EngageRocket co-founders Leong Chee Tung and Dorothy Yiu
Five years ago, Dorothy and I left our jobs as Regional Senior Management at reputable global research and consulting firm to start EngageRocket. EngageRocket started as an answer to our frustration over how employee engagement surveys were being conducted across companies.
Now, the platform has evolved beyond what we could have imagined at first, with over 10 million survey answers collected from more than 200,000 users to date.
We recently celebrated our startup’s fifth anniversary and this milestone made us reflect on our journey not just on the business side of things but also on our partnership.
Finding a co-founder that shares your vision is a big challenge, but making the relationship work in the long run is a bigger one. Even if you’re one of the lucky few, who have found a co-founder that shares your vision and ambitions, sustaining this partnership for 1, 5, and 20 years down the road will pose a new set of dynamics to navigate.
Nowadays, breakdowns in communications between co-founders have become a public secret within startup communities.
In his book The Founder’s Dilemma, Professor Noah Wasserman even stated that 65 per cent of failures in high-potential startups are due to interpersonal relationship problems, especially between co-founders.
Putting things into perspective made us realise how lucky we are to be partners that truly bring the best out of each other.
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Before EngageRocket, Dorothy and I had worked together for many years in our consulting job. Growing a regional business before together gave us insight into our common values, complementary strengths, and a foundation of trust.
We imported a high degree of commitment and accountability to each other into EngageRocket, which has infused our company values from Day 1. Now, we’re proud to say that we’ve found the right balance that works even as EngageRocket scales up its operations.
Here are some of the things we did to secure our partnership’s future.
Dropping C-suite titles
Looking at our contributions over the past five years, we have decided that holding ‘CEO’ and ‘COO’ titles are quite meaningless. The reality is to play to our strengths where we are most needed and cover for each other seamlessly when required.
We know the importance of maintaining swim lanes for decision-making clarity and speed. Within EngageRocket, Dorothy handles product decisions broadly while I deal with the go-to-market, and we respect each others’ decisions in both domains.
Other key business areas such as fundraising, key hires, and strategy are tabled for joint alignment. So far, we have found this to be a unique feature of EngageRocket that optimises decision-making, made possible by 10 years of collaboration prior.
Maintain utmost respect for each other and build a mechanism for check-ins
Conflict is unavoidable in any form of relationship, and our partnership was no exception. With 10 years of collaboration, we have faced many challenges that sometimes led to heated situations over differing opinions.
The frequency of conflicts was higher during the early days of EngageRocket as we made crucial decisions for the business.
This is the true nature of any business relationship, but just like any other setback, there is a way to navigate it healthily. What we have learnt is to always return to our common values and never waiver on our trust and respect for each other.
This aspect of our partnership also influences how we lead our team; we always listen and understand the other first. This has served us well to this day as we ensure that all voices are heard.
The other thing we did was to build a mechanism for check-ins. Our schedules fill up fast, and while we prioritise responsiveness to each other in day-to-day operations, we’ve built ways to keep aligned in a scalable way.
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Dorothy and I have a recurring 30-min weekly Monday morning operational sync, a one-hour monthly strategic alignment review, and a three-hour quarterly long-term planning in our calendars.
These check-ins keep us constantly aligned and leading with one voice at all times.
Balancing our friendship outside work
We are both founders and good friends– and we found it important to nurture both aspects of the relationship as they are mutually reinforcing.
Work and personal matters are separated by platform (we chat on work matters on Slack and personal matters on WhatsApp). We regularly show a genuine interest and concern for personal lives outside work.
We were there for each other through major personal events, and we make an effort to include our spouses when we connect outside work.
Even as we run our independent families, we find opportunities to check-in and build relationships with each other’s personal support network and feel joy in celebrating each other’s personal wins.
Moving forward
Of course, this is far from the end (or even the middle) of our journey with EngageRocket. Just a few weeks ago, Dorothy and I sat down for hours discussing our goals, ambitions, and aspirations for the next five years down the line. As we expand our team, we’re eyeing a larger scale expansion across APAC, followed by global expansion afterwards.
To fulfil this, we know clearly what needs to be done; strengthen EngageRocket’s product capabilities to answer the challenges that businesses in different regions face.
We also have one significant non-revenue related ambition in mind: to grow as founders while we empower our team to grow and become leaders themselves.
After all, EngageRocket’s vision is to create a world where people thrive, and organisations succeed and the best place to start realising this is in our own backyard.
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Image credit: EngageRocket
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