I have now had the pleasure of living in San Francisco for 3 months, and have experienced a great many times the frustration of either being misunderstood, not being understood at all, or even worse, laughed at for the quirks in my speech. It is unfortunately a testament to the nationalistic focus of many Americans that they don’t understand a very clearly spoken English/Australian accent, because they just don’t hear them very often. Whereas those who grew up outside the US had exposure to a wide variety of foreign accents, mostly through the TV shows we watched while growing up, it seems Americans had enough great  local TV shows to bother with the joys (I do joke) of Home & Away and Neighbours as the British did, or the brilliance of The Goodies and Benny Hill as the Australians did.

Anyway, for whatever reason, there are a huge number of British & Australian words and phrases that Americans don’t understand, or think is whimsical. Here is a guide:

Whilst, Amongst

This came as quite a shock to me – that American’s don’t use the word ‘whilst’ or ‘amongst’. They use the much less romantic ‘while’ and ‘among’. Apparently, American’s think us Brits/Aussies are quaint for using such anachronistic terms, although they would never use the word ‘quaint’ either, they would say ‘cute’.

Fortnight

Again, an enormous shock to me is that a word which I use so regularly and has such common usage in my life, doesn’t even exist in the US. They would say ‘two weeks’. Which however practical, feels like it loses some yesteryear romance.

Lemonade

You gotta be careful when you order drinks, as what we think of as Lemonade, they call ‘pop’ or ‘soda’ or other terms. If you ask for  Lemonade you get what we call ‘Lemon squash’. And conversely, they don’t have ‘lime cordial’ which is a bit of a problem if you want to do tequila shots the way I do: with a chaser of ‘lime cordial’. Instead, I discovered last weekend a solution: mix sugar into a shot glass of raw lime juice, and ta-dah! Drinkable tequila!

Any word with an ‘r’ in it

I find if I get into a taxi or am speaking to a shopkeeper, the simplest request or question I make is received with a look of bewilderment and incomprehension. I repeat, speaking as clearly as I can… and again, the poor individual just doesn’t understand me. At this point, I usually sigh to myself, and repeat what I am trying to say, but I roll my ‘r’s. Suddenly, the clouds part and I am understood. So, Brits/Aussies – when you say words like ‘car’, ‘ear phones’, and ‘Sutter Street’… you will not be understood unless you try really hard to roll the ‘r’.

And you may ask to what degree have Americanisms affected my speech? I spent a bit of time when I first arrived watching The Rachel Zoe Project, and to my surprise, with all sincerity described something exciting as being ‘major’. And I probably rolled the ‘r’ in that word too. And although I cannot bring myself to say it with a straight face, I do love it when Americans describe something crazy as being ‘bananas’ – but pronounced like you’d imagine a big Texan would: ‘banaaaanas’. It does make me giggle with affection’

Oh, and dating vocabulary is unexpectedly different. Whereas Australians would say ‘pash’ and the English ‘snog’, the Americans use the much less onomatopoeic ‘make out’. And dating here is a very casual sounding ‘to hang out’.

Anyway, am sure everyone has their own experiences with Trans Atlantic idioms that have made us chuckle warmly, would love to hear more of them, leave in comments below.

This is my guide to hiring: look for the ‘fire in the eyes’.

I look for someone who’s eyes twinkle when they talk about their hopes and ambitions, and when they talk about your company. Someone that has that sparkle of brightness, coupled with a personality that you warm to straight away.

I have hired people (or rather, known I was going to hire someone) just by reading their cover letter. My Account Director, Mark, was like that. We still talk about his cover letter to this day, it is part of the mythology of my company: this passionate, clever, witty, researched letter exuding a desire to work with you. I knew after reading it there was no way I wouldn’t hire him.

Same with when I interviewed Tom, one of our Account Managers. He came to our interview with the job description highlighted and full of notes, and we asked him to share his notes, and what he said was so full of heart and hope and sincerity… I pretty much hired him on the spot.

I love especially when you hire someone that has never done the exact job you are hiring them for, but you just *know* they are going to excel at a challenge you throw at them. They are overlooked by other companies who only want people from the ‘right’ schools and who have done it all before, but I love nothing more than spotting that diamond in the rough and giving them an opportunity to shine. I look around my amazing team and see little gems who I trust and who are so loyal and hard-working, and bring with them untarnished thinking and no ego.

The challenge with this direction is that I tend not to have team members who have done their job before, we are all working it out as we go along. This is both an incredible strength – giving us creativity and unfettered thinking and passion – but a challenge as we can get it wrong, and it takes a degree of management overhead which perhaps a more seasoned team wouldn’t need so much.

My other favourite hiring moments: we have a great designer, Barbara, who had studied and worked so hard, and only agencies and her university gave her work. We looked at the body of work she had done, and were shocked. Why would this beautiful talented girl not get snapped up? Perhaps she didn’t have the experience, and she was shy and not aggressive in her approach. But what we saw in her was a well-rounded, ambitious, creative person who just wanted a chance to shine. So, we gave it to her. What a gem! She can do anything from print design to website design to illustrations to user experience design. And she does it well, quickly, and I think relishes how appreciated she is, the freedom to get a bit creative, and how pivotal her role is in the company, and she knows it.

