In the ninth episode of our Career Inspiration podcast, I interviewed Seth Matheson - Director of Talent Acquisition at Toast.

Founded by Endeca alumni, Toast has been one of breakout tech companies in the Boston tech scene.  The company has raised over $130M in funding, including a $100M round of funding last summer and has almost 800 employees.

Seth actually started his career as a chef before moving to the recruiting industry. He helped Monster build out a very successful Recruitment Process Outsourcing business which worked with companies like Amazon and Tesla before joining Toast.

​In this episode we discuss:

• Matheson's background
• Toast's unique recruitment style
• The core values that make a job candidate 'Toasty'
• How the company uses clubs to enhance its culture
• ...and lots more!

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing a 5-star review - it will definitely help us get the word out there!

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Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz.  Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.

As we cross into each new year, countless numbers of people wait until January 1st to tackle those things on their to-do list they just never seem to accomplish.  For some reason, with the dawn of the new year, we seem to feel better motivated to take on some better version of ourselves. Whether it’s setting new financial budgets, learning something new, or finally shedding those extra pounds, many people rally around self-improvement as a goal.

And yet, think about the resolutions you’ve made over the years.  How long did you stick with it?  Did you accomplish what you set out to do?  As we begin 2018, read below for a handful of ideas to help you increase the odds of your own personal success for the long haul.

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act.  There is no other route to success.” - Pablo Picasso

We all understand actually setting a goal is a key component of being able to accomplish it, but increase your odds by selecting bite-size, specific goals that add up to your larger, ultimate one.  For example, if your goal is to save $3,000 this year, that can seem rather overwhelming when you contemplate where you are going to cut back on, etc.  However, if you instead set the goal of “I’m going to save $58 a week,” it’s amazing how fast that can add up.  A few less trips to Starbucks, bring your lunch to work two or three days a week, and bam!  You are well on your way to that bigger goal. Once you get into the rhythm and your new behaviors become habit, you will likely find yourself ready to take on even more aggressive goals.

“I get by with a little help from my friends.” - Ringo Starr

It can be somewhat intimidating to take on a big new challenge in front of others; for some reason for many people, we think going it alone makes us less vulnerable in case we ultimately fail.  And yet, ample studies indicate that by investing in a support system for whatever it is we are trying to accomplish, we significantly increase our odds of success.  Find someone - a friend, co-worker, family member, etc. who shares a similar goal and use each other for accountability and support.  

“You can never protect yourself 100%. What you do is protect yourself as much as possible and mitigate risk to an acceptable degree. You can never remove all risk”. - Kevin Mitnick

Kevin was right, though he was speaking in terms of information security.  While you can’t safeguard yourself from everything, you CAN protect yourself by being thoughtful about who and what you surround yourself with.  If you aim to lose weight, rid your home of foods that will tempt.  If your goal is to tackle new project work in the office in hopes of being considered for promotion, perhaps consider bolstering your relationships with people who can help you accomplish this versus those who are just fun to hang out with. In other words, stack the deck in your favor; the more you create an environment that will support your success, the more likely a positive outcome.

“I'm not perfect; no one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. I think you try to learn from those mistakes” - Derek Jeter

He’s right; no one is perfect.  Searching for perfection is an exercise in futility, so instead, go for “your very best effort.” Anytime we tackle a new goal, we are going to make some missteps.  Focus on resilience and rather than beat yourself up, focus on forgiving yourself and resolve to get back on track.  It’s all about progress, not perfection.

We all have aspirations, and sometimes we underestimate how challenging it can be to take on a big new goal.  By taking it step by step, surrounding yourself with supportive people and environment, and being kind to yourself along the way, you are well on your way to making 2018 the year you actually crush those resolutions!

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Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator.

Picture this; it’s 2010/2011 and there is this new currency on the Internet that seems to be only available through somewhat sketchy means and is used by equally sketchy people. Users are using this type of coin to purchase illegal goods on something called the Silk Road through the Deep Web.

This is what the world of Bitcoin looked like for a period of time.

