'I Can't Recognize Everyone Anymore': Life at a Fast-Growing Startup

Early employees are the backbone of most startups. They buy their own desks, they establish the culture, they interview future hires and they maintain the culture as the company grows. They jump on the proverbial rocket ship and work, work, work â€" fueled by passion, ambition, coffee, free snacks and the good stuff in the kegerator. Thus far in our series The First 100, we've introduced you to hires 1 through 90 at various startups. Here's a smattering of the companies we've included:

1-10 â€" Reddit, Barkbox, Groupon, Quirky
11-20 â€" Github, Squarespace, Buzzfeed, Plated
21-30 â€" Tumblr, Etsy, RunKeeper, Zillow
31-40 â€" Popsugar, Thrillist, Shapeways, Chartbeat
41-50 â€" Fitbit, Vimeo, Indeed
51-60 â€" Equinox, Eventbrite, Meetup
61-70 â€" Airbnb, Vevo, Gazelle, Rent the Runway
71-80 â€" Pinterest, Clif, Birchbox
81-90 â€" Gilt, Soundcloud, Stitchfix

And now, read on to meet the last cohort of #First100 employees, hired 91 through 100. Then tell us about your #First100 experience on Twitter or in the comments.

Working small, thinking big... I think a lot of people are drawn to startups because they are smaller, more intimate companies where you get to know the people around you. For example, I went to Olin College, which only has 300 students. Recreating the small-team interactions I had at college were part of the reason a small company appealed to me. Pocket Gems was smaller than my previous company, but they had a strong focus on software engineering. I knew that Pocket Gems' engineering focus meant that, even with fewer people, the group would be more my style.

Gaming is sexy... Before joining Pocket Gems, I was working at the space technology company, Blue Origin. Developing space technology was an amazing opportunity for an amateur space geek and was great for my inner child. Pocket Gems still managed to pull me in because, let’s face it, games are sexy. I saw Pocket Gems as an opportunity to make games that would touch millions of people. Pocket Gems was also a place where I could grow and learn as a software engineer in ways I couldn’t yet imagine.I started at Pocket Gems in January 2012 as the first Android engineer. When I started, I was mainly writing Java. Today, I'm the lead engineer on the Android Platform, coordinating across multiple engineering teams.

Horsing around... In the two plus years since I've been at Pocket Gems, it's gotten bigger, but you wouldn't know it from the way the office acts. You’ll still find people playing pool or ping pong after lunch. People can still be caught aiming a Nerf gun at the window while waiting for code to compile or for Excel to get it’s act together. But the company is also older and wiser; we’ve learned a lot about what goes into hit games and what doesn’t. We have better tools and more options for designers and engineers alike. We now spend more time investing in our team’s growth, ensuring both the company and its individuals are always evolving.

Constant challenges... Pocket Gems is never stale. I don't think anyone here is still doing the exact same job they were when they first walked in the door. If you want to learn and grow, Pocket Gems has plenty of ways to help you do that. I've worked on the Android versions of over a dozen different games in two years and each project has it’s own life. Whether it’s a hit game or not, it's always interesting. All projects are all different. Some are easy. Some are exciting. Most are challenging.

Team pride... My favorite projects have had challenging engineering dragons that could take a week to slay. Every launch is another trophy, the final result of months of challenges and successes. Every launch is a reminder of the experiences our scrappy Android team has had together.

Today, Pocket Gems has 175 employees.

My first job... I was in college when I received my offer from Coyote, so I had never had a “real world” job. But I was so excited about Coyote because of the opportunity to learn about the logistics industry and be a part of a company that had huge aspirations to become an industry giant! www.coyote.comI loved that intensity and wanted to be a part of it.

A winding path... Working at a small company was a great way to dive into my career, and my career path at Coyote has evolved. This is a huge perk of starting at a company when it is very young and growing really fast. You either go where you are needed, or you propose an opportunity that didn't exist before. I loved this, especially early on in my career at Coyote, because I really didn't know what I wanted. I was able to learn a lot about the industry from many different roles, and it gave me the opportunity to figure out what I wanted for my career. I started in operations, then I moved into a sales trainer role, and from there I joined the recruiting team. Now I am back to my roots, in an operations management role. It is amazing to have the experience I have had, and I am very grateful.

Excitement ahead... The best thing about working at Coyote â€" and what keeps me going every day â€" is the fact that there is still so much in store for us; the excitement and changes that come with growing are not yet over. Every year here is drastically different from the last but in a good way, because you are confronted with new challenges and experiences and knowledge. It keeps you on your toes and it keeps you wanting to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

Today, Coyote Logistics has 1,263 employees.

