“There's never a good time to do anything ever. So, if you'd like to achieve something or make a change, or do anything, you may as well get started now.”
— Robert Fenton

Today’s guest is Robert Fenton, Founder and CEO of Qualio. Qualio provides the tech-driven quality operating system for modern life sciences companies— no small undertaking!

Robert grew up in Cork, Ireland, graduated as a pharmacist, then moved to the US to accelerate the growth of his enterprise SaaS business. He is a founder who is naturally gritty, performance oriented (quality), but more importantly, focuses on developing people and culture.

Having worked first-hand with him and his leadership team, we can testify to the strong talent chemistry that has already been built amongst Qualio team members. Even before the recent mass pandemic, Qualio had been operating as a fully remote, distributed team across the USA, UK, and Europe.

In this interview, Robert shares his journey as an immigrant founder and some of his stories just simply couldn’t have been scripted better!

We’ll let him do the talking— enjoy! :)

Key Themes

The 5-principles of building a strong culture that feels connected and concerted across multiple geographies and timezones.
Staying focused on the company mission even after being hit by a car.
The upsides of building a fully distributed, remote team in today’s economic climate.
There are no such things as downsides, just challenges.
Acting on serendipity.
Caring for your well-being.

Transcript

Robert Fenton

Thanks, Jon. Thanks, Arjun. Excited to chat with you both today. So my name is Robert Fenton, appreciate the intro as Founder and CEO of Qualio. We're a modern quality operating system for all life sciences companies so we unite their team with tools and data, so they can become quality driven, which basically means to get to market quickly and get to scale faster. And we mitigate a lot of the regulatory risk, which of course, could hold back some of these companies as they try to build their businesses.

Currently CEO, like I said, my role has changed a lot over the last year. And you guys know from when we were much smaller, I was operating and also running the business. Fortunately, over the past year, I've had the great fortune of building a great team. So a lot of my time now is working directly with them.

Jon Low

Great. Thank you, Robert. And so Robert, because I think this is relevant given context, my understanding is even before recent massive events transpired, you already advocated for a remote-only culture at Qualio.

Robert Fenton

Absolutely. It's part of our DNA from the very beginning, because I moved over here now four years ago, and we had our engineering team in Europe. So it kind of came from just necessity and we really liked it because we learned that if you invest in some of the communication and collaboration needs that you have, I'm sure the world is figuring out right now, and you do that early, your organizational culture evolves around that. And it becomes just, just like a new thing.

I think that the way we've described it is it's no better or worse, we believe, but it's a different vocabulary. And you have to learn that. And once you do, I think that sets you free, because there's a lot of people in the world. And not all, not all of them live right near where you live. Right. That's been our motto, right?

Jon Low

And so having had experience with it, not by necessity, not just by mass event necessity, but just by having worked in Europe. What are some of the key upsides you see? Or have experience with a remote working culture? And what are some of the key potential downsides that you like hedged against or solved over the recent year or two?

Robert Fenton

Okay, so some of the upsides are clearly you gonna hire a lot of great people really quickly. And I think it still surprises people in meetingsI tell people like that we're still growing our headcount double digits every month. And it's just, of course we are, it's natural to us now it's normal. And my friends here in the Bay Area are not doing that. Are my friends in Ireland into real companies that are not doing that, or if they're doing that it's a great cost and effort. So that's a huge plus.

Second thing is, you've people have read about this and the world is against figuring this out, if being distributed or being remote forces you to get your management game in place, right? Like, what's your meeting? How do you communicate? How do you meet? How often do you meet people's goals and all of these things which you can somewhat somewhat take for granted until you get to maybe 80 or 100 people in one office.

You have to get right when you're about a dozen people in a remote company because otherwise things get a lot of friction. So investing in that to us, was you know, I won't say painful. We had to adjust to that as we grew across last year. However, the other side of that now, I mean, like we're about 35 people who are already internationalized. If we need to get to 70 or 100 people by the end of this year, which is pretty much on our roadmap, we just do that, like, you don't need we don't need to incorporate any more companies. You don't need to look at any more offices. It's just more of the same.

So, I think when people get to the other side of that, it's like all that is a lot of upside. Of course, you get a better cultural sensitivity because you get to see and interact with people that are outside of your default cultural bubble wherever you are. There are upsides we see.

I don't like the word downsides. I kind of think they're challenges, right? They're challenges that you have to work around timezones. If it's 4 PM in the evening, I'm not going to call our engineering team with a question. But you know what, that does that happen once every six months or 12 months, so not that big a deal. So, you have to kind of create your communication cadence to work within that. Also, we've worked on this right in our offsites and together on the ideas of your sensory and non-sensory perception of people right?

