‘CULTURE EATS STRATEGY’ IS INCOMPLETE

This saying is now a cliche but I think it’s incomplete. My addition to it would be: ‘If Culture eats Strategy for breakfast then Lived Culture eats Stated Culture for lunch.’ Let me explain:

Your culture is not what you say. It’s not what’s on your walls or decks. As Freshworks says, “it’s not your foosball table”. It’s the conduct of your people: what they do when no one is watching. 2 days at a company will tell you if the Stated & Lived cultures match.

I haven’t spent time at Freshworks but my guess is that their culture is a lived one. You can see it in how employees talk about them on review sites. How themes of culture are there in every interview their leadership team does. And I think this simple story is indicative:

Pandemic hit most companies badly. Freshworks actually benefited. They used this good fortune to live upto their values. Not only they did not fire a single employee they ensured that no employee of their vendors lost their job: like the cooks & cleaners in their offices.

There is a saying in education: “Children have never been good at listening to adults. But they have never failed to imitate them.” It’s the same with company culture. Freshworks gives every employee a 50 page beautifully illustrated book on their culture & stories.

From what I can see, their culture doesn’t just exist on the pages of that book. It exits in heads & hearts of the employees who work there. That’s why their culture feels lived in & vibrant.

INSIGHT 3️⃣: CULTURE IS CRAFTED NOT COPIED

Culture is powerful as it guides behaviours and decision making across the org. It is the only way for a leader to scale their Values and Vision. And the most powerful cultures are the ones that are crafted FOR & FROM their people.

Cultures are only powerful if they have an emotional resonance. You don’t get that by copying the culture of the current ‘hot’ company. It comes from a mix of the unique beliefs of the founders, values of the early employees & the formative experiences of the company.

The more I dug into Freshworks culture the more I saw this unique mix. You see that in small things like the reverence for Rajinikanth, their concept of Kudumba (family in Tamil), their obsession with coffee & even the employee created cookbook they released during Covid.

You see it in the big things: Their burning desire to build a global SAAS company that started in India, the pride they feel in their Chennai roots & the numerous profiles of their employess on their blog: all written with thought & care.

Freshworks is a global company with clients from 120 countries. But they are very much a product of the City, Country, Team and Founders who built them. Their culture is about being true to who they are & who they want to be. And this is what makes them uncopyable.

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~ 10 years ago at a pitch competition @mrgirish was questioned on the intense competition in his market. He quoted Rajinikanth. Rough Translation: "I will come late but I will be the latest". Everyone laughed & he won the competition. I think this latest IPO is just the start.