[Culture] At Freshdesk, relationships come first; work next

The most practical times to start up is either before you have children and after they’ve left home. However, in the past few years or so, we’ve seen quite a few middle aged people leave their cushy, high paying jobs to start their own companies. The risks are much higher – you probably have children by now and you have a few significant mortgages to close as well and a steady income keeps them at bay.

But there’s another argument, that because the stakes are so high, businesses started by these middle aged ones are probably more well thought out and have a better chance to succeed. There are no numbers that we have to validate this claim, but we know for a fact, that Girish Mathrubootham and his company Freshdesk definitely do so. (Read their whole story here)

Started in 2011, the company currently houses over a 150 employees and is one of the fastest growing solutions provider of customer support solutions in the SaaS space. It is one of the most sought after companies to work for in the startup space in India and the company is also hiring quite prolifically.

But what is it like to work at Freshdesk? What is it’s culture? And what are you up for when you go to work with them? We got Freshdesk’s founder, Girish, in a very candid interview to answer all these questions and more.

Read on –

HE: When you started Freshdesk, did you have a culture of some sort in mind? Or were you too busy getting things started up?

Girish: Even before starting Freshdesk I have run large successful Product teams and I always focus on a simple aspect – Everyone deserves a Happy Work environment. For me it’s always “Relationships first, Work Next”. I believe that building products is like running a marathon and not a 100m dash. So you have to have a team that can go on and on and on for years together winning, laughing and crying together. Also I believe that life is too short to be dealing with jerks – so we try hard not to be one.

HE: Was starting up in Chennai difficult? Were there any challenges you faced because Freshdesk was based out of Chennai?

Girish: I have never felt that. Chennai is where I first tasted success in life and it continues to pull me back (I moved to the US twice and came back on both occasions. We almost moved to Bangalore and dropped the plan at the last minute.) It is almost as if ” I love this city and it loves me back even more.”

So I think we are happy and proud to be a Chennai Startup.

HE: You’ve spent a lot of time in Zoho, whose culture a lot of people speak very highly of. How much of that rubbed off on you and did you carry that over to Freshdesk?

Girish: I have spent close to ten years at Zoho and I love and respect the culture at Zoho. (To put that in context – I changed four jobs in four years and I spent 10 years at Zoho) I would definitely agree that I have learnt a lot about building teams and culture at Zoho and you fill find a lot of cultural similarities. We have also improved on some aspects which we have evolved internally at Freshdesk.

HE: What are the top 4 ideals that you live by at Freshdesk?

Girish: 1. Everyone deserves a Happy work environment

             2. By default trust (everyone)

             3.  Relationships first, Work next

             4. Learning by doing is best way of learning (No classroom trainings)

HE: What is the attitude of coders who have been successful at Freshdesk?

Girish: Our successful coders are like nerds everywhere. They are mostly silent and introverted. They are brilliant in their code. They like playing with their tech toys (think Raspberry Pis or linux boxes or the Philips Hue lights) They let their work speak for themselves and their pays are really skewed and higher when compared to others with similar experience.

In other words, we are an engineering driven company and understand the value of good engineers.

HE: How important is academic background at Freshdesk?

Girish: We don’t worry about fancy universities or degrees. We have someone who hasn’t yet finished engineering. We also have an MBA from Carnegie Mellon.

HE: What do you do for fun at Freshdesk?

Girish: We play foosball. We had our Freshdesk Foosball championship where my team lost in the semifinals. We work. (Seriously, at least for a lot of us, work at freshdesk is a lot of fun. But I know that you won’t believe me and that’s ok)

We also run internal hackathons. Our marketing team once asked “Why should developers have all the fun?” and then we had the world’s first marketing hackathon.(internally) We have a cricket team called the Freshdesk Falcons who won a local tournament two months ago. Our Product manager is also a DJ who likes to keep us on our feet at company parties.

HE: What’s the experience of a new hire at Freshdesk? How do you get them to feel at home?

Girish: We don’t do anything special. We are growing fast but we are organized into smaller teams. So I think the friendly small team first absorbs the new hire and then the other interactions happen during lunch, coffee or company events. We also have recently started our company Intranet and we hope our people will start conversing there.

HE: Culture wise, what are 3 red flags which signal a bad hire?

Girish: 1. Whining / Cribbing

             2. Lack of ownership

             3. Spreading negativity

HE: In one line, what is Freshdesk’s culture?

Girish: This was really tough to answer. So we did a quick hallway poll asking each person to tell us in one line what they really liked about working at Freshdesk. The almost unanimous answer was “Operational Freedom and a fun work environment”

FreshDesk is bound to go places and they’re still a fun, startup-y environment to work for. Want a beach side view as you work for one of the most exciting SaaS companies in the world?

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Raghu Mohan Author 58 Blogs