Moving to Kayak... I was working at JumpTap, a small mobile advertising company. I joined Kayak because a really good friend of mine worked there and convinced me to come join. Kayak was exciting because of the people. I just love the people and the fact that the product was travel excited me more â€" one of my passions is traveling.

Jumping around... I worked on the hotels product for the first three years as Director of Product Management and moved onto Android for a year and a half, then back to hotels again.

Getting bigger... The company has grown, and I can't recognize everyone anymore. More processes are in place and releases have become more complicated with coordination with international [teams].

Kayak culture... Fun, active and operates like a flat organization. The people and the laughter [keep me going] every day.

Today, Kayak has ~250 employees.

Image: Flickr, sircambridge

Better together... The team has grown fast in the time I've been at Flipboard, partly because of the acquisition of Zite. It’s really cool to see how fast we’re becoming one team and learning from each other.

Working across departments... Passion and collaboration. Everyone works together, and we listen to everyone’s ideas regardless of your role. For instance, even the data team that I’m part of is involved with design for instance. We all care about creating an amazing experience for our readers.

Wearing many hats... Flipboard’s mission to recreate the magazine reading experience on digital platforms and make the content discovery on the internet easier and more personalized. Plus, I love working at smaller companies because I can wear different hats and doing different tasks and grow my knowledge in different areas.

Today, Flipboard has ~100 employees.

Image: Charlie Harrington

Destined for a startup... Before Knewton I was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. In college I always thought I was headed for law school, but then I joined this student-run company called The Corp and plans changed. The Corp is awesome â€" it’s entirely owned and run by Georgetown undergrads, and profits are donated back to students via scholarships and grants. You can start as a grocery store cashier or coffee grinder and work your way up to CEO or CFO within three or four years. The Corp is where I first became interested in business, and decided that the logical next step was to work at a place like Morgan Stanley. Banking taught me â€" a mere history major â€" all about spreadsheets and markets and valuation and all these other things I had never really encountered before. It was intense and challenging, and I felt for a while like I was at the center of something important. But I missed the day-to-day operations of running and growing a business, and I wanted to work at a smaller, scrappier company again. I started looking for opportunities at New York tech companies, and Knewton stood out as a startup building something that could be really transformative. Knewton seemed like a great place for me to learn from and contribute to a team working on an important problem â€" how to deliver personalized learning to students and teachers around the world.

Redefining success... I think there’s this feeling among some people in my generation that "the next five years" are always the most critical, make-or-break years for our careers. When I decided to leave Morgan Stanley I felt like I was jumping off this train headed towards some notional definition of success, and that I might not be able to get back on the train if I didn’t like what I found out there in the wilderness. I had to realize that I was after different goals, and that working at a startup where I could be learning something new every day along with a small, smart-as-hell team was the best next step for me. Now it wasn’t exactly easy to find something that fit my profile â€" a non-technical, finance-guy, history-major startup job seeker. But I didn’t let that stop me. I still remember watching this Knewton Hack Day video from my cubicle at Morgan Stanley around 3 a.m. I knew I had to work there, if I could get them to take me.

Moving up the chain... I joined Knewton as a Business Development Analyst â€" but really I was there to do just about anything I was asked. Here’s a good example of an early project: Our CEO and Founder Jose Ferreira was scheduled to speak at the Davos World Economic Forum, and he asked me to create a chart illustrating the history of education since the time of Socrates. As time went on and our API developed further, I focused more time on business development â€" researching and speaking to publishers about using our API in their digital learning products, and then negotiating partnership contracts with them. Two and half years after joining Knewton, I’m now jointly running our Business Development team and reporting directly to our CEO. Even more unexpectedly, I’m heading up our first international office based in London. I definitely did not see that one coming â€" I’d never even been to Europe before last year. But it goes along with that same theme of jumping at every opportunity to learn more and contribute. A couple key lessons learned along the way: (1) business development deals take take time to cultivate; (2) attitude matters â€" plans will change and things will go wrong and you need to be okay with that; and (3) taking risks like joining a startup can have unexpectedly awesome results, like opening an international office for one of the world's leading ed-tech companies.