My CTO, Ciaran, was also one of those people I knew I would hire before I even met him. He tells the story that he knew this was the company he wanted, and he didn’t even apply or care about any other roles. He sent an application in, then – and I love this – he called up to tell me he had just applied, and just so I knew, he *really* wanted this job. Love that.

The point is, as a CEO, you have to make hiring decisions on so little information, and you often just have to go with your gut. And what my gut looks for (ok, some mixed metaphors here, I know) is that spark and fire in the eyes, someone that goes a little beyond the normal, and I do love a good coincidence. My last hiring tale is about hiring my quirky and exceptional Finance Manager, Sofia. We knew we needed a Finance Manager, so I tweeted this fact. A friend of mine responded with a tweet saying a friend of his might be interested, and sent her email address. I emailed this person, and we interviewed her. What we found out was that my friend had only met her once a year ago, and didn’t know her that well at all. He hadn’t spoken to Sofia in a year, and had no idea if she was even looking for work. It turns out Sofia had just quit her job a week before, and was looking for work in a startup. It could not have been better orchestrated. We pretty much hired her straight away, she had the fire in her eyes. Sofia still makes me laugh more than almost anyone in the world.

Anyway, we are hiring again, so I leave it to those who have that spark to get in touch!

My team and I recently made one of the hardest decisions we have ever made.

Despite being proud of being a UK-based company achieving success internationally, it was becoming obvious that to take ourselves to the level we wanted to, we needed to set up a physical base in the US. We had resisted for a while – I was hesitant to split our team up over two continents when we have such an incredible chemistry when we are together, and I was reluctant to shake up my life, again, to move to a new country. Because it was inevitably going to be me that had to make the move. My dear co-founder, Joe, is married to my good friend Philippa, who runs a wildly successful fashion PR company in London, and it just wasn’t possible for him to move country without living apart from Philly, or without her giving up her company. Neither were even remotely an option.

On the other hand, I was single, with no commitments… it was inevitably going to be me that moved over to the US. But I resisted, I was scared… of starting again, of living out of a suitcase, of not having my support network of close friends, of not knowing a city intimately like I know London. I have moved country 3 times – Sydney to London, London to Sydney, Sydney to London again – and the thought of doing it again… and leaving my support network and team to embark upon a huge challenge on my own… well, I resisted.

But it was my VP Sales, Jeff Sullivan, who kicked me, necessarily, into action. The challenge of running and working with a remote team while 8 hours timezone away – he said – is hard, but its an overcomeable challenge. The challenge of losing opportunities in the US because we aren’t here, is not overcomeable. It was time, and I was the only one who could do it. So like every superhero/heroine/fantasy character I had ever read about and dreamed I could be like (hey, I’m a geek, of course I do that, you all do!), I prepared to shoulder the burden and fear, and set a date for my departure. I emailed a bunch of my friends to tell them – deliberately, so there was no chickening out. No turning back.

Within a month, I had arrived in San Francisco. Why, I am often asked, did you chose San Francisco over New York that has more publishers and advertisers relevant to my business and was fewer hours apart from London? The answer is that I had ascertained in my previous trips to the US that the kind of deals I wanted to win in San Francisco could only be won if I lived in the Bay Area, and was part of the ‘scene’, whereas the deals I wanted to win in New York I could win just by living in the US, not necessarily in New York. I also had more friends in San Francisco, and it made sense to build buzz amidst the home of geek buzz.

It has now been 3 months since I moved over. To be fair, almost half that time has not been in San Francisco – I’ve been all over the US and back to London, Dublin and Athens in that time, but regardless, this sense of ‘home’ is starting to deliciously creep in. It hits me as I drive down the I-280 amidst those grand rolling volcanic peaks; it hits me as walk down streets of such pretty fanciful facades; it hits me as I continually meet such fascinating friendly people, that make me feel immediately at home.

Hannah and I in a helicopter in Vegas

This whole process has been helped immeasurably by the presence of Hannah, one of my team who a year ago asked me if she could one day move to the US with the company, and I promised her I would do that… a year on, I delivered, and to her surprise and delight she was told her dream was coming true and she was moving to the US. Two night ago Hannah moved out of my apartment to her own flat, but before then, for two months, she and I lived together, worked together and socialised together… and strangely, it was actually fun. We explored the city together, ogled at the city’s cute dogs, acted as wing-women to each other at networking events, made each other laugh as we practised Americanisms we learnt from Jersey Shore and The Rachel Zoe Project… we cushioned the cultural shock for each other, and I can’t thank her enough for being such a wonderful. As Hannah said at one stage “There is a level of loyalty you feel for the startup you work for, especially when you are part of the early team, that other people cannot conceive of.”