Fast forward to today, and it looks completely different...especially in the Boston tech scene.

For the next four weeks, VentureFizz is giving our readers an inside look to the blockchain and cryptocurrency scene in Boston. What all the terms mean, who is involved with the technology, what are the investor's points of view, and what the future holds for Boston in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space.

For the first part of this series, it’s a crash course on what the terms in this new frontier mean.

The beginnings of my research started at an event hosted by the MIT Enterprise Forum, that was titled ‘Initial Coin Offerings: The Rise of Crypto Capitalism.’ It was a panel devoted to talking about how initial coin offerings work in the business world, but also an open forum to speak about any and all topics related to cryptocurrency. The panel was a who’s who of people heavily involved within the space, including David Vorick, the Co-Founder of Sia, and Chet Manikantan, Founder and CEO of Tengu.

The audience was a collection of people who wanted to learn more about cryptocurrency and how it works, while others wanted to hear opinions from experts on the subject, and others just came for the free pizza.

However, a common trait amongst the attendees was the excitement and optimism for what this form of innovation has to offer. A recurring phrase said by members of the panel and audience was, ‘It feels like the beginning of the dot-com era all over again.’

And for those involved in the blockchain/cryptocurrency space in Boston, from angel investors to the first-time entrepreneurs to those reporting on it, it’s an accurate statement to make. There’s new developments and ideas being implemented at a seemingly rapid rate, much like how companies were coming to prominence because of the then-new Internet.

“Everyone knows that we’re early. It’s like Friendster-era social networking,” said Parul Singh, a principal at Founder Collective. “Right now, we in an early adopter, building block stage where we are starting to see what kind of applications emerge for consumers, but mainstream users in the US aren’t affected by this yet.”

Singh adds, “Technology cannot reach mass adoption until it becomes invisible to end users.  But yes, watch this space.”

Singh and her firm Founder Collective represent some of the many investment firms keeping a close eye on this space and any and all the future innovation coming out of it.

For many people on the outside looking in on the world of cryptocurrency, the thought of making “real” money with “magic Internet money” (author’s note: this is a nickname I heard that kind of stuck with me) sounds like a risky endeavor or at least a passing fad.

It goes without saying that Bitcoin is a trending topic. Everyone seems to want a piece of the crypto-pie and some people are reaping the rewards with this highly volatile form of investing. Case in point, the Winklevoss twins broke the news about being the first-ever billionaires with Bitcoin.

But what about the entrepreneurs who are looking to stick around long after those who leave? Who are the companies that are creating products and services in unique ways with this technology and how can it be implemented? What about the business side of things? What’s an investor’s perspective on ICOs or companies they are interested in?

The energy of this sector in Boston is enticing for anyone looking for an opportunity to not only start a company with a unique application or help grow a business but also to learn about a potentially disruptive area of technology.

A Mini-Guide to the Lexicon of the Scene

“Several aspects of the technology are hard to understand for newcomers - although you can say the same for every new technology,” said Singh.  A very few people understood how a silicon circuit board worked or a MySQL query and that doesn’t mean they won’t be impacted by the applications.”

To someone with only a passing interest in the topic, the terms being thrown around can sound like a different language altogether, and the how the technology works can be difficult to follow as well.

Blockchain

The blockchain is the backbone of the majority, if not all, of the companies in the cryptocurrency space. It is a form of decentralized, open-source technology that can work as a public ledger for a variety of transactions.

Since it is open source, it makes it appealing to many developers who are looking to utilize it for various purposes. The biggest appeal of blockchain technology is that it is decentralized, meaning it doesn’t report to one major data center. Instead, it is decentralized and spread across a network. Through this, exchanges (of data, coins, etc.) can be done more directly.

There are four major use cases with blockchain technology: smart contracts, security, record keeping, and of course, digital currency. Although, that said, many startups in Boston’s blockchain/cryptocurrency scene use it for different purposes.

