Lessons from operating in stealth mode

One of the earliest decisions we made as founders was to build Shop Circle in stealth mode. This means zero publicity, zero online presence, and no public announcements (except for close friends and family) about what we were working on. It turned out to be a good decision.

For one, it proved to be a huge asset to making early stage hires. We saw the excitement that we could generate around joining something that wasn’t public, and yet had a stellar team behind it, and was still raising a significant amount of capital. It also encouraged us to tell a really compelling story to new hires about our ambitions for the company, and where we saw it heading. Once people had joined, being in stealth mode really fostered a sense of belonging and camaraderie around what we were building. They were all aligned with our vision.

Secondly, it removed external distractions and allowed our team to focus on the things that really mattered. We weren’t worried about how decisions we made might be interpreted or reported in the press: we could remain totally focused on building the best organisation and the best suite of tools for our customers. Ultimately this has helped us find product-market fit and build a really solid set of foundations for us to scale. 

Finally, it enabled us to mentally stay away from the competition. We weren’t distracted by what our competitors were doing, or how they might react to our decisions, at least until we had reached a leading position in the space.   

Despite all its advantages, it’s not sustainable to stay in stealth mode forever.  We wanted our team to be able to shout about what we were doing, and what they had been working on all this time. There’s also a point where you reach a point of scale where not being in stealth mode is certainly more advantageous: particularly around customer acquisition, partnerships, and the acquisition of other apps. Given that we were working closely with merchants, it became important for us to build a brand, and the reputation and trust that comes with this. 

Having raised several rounds of funding, seeing significant traction across the business, and with a bleaker market than a year ago, we decided to emerge out of stealth mode in June 2021. 

Finding our founder-market fit

Since we met on the first day of our Master’s degree, we have always known we’d go into business together. For Shop Circle, we’ve built a strong competitive advantage for the business through our strong founder-market fit, which has no doubt contributed to our success so far. 

NFX’s James Currier lists four dimensions to founder-market fit:

We’ve always known that we’ve got the determination to go the extra mile when it comes to running a business. This wasn’t something we’d do in our spare time, as a side hustle, but rather something that we wanted to commit ourselves to full time. We’ve always felt that we’ve had youth on our side too—we might not have the commitments and responsibilities that may restrict us from taking certain risks and wholeheartedly pursuing success. 

For Gian—my experience in the e-commerce industry helped us build a product that was of genuine value to ecommerce merchants. My role at Amazon worked directly with brands across several categories in the marketplace, meaning I could closely identify the problems that merchants were facing, and how we could build a suite of tools that would support their businesses. 

For Luca—my perspective from the world of venture capital underlined that there was clear demand (and therefore an obvious market opportunity). I saw the growing trend in investment for e-commerce aggregators: companies who were buying up brands from platforms like Amazon. We saw an opportunity to build the first operator of tools for e-commerce brands,  presenting a suite of software to them to help them grow their business. 

4. Experience

Maintaining culture as you scale

Hiring is one of the most important things you have to do as a founder. Our team has been instrumental to our success. As founders, we only make up 2% of the team: the other 98% drive the day-to-day operations of the business and are responsible for what makes us great. So you have to invest time in hiring the best people for the job, people you can trust to make decisions on your behalf. 

We’ve scaled our team significantly in the past few years, now with 100 people across 22 different nationalities. One of our biggest lessons is bringing in a Head of HR/People earlier on. But we wanted to be the principal drivers and upholders of culture in our organisation.  Preserving culture as you scale is not easy, you have to have clearly defined values from the outset, if not, as early as possible. At Shop Circle, some of our values are:

• Transparency—sharing the reality of things, both good and bad 

• Being bold—brave in take decisions, especially if it's not the simplest path

• Intrapreneurship—celebrating people taking initiative, appreciating that good ideas come from everywhere, and reflecting this in the career progression of stars

We’re confident in our current trajectory, that we’ll continue to scale over the next few years: into new geographies, growing our range of products, and putting our customers first, in everything we do. Holding these values at the core of the business will ensure that Shop Circle remains on track and grows into the business we envisioned from day one.