Disclosure certainty 5/5 debate potential 1/5

Cotopaxi Uses OfficeVibe Daily to Measure Company Culture via Slack

Davis Smith · Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Dec 15, 2023 · at 57:05

Davis Smith is the Founder and Chairman of outdoor brand Cotopaxi. He describes the tools and process Cotopaxi uses to continuously measure company culture.

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“One of my favorites is actually a company called Office Vibe. It sends out polls through Slack, which we use Slack, and I measure Literally every day, I'm tracking and measuring our culture, and I can try, I can slice the data based on gender, based on tenure in the company, based on all these different metrics.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Davis Smith

Opinion
Smith: Female investors understand purpose in business better than male investors
“I really believe that women better understood and understand purpose in business than men did.”
Davis Smith Dec 15, 2023 ▶ 31:57 Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Smith: Founders can build great businesses without torching work-life balance
“Yes, you can have balance and you can still build an extremely efficient and great business that's doing great work. You don't have to put in a 120 hours a week, a hundred hours a week and not have any balance. And torch, you know, family relationships and eve…”
Davis Smith Dec 15, 2023 ▶ 46:48 Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Smith: Patagonia erred by keeping all equity with founder Yvon Chouinard
“I think the one thing that I'd love to do better though than what I've seen Patagonia do and this is coming from someone with deep admiration for Yvonne Chouinard and for Patagonia. I guess if there was a criticism I'd have is why after 40 years was he the onl…”
Davis Smith Dec 15, 2023 ▶ 54:57 Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Smith: Consumers will not buy products solely for social good
“People that's wonderful, but people are not going to buy, buy your product because you're doing good in the world. You need to first create a great product. And he was absolutely right. So I really do think that's first, like you have to go build a great produ…”
Davis Smith Dec 15, 2023 ▶ 18:42 Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Smith relinquished Cotopaxi CEO title to recruit Damien Huang
“The only problem is he wanted to be CEO. He didn't want to be president. He didn't want to be my right hand. And I had some other options that were really great right hands that would have been happy being president forever. And at the end of the day, I did, I…”
Davis Smith Dec 15, 2023 ▶ 53:32 Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2026
Smith: Cotopaxi will build employee wealth rather than join a foundation
“And I actually think it's a win for Cotabaxi to, like, I don't want to give the company away to a foundation. I actually want to create something that can create wealth for many people within our organization, and that can allow them to go pass on this to thei…”
Davis Smith Dec 15, 2023 ▶ 55:26 Davis Smith: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenues | E1095 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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