In episode 4, listen to the Untold Story of Bitrise, brought to you by the company’s CEO and co-founder Barnabás Birmacher. Bitrise helps clients build better mobile applications, sparing time and resources for clients, so instead of drowning in mundane details, they can focus on solving problems. Besides having a top-notch CI/CD process, Bitrise is also known for being the first and yet only Hungarian startup to be accepted to Y Combinator.
This episode has so much to offer, especially about company culture and how to expand without losing touch with the founding values, so make sure you tune in and come along for this journey.
‘Culture in the beginning is actually how the founders are working… If you start hiring people, your culture is going to shift. From the beginning, just start thinking about this, how are we working, why are we going to win….’ - looking at successful startups, oftentimes we think success is mostly connected to how good their idea is. Barnabás explains how for Bitrise, company culture and a well-oiled feedback system is the backbone for their success. He explains how they kept on redefining their original idea based on feedback from paying customers, as well as mentors’ feedback.
Participating in Y Combinator’s accelerator program would be a dream for many entrepreneurs, Barnabás shed some light on the most important thing Bitrise took away from this opportunity: ‘at this stage, as a scaleup you kind of have a playbook. You’ll need to build out the culture, you have to make sure you have good recruitment, you have really great people to help you scale…’
This episode follows the story of Bitrise from early days of idea validation through product reiteration based on customer feedback to the rapid growth and expansion leading the company to raising $23.5 million and becoming one of the hottest Hungary-born startups today. If you are interested in the questions below, press play right away:
- What can a CEO protect and nurture company culture? How involved a CEO should be after reaching a certain company size?
- How to pivot when you realise your original startup idea will not work?
- What can you learn from a world-famous startup accelerator program?
- How to hire effectively not solely focusing on culture fit, but also culture add?
- Feedback first culture - how to encourage people to properly give / receive useful, constructive feedback?
- Shift to remote-first - how to decide, what is the right fit?
- How did Ashton Kutcher, the tech-focused celebrity become one of the angel investors of the company?
- What advice can Bitrise give to startups in the early stages?