Being a Knerd... Well, we call ourselves Knerds, so that probably speaks for itself. I’ve definitely let my geek flag fly since joining Knewton: I can state with pride that I've been to at least two Star Trek: The Next Generation DVD release parties at this point. Learning from colleagues is perhaps the best part of the Knewton culture. We've got Ph.D.s, former K-12 teachers and astrophysicists at Knewton, all willing to take the time to teach someone like me more about their area of focus and expertise. During my first two months at Knewton I spent a lot of time talking to people, and I was always surprised by how much time and energy they were willing to offer to help me understand Knewton and their roles. I’ve now realized that’s just the Knewton culture. And that’s why we're focusing on maintaining that culture as we expand to London. We've brought over a team of five from NYC to help seed our European HQ with that same enthusiasm for teaching and learning.

Today, Knewton has 160 employees.

Growing sales... Before working at Blue Jeans Network, I worked at a vastly different world of pharmaceutical sales where I was just another unknown robot among 1,300 sales reps. Blue Jeans has offered me the complete opposite experience â€" instead of sitting in front of a computer and toiling on the same old task everyday, I get to tackle exciting challenges at Blue Jeans as we're building a new territory (versus farming existing businesses). With only 20 other sales representatives, I have the opportunity to contribute my strategic and outside-of-box-thinking to my team and make an impact on the company. More importantly, I come to work every day feeling valued and that what I am doing is significant.

Go team... Team work is not a cliche at Blue Jeans; after every win â€" no matter how big or small the deal is â€" we celebrate as a team. Regardless of your position, everyone supports each other here. At the end of the day, we all aim to move the company in a positive direction, so it doesn't matter who is taking these steps. We often say that the company culture is like a pair of jeans because you can't live without each other and it's versatile and casual. This isn’t just a marketing gimmick â€" it’s true!

Cross-department collaboration... The best things about Blue Jeans are the collaboration, support and strong relationships we have with each other and each department. It’s not the type of environment where you see people in the halls and wonder what they do. In addition, what keeps me going is celebrating milestone after milestone with each other. It’s been amazing joining a company in the early stages and watching it expand, from the inside out. I definitely look forward to celebrating more successes and continuing to grow my career at Blue Jeans!

Today, Blue Jeans has 225 employees.

Going small... I love the culture that comes with a 'small-ish' company, so I had no reservations whatsoever. I used to have my own business, so I am motivated and inspired by an entrepreneurial spirit. I think it's exciting to be a part of the growth process. Seeing all of the hard work pay off is really rewarding.

Living the brand... Directly before joining Refinery29 I was freelancing. So, I was excited about sinking my teeth into the solid task of being the Chicago voice for such a fun and inspiring brand. Also, I was always an avid reader of R29, so it was logical to want to work for a brand that I looked up on the daily.

Work hard, play hard... Everyone in this company works extremely hard - yet, everyone also knows how to have fun, too. It's the talent, creativity, and can-do attitudes that make Refinery29 such a success. It's definitely a group effort.

Today, Refinery29 has 132 employees.

Nailing the interview... I had been looking for a new opportunity with a smaller company for about a year and was hitting brick wall after brick wall. I had big company experience on my resume, but I graduated from SUNY Buffalo and never did consider myself to fit the classic definition of an academic. It seemed that all the roles I applied for were filtering for an impressive educational pedigree. Quite honestly I had developed a bit of an inferiority complex during the job search process and had an underdog mentality by the time I made it through to the interview process with MediaMath. My persistence had finally paid off, and I was motivated by the opportunity to prove to myself that I fit in with really smart people, doing bleeding edge work at a world-class level; and to learn from them. I remember leaving my interview with a sense of nervous excitement. I had prepared well and felt comfortable and confident instantly. I nailed it. Everyone I had met with was incredibly smart, driven, and fit the tech startup prototype with an Ivy League pedigree â€" yet they didn't seem to care that I didn’t. When I got the job offer a few days later, it was incredibly validating and I knew that this was an opportunity I'd have to be out of my mind to pass up.
 
Innovation excitement... I had spent three and a half years at a third party ad server that was a small technology arm of a big public digital media company. The technology was for the most part in maintenance mode. I felt stifled, uninspired, and as though no one was really interested in innovating. Everyone at MediaMath had high energy, seemed truly excited about what they were working on, and more importantly, about their ideas which turned into products that were changing an industry. I did my research on the founders, the company, and the people I'd be working with and was blown away at the prospect of not only working alongside and learning from the top visionaries in ad-tech, but also getting in on the ground floor.
 
