Ushur’s first boomerang employee is a major company milestone. Here’s why.

In the startup world, company milestones come in all shapes and sizes. There are obvious ones, milestones that measure growth, finance and innovation. And then there are others that will never be reflected on a balance sheet, markers of progress that indicate positive growth around foundational aspects like culture, leadership and company building. These soft metrics are often harder to quantify, but are arguably as critical to the long-term viability of a company. They manifest as moments of unexpected success and joy. They serve as an indicator that a company has been architected the right way. Recently, we achieved one of these milestones, one that fills me with personal gratification — we had our first boomerang employee. Our brilliant head of HR, Sarah Stevens, has returned. 

Anyone who knows me well will tell you that I am a people person. I place a tremendous amount of value on relationships, and whether they are business relationships or personal, they are never transactional. I make it a point to stay in touch, to check in. Every time I’m in my car, you can bet I’ll have dialed an old friend to check in. If you’re in my digital rolodex, you can probably expect to hear from me once every couple of years — at the very least. It’s why I’ve remained in touch with so many former colleagues, teammates and employees over the years, and no small part of why Henry and I founded Ushur in the first place. 

Simply put, we enjoy people. We take tremendous pride and pleasure in making their lives better, whether it’s through the platform we’ve built or the connections maintained through an occasional phone call. The importance of maintaining strong, lasting and positive relationships with my employees — both present and former — is one aspect of what makes Sarah’s return so gratifying. I was over the moon to see a former Ushur teammate return, not simply because it validates the culture of innovation, ownership and inclusivity we’ve worked so hard to instill, but because Sarah herself embodies that culture. She was (and is again!) an active builder of that culture. She is the type of scrappy, creative talent that we hope our attitude and approach will continue to attract for decades to come. 

Founders often subscribe to this notion of growth as zero to one, one to two, two to five, five to ten, ten to 30, 30 to 100, 100 to 300, and so on. It’s like a series of switchbacks on a steep trail, incremental and distinct portions of the journey leading circuitously to an eventual summit. As a bootstrapped company that took very little startup capital at the beginning, zero to one was incredibly hard. We did it with very limited resources and a high product risk. We demonstrated patience in the face of uncertainty, and ultimately laid the foundation for the rapid growth we’re beginning to see today. 

Personally, that level of patience is difficult for me. I have a tendency to beat myself up when I don’t achieve the goals I’ve set for myself. As a runner, I’ve finished marathons and still been upset with my performance because I didn’t set a new personal best. For me, part of my growth as a leader requires being grateful for what I am able to accomplish, to remind myself that there are always things you can do to get incrementally better and that incremental progress is progress just the same. 

Over the years, I’ve tried to apply that same growth mindset to building Ushur by paying close attention to the little things. Every year, I’ve shaved a few seconds off my per-mile time, and just last month ran the fastest 10K of my life. In my opinion, there is such a clear analog between those individual goals and establishing systems and processes that grow our business. Healthy, successful startups change, they go through metamorphosis every year or two years, periods of transition that require you to re-think all of the previous stages, to reestablish new norms. Taking this approach helps me recalibrate my own role to be the CEO of the company for the next stage of our business.  

Every day we are actively laying the foundation that will ultimately allow us to take those strides to grow to 100 and from there to 300. (By the way, those numbers are millions of dollars of annualized revenues which is the primary measure of growth for an enterprise software company.) As with distance running, these are muscle memories that must be built over time. Some are quick fixes, but the vast majority are long poles in the tent. Leaders often think about building culture as a one-and-done exercise. It is anything but. Culture and values can’t be turned on or off on a whim. These are foundational elements that require clear guardrails, and a zero tolerance policy for deviations from those boundaries. 

Sarah initially joined Ushur as a consultant, a fractional HR hire who made her value so apparent and indispensable that within two months she was a full-time leader responsible for our holistic recruiting and people strategy. She started as a director and was promoted to VP of HR in under two years. Sarah is one of those incredibly unique individuals who brings a sophisticated blend of domain experience and business understanding. She doesn’t just get the Ushur philosophy, she embodies it. She internalizes everything about our mission and goals, then blends it into her work. She also has an uncanny ability to understand our technology. Sarah spent the final hours before her first maternity leave getting certified as a user on our platform! That's the level of commitment and scrappiness that she practices. When Sarah left us last August to take a role that would enable her to focus on some of her personal goals, she’d set the bar so incredibly high that we struggled to find someone capable of filling her shoes. For me personally, it was like losing a limb. 

A couple of months ago, I reached back out to Sarah for help at what she does best — recruiting. As a leader, so much of my time is spent focusing on the strategy around our talent, our people, our culture. I needed someone like Sarah to be my right hand, and needless to say I was absolutely thrilled when she expressed interest in coming back to do the job again herself. Her return has been such an incredible gift. I’ve talked often of serendipity, and I feel that life has really presented me with a chance to build my optimal leadership team. As we march from our current base camp to the next, we will bring in new, world-class leaders to create a cohesive team of people to enable this next phase of our journey. It’s a process that has already begun, and that we’re excited to tell you about in more detail - so stay tuned!