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Before we dive into Flo, let’s talk about your path. Before Flo, you were the Group HR Director at Bumble with previous roles at Goldman Sachs and Rolls-Royce. Your career has led you to one of the most successful femtech companies in the world. Looking back, what were the key moments or decisions that shaped your path to becoming Chief People Officer at Flo Health? Could you tell us more about your career path?
I'm one of those unusual HR people in that I didn't accidentally stumble into it. I had a very clear vision that this is what I wanted to do. I remember being 17 looking at university brochures: "HR, what does that stand for? Oh, it's kind of an intersection of organizational behavior, human psychology, and commercial business results and innovation. This sounds amazing."
Back then there were only four universities in the UK that offered Bachelor's degrees in HR specifically. It was a relatively new field in higher education. I have never looked back. I started my career in large global corporations, Goldman Sachs first, and then I spent some years at Rolls-Royce. I think big companies are a fantastic functional training ground – you really get the full sophistication of whatever function you're in. The HR team in Rolls-Royce, for example, was 700 people – bigger than the entire team at Flo today! But after some years, I got antsy not feeling close to where the big talent decisions are made, and I didn’t see myself climbing that corporate ladder for the next 30 years . So I made what, at the time, I was told was a very stupid leap out of my corporate job and joined my first tech startup. I was the fourth team member there, I think. The first year of scaling a tech business, I had to take my HR handbook and throw it out the window and pretty much relearn everything from scratch. And it was extremely good to be that jack of all trades where I did everything. I had to learn to create simple solutions and take intelligent shortcuts because you didn't have time to be fancy.
After two years there, I moved on to Lebara Mobile, a 2000 person founder-led mobile operator, because I missed some of the work and challenges that small companies just don't need, like more complicated reward modeling, more sophisticated employee engagement at scale thinking, and international workforce augmentation. After Lebara was sold I joined Bumble. I always remind people that when I joined Bumble it wasn't the company it is today. It was still a small business, largely unknown, at a time when online dating was still a nascent consumer market and not the most common way people met. So it was taking a leap of faith in there being a real societal problem to solve for, and I was blown away by the talented people I got to work with. We accomplished phenomenal things.
Flo has recently hit unicorn status – a massive milestone. How has this shifted the way you think about hiring and building the team for the next phase of growth?
The unicorn status is interesting because, in terms of business fundamentals, nothing really changes. However, it's effectively a financing event that validates us as an employer. It might sound trivial, but in this economy people are looking for financial security, and a well-performing employer. People also want to work for companies that make products they use, admire and can really relate to. We receive over 60,000 applications each year, and all of them start with “Flo changed my/my partner’s/daughter’s/mom’s life” In light of that worldwide love for Flo app, the funding is a nice milestone but it doesn’t really change how we hire, or what makes talent tick at Flo.
As a London-headquartered company, would you still say that you’re a Lithuanian unicorn?
There are not that many billion-dollar companies that are in a single office in a single city nowadays. Vilnius is our largest office, we’re proud to be active members of the Lithuanian tech ecosystem, so yes Lithuania is home for us as well.
With $200 million in new funding, what's the focus now? What doors does this open for Flo in terms of both product and people?
In terms of product, most of our investment decisions and long-term strategy remain the same. We're focused on building new user value and new features, while accessing new markets across the world. Having grown significantly in pretty much every country, we can now pay more attention to pro-social causes. For example, we have the Pass It On initiative that gives away Flo Premium for free to women in lower-income countries.
We can also invest in talent in a mindful and sustainable fashion, like we always have. Back in 2020-21 tech startups were raising investment rounds at crazy valuations and hiring like crazy, only to make huge 180-degree cutbacks six to nine months later. This over-reactive volatility in tech meant many people who had just joined these companies were losing their jobs. Even during that upcycle, we were very conservative about growing our talent base.
For us, there is a natural ceiling to how much talent we can take in because it takes significant time, investment, resources, and effort from everybody at Flo not only to find the right person but to onboard them effectively to our culture. Because of the high bar for talent and our capacity for onboarding we will always grow headcount conservatively, ideally in single digit percentages, rather than do 100% growth and have to make sweeping corrections. In the long term no company is winning from that level of volatility, and employees on the talent market are not winning either.
