{"id":189685,"date":"2026-05-14T15:23:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T13:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/factorial-play\/videos\/the-fact-from-doing-it-all-to-building-teams\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T15:23:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T13:23:48","slug":"the-fact-from-doing-it-all-to-building-teams","status":"publish","type":"factorial_video","link":"https:\/\/factorialhr.com\/blog\/factorial-play\/videos\/the-fact-from-doing-it-all-to-building-teams\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fact: From Doing It All to Building Teams"},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_video_type":"highlight","_related_series":182879,"_related_episode":189678,"_related_season":0,"_video_source":"vimeo","_youtube_video_id":"","_vimeo_video_id":"1192192765","_speaker_id":189662,"_video_description":"In this insightful discussion, Jordi Romero, founder and CEO of Factorial, emphasizes the importance of leadership, team management, and company values. He advocates for trusting oneself and fostering a culture of open communication and curiosity within growing organizations. By encouraging team members to challenge the status quo and continuously ask questions, businesses can innovate and adapt without losing sight of their core mission. Romero highlights the significance of maintaining a balance between hands-on involvement and empowering teams, while also being aware of early signs of disengagement. This approach not only enhances career development plans but also contributes to a thriving company culture. For more valuable tips and insights on effective leadership and team dynamics, don't miss the full episode.","_video_transcription":"00:24 - Hello.I'm Jordi Romero, founder and CEO at Factorial, and I'm an optimist.\n00:28 - I like to ask what if?And I like to think what can go right more often than what can go wrong.\n00:34 - Factorial as a big company I started Factorial together with my partner, Bernat.\n00:38 - It was just a couple of people and today we're more than 1400 people.\n00:43 - The company has grown a lot, and one of the most important lessons for me has been to continue to trust in, in myself, in my brain,in the very simple concepts that were true when we started the company and that are still true today.\n00:55 - One sentence I hear very often is, Factorial is now a big company.\n00:59 - So we need to behave like a big company.We need to do big company things.\n01:02 - And sometimes it's tempting to say, you're right, we're a big company now,we should do the things that big companies do.\n01:08 - But the problem is I think that these things are mostly stupid.\n01:11 - I don't agree with them, I don't think they make sense.\n01:13 - And I've learned that we are right and we have the right to have our own opinions and ideas.\n01:19 - For example, a lot of times big companies need departments, they need processes,they need certain things that they see other large corporations do at that scale.\n01:28 - But then you start asking questions like, are these other very large corporations growing at all? Are they innovating?\n01:34 - Are they attracting the right talent?Are they doing something that is meaningful today?\n01:38 - Or they just squeezing the profits of something they did 10, 20, 30,even 50 years ago?\n01:43 - So I learned it's very important to work with naive people, curious people,people that are always asking open ended questions, that are happy to challenge somebody's opinion and that enjoy having a deep conversation even with some conflict and working towards resolving the conflict and how we like to call it at Factorial. Finding the truth.\n02:03 - There is a beauty in finding the truth.I think it brings a lot of interesting opinions, sometimes fears,sometimes prejudgments that don't have any place in the company that they are.\n02:13 - And it's natural and we should understand that they exist, but we don't need to tolerate them living there.\n02:19 - So I think again, trusting in yourself, remaining confident in asking questions and understanding that what was true nine years ago might have changed.\n02:27 - But you were the right person for the job nine years ago, you can be the right person for the job today.\n02:33 - We see this a lot with the team as well.A lot of people say, I was the right person for a small company, now it's a big company, I'm not the right person anymore.\n02:41 - Look, I have eight people reporting to me.I don't have more than 1,000 people reporting to me.\n02:46 - So I actually only work with a team of eight people.\n02:48 - I always work with a team of five, six, eight, 10 people for the whole history of the company. So my job didn't change that much.\n02:56 - I just need to find extremely talented people, make sure that we believe in the mission, in the goals of the company,that we constantly work together towards finding the truth.\n03:05 - And then the fact is they have teams of hundreds of people.\n03:08 - When they used to have teams of two or three people, that changed.\n03:11 - But my job didn't change as much.\n03:16 - Innovation at Factorial There is one thing that does change when the company grows, which is like Bob Dylan used to say, you have now something to lose.\n03:25 - When you're small, you have nothing to lose.And then you can dare, you can do crazy things when you're bigger as a company, hopefully you have customers,you have revenues, maybe you have investors,and definitely you have employees that rely on the well being of the business and the sustainability of the company.\n03:39 - So I think it is important to realize that you do need to defend what you've built so far.\n03:44 - But if your mission is way ahead of you and you really want to make a big impact,most of the opportunity is still in front of you.