Interview with Jeljer & Lukas from Reloadify

"We want to be a company that people will still want to work for 30 years from now."

Hello Jeljer and Lukas! Who is Reloadify and what are your company's roots?

Lukas: I was a freelance online marketing consultant when I met Jeljer in Groningen in 2015. He was working as a freelance developer at the time and I presented him with my idea for a simple search engine optimization software. We started working on it and it quickly became a hit for e-commerce stores worldwide. Two or three years later, about 1,000 stores were already using our product. However, the product was way too cheap. In those three years, we gained a lot of experience in the e-commerce world, so we saw an opportunity for a new e-commerce software. With our software, we provide e-commerce providers and agencies with comprehensive data about their customers. We launched in May 2019. Today 15 people (12 internal, 3 external) work for us, twice as many as when we started. We have been profitable from the beginning. That is quite an achievement for a start-up that developed under its own steam and with its own capital. We are very proud of that.

What do companies need your services for?

Lukas: 95% of companies do not realize the wealth of customer data they have at their fingertips. With our software solution, we make it easy for companies to use the available data, for example, for customer contact. If the average order value per customer is low, our software can help generate more sales during the customer journey. Our software has a lot to offer: reach customers at the right times, maintain your own fan base, increase sales with the right features, and automate customer communications in a meaningful way. Companies and marketing agencies are still in the early stages of using this data. Therefore, we are way ahead with our product. And we realize that the knowledge of online agencies is mediocre at best. There is a great need for advice here. For this purpose, we have developed masterclass videos and an academy.

Who work in your company?

Lukas: We started investing very early on in experienced people with extensive knowledge of email marketing. They are experts. They can answer customer questions directly and give comprehensive advice. We get very good feedback for this. Because our customers are talking to experts who understand their problem. It is also not easy for us to find experienced and well-trained people. That's why we decided to train more people. Our employees build extensive knowledge during their on-the-job training.

Jeljer: I would say we are very selective in choosing our employees.

Lukas: We are not a consulting company that gets paid by the hour. We rent our software to customers. That's why we keep our organization as lean as possible. We'd rather invest in one really good customer service expert than two mediocre employees. We made a conscious decision to hire so few people. I would say we are quite strict because we have high quality standards. But everyone who comes to work for us finds good working conditions in which they can develop.

So good staff development is the secret to your success?

Lukas: We try to minimize stress for our employees as much as possible. We can decide the pace at which our company grows. The company is ours. There is no investor to set goals and pace. This allows us to grow healthily, take our time to hire people and train them with us. If we grew faster, we would need more staff, which would cause more stress for everyone and more mistakes would be made. This does not have a positive impact on customer satisfaction.

Our goal is to create a company that we all still want to work for 30 years from now. That is our philosophy. We have introduced working days from nine to five. Our employees do not work overtime. There is unlimited paid vacation time and a good pension plan. We pay competitive salaries and offer other benefits.

What does unlimited vacation mean?

Lukas: We don't want our employees to burn out at some point. I'd rather someone take another week of vacation to recover, even if they've already been on vacation. Imagine you've had a difficult year. There has been a death in your family or something else requires you to take time off. Or if you want to go backpacking for six months. We have to talk about things like that, because it just has to be possible.

Jeljer: Our employees are very interested in moving the company forward. They are very dedicated. So there are times when we have to say, You have to take a break now.

Lukas: It's a question of trust. Can we trust people to make their own decisions and take responsibility for their work?

Jeljer: And we can. We are also not typical "bosses." We don't meet a lot, we don't set deadlines. Furthermore, we trust everyone to take responsibility, and that's why we look so carefully at who we hire.

We are not typical "bosses." We believe everyone should take responsibility, which is why we look so carefully at who we hire.

Jeljer te Wies, CTO

What do you pay particular attention to when hiring?

Lukas: Whether we can have a beer with someone after work. (laughs) What we are not looking for are people who want to make a career at any cost.

Jeljer: It depends. Developers need different social skills than someone in marketing. We need team players, not alpha males.

Lukas: And work-life balance is important. We're no good as a company if everyone is stressed.

Lukas says goodbye at this point in the interview and says he has to go, he has his dad day today.

How do you work together and organize at Reloadify?

Jeljer: Our offices have an open layout. There is one big room where we all work. So if everyone walked around the room and talked to each other, a lot of people would be disturbed in their workflow. That's why we have discussion times and non-discussion times. Between nine and ten, you can talk about the day or the weekend. But between ten and twelve it is quiet, from twelve to one we eat together, and from one to four it is quiet again. It's not that talking is forbidden at this time. But you have to be considerate of other colleagues. The most important thing is to concentrate, to be able to think for a few hours, and get your work done. Many employees work from home. I like being in the office. One of our colleagues lives in The Hague. We pay for the hotel when he comes to the office. If you want, you can say in the morning: I'm going to work from home today. And then that's fine.

How do you get the team back together?

Jeljer: We have found that this comes naturally. We have a development team that meets once a week for about 10-15 minutes. That's the only meeting we have during the week. There are no others. We use asynchronous communication: anyone who has a question asks it through Slack.

So the developers work in a self-organized way?

Jeljer: They have a six-week cycle and no deadlines. We require that it has to be done well, not quickly. If the developers finish their work earlier, they can do whatever they want. And very often they find things that need to be done anyway.

What would you say to companies that have doubts about this form of flexible working and open culture?

Jeljer: As a manager, you quickly start doubting people. Are they working? This is often based on feelings, but not on facts. So managers implement controls to make themselves feel good: daily meetings, meeting deadlines and so on. But if you give your employees freedom, they will find their way. It's not easy to allow that. If you don't see your employees for three to four days, you start to worry. You start asking them via chat, "Hey, how are you?" That doesn't help, nor is it necessary. My advice? Relax yourself!

How is the feedback from your team?

Jeljer: We have quarterly 1:1 meetings with a structured questionnaire and get very positive feedback. We want everyone to be happy. If they are happy, they like their work. And if they like their work, they stay with us.

The interview with Lukas and Jeljer was conducted by Michaela Rau.

07.02.2024

More about Hellmund. The Personnel Advisors

Hellmund. The Personnel Consultants. is a recruitment consultancy based in Potsdam. We specialize in placing qualified personnel for test service providers (TIC sector) and for quality and sustainability positions in companies.