How can Lithuania capitalize on this moment to strengthen the ecosystem and attract global attention? What lessons can other companies learn from Flo?
One key lesson would be: don't focus too much on competition. Many companies get very distracted by competition. Flo has always been laser-focused not on looking outside, but looking inside – what are we doing? How are we innovating for the betterment of female health? What are our users saying?
Secondly, be very true to what you stand for and what you don't stand for. I see too many companies trying to be all things to all people. I understand the temptation – you're a startup, so you want to attract the best people on the market. So you default to sales mode and try to pander to every individual candidate to be able to scale. But you need to know what you stand for, what matters to you, and what you say no to, because this is how you get the right people for you, and find the people that will find real fulfillment in what they do.
Another thing I'm seeing much more of is stronger interlinking of the Lithuanian tech ecosystem, sharing knowledge, and networking. We are very keen to share our know-how, our lessons learned on how to scale a business through events that Unicorns Lithuania organizes. It can be very daunting if you're a first-time founder to look at Flo and think, "Wow, a billion-dollar business. Over 70 MILLION monthly users. How on earth did they get there?" We want to show that everybody has struggles internally, and 10 years ago the path looked just as daunting and scary to us, and at no point was success guaranteed.
The other thing I would recommend is to be very open to the diversity of available talent pools. Many of our employees here in Lithuania are expats who come from across Europe. Be open to foreign talent because this is how you diffuse best practices from across the world.
Over 230 of your employees are based in Lithuania, which has been central to Flo's success. What has been the biggest factor in choosing Vilnius as a major base for your operations? And what does the future of hiring at Flo in Lithuania look like?
What made Vilnius attractive for us back in 2020 was that as a company, we have roots in Belarus, so it was culturally close. Sometimes it comes down to something as simple as "Do we know the town? Is it nice? What's the quality of life like?" One of the things we really liked is the amazing quality of life indicators that Vilnius has – it's one of the greenest capitals in Europe, it’s compact enough to get around ‘green’. What we also liked is that it was a growing tech talent scene, which was far from saturated. Of course, competition is becoming more intense because Lithuania still has fewer developers, engineers, analysts, or data scientists than, say, Poland. It also takes a long time to build your reputation as a local employer and gain confidence with talent. It was much harder to hire the first 50 people here than it is now 5 years later. Generally, I think Lithuania as a talent market is quite risk-averse. In the UK for example, people are very happy to change jobs every couple of years – it's almost like you're a quasi-freelancer.
Gen Z is entering the workforce with very different expectations. Do you see it as an opportunity or a challenge? How is Gen Z changing the atmosphere and tech sector?
One of the characteristics that are very pronounced in the younger workforce starting their careers now is their craving for authenticity and meaning. For example, a company like Flo with as strong a mission as we have, albeit focused on female health, has huge attractiveness to all talent regardless of their gender, because people want to genuinely make the world a better place. But this mission needs to be authentic and have integrity; otherwise, you’ll soon be found out.
Because a lot of Gen Z went to university and joined the labor market during Covid, they are struggling a lot more with workplace relations – understanding how real-world human interactions work, and what it's like to have constructive conflict. Remote work was a great enabler for so many wonderful things that improve work-life balance, especially for working parents and women, but it was also a setback for younger people because it has not equipped them with the skills required for collaboration, for a sense of belonging, for seeing what day-to-day real-world life working together in a team looks like. That’s something we’re now focused on helping younger folks ‘catch up’ with.
For people who have have joined the startup scene in more recent years there’s the expectation of always only having ‘the good times’, and it’s a macro challenge for companies now. Most industries are cyclical, and the past 15 years or so of only growth in the tech sector means not many have had experience of requisite resilience through ‘the bad times’. Every company has its bad times, and we’re very keen on building a workforce that is ready for any turbulence through any air-pockets, because this is what separates the truly exceptional companies from the rest.
You've managed to scale without a hiring boom, focusing on lean team building. What are the lessons in hiring to achieve success in business?