Seizing the day... I've gone from being the lone sales engineer at the company, to helping to kick-start our EMEA operations with two of our co-founders Erich Wasserman and Greg Williams, to now managing three teams of solutions developers, sales engineers, and data analysts. It’s been a wild ride and I’ve taken some big steps in my career learning not only how to build out and manage teams, but also how to seize every single opportunity that presents itself at a company growing at warp speed, even if it is outside of your job description. 
 
MediaMath culture is... Genuine. Respectful. Dedicated. Proud. Collaborative. Innovative. Accountable. Empowering. We truly own our careers here and are empowered to influence the organization by identifying opportunities and priorities. We hire very strongly on culture fit and every person from the top down is simply intelligent, good-natured and down to earth. So down to earth, that the CEO will even refuse to take the first class seat that a brand new sales engineer somehow got on the flight back from Minneapolis, while he gets shuffled back to his middle seat in economy. Yes, even if you ask multiple times throughout the flight. (Thanks, Joe!) With great power comes great responsibility, so we work hard but we also like to have fun to celebrate our accomplishments. There are regular trivia nights, happy hours, and team outings. I’ve also made some incredible friends here - the kind of friends that will go to great lengths to wrap your entire desk and all of its contents in Disney Princess wrapping paper for your birthday. A lot of us hang out on the weekends and spend time outside of the office going to concerts, playing sports, and even taking vacations together.

Today, MediaMath has 375 employees.

Redesigning the role... When I started at IDEO I designed and engineered physical products which had already been largely defined by the client. At one point I grew into a management role in the company, but found I missed the challenge and satisfaction inherent in creating design solutions. Today my role starts much further upstream in the process, usually leading a project team. I participate in in-context design research, synthesize findings, identify unmet needs and opportunities for our clients, and create strategic road maps for addressing those opportunities. Ideally, I get to follow through, creating concepts to populate the strategic road map and grow the client’s offerings.

The whole enchilada... Just as my role as evolved, the company and our design process has evolved to fit the much greater scope and diversity in the kinds of work we do. When I joined IDEO most of company was made up of engineers and industrial designers. Today we have people from many disciplines, including interaction design, food science, behavioral economics, design research and communication design. The broadening of our capabilities means that not only can we design a product, but we can also design the digital interface, the service it is part of, the business that delivers it, and finally the brand which sets the stage. Client interaction has become much greater than ever as we work together with them as partners and collaborators. Often projects include teaching client teams how to work like we do and even mentor them as they adopt our approach to innovation in their organization. All these aspects align with our shared desire to achieve ever more broad and deep impact in the world through design.

Positive synergy... IDEO’s culture is about people working together with a shared commitment to excellence in their work and in supporting each other through collaboration and the sharing of ideas, tools and experience. An atmosphere of trust in each other’s capabilities and commitment means that we can focus our energy and attention on doing the right thing, delivering the best we can within the time and budget available. Most people at IDEO are over-achievers who love to challenge themselves to stretch and experiment. That spirit is infectious, gently pushing everyone to try new ways to work, evolving and growing our process.

Being open... The best thing about working at IDEO is the constant stimulation and learning driven by the broad variety of challenges we take on, the daily interaction with colleagues with diverse backgrounds, strengths and passions, and the pervasive openness to acting on new ideas early and often.

Today, IDEO has 600+ employees.

Living the brand... I wanted to join a company whose product I used every day. I heard rumors that Spotify was opening an office there, and pinged a few people to get interviews. I was excited that the service hadn't even launched in the U.S., and I got to help shape the developer ecosystem. When I joined Spotify in 2011, there were only a handful of people in the New York City office. I didn't have reservations about joining a small company because I love the startup mentality and free flow of ideas.

Launching the U.S. dev ecosystem... I got the chance to help build the developer community from scratch. Three years later, we have hundreds of apps using our platform and a community of developers that give us awesome feedback so we can make better APIs and products.

Staying committed... The company has grown considerably since I started at Spotify. We have built up a very strong engineering team in the US since then too. The culture has changed for the better, with more a more diverse range of people joining the company who give us insight into building the best music platform. The main thing that has stayed the same is the commitment to quality, which has only gotten richer over the years, I've noticed.

Swedish influence... I love that Spotify started a Swedish company. The Swedes have a concept called 'lagom', which is a mentality that means to focus on doing exactly what's needed and doing it well, rather than doing unnecessary things. We work hard, but have an equal amount of fun to balance it out.

Today, Spotify has 1,200 employees.

Were you one of the #First100? Tell us your story on Twitter or in the comments. If this series has inspired you to be one of the #First100 somewhere, let us know.