Hey! I am Ajit, and I am currently interning at Weaviate's Developer Growth team. In this blog post, I reflect on the previous months and weeks to give you a sense of what it’s like to be an intern at such a fast-growing, cutting-edge startup in a highly competitive space.

The Beginnings​

I heard of Weaviate quite early through a video by the Youtuber Fireship and have since used it whenever I needed a vector database for one of my side projects. One such occasion was a hackathon hosted by Anthropic last autumn, where I also met Philip, the Head of Developer Growth at Weaviate. We immediately struck up a conversation about Weaviate and the industry at large. Especially after seeing our Hackathon project, Philip invited me to intern in his team.

Philip’s elaborations around Weaviate during the hackathon were highly interesting, and the prospect of working on something I had used myself in the past was exciting - and so I didn’t hesitate long to take one semester off from my computer science bachelor and join Weaviate.

I view Philip as a manager who often doesn’t decide what the team works on solely by himself but rather seeks to enable and amplify ideas coming from the team itself. The Developer Growth team is responsible for marketing Weaviate to developers, with the goal of making Weaviate top of mind whenever they need a vector database. To achieve this, out-of-the-box ideas for content, collaborations, etc., are key - and these frequently come from the team itself. Even before my internship had officially started, I was challenged to come up with ideas for demo applications to show the capabilities of Weaviate.

I started working on one of these, QuoteFinder, as soon as the internship started, and it became my first project. Creating something completely of my own - from idea to execution - was incredibly rewarding and motivating. Generally, there was a high degree of autonomy - as long as you delivered, you could be very flexible in your working style. In addition to creating applications, I also wrote Jupyter notebooks to demonstrate the latest features of Weaviate and how to use it in conjunction with other services. Importantly, I was able to draw from the years of accumulated wisdom of the team on how to create the most interesting and engaging posts about my work on social media and used it to gain followers for Weaviate and my own twitter account.

Of course, the team can effectively contribute with their own ideas only when the overall goals and visions are clear. Philip gave us this high-level overview by always including us in the currently relevant decisions and concerns of management and the current state of collaboration or competition with other companies.

Branching out: Work in the Applied Research team​

Developing applications with and creating content around Weaviate sparked my interest in the database’s inner workings and technologies. Since Weaviate is 100% open source, I was able to explore the codebase on my own terms. When creating a notebook showcasing binary quantization, a newly popular technique for reducing memory usage, I noticed that one of the vector distance functions, the hamming distance, was not yet SIMD-accelerated. I implemented this and submitted a PR. The Applied Research Team was happy about my contribution and offered to let me be part of their team. The team members were very welcoming and showed me their current work in detail. We agreed that I would dedicate half of my time at Weaviate to the Developer Growth team and the other half to Applied Research.

Reflecting on this shift, being able to move not only between roles but also teams so flexibly is one of the unique advantages of Weaviate - while the Developer Growth and Applied Research teams might not even know each other at other companies, here, my shift in responsibilities was encouraged to bring the already collaborative teams even closer together.

Outlook​

Overall, my time at Weaviate has been amazing, and I am glad to enjoy it a bit longer since I extended my internship by a month. I have gained knowledge and experience in multiple aspects, a few of which I will address now.

First of all, my overview of the AI space and its companies greatly improved. While I had been following the scene closely and had been familiar with most relevant companies before, getting the perspective on strategy, differentiation, competition, and cooperation from inside such a company changed my view greatly.

Technologically, my learning progress was equally strong - collaborating on a codebase with such a high number of contributors was an entirely new experience for me, and it was interesting to see the processes put in place to manage the resulting complexity. My perspective on structural decisions, particularly performance optimization, has also changed. For example, Before the internship, I always assumed that using a non-garbage-collected programming language such as Rust would be the best strategy for maximizing performance. In reality, developer time is limited. Using that time to implement optimizations like SIMD can boost performance significantly more than spending it on a language like Rust, which, while a bit faster, has a slower development process.

Most importantly, though, I now also have a much clearer idea of what technological area and corporate environment I might want to work in later. Like many, I was previously captured strongly by the allure of FAANG. Throughout the internship, I realized how crucial and rewarding it is to feel like my work has a significant impact. This sense of contribution is vital for my motivation - and, therefore, productivity. At Weaviate, I always understood my tasks' impact, and making sure I was aware of it was a priority for the people I collaborated with. I can imagine - and have also been told so by many ex-employees - that this is far less of a priority in larger companies. Working at a startup is, therefore, much more of a consideration for me than previously.

Verdict​

If you are a “Builder”, who likes to create things and see them make a tangible impact, then a Weaviate internship is for you. If you are more on the theoretical side, like to read papers and participate in cutting-edge research, then a Weaviate internship is equally for you. This kind of flexibility is one of the big advantages - Weaviate is full of very friendly people who strive to make anything possible for you if you are motivated. So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and apply below.

Join Weaviate as an intern and contribute to our AI-native vector database!

Stay connected​

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I have wanted to write a blog about the topic of culture for a very long time now. Because - first of all - I find it a fascinating topic. How do you explain culture, how do you put a feeling into words? And second of all, how do you build and scale culture?

"Culture is how employees' hearts and stomachs feel about Monday morning on Sunday night." — Bill Marklein

In my role as head of people and culture at Weaviate, I often find myself talking about creating and sustaining a strong company culture. During interviews, candidates ask, “What do you do to create or foster a strong culture?” And at other times, friends and people I talk with – who are not familiar with the people & culture space – ask what I actually do.

These are very good questions, and since Weaviate’s culture is so central to our business (strategy), it deserved some time to think about and reflect on this. Because it’s pretty hard to really get to the core of culture in a few words or to define specific tasks or projects that result in a strong company culture. Think about the last time you saw a great piece of art; it might be hard to put into words what exactly made it great. You know these things by how they make you feel.

Recently our second company trip took place. This time, it was in sunny Croatia. I was heartened to see lots of IRL evidence of our great company culture: Everyone wanted to make the effort to fly across the continent or globe to spend a week with colleagues. People left partners and families for a week to be together. During the week SO much collaboration happened. People were kind to each other and appreciative of each other's work. It became a tradition that we clapped for every achievement — and there were a lot! At the end of the week my hands hurt because of all the clapping (ha ha). Countless connections were made across teams.

It’s at the core of my job to ensure that people feel part of Weaviate, feel they belong, feel appreciated, and that what they do matters.

Achieving this goal calls for a mix of specific things—I’ve created little rituals that allow employees to highlight their colleagues’ excellent work, scheduled weekly coffee chats where we match employees up across areas, created a “life stuff” Slack channel, and organized company trips all to help people to feel connected and good about their decision to join our company. But there are less-tangible efforts that are equally important.

A lot of our culture comes down to making sure that we live by our company values. It’s the collective effect of all of us being kind to each other, helping each other to collaborate, and communicating in ways that are open and transparent. Yes, that’s a little fluffy but there’s ample research to show that a company culture- driven by values - creates an environment where employees feel supported, valued, and seen and appreciated for who they really are. As a consequence, they are more motivated and productive, and the effort expended to encourage a strong culture delivers very measurable ROI because, like members of a sports team, our team members make Weaviate’s success a personal goal.

A big part of making culture scale – or ensuring that we keep our strong culture as we grow – depends on our hiring process. During this process it’s so important to identify candidates who align with our company values. It’s not that we want to hire a group of people who are all the same; quite the opposite, we want to assemble a diverse team with new ideas that will enrich our culture and company. The best way to find those people – all different but also all fitting in to our culture – is to ensure that each candidate’s personal values align with our company values. That’s a very important check.

Next to that, since candidates meet lots of Weaviate folks throughout the process, we can assess in a less direct way whether they align and match with our people (and their values). For example, are candidates kind in their communication with our recruiter and colleagues during the interview? How do candidates talk when they share examples of their work; do they have a “we” perspective or an “I” perspective? Are they open about salary expectations or whether they’re interviewing with other companies? This is all important information to determine whether we see them working at Weaviate.

Although my colleague Ara and I are the only ones building up our culture on a day-to-day basis here at Weaviate, we’re obviously not the only people who create and sustain the culture. We rely on our co-founders and managers to lead by example. I regularly remind them that others will copy the behavior that they model. Culture is the ultimate collective effort; everyone contributes to it and in the end, it’s defined by our collective behavior—especially in how we act, and are, with each other.

I see the People & Culture team as the ones behind the scenes who activate behaviors that fit with our company values. The way we communicate, the way we interact, the way we stimulate ideas – those things all define culture. So we lead initiatives, but it’s not only us creating and sustaining culture – it’s everyone, because the culture is the people.

Another way to scale culture is to ensure that sharing our company values become part of employees’ performance reviews. This way, we’ll make sure that we actively assess whether people’s behavior remains aligned with our company values. Making this as part of people’s performance makes us aware and keeps us on our toes, too. People can be very good at their job, but if they’re not collaborative or kind or transparent, it’s hard to be successful at Weaviate long term.

We have a great product; working on it and contributing to it is very interesting, challenging and rewarding. I want all of my colleagues to take a lot of satisfaction in doing just that. But I also have a personal goal: That our people join and remain with us because of our strong and enjoyable company culture. The way I can contribute to our success is by helping to ensure that great employees want to join—and stay at—Weaviate.

I want to close with a message that our CEO Bob received. With all the —mostly—intangible work we do, getting messages like this is a great testament to the strength of our value-driven company culture.

Stay connected​

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A new approach to People Operations​

In July I joined Weaviate as our first People Operations Manager. That’s not just a 21st century name for “human resources”, which was traditionally focused on administrative tasks and often seemed to assume that employee retention was a given. The difference is marked by emphasizing “people”—as in real, whole persons.