We're speaking right now and I can see you both, I can hear you both, but I have a limited set of sensors I can use to figure out if we in rapport you know, if this is a tough conversation we're doing these via zoom. So, it requires a more deft hand. But again, we're doing this for quite a while now I believe I could be speaking with you sitting around a fireplace with you know, a bourbon and cigars and a pair of slippers or whatever you imagine as this cozy kind of environment right, and I don't think I'd feel any different. Because it's like people who have evolved without sight or hear you evolve other senses, I believe come out the other side pretty much as good but at first. It's a challenge for me, always a challenge but we were comfortable with it.

Arjun Dev Arora

Just think that that's super interesting. And I think this ability to kind of attune your senses to understand and build rapport in a, you know, remote based environment is a fascinating skill set. And seems like you're on the front lines of that. Really, folks that develop that skill set over time, it's very impressive. So excited to tell her more about that over time as you as you share more of them, of course.

Jon Low

And so, Robert, I'm gonna switch gears because I think there's something very important for a lot of people to know that they don't know about you, and I'm not going to give it away. But if they haven't figured it out, you're from Ireland. An entrepreneur from the south of Ireland in Cork.

I'd like to give you an opportunity to share a bit about your journey from, you know, from being a student in college, graduating during the last financial crisis, and actually spotting the opportunity to do this for the quality management industry, and making your way through the ups and downs, all the way to the Bay Area. Because you know, no one just wakes up one morning and finds himself on the other side of the world with some strange, techy people, right?

So I'd like you to run us through that journey. I think it's really important, super inspiring. And I'll put questions where I think it's worth unpacking a bit more, but we leave the show to you right now.

Robert Fenton

Yeah, so lots of questions to unpack there. I guess I'm gonna summarize that back in, you know, learning about tech, getting into tech and and i think you phrased some of those questions to me before we chatted. Part of understanding how it got here because if you assume I qualified as a pharmacist, and 2008 now I run a software company in San Francisco, that sounds like— how do those dots join right? But, it's actually a pretty straight line.

You know, as most people's journeys are once you get to know them, so you know of all those I think it's the intersection of science and technology has always, always, always fascinated me since, like my earliest memories of before high speed internet. You know, before we had a computer in my household right when I was when I was growing up, right, every single science and tech magazine or book I could get my hands on.

I watched all of the Discovery Channel at least twice, right? And also, my dad was a telecoms engineer. So, I was thinking this morning before we met and some memories came back of the hundreds of hours I spent disassembling and reassembling little electrical components. Even like, remember one thing in particular, it was an electricity generator that was part of a magnet. So you twist a handle and he had an electric shock or you could power like a telephone terrain or light bulb or something. And I think I spent probably a year of my childhood playing with that and similar things. So all those things mean that you know, I always liked both of those things. And if you look at Qualio today, a lot of that is embedded in there. Getting into tech.

From Cork in Ireland, an unusual path started. I guess it is my interest in science so after coming out of high school equivalent I was fortunate enough to represent Ireland internationally in the Chemistry Olympiad. So, I always loved science, chemistry was a big thing for me, I decided I could pivot that into a career in pharmacy so this summer I started studying pharmacy in Cork in Ireland, studying that for five years.

Worked as a pharmacist for about five months before I decided it really wasn't for me and that was during the 2008 crash right where the whole world was unemployed. I was working seven days a week because I was pretty determined to make it work and there was always a bit of a way. I think it was pretty much always a way to kind of get experience and exposure.

Fortunately, when I decided pharmacy wasn't for me, I had worked in Pfizer, one of the world's you know, biggest pharmaceutical companies in a quality role as an intern. And during my qualification here for any practical experience, I'd worked in R&D and manufacturing support roles and one of the world's largest dermatological companies. So, I had this really interesting exposure to life sciences and how it works. So I was from the industry, but not all the industry. And I think I had a really unique set of experiences that enabled me afterwards.

Like, watching how cumbersome how costly and how complex these home build solutions were. And these were companies with unlimited budgets, really. And that was really fascinating. So I had the insight that I compare that with my interests, and we can build a better mousetrap, we can build a better product, and one that didn't cost millions of dollars, right and spend are a team of people to install, configure and manage them. There had to be a better way. And that was just as SaaS was starting to become a thing. So, a lot of that kind of came together. I guess that's the journey. That's the kind of journey to initially kind of started in quality. I can go into more detail there. But yeah, I have no background right.

I was a pharmacist here who always liked software technology. But if you look at my university application in Ireland, I think it's similar to India and that you get a stack-ranking of your course choices and you get into the course the first one to apply for. So I did well, so I got introduced to my first choice, which is pharmacy. The six choices are all math and engineering, all of them, like every engineering course you could do. So, again, it wasn't that much of a jump. And I was young enough to believe that I could carry on my trend of being successful at things I applied myself to.

