7y
Thanks for leaving such a thorough review. Let me begin by apologizing that you didn’t have a good experience at Luno. We try incredibly hard to make Luno an amazing place to work and progress, and where it doesn’t work out for some people, I really take full responsibility.
Also, I can assure you that we’ve spent a lot of time reading and reflecting on this review to ensure we draw the necessary truths from it to ensure we make things better for people in a similar position. As you know we’re scaling super fast and sometimes we don’t get to fix or do things as fast/well as we should. But scaling shouldn’t be an excuse for everything, and there are many areas that we can improve on. To address some of your specific points:
Different offices with different culture: this is true. Bear in mind though, a big office wasn’t like that in the beginning, it took many years to get there. Most of our other offices are much smaller and new and will take time to evolve its own culture. Some offices have grown well, others more challenging, but it’s all a work in progress and we’re spending an incredible amount of time and energy to do it right.
No autonomy: ‘no’ is probably a bit of a superlative, but there have certainly been challenges across some new offices. I am under no illusion that there are many initial bottlenecks, which is understandable given our stage and pace of growth. The important thing is that the strategy of all our new offices is to ultimately be fully autonomous, but it takes time, and it’s often 3 steps forward, 1 step back. This is a high priority on my agenda and over the past few months we’ve done a huge amount to speed things up.
Processes ‘designed to be concentrate power in the hands of early employees’: It's definitely not ‘designed’ like that. Like any fast scaling company, it does sometimes happen that some early employees are challenged in a certain area, and then this could become problematic. But it’s not some evil power mongering going on, it’s usually just someone out of their depth that is insecure or worried about their job etc. We have a track record of asking people like this to step aside where needed, but at the same time, in some cases it is missed or we try to first give the person a chance to develop, and then it might take a bit of time for them to get better or for us to make that change, but it is always dealt with one way or another.
Free lunches ‘designed to keep you in the office and only 15 mins. Again, not ‘designed’ in any way, it’s just free food and (if you would like it) and an opportunity to sit and have lunch with your colleagues if you want to, but you can take however long or wherever you want.
Collecting people from prestigious companies for pitch books: if you look at the data on Linkedin for example, you will see that there is a huge range of Lunauts, some from so-called ‘prestigious’ companies, many (if not most) who are not. We hire based on merit, and often they will be from these companies, there is no bias. When I do investor pitches, I have a team slide (that you presumably refer to), which includes logos of companies that people previously worked for, which is standard. It’s also standard to include the companies that other people would know vs ones that are not so well-known. So nothing unusual.
Do time as a prison sentence: no-one is forcing anyone to do anything or be anywhere. Like any other company, we’re a good match for some, not so good for others. But there is no gun to anyone’s head.
No dialogue with management and that it’s ‘one way’: I think this is a gross generalization. Can we all do better at communication generally? Yes of course. It’s something we’re constantly working on, especially in many new teams and offices where communication is a bit weaker because people don’t know one another that well, hence trying to invest more into that.
Product doesn’t differentiate, marketing expected to drive all, big bet with established players in space - this is quite a lot to address but in short, if you understand our business model you’ll understand why we’re so well set up for success in our industry. For example, we are no 1 in many markets across the world, by quite a significant factor. And we’re actually the total opposite of relying on marketing for growth, almost all of our growth is organic.
Act faster on toxic employees: something I 100% agree with you, we don’t always do it fast enough, and we should be better at it.
Again, I sincerely apologize that you had such a bad experience at Luno. Please know that there are a lot of people working tirelessly to make it better for current and future employees, and that we’ve taken your comments on board to make sure we improve. It would be useful if you could discuss your views with me in person so I can get more detail and act better where necessary, so please whatsapp or email me if you’d like, you have my contact details.
Marcus
