Another Milestone at Shippo: 200 Employees and Counting!

The pandemic has transformed how we work, live, and shop. At Shippo, we’re committed to helping our 100,000 e-commerce merchants respond to this transformation by giving them the tools they need to ship competitively and deliver seamless experiences for their customers. Our $1 billion valuation only reflects the ever-expanding potential of that mission.

Meeting our goals requires building a team that is driven, experienced, and passionate, so that we can continue to deliver value to our customers. Today, I’m happy to announce that we now have more than 200 Shippos onboard as we work to build the e-commerce platform for the 21st century.

This milestone is notable in large part because of how fast we got here. At the start of 2020, Shippo had just 80 employees. Five months later, our team was at 100 – a number that doubled just a year later. In fact, half of our team was hired in the middle of the pandemic. 

The pace of that growth reflects not only the success of the solutions we’re building, but also the incredible efforts of our People team, which has leveled up our hiring and onboarding operations across the board over the past 18 months.

Employee experience is front and center at Shippo. All of us are juggling a lot right now, and we are building a company that reflects and respects both the work and personal lives of everyone on our team. We’re living in a moment of firsts, and it’s critical that our people process reflects that. 

As we celebrate this milestone for our team, we also want to take a moment to reflect on how we got here.

We Are Intentional About How We Grow Our Team

To enable our growth over the past year, our team had to make deliberate decisions about how we met, interviewed, and hired candidates. 

First, we spent a lot of time seeking out ways to streamline the interview process for hiring managers. While hiring is important to Shippo’s continued growth, it’s just one of the many responsibilities our team members must juggle day to day. To make the process as efficient as possible, we introduced robust candidate evaluation rubrics, interview channels in Slack, and a commitment to 24-hour turnarounds on hiring decisions.

Feedback has been positive! Candidates appreciate this streamlined process as well because it creates an even better interview experience for them.

We’ve Reimagined the Onboarding Experience

With employees now joining the team without ever meeting anyone in person, we’ve had to be even more thoughtful about the onboarding experience. Here, we have two priorities: Not only do we want new team members to feel welcome, but we also want to ensure that they have all the information they need to onboard successfully. 

First, we increased the length and breadth of our onboarding process. Our new hire orientation is now a week long, with 13 sessions taught by experts across the company covering the industry, each department’s role, and the ins and outs of our business.

Second, we laid the foundation for robust product knowledge. We understand how important it is for every Shippo to know the Why and the How behind the 21st century e-commerce platform we’re building for our customers. To help every new hire get there as quickly as possible, we’ve implemented a robust Product Academy covering all things Shippo, and — after completing the modules — give them the chance to help our customers first-hand by addressing support OTDs, or opportunities to delight.

And last, we’ve committed to continuous improvement. Our People team is constantly looking for feedback on how to improve the onboarding process. A month after they join, we schedule 1:1s with new hires to hear about their first month and ways that we can improve their experience. 

“Shippo believes in investing in its people,” says Shippo Director of Learning and Development Elizabeth Brinlee about that commitment. “Shippos have access to coaching with a certified coach, and opportunities to move through work challenges in leadership cohorts at various levels. And there’s so much more to come!”

Continuing to Deliver on our Mission

This moment in the Shippo story is important because it shows how we’re meeting our mission of empowering every e-commerce retailer to ship at scale by efficiently scaling ourselves. As we shared when we raised our $50M funding round in June, we also plan to further expand our operations internationally this year to better serve our partners.

The growth itself is exciting and inspiring, and I’m equally excited about the amazing opportunities it will create for everyone on our team. Here’s to the next 200 Shippos!

If you’d like to join us in playing a part in this incredible journey, we would love to hear from you! Check out our Jobs page to see which roles are currently open across all departments, from BizOps and Customer Success to Product, Engineering, and Growth.