While People Operations still provides some administrative functions that have not changed much since more conventional days, the main focus has now shifted: today, People Operations is not only operational but also strategic and employee-centric. My goal as People Operations Manager is to build a foundation that can enable and sustain the business, while fostering a high engagement and performing environment. All this leads to additional responsibilities, some of which did not exist before:

• Taking charge of all new team member’s journeys and ensuring they go through an amazing onboarding experience. This is a critical moment, because an onboarding experience that inspires doubt can create an immediate retention challenge. Recent research shows that a positive onboarding experience improves new hire retention by 82%, and productivity by over 70%!
• Creating and maintaining scalable guidelines and processes related to different people-related areas such as payroll, benefits, employee leave, travel and expenses, amongst many others. This ensures there is a solid operational foundation that supports the employee lifecycle and allows the business to operate smoothly.
• Ensuring compliance with relevant legislation and regulations in order to minimize risks. This is especially challenging in a fully remote startup with people employed on several continents.
• Using people analytics to quantify different people-related factors, from the success of our guidelines and processes to the engagement and happiness of our team, to encourage and enable data-driven decisions.
• Perhaps most important: we are the main point of contact for our team on any and all issues related to their interactions with the company as a whole. This extends to providing guidance and advice to managers as well.

At Weaviate we go beyond the traditional HR approach by taking responsibility for each employee’s experience, engagement and well-being across the entire period that they’re with us, in a way that is consistent with our company values, which include kindness, transparency, and trust.

People Operations is especially important to Weaviate because we’re still in an early stage (thus without many established guidelines and processes), growing fast, and talent-dependent. My role is also shaped by the way our company was “born global” and fully remote.

Creating People Operations in an early stage​

One way that Weaviate’s founders set their company on a path to success was by planning for growth rather than just letting it happen organically. They brought in my manager to be Head of People & Culture very early – when there were only about a dozen employees, and the first People Operations hire (myself), has come in shortly after. Companies that prioritize the early hiring of people-related roles demonstrate their belief that roles like ours contribute directly to the success of the business. This gives us the chance to shape and build our company culture, and to establish guidelines and processes early on in the company journey, rather than later falling into the trap of, “That’s just the way we’ve always done things,” a realization that often leads to the rueful realization, “We should’ve tackled this earlier”!

Weaviate’s success depends on being able to attract and hire uniquely talented people who are in high demand. Two ways we achieve this are by searching globally, and by giving employees the trust and freedom to work wherever they are in the world. Since a company of our size can’t create a legal entity in every country where we have employees, we sometimes rely on an “Employer Of Record”—a company that exists to solve this specific problem by having a legal entity in any country where we might hire someone.

Another important aspect to our success is the ability to engage and retain our people. Often, early-stage companies focus primarily on recruitment, and it's only after the team has expanded that retention becomes a priority. Unfortunately, by that point, it can sometimes be too late. This is where People Operations becomes key: by establishing people-focused guidelines and processes that support and enable people, we make a direct impact on employee performance, happiness and retention early on. Having a company culture focused on accountability and commitment, allows us to do so in a flexible way.

One example of this is establishing globally-adapted guidelines around paid time off (PTO), which vary a lot from country to country. At Weaviate we’ve decided to simplify our PTO policy by leaving it flexible: people can take the vacation time mandated in the country where they live and work, of course; but they can also take more days if they need them. Operationally, this allows us to scale PTO and ensure we are compliant in all locations, but our main motivation behind this decision is to give people freedom and flexibility based on trust, which is consistent with our company values.

People at Waviate travel frequently, which means another current priority within People Operations is to define an efficient and scalable travel & expenses policy that can support this now but also as the team grows, ensuring a good balance between allowing people to travel easily and comfortably, while also keeping business costs under control.

Being a fully remote company and following our value of transparency, documentation is also very relevant to us. For this reason, building an Employee Handbook that can act as a single source of truth (not only for people-related topics, but for all teams at Weaviate!) has also become a goal. This will allow people to easily access the information they need anytime.

Taking on the People Operations Manager role at a young company like Weaviate, means that I often have a blank canvas. Creating a set of flexible, scalable and well-understood People guidelines and processes is a challenging but satisfying task, because I know that once achieved, it will reduce uncertainty and time wasted by the rest of the team, and it will improve their experience at Weaviate.

Of course, it would be great to create a perfect guidelines and processes from scratch—one that addresses ever corner case—but the reality is that, it is fine to create them in a way that’s flexible, scalable, and ensures that we have good feedback loops so that employees can help us to iterate and improve it, just as we do our products. Instead of “minimum viable product”, think “minimum viable policy”. This approach is key to building People Operations in a way that can enable and support the business early on, and continue to grow and evolve with it.

Some of the challenges we have are not exactly textbook problems, especially taking into account we are a fully-remote company, a relatively new way of working. Luckily, although they might be new challenges, they are not unique to Weaviate. Those of us working in People Operations find support via peer groups on Slack and Linkedin, where all of us share solutions and best practices. Besides, there are also annual conferences such as “Running Remote”, held every spring in Lisbon, where inspiring ideas related to remote work are discussed.

People Operations is one of the few jobs in which going unnoticed is a compliment​

My goal as a People Operations Manager is not only to ensure our team members are happy and have a great time working at Weaviate, but also to ensure they are free to be as productive and creative as possible in order to maintain our current intense pace of innovation. That means that sometimes, the performance of People Operations can be measured by things that are absent—problems, stresses, distractions, or intrusive processes that interfere with all the others’ ability to achieve their own goals. I also want to also ensure that everything we build is built with our company values at the core, so that our team never experiences any dissonance between their personal interactions with Weaviate and the values that matter to us as a company.

While I’m happy that you’re reading this blog post, I’ll be quite fine if, going forward, my teammates at Weaviate rarely feel that they need to contact me. Don’t get me wrong, I love solving problems, but something I love even more is providing guidance and solving those problems before they come up. So if I rarely get questions or have to deal with tricky employee issues, I’ll take that as an indication that I’m doing a good job!

Stay connected​

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If Weaviate was a typical human child, this is about the stage of development when we would begin using the future tense in speech. And, at about four, kids begin using words that are 100% understandable to strangers, not just family members.

Of course, we’ve been thinking about the future from the very beginning; our fourth birthday is a rare occasion when we’ll dwell on the past for a moment. But coincidentally, one thing that has happened recently is analogous to that hypothetical four-year-old child using language that strangers can understand: In the last few months, we have found that when we talk about vector databases, we’re more widely understood too!

For better or worse, AI-native companies will see ChatGPT as a watershed moment​

The media’s recent obsession with generative AI and ChatGPT in particular was a bit of an early birthday present for Weaviate. Like so many watershed moments in tech—or indeed, in life—this happened at first very slowly, and then all of a sudden.

Slowly…

Around 2014 people tinkered with machine learning and models, thinking of new ways of storing data and representing it. In 2016, Google—which of course had become a global behemoth on the strength of keywords—announced that it would, henceforth, be “AI-first”. A year later, a group of Google scientists delivered a seminal paper, “Attention Is All You Need”, that conceptualized transformers. Seeds were sown.

“I was at a conference in Greece—it was all about linked data—and there was a guy there from the EU who complained that he’d been tasked with compiling a database of all the rivers, lakes, and seas in Europe. ‘The problem,’ he said, ‘is that in German, the word for lake is see.’ My suggestion was, why not use machine learning and just let the model figure it out? Now, that is the go-to answer but back then, it was blasphemy.” - Bob

It was another couple of years before we founded SeMI Technologies, the company that became Weaviate. At the beginning we were influenced by the popular notion of the Internet of Things. We realized that pushing towards the edge meant that companies were dealing with many disparate databases. Our first thought was that we could create a product that unified them.

“That was also a semantic search use case. But as we tried to build the technology there was a point where we got this crazy idea: What if we don't do it on the schema? What if we do it on data? Once we saw the value in doing it on the data, the next obvious question was, shouldn't we also store the data? Because if we want to have efficient retrieval, it doesn't make sense to store it somewhere else.” - Etienne

At the time, we were enchanted with the magic of machine learning and the idea of navigating in a vector space to find things that were logically related. We saw the value in giving people that ability. But sometimes it seemed that only we saw it.

It took a long time to convince people to let machine learning train the model and use the information from the model embedding to organize, store, and retrieve data. It was literally a paradigm shift, and it didn’t come naturally to most potential clients. For a while, we’d give demos in which we used a publishing business as an example. Clients would politely listen and then say, “That’s nice, but we don’t have a magazine.” We had a pitch deck; we raised zero dollars.

“Early on—before we had customers or users reaching out to us and saying, ‘I have a problem that can be solved with vector search’—there was doubt. But the belief in Weaviate was so much bigger than the doubt that it was obvious we should keep going.” - Etienne

As we forged ahead with Weaviate, we gradually built up our company and community of users. Investment, when it came, seemed to happen organically.

And then suddenly…

In the history of AI technology, ChatGPT is just another step. But in terms of enterprise interest in AI, it marks the beginning of a new era. We’re no longer patiently answering questions about which verticals and what use cases. C-level execs are demanding to know how their companies will use generative AI. Customers, including major global brands, reach out to us having already identified specific problems they want our help in solving.

“I'm surprised at what's happening now—not because people get it, it was obvious people would eventually get it—but it was there for a long time; people were talking about it, people were showcasing it. The thing that takes me aback is how suddenly it’s all going now. We’ve gone from zero to hearings in the U.S. Senate in a few months.” — Bob

That change sparked growth. That growth’s forced change​

At that hypothetical four-year-old child’s birthday party, the focus would be on cake and treats. But for us as the founders of a company that’s reached four, the tendency is to look back, and take stock of where we are now.

We’ve accomplished many of the things that we set out to accomplish back in 2019. And as a result, our day-to-day jobs are now a lot different than they were. There are new satisfactions that come from watching Weaviate grow; analogous, we suppose, to the feelings a parent has watching a child develop. But we both have to admit that change brings new challenges and sometimes it means doing less of the things we loved when our company was just a handful of people.