Take, for example, one of the more prominent companies in the space, Sia. The company’s founding team, Dave Vorick and Luke Champine, has created a decentralized data storage network where users can purchase 1TB of data that is encrypted over their network of hosts.

“We have hosts all over the world, so it’s not like there is one big target like a data center,” said Sia’s Head of Operations Zach Herbert. “A hacker would have to gain the encryption key and files from ten different hosts in order to put the data back together.”

At its core, blockchain is a line of data that is created from a starting block, called the genesis block, that is then broken up into linear sections called “blocks.”

The data inside these blocks cannot be changed or modified, which is commonly referred to as an immutable data. These blocks can be built off of each other using similar data, thus creating a chain. Hence the name, “blockchain.” A developer can add other blocks to it, which are called “orphan blocks” that can harness data off of the block they are an offshoot of.

However, an orphan block cannot replace a block of data on the main blockchain. Instead, it can become its own separate chain.

Cryptocurrency and its various forms

Cryptocurrency is a type of digital currency that can be exchanged anonymously through a blockchain. However, since it is not tied to any bank or financial firm, cryptocurrency exchanges and purchases can be done in a much quicker fashion.

Bitcoin

Without question, Bitcoin is the most well-known of the cryptocurrency coins. The coin is commonly used for purchases through the blockchain. Bitcoin can be purchased and sold through online vendors, such as Coinbase. Although, Bitcoin mining has become a trend for those looking to obtain some currency without having to go through a marketplace.

MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) is a research enterprise that employs both undergraduate students at MIT and Bitcoin developers to study and create projects built around this type of cryptocurrency. The DCI is the brainchild of MIT Media Lab Director Joichi Ito, Bitcoin developer Jeremy Rubin, and MIT alum Neha Narula, who serves as the Director for the DCI.

“What’s getting people excited about this space is Bitcoin,” said Narula. “There is a lot more you can do with Bitcoin than you would think. It’s great to have lots of experiments and people to work on them.”

The DCI, as described by Narula, is “a bit of an unusual one,” as it is a very open and collaborative environment that allows members to be flexible and focus on various projects, such as discreet log contracts using Bitcoin.

Ethereum

Ethereum is another form of cryptocurrency; however, it is more than just a coin. The best way to describe it is “cryptocurrency by developers, for developers.” Bitcoin is, as of now, still just a currency, but Ethereum can be used for building applications, like smart contracts. If, for example, a sports organization wants to start giving contracts without having to go through an agency, Ethereum has the ability to do that.

Studies have shown Ethereum to not only be more abundant in amount, but it is also faster to conduct transactions through Ethereum’s GHOST protocol.

However, the adoption rate of Ethereum has been significantly slower due to its complicated, hard-to-learn nature for those who are just coming into the crypto space.

Token

From the surface, a token is not so much different from a cryptocurrency coin. However, the major contrast between the two is the use-case applications. Coins in this space are typically accepted as a form of currency, and they can used for other purposes outside of purchases, but tokens are part of an internal economy within technology platforms. They can be used for purchases, yes, but they also can be exchanged for currency and are vital to a company when they are going through an initial coin offering.

Tokens are usually proprietary, and their value only increases the more it is used in a certain technology setting. If, for example, Amazon began offering tokens, users could purchase and use them for expedited shipping, create extensive wish lists, rent/buy videos on Amazon Instant Video, etc.

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)

Initial coin offerings, or ICOs,  might be one of the more controversial parts of the cryptocurrency space. An ICO is a different method to fund your company, without having to exchange equity for an investment. A company will create its own token, which can be purchased by would-be investors. Owning a token with an ICO is similar to owning shares of a company during its IPO. In turn, those tokens can grow in value within the company. In 2017 alone, ICOs totaled to $3.7 billion across various companies in the United States.

In October, AirFox, a startup offering mobile users overseas with affordable data plans, became one of the first venture-backed companies to raise $15 million with an ICO. The company’s CEO Victor Santos, CTO James Seibel, and VP of Business Operations Christine To decided to take time off to work on the ICO in order to raise their funds in a quick fashion.

