Michał Skurowski, Founder and CEO, Livespace:

“We are extremely satisfied with our collaboration with Yellow Brick Road. They demonstrated an excellent understanding of our business needs, coupled with outstanding headhunting skills and expertise. Kacper, in particular, played a pivotal role in our company’s transformation by recruiting nearly half of our entire workforce. Without his support, we would not have been able to achieve our business goals, significantly improve product development quality, or initiate our international expansion efforts. I highly recommend Yellow Brick Road and especially Kacper, who have proven to be trustworthy, professional, and incredibly effective.”

Łukasz Rozbicki, Head of IT, Livespace:

For me, it’s crucial that the recruiter provides candidate profiles tailored to my needs, rather than those that are simply “available at the moment.” Pre-selection is extremely important because it significantly reduces the workload for the hiring manager. Additionally, I find it highly valuable to exchange knowledge and improve the internal recruitment process within the organization based on the recruiter’s experience and recommendations. Yellow Brick Road demonstrated a strong understanding of my candidate requirements, excellent communication, and effective process integration, such as the swift and seamless incorporation of recorded candidate interviews into the recruitment process.

What made the recruitment process easier was the concise reports on each candidate, free from unnecessary embellishments and focused on the essentials. However, when necessary, we also had the opportunity to discuss “intangible” aspects, such as cultural fit and the candidate’s personality. This was valuable to me as it provided an additional perspective on the individual.

Background:

Livespace is a process-oriented CRM system founded in 2011 by Michał Skurowski and Marcin Stańczak. Today, with over 1,200 paying clients, Livespace is a profitable company that recently secured a 10 million PLN investment round to fuel its development and expansion into European markets.

Challenges:

In mid-2023, Livespace faced two major challenges:

1. System Stability and Reliability: Ensuring the system could handle increased data processing and maintain high availability.

2. International Expansion: To sustain growth, there was a pressing need to enter international markets.

Addressing these challenges required a significant boost in recruitment efforts.

Solution:

Yellow Brick Road played a crucial role in meeting these needs by recruiting 20 professionals over the course of a year, including 4 key members of the leadership team. This effort enabled Livespace to scale operations while fostering a culture of accountability and maturity.

First Challenge – System Stability and Reliability:

The surge in customers led to a dramatic increase in data processing requirements, resulting in the lowest system availability historically recorded in October 2023.

Solution:

In response, Livespace decided to shift its approach to building its engineering team. Since 2023, the company has focused exclusively on hiring experienced engineers with strong soft skills and attitudes that support the development of a mature and responsible engineering culture.

Despite the growing pool of candidates in the latter half of 2023, finding individuals with the right mix of responsibility, maturity, self-direction, and technical expertise proved challenging. This was achieved through:

– Deep understanding of recruitment needs

– Effective communication and seamless process integration

– Inclusion of recorded video interviews in the process

– Concise candidate reports combined with thorough discussions on soft skills (personality, attitude)

– Conducting in-depth reference checks

Second Challenge – International Expansion:

The Polish market’s saturation and the need to “go global” for continued growth. Livespace now competes primarily with global players rather than local CRM providers. To prepare for this step, the company secured funding, and executed a series of key recruitments for positions such as Head of Product, Head of Marketing, Head of People and Culture, and Head of Customer Success, supported by Yellow Brick Road.

Success in this endeavor was ensured through:

– Thorough analysis of recruitment needs and competency profiles

– Head-hunting and executive search efforts

– Conducting comprehensive reference interviews

Interested in how Yellow Brick Road can assist your company in scaling and building a culture of ownership, autonomy and responsibility? Drop us an e-mail or book a meeting.