My journey to RigUp
It’s hard to believe that just 6 months ago I was taking Spanish lessons in Guatemalan pueblos, while now my days are filled building products for RigUp in a new city, country and continent. RigUp is a customer focused startup determined to provide the energy industry with modern day software solutions. The opportunity to join RigUp represented a significant challenge for me. Firstly it meant an opportunity to move to a completely foreign industry, one ripe for technological disruption. It also was my first chance to work outside Australia (so please excuse my spelling). To cap it off, moving to a fast paced startup of ~120 person represented a completely new modus operandi when compared to my previous experience in +40k employee organisations.
I would love to say that my ability and grit were the driving forces behind how I overcame these obstacles. However the reality is that the unique culture of RigUp was undeniably the main factor. My journey to RigUp started before my first interview in Austin.
1. Presearch
Wanting to see what I was in for before my interviews I decided to create a RigUp user profile. After only a very short time on the platform I was confronted by strange terms like; roustabout, flowback, completions consultant and mud loggers. This triggered a realisation. If I was to succeed as a PM at RigUp, I would need to take a step back and understand who were these completely foreign customers.
After making it through the application process I wanted to tackle this before I started working. So I decided to systematically write a brief synopsis on as many of RigUp’s user types as I could find. This exercise proved useful, not only for developing my industrial knowledge, which was nada, but it also enabled me to stumble upon a world of online industrial resources including; community forums, glossaries, encyclopaedias and blogs. However after just a few hours in the office I would come to realise that this was just the tip of the iceberg.
2. In the Office
From my first day I was immediately confronted by a company that was ubiquitously driven by it’s northern star, “to empower the men and women who power the world“. Part of this drive stems from the fact that many of the team have spent hard time in the field and know the industry like the back of their hands. The team’s passion and complete buy in to the RigUp mission was contagious, after just a few hours I was hooked.
Critically RigUp is also very conscious to preserve this passion. For example, as the team continues to grow the portion of staff with industry knowledge is inevitably diluted. To counteract this ‘Energy Industry 101’ classes are provided. These crash courses held by in-house experts get noobs, like myself, quickly up to speed. Now onboard with the company mission and equipped with a contextual understanding of the industry, the final and greatest frontier was to understand our customers.
3. GTF out of the office.
Lucky for me RigUp’s CPO was fully conscious of the need for his growing team to get into the field and meet customers ASAP. So in my second week I began shadowing the Sales team. This proved an invaluable exercise. Not only did I get to meet some customers face to face but I was also able to use the lengthy commuting time to pick the brains of our team on the front line.
While speaking to customers in a hardhat and flame resistant attire, next to a pounding 10 tonne drilling rig I realised just how far I had come from my previous role in an ocean view banking office. More importantly it lead to an almost instantaneously moment where all the information I had ingested just seemed to click. Meeting our customers face to face working hard in the fields of Colorado and Texas enabled me to humanise them and truly identify the problems that RigUp helps solve.
4. Returning to work
Once back in the office, with my orientation well and truly over I started to get to work. During the discovery part of our feature builds we use behavioural analytics data and tools like Heap to quantify customer pain points or irregularities. These are then combined with qualitative data from; front line teams, Fullstory, Delighted and Intercom to gain a more comprehensive picture. Our product, design and engineering teams then go to work to hypothesise potential solutions. These are then further validated and iterated upon with sets of customer interviews and broader stakeholder feedback.
During my first set of user interviews something hit me. I had conducted interviews in my previous role but I had never been confronted with customers who had anywhere near the level of enthusiasm, advocacy and genuine gratitude. After hearing these first hand testimonials of just how big a difference RigUp has made to their lives, I became even more energised. Really what could be a more motivating reason to get up every morning than knowing your product is helping thousands of people?
5. Collaboration, Growth and Process
Another strikingly different thing about RigUp is the management teams genuine desire to continually take in feedback and improve our product delivery methodology. In our weekly meetings the CTO and CPO probe the product and engineering teams for feedback. They are cognisant that as the team continues to grow there is a need to continually refine our product delivery framework and methodology. The really unique thing though, is that unlike my previous orgs, the team’s feedback is closely listened to and often instantly acted upon. This degree of collaboration and forward thinking is also mirrored throughout the entire company. As seen by the recent transition from a traditional functional org to a scalable network based one. Now as I work day to day in ‘tribes’ and ‘squads’ I truly get to make holistic solutions for our customers while learning from my peers in every corner of the business.
The innovative management practices have led to levels of collaboration and camaraderie I have never seen before and is yet another example of how RigUp sustains its empowering culture. For these reasons alone it came as no surprise that we were recently identified in CNBC’s Global Upstart Top 100 Most Promising Startups.
All of this has ensured that in my short time at RigUp the nature of the organisation has allowed me to overcome the challenges I was faced with. In just a few months I have moved across the globe and learned an astronomical amount about a completely new industry. And while I need to continue to strive to better understand our customers, I have no doubt that if RigUp retains it’s truly customer obsessed culture the business will continue to move from strength to strength, while I enjoy the ride.
For more information about RigUp check out rigup.com (btw we are hiring!)
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