“There is a lot of work that is needed to unlock an ICO,” said To. “Our ICO started in July [2017], and while the first two weeks were rough, especially for a rather low key company.”

“Then something unique happened,” To adds. “We went from explaining to folks what an ICO was, to people coming to us looking to purchase tokens.”

AirFox is one of the many companies to have found success raising funds through an ICO, but as To described, it wasn’t simple. The reason why it’s considered controversial is that the process has become all too appealing for many would-be entrepreneurs who think it’s a walk in the park for quick cash.

“There is an illusion that it is [running an ICO] easy and it’s not. A lot of companies think it’s quick and easy money and it’s not,” said To. “There are a lot of unknowns, and the amount of funding is more than you think. There is so much work to do in such a short period of time.”

“It’s still a little bit like the Wild West for ICOs,” said Singh. “There is a lot of unscrupulous people out there that are using it as a scam, which is a shame since there is potential to fund a different way.”

Another major issue is it can create an abundance of tokens that can only be used within a specific network, rendering them useless in other settings within the space. Where coins can have a variety of uses, tokens are useless outside of their respective network.

Tune in next week...same blockchain time, same blockchannel

Throughout researching what the terms mean in this space, Singh proved to be a helpful source and gave us a little insight into how investors like her view this space. However, she isn’t the only one getting involved.

In our next installment of Cryptocurrency & Blockchain in Boston Tech, we will be getting the investors’ thoughts and perspectives on the scene and, what some of their predictions are for the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry in Boston.

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Colin Barry is a contributor to VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter @ColinKrash.

Images via Founder Collective, MIT DCI, AirFox, BigFish Communications and Osman Rana on Unsplash.

In the eighth episode of our Career Inspiration podcast, I interviewed Brian Gilbert - Director of Talent Acquisition at iRobot, which is famous for their robotic vacuum cleaner called the Roomba.

Brian has led talent acquisition at high growth startups and publicly traded companies at scale.

​In this episode we discuss:

• Gilbert's background
• How he built out their talent acquisition function which was originally run by a recruitment outsourcing firm.
• Why employment branding has been something the company has focused on significantly and the results.
• iRobot's massive contributions to STEM education
• ...and lots more!

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing a 5-star review - it will definitely help us get the word out there!

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Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz.  Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.

The startup food and beverage sectors are hot. With, according to CB Insights, 1,300 deals - valued at nearly $6B - involving F&B companies since 2012. As consumers look for greater convenience and healthier options, and brands, retailers, and producers look to boost margins and reach new markets, a range of companies have stepped up to change the rules and drive innovation.

Many of these disruptors are based in and around Boston and run the gamut from new takes on snack food and natural beverages to packaging, delivery, and restaurant concepts, apps for merchandising and retail sales, and even new approaches to high-tech agriculture.

Like any successful startup hub, the Boston F&B scene has a growing and diverse community of talent, mentors, well-connected startups, supporting software and services firms, and peer communities; plus a few anchor companies like Boston Beer Company, Dunkin’ Brands, and Ocean Spray.

Here’s a quick guide to some of the key players I’ve been tracking and gotten to know as I navigate the local food and beverage cluster forming around downtown Boston. Know others that should be on my radar? Feel free to shoot me a note!

Buzzy brands

Walk through a local Whole Foods Market or CVS and you’re likely to spot a number of products created right here in Boston. From natural food brands like Biena Foods and their chickpea snacks (gotta love their BBQ flavor) to hometown heroes Grillo’s Pickles, and Tom Brady’s favorite indulgence from Unreal Brands, there are a growing number of locally born treats available in your local supermarket.

Of course, those of us who are fans of craft beer know that there’s no shortage of awesome local breweries as well (BeerAdvocate has a handy, up-to-date beer guide I recommend). But fewer folks know that some of the fastest-growing beverage companies are also in the neighborhood, including Spindrift and Downeast Cider House, both of which made Repsly’s recent Top 100 Buzziest Brands list.