\n03:52 - And you should be willing to take some risks respecting everybody that decided to trust in your firm, in your brand, in your company, but be willing to assume some risks looking forward.\n04:02 - Now that is tricky and that requires the company that's both growing, maturing,learning and at the same time building solid infrastructure,certain level of processes and organization to make sure that you protect what is very important incentiveship.\n04:16 - In our case, for example, there are things that are critical with a technology company, so security, confidentiality,data protection, all the legal requirements that we have.\n04:24 - As a company that helps other organizations manage sensitive data such as employee information, this is sacred.\n04:30 - We can never assume any risk there.Now we might launch a product that is not successful.\n04:35 - That's fine, we'll survive it.We'll launch another one and then another one.\n04:38 - And as long as some of them are successful, we are fine.\n04:41 - If a few launches don't go the way we want, same for opening new countries or going to market in different ways.\n04:47 - We need to be willing to make mistakes as long as these mistakes are not fatal and they don't cross the red lines that going back to our company relate to security, cybersecurity, data privacy and obviously all the legal requirements.\n05:01 - So how can we be a company that has something to lose and Continue to innovate.\n05:05 - Different to these large corporations that stopped innovating.\n05:08 - I think it all comes down to the people you surround yourself with.\n05:11 - We at factorial try to look for people that are not comfortable in the status quo.\n05:16 - They just disagree with the way things are, and they are relentless in working hard and being optimistic about the possibilities ahead of us.\n05:24 - So I think if we continue to attract and retain this type of talent that don't accept the successes, don't accept the status quo, but always look forward to what else can we do?\n05:34 - What if we disrupt ourselves?Then I think the company can continue to execute and innovate.\n05:40 - And again, we're right now 1,400 people.We will see how we can continue to do that when we are 2,000, 10,000, maybe,who knows, 20,000 people in the future.\n05:52 - Mistakes to avoid when launching a startup Reflecting a bit on our history and all of the steps and all of the decisions that we made.\n05:59 - As I said before, many mistakes were done.Most of these mistakes have been trusting others from the outside that came from an organization with a much larger scale.\n06:09 - And they seem to know all the answers.And that's very reassuring because when you're starting up, when you're growing,when you're entering new, unknown territory,which is the case for a company that grows pretty much every single day,you can get tired of not knowing the answer and looking forward to somebody else that has the answer.\n06:25 - So here come experienced executives.We sometimes went to very senior, experienced executives that seem to know all the answers, and they did know all the answers for the questions from their previous company.\n06:36 - They didn't know the answers for our company.They knew the answers for their previous company.\n06:41 - And maybe, sometimes, these learnings apply to our own business,but many times they don't.\n06:46 - And it's very dangerous because people that feel they know the answer,they lose this naivety.\n06:51 - They lose the curiosity, they lose the humbleness of not knowing.\n06:55 - I say every day, I don't know.I'm very comfortable telling my team, I don't know the answer to your question,and it's fine, but we're going to work together to solve it.\n07:03 - When I talk to people, especially some senior executives that always claim to know the answer, I start being suspicious because in the past we've burned ourselves by working towards a direction,thinking we knew exactly how we get there, when in reality we didn't.\n07:17 - And then the extreme confidence made very bad consequences for the teams that were pursuing those.\n07:24 - So I think we need to work with people that have experience,but experience in learning, experience in asking questions,experience in unlearning something that Nitya, and my colleague, says all the time:it's very important to find people that are as good at unlearning as they are at learning.\n07:39 - Some of us can be stubborn.And the truth is, stubbornness is required to build a company and scale it for many, many years.\n07:46 - Because I cannot tell you how many times I've been told, you're not going to succeed. This is not possible.\n07:51 - My favorite thing, this is impossible.People said that all the time.\n07:54 - So I think an entrepreneur, an executive, a business leader,needs to be stubborn and confident enough, but humble and curious to be able to say, what if you're right?\n08:04 - What if I'm wrong?How does this future look like?How can we test it without damaging the company culture?\n08:10 - Without breaking what's already working, but making sure that we break what's not working enough so that we can grow and make process.\n08:21 - Learning to start your own business I used to like to get involved in everything.\n08:27 - I could even say that I used to be a control freak.\n08:30 - I'm a programmer.I started programming the first version of Factorial.\n08:33 - I started writing the first copywriting on our website.\n08:36 - I wrote the emails that we sent to prospects.I even did some of the basic finance management of the business because there was nobody else.\n08:43 - I just did it out of necessity.So when you start a company from scratch, you get used to doing,doing everything yourself.\n08:49 - And the truth is, if you work hard enough and you're a little bit smart, you get decent at a lot of different things.\n08:55 - Now there is a time when you want to scale, you want to grow,so you start hiring people.