“The difficult thing as a founder is that you want to do everything. You wear too many hats, and if someone else doesn't do something, you tend to say, Okay, I'm wearing 13 hats. I can just put on a 14th hat. Now, I’m reversing that and giving those hats to other people, trusting that they’ll do the right thing. What is left over after that is where I can create the most value.” — Etienne

Etienne was basically our Founding Engineer (although he claims not to have even been familiar with that term at the time). He was the one person who, hands-on, built the first product. From there his role evolved into something like an engineering team lead, then into something like a VP, Engineering. Now it’s evolving further into a classic CTO role. Bob’s role and challenges have changed as much.

“A friend who leads a much larger business than Weaviate warned me that as we grew I’d face two big challenges. One was context switching, and he was right about that. I have days with back-to-back meetings on completely different topics, and that is exhausting. The second thing is, so often when people send these things, I read them, I see them, but the thing he warned me about was, Nothing that comes to me is going to be easy. Even at our current size, every easy problem–including many things that I would have dealt with in the old days–is now managed away. So, the only questions that reach me are hard ones! Even ones that call for a binary yes-or-no answer involve a lot of money or make an impact on people.” — Bob

We recently published a blog post on our plans to grow Weaviate in a “cellular” fashion. We believe that strategy will allow us, as founders, to contribute maximum value while empowering other managers and team members to grow the company, and their careers. We’re living in a unique moment in terms of popular interest—and enterprise acceptance—of AI.

Happy Birthday to us, and thanks to all the people (you know who you are!) that helped us reach four.

Stay connected​

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Over the last few months, we have been recruiting heavily.

Our successful Series B round both encouraged us to ramp up hiring and focused attention on Weaviate. We’ve also recently been mentioned at Google I/O and a Gartner conference. And of course ChatGPT and generative AI are suddenly pop-culture obsessions, which has increased interest in AI-native applications.

A year ago, few people had heard of us; most didn’t even know what a vector database was or how one might be used. But thanks to all this recent attention, we now hear from many more applicants–often before we’ve even announced a new opening. Instead of looking for people, people are often now looking for us. This has got me thinking about the nature of recruiting, and the challenges of finding the (technical) skills that we need in people who share our values and will fit in here at Weaviate.

So, how have we scaled our hiring process? And what personality traits or “soft skills” are we looking for in prospective employees? If you’re curious about either of those things, read on!

Sometimes its feels as if I am running a dating site​

I want to find out who Person A is and what they’re looking for. At the same time, I want to see whether they match up with Person B, who they are and what they’re looking for. (Of course, in this case one of the “people” is Weaviate.)

As in dating, it helps to know what you’re looking for—in this case in a job—and what makes you happy. What are your ambitions?

On the other hand, it's up to us to accurately convey what we’re looking for in any position, what we offer, and the stage we’re at as a company. I’m doing this in a kind and collaborative way that is consistent with our values, so it’s not as if we ask all the questions and the job-seeker answers them. It’s more conversational; a way to see if what you’re looking for and what we’re looking for both match up.

Getting ready for those first dates​

Obviously, your preparation should begin with learning about Weaviate. Our website has a lot of information including other posts in this Meta blog. Look at our Twitter account, our LinkedIn page, our website, YouTube channel and, of course, Google us! And as you get deeper into the process, look up the people you’ll be talking to (but don’t get creepy about it ;-)).

From the perspective of the job-seeker, the goal is often seen as simply: Get the job. But working for a company that doesn’t suit you will ultimately lead to frustration. You should have a clear idea of what you’re looking for from us, too. That is why we like it when applicants ask us as many questions as we ask them! Of course we want to avoid a mismatch from our side, too; we think about what we need, and what we find important in a new colleague. In a nutshell, the hiring process is simply a means of determining if there’s a match between the things that are important to you, and the things that are important to us.

Since we’re a fully remote company, we search for team members who we’re confident will do great work with minimal supervision. These are people who share our goals, take the success of Weaviate personally, and are naturally inclined to take ownership of their work. Since they will do their work with little direct supervision, we need them to seek advice when they feel stuck and tell colleagues if they’re not making progress. That makes good communication skills very important to us. So no matter which roles you have at Weaviate, being a good proactive communicator is essential.

Because we’re growing so fast, we’ve streamlined and formalized our hiring process​

Generally speaking, most of the candidates we’re seeing now fall into one of two categories: Some are people who are intrinsically fascinated by the vector database space and the potential of AI; others are motivated by our Series B announcement and sense that Weaviate may present a great opportunity for growth and to learn. Until recently we proactively recruited a lot of people but now we’re seeing far more unsolicited resumes.

A year ago, if a resume and cover letter didn’t seem to perfectly match what we were looking for, we gave people the benefit of the doubt and interviewed them anyway. But today we’re pressed for time and we’ve come to realize that if a candidate is really motivated, we expect them to make sure that their skills and motivation are reflected in their resume and cover letter. We’re more selective both because we can be and because we have to be.

For the last year or so, we’ve used a recruitment agency as our partner in crime to help identify an initial pool of candidates for open positions. Since our Series B announcement, the managing director of the agency has been working on our account full time as an embedded recruitment lead. He recruited many of the people currently working here and in an initial chat he can usually tell if a candidate ticks the essential boxes of what we’re looking for. For us this is a perfect solution; he’s been working with us for the past year-and-a-half, and has developed a great sense of whether–besides ticking essential skill/experience/talent boxes–a candidate will be a good fit with Weaviate.

After initial selection, candidates move through a four-stage interview process​

It begins with an introductory chat with me. The purpose of this conversation is, again, not unlike a first date. We talk about ourselves and get to know each other. I used to schedule 45 minutes to an hour for this call but to be honest, I found that I had a good first impression in the first 10-15 minutes, so lately I’ve been limiting these calls to half an hour. That still leaves you time to ask some of your own questions.

The next step is a longer interview with the hiring manager. This is a deep dive into both your background and the position on offer. Assuming that goes well, you’ll be given a challenge–this is a work assignment that is realistic for the position; it could take you a few hours. This third interview will again be conducted by the hiring manager but it will also include one or two team members. You’ll talk through your solution to the challenge assignment and discuss it with potential team members. The goal here is to get the best sense of the way you approach your work in a reasonable amount of time and, equally important, to get a feel for a match or natural connection between you and your future team.

The final interview is a cultural interview, again with me. I need to get a sense of how your personal values and work preferences align with our company values. Finding that cultural fit is very important to us. If we have a choice of someone who is 10/10 for technical skills but not the best cultural fit, and another candidate who is maybe an “eight” or a “nine” on skills but 10/10 on culture, we’ll choose the culture match.

Communication and respect are important whether there is a fit or not As you now know if you’ve read this far, this process involves a significant investment of time and effort on both sides. Part of showing respect to candidates is ending the process as soon as it becomes apparent that there’s not a good fit. Next to that, in the past, I typically gave fairly detailed feedback to candidates who were rejected during the process, but I came to realize that people didn’t always value it that much. Now, I usually just tell people that they were not selected, give them concise feedback and offer additional feedback if they wish to hear it.

However it happens quite often that even unsuccessful candidates feel that they had a positive recruiting experience–something I’m very proud of! I recall one applicant who finished his challenge assignment even after he withdrew from the process to continue in his current job. He told us that if we wanted to hire him later, he’d be that much further along in the process. A few months ago, an engineer who was fairly deep into our hiring process changed her mind and accepted an offer from another firm. But she’s stayed in touch and has asked us to let her know the next time that a position opens up that matches with her skills. Reactions like that make me feel that our recruiting process is true to our values–even though by definition we are destined to reject more candidates than we bring on.

Of course for me, this ‘dating’ process brings the most joy when it leads to a perfect match, because while I know we have a great product, our people are the biggest differentiator.

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The last six months we’ve felt a quantum shift at Weaviate. The buzz around generative AI has greatly increased interest in AI-native tech. More and more people realize that a vector database like ours may be nearly essential for most enterprise applications of LLMs. Meanwhile our core open-source technology has passed the MVP stage and new instances of product-market fit are occurring so fast that it’s a challenge to keep up with them.

Hence that quantum shift; now, our challenge isn’t proving that there’s a role for Weaviate in the coming AI disruption, it is determining how best to scale our operation.

As a founder, this is a good problem to have! In many ways, it is the very problem Etienne and I set out to have when we created our company in 2019. But shaping the growth of a company is very different from shaping a product. It calls for a different kind of vision because people aren’t code, tools, or processes.

Rather than envision departments and hierarchical structures, I naturally gravitate to a more organic approach–a corporate equivalent of “cell theory”. As far as I know, this biological simile was first described by a Dutch tech entrepreneur named Eckart Wintzen, who wrote about it in his 2007 memoir, Eckart’s Notes.

Wintzen was admittedly idiosyncratic but also undeniably successful. His company, BSO/Origin, grew from a one-man operation in 1973 into a 10,000-person multinational with $1B in revenues and a remarkable record of consistent profitability before he sold a majority stake to Philips in the mid-’90s. Throughout BSO’s period of rapid growth, the company was able to remain lean and entrepreneurial because it reproduced by forming new “cells”.

Why cells? And when should they divide?..​

Virtually all living organisms are made up of cells. As organisms grow and develop, they follow two basic rules: The first is that there is a fundamental limit to the size of an individual cell, beyond which it cannot function efficiently. So, growth is not achieved by having individual cells get bigger and bigger; instead, cells divide and replicate. The second is that as organisms develop, cells specialize to fill individual functions.

Wintzen seems to have had the first inklings of his cell theory when his company reached 100 people. At that moment, his inspiration was to split it into two, with one 50-person cell under his control and another under the control of his second-in-command. (He came to believe that the maximum team size for optimum efficiency was in the 50-70 person range; there’s no minimum size.)

Although Weaviate has not quite reached the point where size alone dictates a cell division, we have already created new cells in order to follow that rule of cell specialization.

Each cell has a singular focus​

For example, we used to have a single team devoted to “Solution engineering & customer success”. As we’ve grown to put more demands on that team, it’s become clear that those are actually two distinct (if related) assignments. So, we’ve split that into two cells: Sales Engineering, and Customer Success.