You have to figure out what your talent strategy is. It's quite easy to say but very hard to do in practice. Ours, for example, is that we are a company of very high talent density. We want to always remain as lean as possible in the number of people, but we want those people to be the best in the world. Everyone can say that, but to actually make decisions on it and stay true to it in practice is very hard because you have growth pressures. Every manager will say, "I need more people, and I need them quickly." So the temptation to lower the bar is always there.
But you have to stay true to whatever your talent strategy is. Your strategy might actually be paying the middle of the market and having more hands to do more work. This isn't us, and that means there are times when we are under-resourced because we're waiting for the right person. It's difficult for teams to be under-resourced, but we have seen time and time again that holding off is worth it. It's short-term pain for long-term gain.
Around half of Flo Health Inc. are women. How can company managers help women see that they have the potential to advance and the opportunities to do so?
You need to create a workplace that is not just paying lip service to wanting ‘diversity’, but think about what actually attracts your target demographic to work and thrive at your business, and can you actually deliver on that. You need to create a workplace that walks the walk and can accommodate that. For example we know that maternity leave is a very high churn point for women, because it creates a natural long break from your company and openness to do something else. Our return-to-work bonus for new mothers is not really about the money per se, it’s about sending a signal that you are wanted back. We set the path and help people return to work successfully, help them feel like they're not a horrible mother by caring about their career continuation and advancement.
I believe in diversity built on true meritocracy. No woman wants to be appointed or promoted because they’re a woman. This type of tokenism where your progress is not due to your talent, experience or track record fairly compared to others - is doing a real disservice to progress on gender equality in the workplace. It's an awful experience to be ‘the diversity hire’. There’s a lot of impact a company can make that is not filling quotas or being tokenistic - training in unconscious bias in hiring decisions, making your job ads and performance assessments gender-neutral, reaching out to passive female talent pools if they would not have the confidence to apply, transparent salary ranges where pay decisions don’t come down to who negotiates more aggressively. These are science-backed interventions that make a real difference, but you have to be willing to commit to them, and experiment, and change tack, and see what actually works for your business.
Generally speaking, what competencies would you name as the most important for the high-value-added sector over the next 5 years?
It's no longer the case of getting a degree in a subject and being guaranteed success. That was 10-20 years ago – get a degree as a programmer, and you'll be set. Now, T-shaped skills are important – going deep in whatever you specialise in, but also having the lateral skills to collaborate cross-functionally. A good developer will understand not only their technological architecture and solution set, but also how to deploy at speed, what is the commercial thesis, how to solve user problems, have empathy, understand design and research, and collaborate with non-tech peers. So both breadth and depth are crucial. That's what we as a company are looking for – not only deep expertise but ultimately the ability to work with others. If you assemble a team of players who are amazing at their respective fields but unable to work together, you won't succeed. And obviously I can’t not bring up AI - I think keeping up with AI-enabled tooling and co-piloting whatever your profession is going to be the basic table stakes for absolutely any role in any industry, and sooner than in 5 years.
From your perspective, how can Lithuania further grow its tech ecosystem and position itself as a global player in the tech space, a leading tech hub?
If you look at more established, mature, talent-dense hubs across Europe or the US, the number one common thread they have is that they are very welcoming to global talent. So you need to have governmental and immigration policies that are welcoming to foreigners. And it can be very difficult for countries in Northern Europe and Central Europe that are historically quite insular. The approach needs to be holistic with consistency across more than just business innovation, being favorable to foreign investment, legislation, and tax infrastructure. It requires everything else to fall in line.
Tech ecosystems and talent hubs aren’t built overnight. It just takes time. Talent and business are entirely built on network effects, and network effects take time, a frustratingly long time to get going. But when you have the network effect, more will attract more. It’s a self-sustaining and self-growing mechanism. But that conviction has to be there for years and decades whilst you don't see any results yet, where it feels very slow-growing and low ROI, to keep the conviction of your thesis.
Ann Roberts was interviewed by Rūta Pukenė, Head of Ecosystem Development and Community Relations at the Unicorns Lithuania.
