One of the hardest things as a startup founder is handling the growth of your company and your ever changing role as that growth occurs. Matt Lauzon is founder of Gemvara, a Boston based, venture backed startup that is at the cutting edge of e-commerce for jewelry. I had the opportunity to have an e-mail interview with him about the lessons he's learned as Gemvara has grown from a startup out of Babson College to a twice venture backed growing venture now with over 30 employees.

E-nterview with Matt Lauzon: Part I - Roles, Culture and Teamwork

1) How has your role and responsibliities changed as you've gone from starting this with your classmate at Babson?

- There's likely been a few stages as you had just your cofounder, then a small team, then suddenly you needed to start using management layers that would suddenly remove you greatly from day to day activities...

I often need to remind myself that I can't be involved in every decision, in every part of the company, on every day of the week. It's hard! I believe most entrepreneurs are wired to get their hands dirty and when you start something from scratch it's critical that you literally do everything from defining the strategy to writing copy for your website and marketing materials. As the company grows, this changes, and I have found that empowering talented people to make the right decision usually yields the best outcome. As a result, I am finding that more and more of my time is spent making sure the different parts of the company and working in unison with a singular vision and that we have the right people on the bus to make the tough decisions that come up every day.    

2) How have you dealt with the increasing detachment from day to day activities?

- Any challenges in just trusting your team?  Hard to focus on just the vision and fundraising (or whatever your duties shifted to)

It is very easy to trust your team if you hire quality people and establish frameworks to help them operate effectively. We have spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a Gemvarian - from establishing qualities we'd like to see in people to creating easily understood operating principles that help us be successful day to day.

For instance, one of our principles is the "1% Rule" which is to always allow yourself the 1% possibility that you are not right, no matter how much confidence you have in something.  Rules like this help me feel better knowing that even if I can be in every meeting to see both sides, I know that every Gemvarian will keep an open mind to ideas, even if 99% of their conviction is that a different idea or proposal is the right approach.   

3) Do you feel at this stage Gemvara has a company culture? If so, how would you define it? What are your favorite traditions or other aspects of it?

Yes. We are customer centric and we are data driven. Everything we do is about matching customers with a perfect piece of jewelry and providing them a consistently high quality product and experience. Our customer centricity can clearly be seen in our superb customer care team, but it really carries in to every aspect of what we do.

When I say data driven, I mean a couple things. First, we literally see every action our customers take as a vote for or against what we deliver and how we deliver it. Second, our data driven approach means that we have an aggressive test and learn culture. Our team is not afraid to go out on a limb, but we always keep in mind how we will measure success (or failure) and we are not afraid to act once we have enough meaningful data to work from.

In terms of our office environment, if you spent five minutes you'd probably think we have too much fun, if you spent five days you'd realize how much work gets done and if you stayed five weeks you'd realize that we solve insanely complicated challenges week after week and we love doing it. I couldn't imagine loving what I do and who I work with more than I do. 

These are just a few of the things Matt and I discussed.  What questions do you have?  Stay tuned for Part II of the interview next Tuesday on "Building the culture & roles of mentors."