The delivery guys

So how do you get these healthy snacks to your workplace or kid’s school or a late night meal (or adult beverage) to your apartment? A number of Boston firms are hard at work making it possible, even as some early food delivery app firms based in town (like Chef Nightly and Foodler, now GrubHub) have exited the game.

Of course, one of the most prominent is online booze marketplace and mobile app Drizly, which continues to rake in both fans and funding (about $35M so far). On the corporate side, Leanbox is reinventing the vending machine with its smart food and beverage kiosks for workplaces, while Bevi is doing the same for water coolers.

Meanwhile, Smart Lunches is tackling the age-old question parents dread: “What’s in my lunch?”, with a clever online ordering app and delivery network to get your kiddos their healthy or allergy-smart meal at school or camp.

The app providers

As brand ambassadors, merchants and their consumers embrace mobile devices, the number of apps available to help manage field teams, merchandise products, and create better in-store experiences has taken off as well. Beyond being a hub for food delivery app development, Boston is also home to a number of SaaS shops, agencies, and investors focused on solutions for food and beverage brands, retailers, and restaurants.

Repsly moved to Boston three years ago to tap into this very ecosystem, and today offers a mobile CRM for field sales and merchandising teams in 70 countries. Other SaaS providers in town include BevSpot, which offers a variety of online tools for managing bar inventory, ordering and sales, Drync, which provides a slick white label app for liquor retailers, and LevelUp (the old SCVNGR), a mobile payments app and customer engagement platform that has raised over $100M so far.

At the same time, several local firms are helping establishments operate and deliver unique, memorable experiences to guests. These include Toast, which offers a mobile POS system for restaurants, bars, and clubs and has raked in nearly $134M in funding to-date, Providence-based Upserve, an end-to-end “Restaurant Management Platform,” and the Moseley Group in Franklin which has been an innovator in applying design thinking and experiential branding to the food biz for over 25 years.

The rocket scientists

While the locally sourced consumer brands and services above are hard to miss, a few other Boston-area firms are working behind the scenes to create next-gen food tech and devices that are changing the way we eat, drink, and produce food. Several are looking to harness the power of AI and machine learning to solve some BIG problems, such as ag-tech heavyweights Cibo Technologies with its custom seeds designed using machine learning, and local unicorn Indigo, which is using machine learning and plant microbes to boost crop yields and farmer productivity.

Of course one of the first ag-tech pioneers was Boston-based Freight Farms, with its wired up containers for go-anywhere farming. Up the road in Manchester NH, Dean Kamen’s DEKA Research & Development may be better known for its futuristic medical devices, but was also the brains behind Coke’s Freestyle soda machine. Meanwhile, if you are looking to create your own new food product, the folks at Chew can help you get started in their food innovation lab right in downtown Boston.

The connectors

Scaling the sparks of innovation requires a supportive community of mentors, incubators, and funding sources. Boston has this in super-sized portions with a number of local food and beverage focused investment firms, law practices, shared workspaces, and media companies like Watertown-based BevNET.

For funding and deal-making, Boston founders are lucky to have a number of options, such as  Cambridge’s Fresh Source Capital, which is focused on sustainable food and agriculture, and Sherbrooke Capital, a VC firm investing in health and wellness from its office in Wellesley. Plus Nutter’s Food & Beverage Practice hosts an excellent Founder Roundtable each fall.

For emerging brands, Branchfood provides networking programs and office space, while the Food Loft also provides coworking space and investment for food and food tech startups.

So whether you are new to the game and looking to test market a new product idea, an established growth brand looking to reach new markets by scaling your field team, or a techie looking to break into the F&B business, there’s likely just what you need right here in Boston.

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Allen Bonde is vice president of marketing at mobile CRM provider Repsly. You can follow him at @abonde.

'Tis the season... and there was no shortage of holiday festivities across the Boston tech scene over the month of December.

You'll see some elaborate holiday parties, fun in-office celebrations, and lots of giving back to families in need.

It's also a good time to own an ugly sweater company, as there is no shortage of creative options there.

Enjoy the slideshow below!