\n08:59 - And I used to get involved in way too many things.\n09:02 - So one of the areas that were very hard for me to unlearn was that things can go very, very well.\n09:09 - Actually way better than if I was involved.When I'm not involved, it's very hard to learn how to give direction to a team without being involved in the execution of the team.\n09:21 - So one mistake I made was staying involved in too many things all the time for too long.\n09:26 - Then I realized this mistake and I unlearned that.\n09:29 - But then I made another mistake which was too hands off.\n09:33 - I let the teams go.I don't want to say without supervision, but not being involved at all.\n09:39 - And that meant that whenever this team started doing something that maybe was not aligned with another part of the business, or even worse, it was going in a direction that is not aligned with the company culture, usually I would learn about it too late and the way to course correct was too painful.\n09:56 - So finding this balance of not being Involved, but at the same time,not neglecting was tricky for me, and I learned.\n10:03 - One example that my co founder, Bernat told me about was parachuting at random projects and going extremely deep, going as deep as humanly possible,asking all the questions until there is no more questions to answer,and then making sure that the team that's working on it, first of all,they know what they're doing.\n10:20 - Second, they see that you care and you can understand what they're doing.\n10:23 - And third, it's a random sampling.This part of the organization knows what they're doing.\n10:27 - So hopefully the parts around this area will also be doing the right things.\n10:31 - So.So finding this balance of not being micromanaging and involved everywhere,but at the same time not being checked out, not abandoning your teams,definitely was a learning curve.\n10:45 - Learning to find balance In a growing company.The highest highs and the lowest lows always have to do with other people,with the people in the team.\n10:55 - Some of the hardest things for me to accept and process in the growing story of Factorial have been when people have let me down.\n11:03 - And in most of the cases, what it meant is they just gave up.\n11:07 - They stopped caring.And this is painful because I care a lot, and the people I'm surrounded with care a lot.\n11:13 - So when you're working with somebody that cares about what they're doing,that grows with you, goes through the highs,goes through the lows, and, you know, grows as a business and as a person and as a human being.\n11:24 - And then at some point, they stop caring.That can be very painful.\n11:27 - It's hard to see at the beginning.It's usually small comments in passing that you hear, and then you're like,why did they say that they don't care?\n11:36 - And then you start assuming they meant good.And I misunderstood until it was obvious they were checked out for different reasons, sometimes personal, sometimes professional.\n11:45 - But they decided it was time for them to move on.And I hadn't confronted this situation right away, then it was painful.\n11:51 - I've learned, again with experience, that whenever these comments happen,you go straight to the comment and you say, what do you mean?\n11:58 - Why do you say that?Do you really think that? Are you having a bad day?\n12:01 - It's fine. We all have bad days.I have bad days. Not often, but I do.\n12:05 - So you ask, what did you mean by that?Why did you say that?\n12:08 - You say, that hurt me.And then you can have a chat about it, and many times they'll just say,oh, sorry, I didn't mean that.\n12:14 - So maybe it was a misunderstanding.Sometimes you start uncovering it's like, look, this thing happened.\n12:19 - The team grew a lot.I don't know the people I work with anymore.\n12:22 - I'm not having fun.You can probably address that.You can probably redesign the organization and say, would you have more fun?\n12:28 - Would you be more successful?Would you be more productive?\n12:31 - If we redesign the organization and maybe you focus on this project now and we find somebody else to take over this other part, most of the issues with people can be solved.\n12:39 - The problem is if we don't find them early enough,then they can get too big and people can decide that they're checked out and they're ready to move on.\n12:46 - So definitely looking out for comments, making sure that people are having fun,even if they're struggling, sometimes, even if they're suffering,you know deep down that they're enjoying what they're doing.\n12:58 - Then we're good.Whenever there is a sign, pay attention to the signs.\n13:02 - Work with the people, ask questions.Because in my experience, if my team is successful, I'm successful.\n13:07 - We're successful. If they struggle, I struggle.We struggle.\n13:11 - So I think to summarize it, all things are simple.\n13:15 - If you ask enough questions, if you use your brain,and if you do simple math, everything can boil down to simple concepts.\n13:23 - I think it's important to understand that even if we're a much larger organization, we're in many countries, we have multiple products,we have a team of more than 1,000 people.\n13:31 - At the end of the day, there's more question you can ask has a simple answer.\n13:37 - So being able to remain curious, to being humble,to not taking things for granted and letting your team do the same will allow you to continue to have fun, to find the truth, and to grow if you want and if you care for a very, very long.","_has_trailer":false,"_trailer_vimeo_id":""},"categories":[935],"factorial-categories":[],"class_list":["post-189685","factorial_video","type-factorial_video","status-publish","hentry","category-leadership-insights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.5 (Yoast SEO v21.9.1) - 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