So I said kind of what the hell and and decided to dig in. So I guess that's the journey to kind of start getting the company and it's not such a crazy joining of the dots, I think.

Jon Low

Totally agree. Thank you for sharing that. And, Robert, my understanding is as you were building quality, one of the phases in probably both your personal life journey and quality as a business's life journey was flying to a conference in Boston. And then that catalyzes an opportunity for you to then take the next step towards it. Can you unpack that a bit? Because I find that very fascinating how you had to do a mid air pivot? I guess right.

Robert Fenton

So again, we started in Ireland. Selling to companies in Europe is really tough because if you look at typically the marketplace is a bit more of a laggard market versus an early adopter market, just generally speaking. And we definitely found that to be true with our product. So we had more customers in the United States than anywhere else. And I spent a couple of weeks in San Francisco with a program by Enterprise Ireland, a government body, and I had spent a week in Boston, because most of our customers were in Boston, and it's way closer to Ireland for timezone perspective. So it would kind of make sense to be there.

And I was at a talk at night by really, really well-respected venture capitalists and it was there I believe, there was a group of students. I still don't know why I ended up there with the students, but I was at this little fireside chat and somebody asked the inevitable question of, “You know, If I'm starting a business today, however they do it software business, San Francisco Bay area or Boston?” And he said, and I'll never forget his words were, “You know what? We believe Boston is the second best place in the world to start, you know, start a software business.” And that was basically it for me. It was pretty, you know, I've pretty much when I make the decision, that's kind of it, and then it's done. And that was it.

I said, “Okay, we're going all the way over here.” And of course, you get to skip the winters. But you know, there's a few reasons but the main one was, yeah, if I'm going to move like thousands of miles what's an extra couple thousand?

Jon Low

Yeah, wow. Well, true grit. So you know, you know, sometimes you're so forward looking as a child, you love challenges and like moving towards a future— want to give you an opportunity to share a bit about some of your biggest challenges of yours along the way. If you could share one of the most memorable for you, and what that taught you that would be most brilliant.

Robert Fenton

Yeah, of course, there are innumerable, you know, challenges and setbacks and blockers you have over time. And there is one that does stand out and again, I think helps reaffirm why believer company's mission like I do. And that is that it was back when we first started working on quality. I was actually in a road traffic accident. I was like cycling home from the office because I sold my car, you know, for companies getting funded here. We're getting going.

Cycling home, I was hit by a car and I fractured my collarbone. And it was really tough because I just hired our first employee, right? This is a lot riding on this. And a few weeks afterwards, partly due to stress and genetic predisposition, who knows, I got diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, which is a pretty debilitating condition and the variant I have is called all sort of colitis, it's pretty serious autoimmune disease.

Trying to manage that while trying to start a business that I had no background and pedigree in was, was probably one of the most formative moments in my entire life because it was okay this is a lot of said challenge second to the extreme, I think. But I fought through it and again, it taught me the value and just pushing forward and prioritizing and figuring things out and I was fortunate to end up at one point I was on a high enough dose of corticosteroids that I got very powerful anti-inflammatory to a degree. And I was at a dose high enough that's typically reserved for pre-surgery hospitalized patients, while still running the business as fortunately I had two of the top gastroenterologists in the country helping me. Because I basically reached out to them and had them helping me and I was in touch with a gastroenterologist in Canada in the United States. And I think thanks to just brute force of going there's always a way and got it under control.

And already 2015 a few months before my first trip to the United States and I feel great. But I think that was probably looking back and going through tough moments that I think will stand to me for a long time and going there. So it's first of all this way, and it's like somebody said, Paul Graham that said, you know, it's companies don't die, you know, or there's a phrase about that right once or keep hitting on the keyboard company can keep going. And, of course, what is our company? Do we want to help more of these, it shouldn't have been just this difficult for me right to get those treatments, to get that expertise.

Jon Low

Right. And, you know, and, you know, coming out of the side on the other side of that,

you know, you continue growing Qualio, who were some of your key guiding lights or mentors along the way, and what specifically did they teach you that you hope to take with you and hopefully even pass on right to your leadership team and others who work with you?

Robert Fenton

Sure. There's no one person I could point to. But it was coming to the Bay Area, again to speak with just so many people who have had huge success, and just witnessing their humility and their ability to help. And I think that's what the Bay Area still works and has a special magic about it compared to everywhere else is just meeting these people, and then laying out like, here's a crap time we went through here. Helps you understand what's really possible.

