Every 18 months feels like running a new company, says App Annie founder

When your startup is hiring by the truckloads, that’s often a good sign. Either its revenue is reaching the stratosphere or it has just secured massive dough from investors.

App Annie is a rocketship. It has become a valuable tool for app developers who want to understand usage patterns, their competitors, and trends in the app stores. It has grown to 400 employees across 12 locations, up from a founding team of five in 2010.

“Every 18 months has been like running a different company, because we have been growing so fast in terms of team size, or in terms of the number of offices,” says App Annie founder and CEO Bertrand Schmitt on the sidelines of Tech in Asia Tokyo 2015.

3 months to bring it

Schmitt says that every 18 months, he’ll rethink how he runs the company. Scaling isn’t just about adding more people, but keeping it efficient while the team grows.

And while change is good, learning when to maintain the status quo is an important art. “You don’t want to change too early [or] change things that are still working,” he adds. The right time for change is when there’s enough tension between employees and convention. That’s when people understand the need for change.

For Schmitt, probably the biggest adjustment he made was his day-to-day responsibilities. While he used to do marketing, finance, HR, and product early in the startup’s life, he has delegated those to new hires.

Hiring the right people is key to successful transitions. Three months is the typical time he gives to evaluate a new hire. Sometimes he’ll give up to six months, but that only applies in 20 percent of cases. If you find the new hire is bringing more headaches rather than lessening them, it’s best to replace them quickly.

Changing the way he communicates is another change Schmitt made as the company matured. He travels often to meet various country teams, because there’s only so much you can do with phone calls.

He’s also big on video conferencing. “We have a video conference room in every region to make sure we have good, high-quality connections to communicate. And we believe video in most cases is better than audio. Which itself is better than email,” he says.

This is part of the ongoing coverage of Tech in Asia Tokyo 2015, our annual conference taking place on September 8 and 9.