Similarly, as the number of developers using Weaviate has grown, we’ve realized that it now makes sense for DevRel to split into two specialized cells. So now we’ll have a Developer Growth team–a cell charged with increasing the number of developers using our open-source software– and a Developer Relations cell devoted to engagement with the community. They’ll ensure that our documentation is complete and develop the educational materials needed to keep our developer community happy.

It will be a while before any of our specialized teams exceed the threshold size for efficiency, for example when we have 50+ people in Developer Relations alone. But there will be more cell division prompted by specialization.

Although I can’t predict exactly how that will go, I can easily describe the algorithm we’ll use to decide when it’s time: We should split a team into two (or more?) cells whenever it holds a team meeting and a significant number of people find themselves thinking, “Why am I even listening to this? It doesn’t concern me.”

Making it work​

Per Eckart’s Notes, there are a few key principles to follow to help ensure the success of this cellular approach to growth. Perhaps the first principle is that when a cell splits, both new cells should be led by someone from within the organization and if possible, from the “parent” cell. That way, cell leaders always have the essential organizational knowledge and can be guardians of the culture.

Generally, the leader/coach of each cell has freedom to structure their team as they see fit, in order to best achieve their cell’s goals. Individual cells should have a minimal (or ideally, no) administrative staff or “departments”. The cell leaders collectively form a management team, and of course they must be a team so that the company can share a unified vision and present a unified brand.

Growing Weaviate for the future​

The cellular model described by Eckart Wintzen certainly worked well for his company.

Of course, the “flat” organization and a structure that preserves small-team, entrepreneurial attitudes throughout the organization is conceptually similar to the management styles found in many other lean, agile organizations. So, perhaps Eckart’s most unique contribution to management theory was the vivid simile of cellular division. That doesn’t necessarily diminish him or his ideas; after all, the ability to express a vision that’s easily understood and shared is a key skill in a founder!

As I noted off the top of this post, the “problem” of maintaining our culture while rapidly scaling up is a good one to have. I prefer thinking about our company as a growing collection of cells rather than describing it in institutional terms like “departments” but no matter how it’s worded, our vision for Weaviate has always been a flat organization made up of close-knit teams that maintain a start-up vibe.

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Weaviate continues to grow. All the more reason to ensure that our All Hands sessions contribute to preserving a valued work environment and sense of community.

When I arrived at Weaviate, our All Hands sessions were mainly a way to spend time together as a team. Just a year ago, we could have an All Hands in which everyone was able to share how they were doing and what they were up to. However our company has doubled in size, and–spurred by a recently completed Series B round and the realization that our vector database can function as a critical layer in a generative AI stack–we expect to grow again in the coming year.

That change in scale means we have to reshape our All Hands because there are simply too many people for a loosely structured meeting to be practical. But beyond those practical concerns, our get-togethers don’t only reflect our values, they also help to reinforce them. So, I’ve given our All Hands set-up a makeover.

Defining goals​

The first step in any makeover or renovation project is having a clear objective. So, I had to ask, “What do we want to get out of our All Hands session ?” The first three points I came up with are nearly universal:

1. Keep everyone up-to-date on important company news and aligned on our strategic objectives.
2. Celebrate our people and their/our successes (a very important one to me!).
3. Give people an opportunity to speak and share (their work).

But the fourth point might give you a better sense of who we are as a company:

4. Foster a company culture that embodies our values:
   • Transparency
   • Kindness
   • Collaboration
   • Trust
   • Excellence

Achieving goals, reinforcing values​

In the spirit of #transparency, the first element of the session is an update on our goals and strategy.

Connected to our value of #kindness, we celebrate people and the awesome work they have done. One fun way we do that is by encouraging everyone to nominate a “Weaviate Hero”. The idea here is to give a colleague a compliment and express appreciation before the entire group. Some people do this naturally or show appreciation in other ways; others are more reserved. But every single person at our company does great work, so we’ve created a moment to focus on their contributions to our success.

The idea is simple; anyone can submit the name of a colleague, and explain why that person is their hero. Often the compliments are related to a project or feature that they’ve completed, but any special act can be acknowledged. It’s very cool and energizing to hear everyone–even more introverted team members–celebrating with each other. A colleague contacted me afterwards to point out that we don't need to wait for our bi-monthly All Hands to give such props. He suggested a way to do it in Slack, and we have adopted this practice, too.

One way to embody our value of #collaboration grew out of last autumn’s company trip in Italy. At the end of that week, we hosted two demo sessions in which people showed what they were working on. Seeing that work-in-progress encouraged the rest of us to ask questions, share perspectives, and imagine the ways we might help those ideas reach production and be successful. Those demos were so popular that we decided to make them a regular feature of our All Hands. This is a great way to support each other moving forward.

If a colleague wants to contribute to the All Hands, I #trust their content. I don’t review anything in advance. I may provide some guidelines about the goals or purpose of these team updates, but I don’t interfere with their contributions.

We’d like to have a lively and freewheeling Q&A because we want people to feel comfortable asking questions, sharing their thoughts, even (perhaps especially!) voicing any doubts or worries. Even if only one person speaks up, others often have the same thoughts we may all benefit from the discussions that follow. I admit that so far, few questions are being asked, so if you have suggestions about ways to encourage a free flow of questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Overall, I’m happy with the changes that we’ve made to our All Hands sessions–which are especially important in remote companies like ours. I think the lesson is that, just as our software evolves in a series of iterations as we strive to perfect each product, so must our cultural processes and practices iterate if we are to preserve our values and culture through this period of rapid growth.

In this way, even our All Hands sessions strive for #excellence.

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In January 2023, SeMI Technologies became Weaviate as we aligned our company under the brand of our well-known vector-search product. Adopting Weaviate as the name for our company created the opportunity, and gave us an incentive, to develop a new graphic identity.

Rebranding was an opportunity to reflect on who we are now and where we're going. It's a chance to evaluate messaging, visual identity, and our overall brand strategy; and to get creative and build something great together.

It was an even bigger deal for me because as a graphic designer, creating a new corporate identity from a clean sheet of paper is a rare treat. (And if you’re wondering, my creative process typically does start on paper!)

Exploration of Weaviate logo, sketches (2018)

First Weaviate logo concept (2018)

I began with a review of other companies in the space, or adjacent to it—both to get a sense of the visual language being used, and to rule out any solutions that might be confusingly similar to another company’s.

During my research, I was struck by the sameness of many tech firms’ visual identities. Logos were typically “flat” and for companies in the vector-search space, some variation on an isometric cube or grid—implying dimensionality—was common. Websites were templated, with similar layouts, colors, and fonts. Of course, simplicity is good… but too much of it is boring.

Although one might think of developers as particularly rational types, part of my research involved talking to developers about the things they thought were interesting or cool. They cited things like games and virtual reality; a lot of what they thought was interesting was also fun.

Creating a unique brand that reflects our cultures and values; differentiating ourselves from competitors, and attracting fresh attention were all givens. We also decided on two important and very specific objectives for a new Weaviate identity.

Weaviate logo transformation by Mihai Dolganiuc (2022)

First, we wanted to bring Weaviate to life with a logo that felt real and substantial, not flat. As a software company, we don’t produce “things” with their own distinctive designs. (Think of a company like Apple or Tesla; sure, they have carefully crafted logos and such but, in the end, their visual identities are defined by their products.) For us, our logo and graphic style is our whole visual identity. So, to emphasize that we’re a real company doing things in the real world, we wanted to use a three-dimensional style.

Weaviate logo in 3D by Constantin Calcatinge (2022)

Second, we wanted an identity that was fun—even toy-like—with bright colors and playful fonts. To achieve those objectives, I collaborated with a logo designer, Mihai Dolganiuc, and a 3D artist, Constantin Calcatinge. Beginning with an earlier Weaviate product logo (yes, one that also took inspiration from a flattened cube) Mihai first transformed it into a rounded object with vibrant color overlays and then Constantin turned it into a realistic 3D object.

Realistic 3D Weaviate logo (2022)

In the vector-search space, a lot of companies use some variation on a dimensional grid to give a sense of high dimensionality. We chose to imply that sort of space in the different way, by floating the logo in a loose galaxy of vectors. Our users typically work on fairly powerful devices and have lots of bandwidth, so the logo can also be animated.

As an open-source tool, Weaviate is something you can install and play around with. We want you to try it out, explore it, break it, improve it, and be creative. We worked hard to translate all of that into our new logo and visual identity. We hope you want to grab it and play with it!

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As a remote-first company, Weaviate gives its people the flexibility to work when and where they choose. We give every employee lots of autonomy and trust they will work in a way that suits their situation and needs, while also fulfilling the requirements of their position and supporting other team members.

But there’s more to work/life balance than flexibility on the “work” side of that equation. I believe that taking time off to recharge and refresh one’s mind are essential. So yes, it follows that if any person is to do their best work, they must spend occasional blocks of time not working. That’s why we’ve developed a philosophy about taking time off, and actively encourage our people to use their time off.

However, just as individuals have unique workstyles, they also have unique needs as regards time off. That’s especially true for Weaviate; as we assemble an increasingly global team, we need to take different countries and cultures into account, as well as our company values and remote mindset.

Our time-off philosophy is based on two core ideas​

The first is that we’re one team, and every team member needs to keep this in mind when taking time off. The second is that everyone on the team “owns” their job and their life. Each individual knows what’s best for them.

We’re one team. Everyone shares responsibility​

In the best start-up fashion, we’re a tightly knit team working hard to make Weaviate successful.

“Work together as one” is one of our company’s stated values. Our group of awesome colleagues are all pulling together to help Weaviate, and the whole vector-search category take off. We all feel a shared responsibility for what we’re sure will be a shared success.

Since working together is part of our DNA, it should figure in all of our decision making - yes in our daily work and in pursuit of goals set at Weaviate, but also in decisions related to taking time off.

We all want to surpass expectations and do what’s best for our customers and our community. But everyone needs time to disconnect and recharge, and everyone deserves earned time off. We want every team member to have a satisfying work/life balance, whatever that might look like.