Okay, Steve Jobs has a really great quote. And I hate quoting people, they're always getting quoted, but it was something around the lines— if you look around, all the things you see were created by people no smarter than you—I'm totally butchering the phrase, but the sentiment really stuck with me. And that to me is that reinforcement is a really good way to get through any tough time or any period of self-doubt, because it's actually true. Right? And I've had the good fortune to meet lots of people who have created lots of really amazing technology companies. And I'm not saying I'm smarter than them, but you know, they're really great smart people, but they're humans. But these are really simple. They're not invincible.

Jon Low

So well said. You know, because this video is designed to also potentially inspire uprising leadership or founder talent. What, if anything, would you like to share with them that you think might have been helpful for yourself or others to know when you're starting your journey?

Robert Fenton

Yeah, that's that's a tough question to unpack. Because you know, me and people who know me know that there's, you know, every situation has its own reference to a book or a person or a situation.

But the one thing that I always see in people, and the one thing I always try to help people with, or at least help them understand, is that there's never a good time to do anything, right. The world is in an uncertain moment right now. But you know, Fortune favors the bold is the phrase that we've been talking about internally, right? It's, there's never a good time to do anything ever. So if you'd like to achieve something or make a change, or do anything, you may as well get started now. Right? Literally, it's a mental construct that holds everybody back I think.

Arjun Dev Arora

I would say you are one of the best in class and the ability to do that. Impressive.

Jon Low

Yeah. And I have one final question, Robert, because, you know, you're continuing to optimize and grow the Qualio and its culture in the way that you want it to represent. Can you share a bit about the vision or the culture that you would like to see materialized quality within the short term, mid-term, long-term?

Robert Fenton

Yeah, and I think that's pretty well codified right now. And two things actually three things and this is what we call a company Manifesto, right. This is something that and every single day in our senior team huddles, we talk about this at our all hands tomorrow morning, we talk about it again. And it's our core purpose. And I'll walk you through it right now.

And I could talk about that if you want to its core purpose is to enable teams, and launch and scale life saving products, right? It's particularly important in this free moment in time.

To do that we believe as a culture as a company, there are five principles that we need to operate by every day, right?

First is seeking ownership. We're a remote organization. Rule one is people have to again go back to the piece of advice I had to everybody, you're taking the bull by the horns, you know, if you see a problem you get you have the chance to fix it. And we try to hire and hire for that, because that's, you're creating a company of leaders then. Right? I think that that has a lot of payoff.

Second thing is being customer-centric. Again, could not be more relevant right now businesses, some of them, many businesses are going to struggle to get new customers. What's the one thing you can control, just being awesome for the existing customers that you have, and we're still growing, we're having a really good period now. But still, our existing customers probably could do it some TLC, same for every business.

Third one is curiosity. If you know me, wll, I mean, I'm a pretty voracious learner and like intensely so I don't expect everybody to be like that. But for moving here, all the people I've met who've been tremendously successful across any metric are always a beginner in every conversation, they're a beginner. And that's been very, I think that's very important.

The fourth one is about intentional communication. So, again, remote team, we have to be incredibly intentional about how we communicate, when we communicate, what the context is. And I'm making this clear to the person who might speak a different language to me. And in general, I think this is a very positive attribute to have classes org scale as 35 people versus 100 people versus 500 people, companies getting in a lot of trouble if they don't make that a core priority, right? Because transparency allows people again to be leaders and have ownership because you understand the context into which to have to make decisions.

And the last piece is pretty simple key players right? You know, there's, there's no I in team, there's a me in team, but my job has been the team has actually support the team. Right? And I think that's again, this is people often don't like having this in there because it can be touchy feely.

Look at all the great successes in the world, right? And you can find any example you want to the Wright brothers is in my head right now. I don't know why. But you know, that was a team that's underfunded, had no business ever winning flying a plane, but it was the team dynamic that had right just belief in the hustle that had wasn't any one person and all great companies.

It's not, it's not me, you could launch a new feature next month. I may or may not have had a part of that. But I was the least important piece. So I think supporting the team is something that's underrated. But I think the best companies and teams know that. So that's it.

One more thing I'll share is because we're doing a company manifesto. The core brand promises that again, every decision we make, it has three criteria, right? And we promised our customers through three things.

It's going to be easy to use. We show value in seconds, andweonboard you faster than you ever thought, everything we do is to make sure your life is easier and better. And don't worry, it's scalable, right? We will work with you whether you're a three person spin out from university, or, hey, you've just been acquired by 1000 person org and ever been rolled out to the parent, don't worry, that would be successful. And we're trusted because we handle and mission critical data set for these companies to think about is life and death for people and life and death for the company. So we have to be trusted to be up and be reliable. So that took a lot longer than I expected. But as you can tell we, we talked with these every day, and I could probably go for an hour. So could anyone on the team.