Over the years, the application of Lean principles has been successfully incorporated into many areas of organizations - clearly, manufacturing and development have been enormously successful at both understanding the concept and applying it in the real world to achieve objectives. But, other areas of the organization can just as easily incorporate the same types of philosophies (and methodologies) within their own departments.

At its core, the Lean philosophy revolves around customer value as a focus and end goal, encouraging the application of these 7 main principles:

Eliminate waste: Thoroughly and critically examine existing processes and identify steps that are deemed wasteful to reach optimization.

Build quality in: By integrating quality at each step, rather than completing and revisiting, inherently eliminates waste and achieves a better ‘product’. 

Deliver fast: The concept of delivering fast allows the team the ability to elicit feedback and make adjustments as needed.

Create knowledge: It is imperative to capture knowledge that is created. This knowledge has a direct relationship to future performance around time to market and improved quality.

Defer commitment: The team should leverage the defer commitment concept to ensure they have the needed ‘functionality’ of what the customer is requesting.

Respect people: The team as a whole ultimately impacts the customer.

Optimize the whole: Individual teams should look at themselves as part of the bigger picture, not in a vacuum.

There is a misconception that Lean always equates to a reduction in workforce. This is fundamentally not true. When executed properly, it actually makes your workforce more productive, driving higher value per employee.

Getting Started

An interesting approach to beginning to look at Lean is to chart processes with something simple, like post-it notes. Often it becomes readily apparent that not all team members adhere to a common process, and this lays the groundwork to decide, as a team, where improvements can be made.  

• Are you over-producing? Try to identify over delivering vs. over-producing, keeping in mind what is most valuable to the customer.

• Are people on the team waiting? This is a key indicator of waste – obviously. Analyze and brainstorm how to overcome this stumbling block.

• Is there excessive handling on the way to delivery? Look at how you can streamline approval cycles, requests, and information.

• Is the process in play too complicated? Discuss and brainstorm as a team whether there is a simplified method that achieves the same outcome desired.

• Is there an unacceptable amount of defects? It’s common knowledge that the cost of quality increases and your value diminishes when something must be fixed after the fact.

These are just a few of the questions you can ask yourself and your team to see how Lean might apply in the work you perform every day.

Real World Illustration: Lean in a Professional Services Group

In a recent example of Lean, NeuEon recently worked with a large Edtech firm’s professional services group. The group was charged with upgrading numerous existing clients to their cloud product. The team performed a series of planning steps for using Lean/Kanban principles in their work. After some discussion, the team realized that there were many tasks that could either be eliminated or automated to increase efficiencies. The team also implemented Atlassian’s Jira to track the standard tasks for each upgrade. In using Jira and Lean/Kanban principles together, they identified and quantified that the work in the queue would never be finished within the prescribed times. This realization of the amount of actual work vs. available resources empowered the team to discuss expectations internally and with clients.

Other key data points that revealed themselves in this new Lean/Kanban process included severe bottlenecks in the process. The team could identify tasks and dependencies that were built into the overall process and acknowledge that these dependencies, in some instances, were “band-aids” that were integrated into and became part of the process. The team was then able to assess their process and highlight these areas for improvement critically. The result not only helped the team deliver better quality for the client but also prepared the team to tackle new initiatives with knowledge of how to apply Lean to every situation moving forward.

Conclusion

The application of Lean can be adopted by multiple functional areas across organizations and shouldn’t be looked at as something done only by specific departments. Lean can be used in any industry, and its principles allow for a company to make teams more accountable and own the process they use each day to create a product or service, regardless of whether the customers are internal or external.

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Jim Hannon is a Lead Consultant at NeuEon, specializing in the implementation of Agile Transformations and business process improvement.

We’re coming to the end of another jam-packed year, and like most of us, I’m taking a pause to reflect on all that’s been accomplished (and some of what hasn’t!). For me, it was a year of serious reflection, some big decisions that affected my personal and professional life, both creating and diving into some new opportunities and enjoying a few good wins along the way.  And yet, when I think about what made it truly notable, it wasn’t about what I did as an individual that I find celebratory —  it’s the wins our team had that make me the proudest.