Sometimes, a healthy break may only involve being offline for an hour or two. For example, I do an hour of sports every Friday morning - this helps me to maintain my mental health and be happy at work. Some of my colleagues get great satisfaction from dropping their kids off at school and picking them up again at the end of the school day. That’s perfectly fine with us! We trust that every colleague will get their work done. We think about longer breaks, from a few days to weeks, the same way.

Communication is required to put this degree of flexibility into practice. It’s important that each person coordinates and discusses time off with their team and that ultimately, decisions about time off are consistent with team objectives. That’s especially true during popular or official holidays, so that we can ensure business continuity.

Another aspect of shared responsibility is looking out for one another. If colleagues can see that someone is burning the candle at both ends, they should remind that person that they can take time off and encourage them to do so - even if he or she is pulling all-nighters out of sheer enthusiasm.

Everyone “owns” their own work and life​

We feel this is true by definition. A one-size-fits-all vacation policy isn’t just dated, it’s inconsistent with our values and impossible to define in a company filled with unique individuals from diverse countries and cultural backgrounds, who are each doing unique work.

Again, using myself as an example, every three to four months, I need a break to recharge. Sometimes I need a bit more time, sometimes less. It’s not something you can put a number on; I can’t say that a specific number of days helps me recharge in order to deliver my best work and certainly can’t speak for my colleagues. In order to be mindful of that, our philosophy is to allow our people to choose the amount of time off they need. We also want people to choose when they take time off. We certainly want them to take mental-health days when they want them, not just when they need them!

This mindset of taking and managing your own time off doesn't come naturally to everyone. Indeed sometimes flexibility comes with its own challenges.

• Figuring out how and when to take time off can be an additional cognitive load.
• Since there is no specified time off limit, people may worry that they’re being judged unfavorably.
• People might worry about burdening their colleagues for being away too long.

We believe the advantages more than offset the challenges. I see it as my job to help our people - including managers - to grow into this mindset. We want everyone to be comfortable taking time off. To this end, managers should include conversations about time off during their one-on-ones with their people. They should also model good behavior by taking all the time off they need, too!

We believe that trust breeds trustworthiness​

Trust is an essential part of Weaviate's culture; it is especially important in a remote company. We trust that everyone will act in the best interests of Weaviate. That goes for taking time off, as well. We trust that each team member will know when and how much time they need to take off - and that each person will take their work, responsibilities, and colleagues into consideration when planning and taking holidays.

To summarize:

• We believe that each person has their own energy level and lifestyle, and that it’s up to each person to determine how much time off they need and when they should take it.
• Every team member must also consider their work, and their team’s responsibilities and goals when scheduling time off.
• Coordination and communication are essential.

We trust that if everyone keeps these simple rules in mind, we’ll have happy & healthy people who are able to do their best work, and who will contribute to make Weaviate successful!

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You’re reading this blog, not just looking at it. And most of the ideas in this post are conveyed in words. But admit it: The first thing that caught your eye was that cute drawing of the GoLang gopher holding a vacuum cleaner.

Even though a paragraph of text precedes this image, you probably looked at this picture before it. Congratulations, you’re a human, not a robot.

There’s a good reason for that. For most of human evolution, written language didn’t even exist. We had to identify plants - some were poisonous, others were nutritious - based on what they looked like, not printed labels at the supermarket. Our brains evolved to process images, not text. As a result, we still process images much faster than words.

Visual design is more than aesthetics. It’s also strategic.​

We are all swimming in content. Website interfaces, social media messages, videos and images, printed material… It has all been designed and usually the designer’s goal has been to communicate a message, not just make it pretty. Design is especially useful in a “borderless” business like Weaviate because people all over the world understand the same visual language.

One of our main goals at Weaviate is to share knowledge about Weaviate in particular and vector search technology generally. Many people are confused by terms like, "vector database", "cloud native", or "open source", and the key technical concepts related to search technology can be hard to verbalize. We’ve found that creating visual stories - especially using analogies from the real world - is beneficial. For example, we visualized multi-stage search as a story about a fisherman searching for one particular fish.

Visual design also gives us great tools to add emotional value to content. For example, we’ve created several visuals for Hugging Face models; one that the public has access to, one that’s private, one’s fully automated, one’s ready to use. We created different visuals for each type of model to help our community and customers understand the differences between models and choose the one that best suits their specific use case.

Another reason that visual design is particularly important to Weaviate is that as an open-source company, we benefit from a cohesive community of users. Images and symbols have reinforced peoples’ sense of community since ancient times, and they’re still effective.

When we introduced a new Garbage Collection feature, we illustrated it by giving the popular Golang Gopher character a vacuum cleaner. Developers love this little guy and using his image (yes, it’s open source!) reinforced bonds with developers in our community.

Four tips to help you leverage visual design in almost any company​

Making smart use of visual design can help you to engage with your customers and community as well as improve internal communications and processes within your company. Here are four tips that will work in almost any organization:

• Be consistent. Keeping your visual language consistent makes your brand recognizable.
• Add emotion. Think about what you want people to feel and be intentional about adding emotion to your design.
• Use visual analogies. Illustrate complex or novel ideas with familiar, real-world analogies the viewer already understands.
• Use design to align on goals. If you visualize an idea or strategy with your team and/or customers, everyone can literally keep the same goals in sight.

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At early-stage companies like Weaviate, teams are still small, so it’s often difficult to justify both a dedicated Product Manager and a formal engineering team lead. However, early-stage companies also set a high engineering tempo, so strategic product decisions can often only be made by someone with a strong technical background. That’s why in Weaviate case, a single person often takes the lead in both product and engineering decisions. This is not a compromise, it’s a strategic choice.

Combining both roles into one—we call it “Product Engineering”—is the best way we’ve found to develop and iterate new ideas, and to quickly get from a “lightbulb” moment to product-market fit.

Learning from both good—and bad—examples​

Before co-founding Weaviate, I worked at companies with more traditional structures, in which product managers and engineers were different people, from different backgrounds, doing their own things. In some places, PMs and engineers fostered good communications, and made decisions together without regard for hierarchy or seniority. The barriers between those roles were lowered and the natural conflict that sometimes exists between business interests and engineering performance was healthy.

I also saw companies where product managers and engineers could not get out of each other’s way. This was especially a problem in companies where PMs could not understand use cases, because the users were, themselves, also engineers. (This, incidentally, is true here at Weaviate.) Likewise, engineers failed to think about the big picture while they scrambled to achieve arbitrary deadlines or create poorly conceived products. So, I knew what I wanted to achieve and what I wanted to avoid as Weaviate CTO.

Looking back on it, I was already sure that the best way to break down the product vs. engineering mindset was to encourage engineering to take on product decisions - at least at first. At the time, I didn’t have a name for such a position or realize that there were already examples of it being successfully combined in other enterprises. (See examples here and here.)

We define a good idea as one that’s intuitively convincing, backed by evidence, supported by a strong business case, and that fits our overall vision for Weaviate. You’ll note that the originator of the idea — whether it came from someone with a senior-sounding title — is not part of that definition.

However, collaboration and open communication are some of our core values, so as a team, we already see ourselves as all “in the same boat”. If Weaviate — and the company — are successful, we’ll all succeed. Having such a corporate culture may be essential if the Product Engineering approach is to succeed.

What does product engineering look like in practice?​

The most important aspect of this role is that the engineer really sees the big picture. Every feature, every commit, and every line of code needs to advance a use case that’s consistent with the company’s business goals. Decisions must be made from the user’s perspective. This means, of course, that the engineer must understand the user’s needs and empathize with the user’s situation or problem. And it means that the engineer must be an excellent listener, because this is the foundation for the communications skills this approach requires.

Some (perhaps most) of the companies that choose to take this product engineering approach will still have a role identified as Product Manager. But that role also changes when the product engineering philosophy is applied.

Product managers need to involve engineers in day-to-day decisions. This requires a healthy level of trust and pragmatism on the part of PMs. One reason I feel strongly about this is that in my view, no manager should waste time on decisions that require only common sense. Similarly, engineers need freedom to handle edge cases on their own—even if they would traditionally be considered “product decisions”. This is not a case of responsibilities being stripped from PMs. Rather, it frees them up to focus on bigger decisions and strategic thinking.

This only works with mutual trust. Engineers need to trust the PMs’ vision. PMs need to trust that engineers understand and have bought into the vision, and will make decisions that advance it.

Challenges and long-term implications​

People who can think and act like product engineers are rare, and they know it. So, naturally, they come with a higher price tag. If you plan to retain a distinct product manager position, that becomes harder to fill as well, because if common-sense decisions are no longer the responsibility of the PM, all that remains are big, bold decisions that have a long-term impact. But these challenges are offset by the fact as that sense of ownership increases, everyone feels more responsible for their work and cares more about the long-term health of the product and company; output and quality will improve.

Even if I’ve convinced you to operate without a dedicated product manager at the beginning, you may wonder what you’ll do when the team has grown, and the responsibilities are too much for one product engineer. At that point, you might hire a dedicated PM and double down on an engineering lead. Or, will you choose to hire an engineering-minded PM? Of course, that would be a challenging role to fill with an external hire, but by that point, you may be able to promote someone into such a role from within your ranks.

You’ll cross that bridge when you get to it, but if I’m right by that point, you will be committed to blurring - if not erasing - boundaries between PM and engineering roles.

Why product engineering is the best approach for a company like Weaviate​

The most obvious advantage to merging the roles of product manager and engineer is that in a startup setting, the boundaries between roles are blurred anyway. It’s hard to justify hiring a separate product owner and tech lead when the whole team is three or four people! Making product decisions outside the team is wasteful in a different way; it makes the team dependent on some external person and risks creating a disconnect between engineers and users.

But a product engineer can fill both roles. They can align with a Head of Product or even the CEO on the long-term vision, while tackling day-to-day decisions inside the team. Other domain experts, such as UX designers need to be involved, too. This way, every other member of the engineering team benefits from having an actual decision-maker with them in the daily standup.

Just as important, the product engineering approach helps a startup to iterate fast, making mistakes while they’re still cheap and allowing the company to learn quickly.

Users tend to give very poor feedback when a PM pitches them an idea. But users give excellent feedback when presented with a prototype. The product-engineering approach, which lends itself to rapid prototyping, gets the startup to that point of first meaningful feedback as quickly as possible. That, in turn, enables Weaviate to deliver a steady stream of high-quality software.

As CTO, that warms my heart.

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Over the past six months, Weaviate has doubled in size; we’re now nearly 30 people. At this point, we have team members based in Europe, the U.S., South America, and Australia. Some colleagues who have been working closely on the same team for months have never met face-to-face. So, we’re super-excited that in a couple of weeks, we’ll all be in the same place, at the same time, for the first time. As a bonus, it’s in Italy!

Our location is The Workation Village in the Piemonte region of Italy. This was an actual village for centuries, though like many Italian hill-towns, it lost most of its population in recent decades. A group of entrepreneurs have restored the buildings, and created an idyllic rural campus. They describe it as “A magical place in nature for team retreats and company offsites - to reconnect in the remote age and to be inspired.”

IRL meetings are essential for remote-first companies​

We’re committed to our remote-first structure. Despite the distance between us, we put a lot of effort into creating a cohesive team spirit. But we also believe that the experience of coming together is an important aspect of building and fostering a strong remote culture. Those two ideas - of that strong remote culture, and in-person bonding - are not opposites, they’re complements. So yes, we choose to work from coworking places, coffee cafes, our homes, or wherever. But we also want to build the strongest possible relationships. We’ve already felt that happen in situations, such as meeting each other at conferences, that brought together quite a few of us; that convinced us that those IRL moments are helpful. And if we have such moments in a beautiful Italian village… We’ll just have to power through it ;-)

By now, you may already have the sense that we’re all very excited about this idea; personally, I can’t wait. It will be fun, but that’s not the only reason why we’re doing it. It’s a workation, not a vacation. We’re doing it because creating better and stronger bonds and relationships, and engaging in intensive collaboration and brainstorming, will help Weaviate to achieve its business goals. I’ll report back after our workation, but we’re already sure that spending some time together IRL will result in more and better work output-that you may see in everything from new and creative use cases for Weaviate to revisions to our website.

💡Our recipe for a winning workation: Enjoy yourselves, be yourselves, do your own thing

After months or years of remote work, an entire week with colleagues could be intense. In order to ensure that Weaviate as a company and the team as individuals have the best outcomes and experiences, we have planned our workation along the following principles…

1. Give people flexibility. We’ll have lots of activities to choose from, but they’ll be optional. People can have a week that is as packed - or as relaxed - as they want. And, we’ll have a diverse range of activities; some sporting, others cultural. (Of course, many Italian cultural experiences revolve around food and wine. Our experience will include a pasta-cooking workshop and wine tasting.)

2. Don’t over-engineer the program. We want to leave space for spontaneous activities; those are usually the most fun anyway.

3. Have those ‘all-together’ moments as a company. Our dinners will be times to come together with the entire group. They’ll be held in the village’s trattoria, where long tables can accommodate our whole team. Our founders, Bob van Luijt and Etienne Dilocker are planning to host a special dinner; they’ll cook and select great wines.

Building the UX for a company trip​

My goal is to organize a workation where everyone gets what they are looking for. Of course, I know what would be fun for me, but what about other people? Everyone has their own ideas, so I sought input and feedback on the program from some of my colleagues. One thing I heard back from our engineers is that they really like to get into a flow; when they’re focused on a work challenge in a hackathon, they like to extend it into the evening as well. That was a really good insight for me, as I don’t have that preference. I guess what I’m saying is that, as with any other UX, you have to keep the customer - in this case my colleague - in mind!

As you can probably tell, I’m really excited about this trip! My goal is that people enjoy each other's company and that we all leave Italy even prouder to be part of our Weaviate team. If that happens, we’ll be that much closer to achieving our goals as a company. We’ll share our experiences in Italy, so please follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and (new!) Instagram as we post from The Workation Village, beginning on the 5th of November!

Stay connected​

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Working in a company with an inclusive culture is important and it’s good for business, too.

Inclusive workplaces enable and encourage employees with different personalities, values, perspectives, and cultural backgrounds to coexist and thrive. In turn, employees who feel welcome, respected as unique individuals, who feel heard, and that they belong are more engaged and productive, and more likely to stick around. That’s exactly what I want to achieve at Weaviate.

However, inclusive workplaces don’t simply happen, nor can they be wished into existence. In a previous job, I worked for a large company based in the Netherlands; my department - that was part of the head office - had hubs in several other European countries. Some of those satellite locations had been part of our department for years. And yet, I came to realize that the people who worked in those locations felt left out, maybe even less important. Even though we were part of a global company, my department saw lots of things from our “headquarters” perspective. Even back then, I already felt strongly about creating a team - or culture - where people felt equal and included.

Creating an inclusive culture is at the heart of my personal vision for Weaviate, however it’s been a learning process. Despite my best intentions, I had a tendency to start meetings off with, “Good morning,” or “Good afternoon,” depending on what time it was here in the Netherlands. It was a colleague who pointed out that it was not morning for everyone; indeed it might not even be the same day of the week for some people! I learned that even the smallest things can contribute to inclusiveness.

For a while, some colleagues in our company had a co-working space where they met up a couple of days a week. We realized that by giving a part of the group a place to go to, we might accidentally create a subgroup. That was not something we wanted. We ended that arrangement because we really feel that we should be a remote-first company on principle. At the same time, we still encourage and facilitate colleagues meeting up to work together when they feel like it.

So, how can you start to create an inclusive culture?​

Besides small things like not saying, “Good morning,” just because it’s morning where I happen to be, here are some additional practices I follow to ensure that everyone at Weaviate feels included no matter where they may be-or whether we’ve ever even met IRL.

We have settled on English as our “official language”. We aim to speak and write in English in all work-related conversations. We try to stick to this rule even in one-on-one situations where both people share another native language. This is important because you never know when you may need to loop someone else in.

At first, we had one All Hands per month where everyone could join in. But later, as more people started joining from different time zones it was often inconvenient for those checking in from the U.S. or Australia. In an effort to be fair to all, for a while we alternated between a time that was reasonably convenient for Europe and America in one month, then a time convenient for Europe and Australia the next. We recorded all sessions for those who couldn't join. Generally this system worked well, but we’ve since gone one step further. We now host two All Hands meetings on the same day, one at 10:00 am and a repeat at 4:00 pm (in the Netherlands), so that everyone can join at a more convenient time, no matter where they live.

We mainly rely on Slack for asynchronous communications. We don't expect people in different time zones to respond right away, and we respect each person’s ability to set the time in which they’ll focus on work. Working asynchronously releases us from the expectation that people should respond at that moment and I find that respecting others’ time and work-styles strengthens an inclusive culture. Of course, we’re all used to DMs and text messages, so it may be a mindset that you need to learn. I know that I have had to become a bit more patient, but I feel that change was good for my mental health as well.

How UX (or EX) can contribute to an inclusive culture​

I take an employee-centric approach; my “door” may be virtual but it’s almost always open. It’s a statement of the obvious, but a good place to start is simply asking people if they feel included. Ask questions like, “What can we do to become a more inclusive work environment for you?” and “What does and doesn’t work at Weaviate?”. Having open communication and conversations are essential in my opinion.

One of our company’s five values is kindness. We want our people to be kind, respectful and show empathy towards others. This last part-showing empathy towards each other-is important when creating an inclusive culture. This means that managers should allocate time to check in with people and have those open conversations. You should ask about people's needs, acknowledge them, and tailor your actions accordingly.

Making sure everyone is heard​

Whether people are more- or less-inclined to speak up in remote meetings depends on the individual. However, it’s easy to overlook the ones who in general say less. I’m quite extroverted but if I’m in a group of ten people and three of them are contributing a lot to the conversation, I may not speak up. If you’re an owner of a meeting, you should make sure to ask everyone’s opinion, paying attention to people who you know won’t likely share an opinion unless they’re invited to do so.

At Weaviate, we also strive to ensure that anyone who is reluctant to interrupt the flow of a meeting to ask questions or make comments has other ways to express their opinion. They can ask questions in the meeting chat, or in a Slack channel. We sometimes use interactive polls that allow people to speak up anonymously. In some meetings we use a Miro board that also allows for anonymous contributions to the discussion. And of course if these means don’t suffice, my virtual office door is always open!

At Weaviate, we are still a small group numerically but we’re already distributed across several continents. My goal is for everyone-whether they’re near or far-to feel close to each other.

Stay connected​

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About me​

I lead Weaviate’s Solution Engineering team. Right now, we’re only four people. Still, we combine a broad knowledge of different types of software, different domains, and applications, and we use that knowledge to help customers get the most out of Weaviate. We’re also responsible for running Weaviate in the cloud for customers who would like to have a managed service.

About Solution Engineering​

In a way, we’re the storefront. At this point, most customers want to use vector search for something but don’t know how to get there. Others are fascinated by vector search but don’t yet know how they’d use it; they’ll ask us to suggest use cases. So, we begin with discussions about what kind of data they have, what they want to build, and how Weaviate can help them. Next, we build a proof-of-concept or create a small version to demo and establish a business value. The final step is getting something into production and customer-facing.

Along the way, we often share customer feedback with the Weaviate core team on features we should add or enhance to Weaviate. So, we interact with customers, the developer community, and people on the technical side; we’re a transit point for a lot of information and ideas.

So, we’re that feedback loop for the core team. We share how people use Weaviate and pass along feature requests. We also work with the research team when customers request a novel feature. Finally, we even work with the DevRel team, informing them of new use cases they might want to blog about.

Remote work​

Since solution engineering is heavily dependent on interaction and effective communication, you might think that it would be hampered in remote-work situations. I must admit that I sometimes miss meeting in front of a whiteboard or covering a wall with sticky notes as we work things out. But an unexpected benefit of Covid-19 was that it showed us new ways to do solution engineering by forcing us to work remotely and by pushing the adoption of remote tools and workstyles. And those new ways have their advantages, both for the people doing the work and the work itself. In the remainder of this post, I’ll explore some of the tools and processes we use to perform effectively in a remote environment and even turn our remote-first working style into an advantage.

Working with customers​

Whether customers come to us with a specific request or are just curious to learn more about vector search, the first thing we do is plan a meeting with our Customer Success team. As the head of Solution Engineering, I try to be in all those meetings, along with at least one other team member. If that meeting is productive and we schedule a follow-up, for example, to define a proof of concept, sometimes we set up a private Slack channel, so that users or clients have a direct line of communication with us outside of email. Some clients, such as government agencies in the Netherlands - where I am based - aren’t permitted to use Slack, so we set up a Teams integration for them; we try to be flexible because every company has its own preferred method of staying in contact.

Providing responsive service across all time zones remains a challenge. Right now, I have one solution engineer based in Australia, who is well-positioned to cover Asia; I’d like to find another person on the U.S. west coast.

There are three of us on the Solution Engineering team here in the Netherlands, but I’m the only one born here; one is from Turkey, and the other is from Moldova. Because we’re a small team in constant contact with customers from all over, it’s crucial that everyone is proficient in both spoken and written English.

How we keep in sync​

We typically have a 15-minute stand-up meeting every morning at 10:00 a.m. CET, which is 6:00 p.m. for our Australian colleague. We use Jira to keep track of what people are working on. Miro’s “mind mapping” software is excellent for collaborative ideation. We also use Jamboard and of course we use Slack amongst ourselves. Another tool that’s useful for asynchronous communications, especially with clients, is Calendly. That also can feel a bit weird at first; it feels as if you’re saying, “Find a slot on my calendar and figure it out,” but I try to use it more like, “Let’s find a date that works for you; here’s my calendar.”

We are here to help​

The Solution Engineering team does not do any heavy coding. We don’t build the solutions for customers, but we create bits of code to load a data set or send x number of queries to figure out how fast Weaviate works on the customer’s data. In addition, we do remote coding sessions, including pair programming. Being able to work on things at the same time helps reduce any sense of isolation.

Team health​

In a remote setting, you must be intentional about maintaining team happiness. In my previous job, I worked with several search engineers, and we had a short stand-up meeting every morning. So, if someone had dark circles under their eyes or their body language slumped, I could immediately see something was wrong. At Weaviate, we build team spirit with hackathons; we log in to a three- or four-hour session—people can drop in and out—and we build something outside our normal work scope. Recently, we tried out a competitor’s product to see how easy it was to use it and whether it had features worth adding to Weaviate.

Next steps​

One thing on my to-do list is to hire a solution engineer who’ll be dedicated to our open-source community. But for now, my team shares that responsibility. We have a Slack public space where anyone can sign up for free to ask questions. As solution engineers, we see the community as a source of information and treat it as we would a client.

Our goal is to make Weaviate the de-facto standard in vector search. The Solution Engineering team contributes to that goal by nurturing our community and ensuring clients get maximum value. The CEO of Elasticsearch was my boss at my first internship; it started out in Amsterdam, and I worked in the same building. I saw it grow from nothing into a big company. I have the same feeling about Weaviate.

Stay connected​

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A question that I get a lot is, “Why would you create an open-source business?”

That’s understandable; I must seem like an inventor who refuses to patent his inventions or an entrepreneur giving products away for free. If you’re starting your own open-source business, you’ll hear this question from the talent you’re trying to hire, customers and investors, and maybe you’ll even ask yourself the same question. If you have trouble explaining how such business models work, try using an example of a business from outside the world of software.

One such business is Momofuku, the restaurant empire of chef David Chang. If he had chosen a closed-source model, he would force kitchen employees to sign NDAs and make all his revenue selling food to restaurant customers. But instead, Momofuku restaurants typically have bar seating that looks directly into the kitchen. Chef Chang publishes his recipes in cookbooks and on his website; he demonstrates his techniques on cooking shows; Momofuku even sells key ingredients under its own brand. That media exposure results in a steady stream of customers that are monetized both the traditional way and through the sale of cookbooks, ingredients and appearances, where Chang’s speaking fees can reach six figures.

Open-source software companies like mine are just taking that Momofuku metaphor one step further—it’s as if we also gave away the restaurant meals in order to monetize the cookbooks, ingredients and appearances. However, unlike a restaurant, my company, Weaviate, produces a “deep tech” infrastructure software product that end users may never see. Building a strong brand around such “invisible” products is not quite as straightforward.

If this is your goal, too, you should begin by cultivating a community of users (usually software developers). This calls for radical transparency and, yes, making your technology available for free, because you have to prove that you can add value first, then build a community of users. Only later will you monetize the products or services that will allow you to capture some of that value. Demonstrating value begins with putting all the code and documentation online and getting developers to use your products. At this stage, winning does not look like an increasing revenue stream; it looks like a growing user base. There are all kinds of ways to monitor that. You can count downloads or Slack or Discord users, and open-source companies on GitHub can count “stars.”

That data becomes a marketing asset. It’s analogous to the top of a traditional, closed-source business’s marketing or sales funnel. It replaces the kinds of inbound and outbound marketing that a traditional business would use to build awareness.

That awareness is built as people directly use the software. This is not to be confused with a “freemium” model, which limits what somebody can do with the technology; a true open-source model gives access to the entire core technology. Although some CEOs will balk at the idea of a business in which many or even most users won’t pay for that core technology, those nonpaying users actually add value to the open-source technology by spreading its use and building on top of it. The model works because the value is created around the open-source core by creating an ecosystem of users. The goal is an unfiltered relationship with the developers using it.

My company captures value with SaaS and hybrid-SaaS products and service-level agreements with clients. Your model may vary in the details, but in general, an open-source marketing strategy works in four stages:

1. At first, software developers tasked with a certain challenge find your open-source technology themselves through high-quality content (blogs, documentation, demos, talks, etc.). If they are happy with the result, they might inquire about the paid services on offer. In traditional terms, this is a bottom-up/inbound marketing push.
2. Then, software developers working with the open-source technology might not be aware of the additional services, or they may be using incumbent tools to solve a problem for which your technology is a better solution. Reaching out to them to offer help is bottom-up/outbound marketing.
3. Later, technology leaders inside a company might want to know what is possible (e.g., if they see competitors being successful with your technology). The use cases in the same industry as they are in (collected in steps 1 and 2) can be presented to them. This is top-down/outbound marketing.
4. Finally, technology leaders will reach out because they want to power their products with your solution. Getting this kind of top-down, inbound marketing inquiry means that your open-source company has become a force to be reckoned with in the tech industry. That’s the goal, but note that the four stages aren’t sequential; even after you reach the fourth stage, you'll continue to simultaneously encourage all permutations of this marketing strategy.

The choice to seek a small slice of a larger pie—rather than pursuing a whole pie for oneself—is not only made by small companies and startups. For example, this is exactly the approach Google took with its TensorFlow machine-learning platform, its Material Design framework and its Go programming language. Those products are completely open-source; anyone could run them on another cloud provider, like AWS. But they sit in the Google ecosystem, and they bring a significant share of users, talent and customers into that ecosystem, where they also use paid services from Google Cloud.

Of course, choosing an open-source business model is not without risk (paywall). Competitors are free to copy your technology, and some percentage of users—even most users—may never become paying customers. If you choose to join me in using this business model, it will mean that we both believe we can build products that are better than anything our rivals can make. We also have that in common with David Chang—any rival chef can buy a Momofuku cookbook and attempt to create the same meals.

It seems that Chef Chang welcomes the challenge, and so do we.

Ready to start building?​

Check out the Quickstart tutorial, or sign up for a free Weaviate Cloud account.

As Weaviate’s head of developer relations, my job is all about connecting with developers in our open-source community. That means going to events and taking every public speaking opportunity. And, since Weaviate is a remote-first company with employees on several continents, I’m also engaged in helping other team members to become effective advocates in their own far-flung developer communities. Not to unnecessarily typecast a diverse group, but many developers aren’t natural performers. All the more reason, then, to write this post.

Developer-to-developer connections matter​

Weaviate - the vector search technology that we create - is like a great toolbox. It doesn't do anything by itself. But in capable hands - of builders, dreamers and creators - it can be used to build amazing things. So, it's super important that we connect with “doers” and developers all over the world.

Even though we’ve all adapted to remote work, I prefer giving talks in person as opposed to remotely. I need that person-to-person connection. I want people to know, “Oh, Sebastian is a real person; someone who exists in the world, not just in this 40-minute talk.” The real opportunity comes afterward. When people come to you after the talk, with questions and ideas, that’s when you build relationships.

This isn’t a job that can be delegated to sales or marketing; they’ll write a beautiful sentence, but eight out of ten words will be buzzwords. That may work on a CEO or even a CTO, but if you use more than two buzzwords in a paragraph to a developer, they switch off. It's like, “What are you selling me?” We speak differently when we talk to each other.

Establishing goals for your talk​

Decide what you want to achieve. I like to excite people and most of my talks are technical, so I tend to live-code on stage. I want to do something from scratch and say, “Here’s something you thought was difficult and yet look what I did in five minutes; you could do the same.”

In a talk like that, I want to teach someone to do something new. But you may merely want to educate the audience about your tech and show them what’s possible, or to inspire them. The idea here is not necessarily to teach them to repeat what I do, but for the audience to realize that there are new possibilities within their grasp.

Start with a high-level outline​

When preparing a talk, I like to begin with a very high-level outline; something that can be encapsulated in three to five bullet points. Then as I develop my script, I circle back from time to time to make sure that I’m achieving those tightly defined objectives.

Divide your talk in distinct sections​

It’s essential to know your audience, and the understanding that they bring to your subject. Otherwise, you risk losing them at the beginning. Of course, there’s always a risk you’ll lose some people, which is a good reason to structure a talk in several distinct sections. That way if someone gets distracted or lost in one segment, they get a chance to come back to you. They’re like, “Oh, I kind of got lost there, but here’s a new segment; maybe I can start paying attention from here.”

Wow moments​

One thing that can really help you to create great talks is paying attention to your own emotions as you research and learn about the topic. When you find something that gives you a real, “wow” moment—whether it’s interesting, or exciting, or even terrible—integrate it into your story because you will be 100% authentic in that moment.

Rehearse​

You have to rehearse your talk—and not just to a blank wall; rehearse it to people and get feedback. Were there parts they loved, or places where you lost them? It’s also very useful to have a designer look over your presentation; they’ll tell you a very different perspective.

Then, it’s time to practice some creative destruction. I always delete my script before talking to the audience, because I never want to fall back on reading it. Some people have to have a script but I recommend a few bullet points or keywords at the most.

A lot of people experience imposter syndrome; they worry that they don’t have complete, global expertise on their subject. But you know enough; the event organizers would not have booked you if they weren’t sure of that. If you’ve prepared well, you’ll do well.

Find the nodder​

I’m an extrovert, so I get energy from my audience. However, if you feel a bit nervous, look around the audience, there’s always someone who will nod along with you as you make your first point. Spot one or two such people and deliver your talk to them!

Bring a bottle of water​

Your water bottle is your friend! Taking a sip of water turns an awkward pause into… just a pause. So, take a sip of water if you lose your place and need to collect your thoughts—or if you’re killing it and want to give your audience time to let a key point sink in.

Set reasonable expectations​

If you pitch a talk at a major conference and aren’t selected to speak, don’t be disappointed. It’s a good idea to start out small anyway. Find a Meetup group to practice on. Don’t beat yourself up if your first few talks are underwhelming, either.

Most talks have two basic goals: to make people aware of your technology—in our case, vector search—and to make the audience care about your company and about you as people. Ideally, you’ll achieve both of those but at the beginning, consider it a win if you succeed at even one of those things.

Record your talks​

As you improve, make sure to get a good video recording of some of your talks. At first, these will help you to improve your presentation skills and later, you can send a video to conference organizers, to show you’re worth putting on stage. Note. don’t be too alarmed if you hate your recordings, especially at first; most of us are quick to spot our flaws and little mistakes, and slow to realize that we’ve done many things quite well.

Final words​

As a developer, it’s easy to think of public speaking as a soft skill that’s optional in your career. But great talks don’t just increase awareness of your company or products, they can be an important part of the brand. And the ability to deliver them can certainly be a beneficial part of your personal brand, so it’s a skill worth developing.

Ready to start building?​

Check out the Quickstart tutorial, or sign up for a free Weaviate Cloud account.

Here at Weaviate, we aren't just building open-source products, we're building an open-source brand.

To create a meaningful product, we need to both solve a problem and know the people we're building it for. To create a meaningful brand, we need to know why we're solving that problem, and who we are.

Creating that brand in an open-source spirit does not call for the traditional brand-building techniques used to shape a message. Rather, our goal is to transparently share our experiences as team members connect with each other and our users, to help them solve their problems.

For the last eight years, I've helped tech companies build their brands and visual identities. I've learned an important lesson: Businesses that don't know why they exist and what they are trying to achieve struggle to find product-market fit. They have no strategy or vision, creating confusion for the team and, inevitably, their customers. They don't know who they are talking to and without a clear value proposition, they waste money on Google ads and paid campaigns that don't bring measurable results. They copy their competitors and hope for the best. Without consistent messaging—and especially without communicating values—they can't attract the right talent.

Too many tech companies are focused on their product—understandably the center of many founders' universes—when they should focus on people and their experience with the brand. That's especially true for us as, in the spirit of open source, we'd rather build our brand from the bottom up than dictate it from the top down.

How we'll do it at Weaviate​

It's not a one-person job. We need to involve every level of the organization.

First, we are doing the work required to create a shared understanding of who we are as a company. This takes a lot of reflection, thinking, brainstorming and time. That time and energy helps us to define our values, purpose and vision. Those are foundational to the brand but also aspirational—they're the stars that we'll use to navigate our future as a company.

Those values will be reflected in clear, transparent, and forthright visual language, creating an identity that will help us make the right decisions by reminding us who we are when we're our best selves and honestly portray us to future users, customers, and team members.

At Weaviate, we believe that our brand is not performative; it's not mainly about the company logo or nice images on the website (although I do definitely care about those things!) The brand is felt more than seen. It is defined by the way people feel about our products and services. It's not shaped by our claims, but rather by people's experiences and interactions with us. That's why one of our main goals is to create the best brand experience for our users.

We use the concept of an open-source brand to share our processes, experiences, successes and failures. And people's feedback will help us improve, resulting in better business decisions and ever-stronger relationships.

In future posts, I will share more about how we're building our brand; why visual design is important, especially in the tech industry; and I'll write more about our design processes as we continue to develop a visual style and experiment with a logo design. We intend to be entirely open about this process. That's only right, considering who we are.

Stay connected​

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Weaviate has spent almost its entire life as a company in the pandemic and post-pandemic period (that is, if we dare assume that the days of major Covid disruptions are over!). For us, that was lucky timing. We were never forced to make a rushed transition from on-site to remote work; we were born remote-first.

Like many companies who made that transition, we've found that our people are happier and, if anything, more productive. Unlike those legacy companies, we have no intention of switching back—or in our case, just switching—to onsite work.

We believe that the benefits of remote work clearly outweigh any disadvantages. Let's face it: the old 9-5 workday didn't work for everyone. Some employees are morning people; others are night owls. Some people love to travel; they're energized by new sights and sounds and pump that energy into their work.

Most importantly, we're not just a new company; we're working in a whole new tech ecosystem. It is a challenge to find people who have solid experience in vector search. By offering remote work, we can recruit from a global talent pool.

Although remote work is right for us, there are still some challenges when it comes to creating a cohesive culture in a small company that is dispersed across several continents and time zones. This begins with trust. If you wish to follow our model, you must ask yourself: Do I really trust my people? For me personally, this is an easy one. My default setting is to assume that people have good intentions. So far, this has certainly been validated by my colleagues here.

Remote work also prioritizes certain characteristics. Team members must be proactive self-starters, and good communicators. We place an emphasis on this during our recruitment process, which includes specific conversations aimed at determining whether candidates will flourish in our culture. We like candidates to have wide-ranging conversations with a lot of colleagues.

As more and more legacy companies push for a return to on-site—or at least hybrid—work, one reason they cite is that remote workers don't feel as connected to their teams. Weaviate believes that it's just as possible to build a strong team spirit amongst remote workers. But I admit that remote-first companies can't rely on that spirit to arise organically. For companies like ours, it calls for an intentional strategy.

For us, that looks like weekly coffee one-one-one meetings arranged by a Slack bot. And, every month, we have an all-hands meeting where we introduce new employees. These always include some activity that helps us get to know each other better. At the moment, one of the most enjoyable tasks I have is to plan an in-person company trip where every employee will be in the same place, at the same time, for the first time. The focus of that workation will be on creating social and emotional bonds and building positive team energy. Its location must, for now, remain a bit of a secret but if you check back in from time to time, I'm sure you'll learn where it will take place. Who knows, maybe you'll even be in attendance. ;-)

In the meantime, we'll just note that the consulting giant McKinsey recently released a white paper on the aftermath of “The Great Resignation” that has occurred over the past couple of years. Among workers who changed jobs or are considering a change, better pay and career prospects are, predictably, the top desires. But number three on their wish list is a flexible work arrangement. Among workers who quit during the pandemic, workplace flexibility is the top inducement to return to work. So, a lot of legacy companies will have to adjust their HR policies to extend remote-work options into the post-pandemic period.

Not Weaviate though, we're remote natives and we are enjoying every bit of it!

Stay connected​

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We're moving towards our goal of creating a profitable, AI-first, open-source company around our vector database, Weaviate. With help from our investors, Weaviate is transforming from a small band of visionaries, into a company - yes, still a small one for now, but a growing one, united by a shared vision. In order to stay true to our open-source spirit as we grow, we want to share that vision with a much larger group of people than just our team. That's the purpose of this blog. We think of it as a meta-conversation about our company.

Our key audience is the community of developers using our open source solutions such as Weaviate, whether they are open-source users, Weaviate's customers, or others simply investigating our technology. Note that I don't say only users because every download is valuable. I'm sure that in some future post, we'll get into why even non-remunerative users help us to reach our goals. But for now I'll just say that we strive to make them feel valued every day.

Even people who may never become users are understandably curious about an open-source startup's journey. While there have been some notable successes using this business model, the idea of building a tech company without protecting intellectual property still strikes many as counterintuitive. Over time, this meta-conversation will become a resource for future founders.

We're happy to share our vision with other companies on this path, so this blog will be an exercise in radical honesty. Forget NDAs; this is our disclosure agreement. We can be transparent about our strategy because it's execution that matters.

💪 We can be transparent about our strategy because it’s execution that matters.

We hope that you'll check back in with us over the coming weeks and months as we put up posts outlining our decision to build a remote-first company, and our experience of creating a cohesive culture over distance; we'll post about engaging a community of developers; engineering solutions for customer success; the unique challenges of building a brand in an open-source company; and the process by which we'll create valuable products around our open-source vector database - something that's obviously essential if our strategy is to work!

Over time, we hope to build a document that both records our evolution and may serve as a road map for other founders facing similar challenges. Our decision is to be not just an open-source company, but an “open book”. So, documenting our approach with complete transparency is not just a business decision but also a philosophical position.

This is simply who we are, as founders, a team, and company. Or I should say, it's an introduction. Keep coming back to get a clearer and clearer picture.

Ready to start building?​

Check out the Quickstart tutorial, or sign up for a free Weaviate Cloud account.