So, two days before my first ever Thanksgiving, I thought it pertinent to give thanks to the ease and joy I have felt moving to San Francisco. Thank you to the people who are so willing to open their arms and welcome a stranger into their circle; thank you to the cerebral stimulation I feel at networking events here; thank you to my team back in London who have felt the challenge that distance inevitably adds to our relationship, and still deliver again and again and again. I have no idea what the future holds, where I will be in a year, what adventures, challenges and achievements are ahead of me, but right now, this is right, being in San Francisco and building my team out here, growing my company, giving this whole thing a real and proper go… this is right.  I’m glad I came to America.

We always knew it would happen. The day after we closed our last funding round, I sat with my team, there were 9 of us, and we said “You know things are going to change from now on?” We knew it, that hiring more people and growing quickly was going to be fabulous but also incredibly challenging. Growing in size quickly whilst running and trying to keep the culture that defined and envigorated us all, would no doubt be hard. But we thought it would be fine.

Fast forward 4 months later… and it is fine. We now have a team of 24 full-time plus 3 part-time team members, we are bursting at the seams, and things are going great! But it hasn’t been without its growing pains.

On a personal level, the biggest challenge for me is looking at the way I lead, and evolving certain aspects of it, without losing the drive and instinct I have, and that I think has done my company well so far. Especially bringing in fantastic senior experienced people, who have a different approach to projects and decision-making to you.

The first thing we did, and I’m so glad we did, is bring in an amazing leadership training lady, Julie Harrison, who I *heartily* recommend. Think of it as group psychotherapy for a company. I took the 8 members of the management team away to a country estate and we planned our future and delved into the kinds of people we are and the ways we communicate to each other. Its been a very humbling and self-assessing time, for me and I think the whole team, as we look into ourselves and define how we want to grow as colleagues.

Here are some of the things I have learnt, and to be honest, am still learning:

1. People don’t read my mind. Really, this has come as a complete surprise to me. Until now I worked with a small team of people who knew me so well that I didn’t have to explain things, or even make explicit efforts to ‘communicate’. I shared things, and the team understood me, and me them. But this isn’t very scalable, and almost tripling in size with people that haven’t known you as long, means you do have to explicitly do things like: share your vision, explain your decisions, talk through why you want something to be done differently. The language I use as well has to change – again, I can’t expect new people to know that when I’m brusque and decisive, that I don’t mean to undermine or be rude, and I have to be mindful of the words and the way I say things.

2. My job is changing. I now have enough people in the company that I really can delegate, and actually, I really should. Its hard as I’ve been a very hands-on CEO for 3 years, and now its not only not scalable, but it doesn’t convey the confidence I have in my team if I get too involved in the details. This is really hard for me, I’m a product CEO, so I am used to being involved in every aspect of the business, and I still want to be sure that the output of what we do as a company is to the level that I think will help us achieve our business goals. What I am striving to do is give clear description of my goals and vision, empower my amazing team to deliver, and if I think there needs to be further enhancements, to communicate my reasoning for why I think there needs to be enhancements, rather than just do the enhancements myself.

3. Find the balance between my instinctive gut decisions, and a more cerebral analytical approach to decisions. This is a tricky one to communicate without sounding like I’m a new-age odd person. But the way I innovate, make decisions, and devise a vision, is not in a linear analytical path. It used to be, but as I’ve grown, and as I’ve been running this company, I have come to accept and revel in this ability of mine to just ‘see’ the right way to go. Its the reason I was able to pivot to Skimlinks from Skimbit, its the reason I have hired certain key people, its the reason behind much of our core strategy. And it has worked – we have a successful company with happy clients and happy employees building innovative technologies and creating a name for ourselves in the industry, we are doing something right. And I think as the leader of a startup in a race to become an established company, you can’t always take your time and analyse every decision thoroughly. Sometimes you get a moment of opportunity and you have to take it, and sometimes speed to market makes the world of difference. I really believe this. But I don’t dispute that there is value in having this balanced with another way of thinking that is more analytical and measured. What I would like to do is still be able to act swiftly and decisively, but working closely with my management team who bring so many different facets and perspectives and insight into the mix.

Many startups stumble at this phase – growing so quickly can lead to huge amounts of time being spent for the first time on processes, meetings, preparation, communication, talking things through, and while I know a degree of all these things is essential for the functioning of a big team, I will not let my company become swamped in inefficient tasks, and hope that we can quickly become the kind of symbiotic telepathic team it was easy to be when we were smaller. I like the analogy of a rowing team – that to win there needs to be a mind-sharing unity to what we do, everyone has to be bought into the vision and direction of the team, and this comes about as a result of a hell of a lot of training, hard work, and passion. Well, this is something we certainly do!

The secret to getting over growing pains, well, I’ll tell you once we are through them, but my guess is that the secret will turn out to be a genuine willingness on the part of all parties to grow and evolve together, and to be honest and open throughout the process. Sounds cheesy, but its perhaps like a new relationship, as you get used to the other person’s quirks, you over time develop a language and habits that make you closer, make you a partnership. I like the idea of that.