I count myself fortunate to be part of three great teams at work: our executive team, our People Strategy team, and the Rapid7 community. Though the work often overlaps, I typically engage and experience the roller coaster ride with each team slightly differently. With all three, however, I find an abundance of learning opportunities, challenges to tackle together, and an outsized amount of laughter along the way. And as December comes to a close, I’m going to take a moment to thank them for what they have given me… and hopefully, encourage you to do the same with your own teams.

Dear Rapid7 Team,

Thank you. There are far too many of you to name, but if we’ve interacted in any capacity more than a passing hello, I’m addressing you.

Thank you for the disciplined risks you were all willing to take along with me. Those who know me well appreciate I’m more than a little left of center when it comes to taking on a big change or risk. Complacency and fear of stagnation are almost as terrifying to me as is my fear of clowns. This company provides an exceptional support system, allowing me to pursue my crazy ideas. It’s one thing to ponder the ideas that pop into my head in the middle of the night, but it’s quite another to see what happens when I partner with others to bring those ideas to life — especially when I get to work with such an amazing team and drive positive impact. It’s also pretty special to see so many of you gaining confidence to drive innovation and impact in the company because you feel inspired and supported to do so.

Thank you for providing me a boundless set of opportunities to foster my own continuous learning. Whether it was partnering with our leadership team during various offsites, discussing how we will take over the world, or learning from a leader in an overseas office about how their needs differ from ours in the U.S., it was a year full of personal development for me. I end this year with new perspectives, new ideas, and new passions for topics I hadn’t considered at the start of 2017. I learned long ago if you walk into a room assuming you don’t have all the answers, it’s incredible how much you can learn from others. This adage served me unimaginably well this year. You didn’t fail me.

Thank you for your individual excellence. One of the benefits of being part of a growth company is that the opportunities for improvement never stop. It’s like playing whack-a-mole: once you feel like you’ve tackled one big thing, another one pops up needing attention. Some people get exhausted and disengaged by this constant marathon, and yet the folks I work with always come ready to dive in. It’s one of the things that makes this company truly unique; status quo is taboo. Our dedication to constant improvement is a true key to our continued success.

Thank you for the teamwork. We think of ourselves as “one moose,” to recognize that we are all in this together. We appreciate that we accomplish infinitely more as a team than we ever would individually, and we do the hard work to make relationships work. It fills me with tremendous pride to watch guests enter our lobby, only to be asked by those of us who pass by, “Have you been helped yet?” No one tells us to behave this way. We do it because we work hard to be inclusive and kind. Just as no one tells us to ask a peer “Do you need a hand?” when we know they are working hard to make a deadline. We do it because we understand grabbing a shovel and pitching in is what you do when you are on a healthy team.

Thank you for the meaningful customer partnerships. Given my customers are all of you, (rather than our external paying ones) listening to your ideas and concerns, actively engaging with you in idea generation and those activities that will drive the greatest benefit to us all are key focus areas for me. By continuing to ask me the tough questions I hadn’t yet considered, you have helped me to raise my game.

You’ve ignited a fire in me to take advantage of opportunities, rather than wait until they become problems to be addressed. Some were easy, some were far more complex that will require a programmatic response in the New Year...but as always, if they were important enough for you to ask about, they are worth my energy attempting to solve. I do not own the culture of this company — we all do. When we partner together and hold ourselves accountable to keep it strong, healthy, and scaling along with us, together we keep this company thriving.

And finally, thank you for all for allowing me to do the work I am passionate about doing, every single day. As the year comes to a close, so does my seventh year at Rapid7. Never did I imagine I’d continue to find a challenging, rewarding, and inspired company for such a sustained period of time. I love this company and I love the partnership and collaboration that comes from working with all of you. Thank you for that.

Happy Holidays to all. May you get good rest, and come back on January 2nd ready to engage with all that 2018 will bring!

Christina

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Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator.