The Expanly Playbook

At Expanly, our mission is to empower e-commerce brands to reclaim control of their advertising and unlock sustainable growth. To achieve this, we've built more than just a powerful platform; we've built a unique way of working.

This playbook is our operational blueprint. It's the single source of truth that guides our culture, our processes, and our daily actions. We're sharing it publicly to give our clients, partners, and future team members a transparent look at the engine behind our technology.

A core element of our identity is our hybrid model. This is a strategic decision designed to give us a competitive advantage. We anchor our leadership and product innovation in our Helsinki headquarters to foster the deep, in-person collaboration required to solve complex problems. Simultaneously, this structure allows us to build our sales and customer success teams with the best talent globally, right in the markets they serve. It’s how we stay deeply connected at our core while being expansive in our reach.

We build our product iteratively, and we build our company the same way. This document is our commitment to that process, a living guide that we constantly read, question, and improve.

I. Our Hybrid Foundation: The "Why" and "How"

A. Our Philosophy: Blending Collaboration and Global Reach 

Our decision to operate with a central headquarters in Helsinki, complemented by a global remote team, is a direct extension of our business strategy. We are building a global product for global clients, and our operational model is designed to maximize both deep, collaborative innovation and expansive market presence.

1. Global Ambition Requires the Best Talent: Our goal is to scale aggressively, first in the Nordics and then globally. To do this, we need the world's best talent. We believe the optimal way to achieve this is through a dual approach:

   1. Innovation Hub: We are building a center of gravity in our Helsinki headquarters for leadership and product development. This allows for the high-bandwidth, in-person collaboration that is crucial for solving complex problems and driving our core product forward.

   2. Global Market Presence: For our sales and customer success teams, we hire the best talent directly in the markets they serve. This remote-friendly approach ensures we have local expertise and can be closer to our customers, wherever they are.

2. Strategic and Capital Efficient: In the early stages of a SaaS company, every resource matters. Our hybrid model allows us to allocate capital intelligently. We invest in a world-class headquarters to serve as our innovation hub, while avoiding the massive overhead of physical offices in every market. This lean structure allows us to be more agile, directing our capital where it has the most impact: into product development, customer success, and growth. Our employee stock option program ensures you have a direct stake in our collective success.

3. Deep Focus for Intelligent Work: The problems we solve are complex. Building a platform that gives clients "strategic control" requires deep, uninterrupted focus from our team. We are committed to creating an environment that enables this, both in our Helsinki headquarters and for our remote team members. Our processes and communication structures are designed to be an "interruption factory" antidote, allowing for the focused work needed to build an intelligent, high-performing product.

B. Our Core Principles in Action

These principles are the bedrock of our culture, uniting our team across all locations. They are the human-driven logic that guides our work.

Our Mindset:

• Be the Client's Champion: Our success is a direct result of our clients' success. Whether it's revenue increase or profitability improvement, we are obsessed with the results our clients achieve. Every decision we make, from a line of code to a marketing campaign, should be weighed against the question: "How does this help our clients win?"

• Driven by Outcomes: We measure success by the impact you make, not the hours you work. We set clear goals and trust you to deliver.

• Ownership is Strategic Control: Our tagline, "Reclaim Control, Unlock Growth," applies to you, too. You are the owner of your domain. We provide you with the context and goals, and we trust you with the strategic control to execute.

• Transparency by Default: We believe the best ideas and decisions come from a place of shared knowledge. We use public channels for discussion and document decisions openly to ensure everyone, regardless of location, can understand the "why" behind the "what" and contribute their expertise.

Our Actions:

• Handbook-First: This playbook is the central repository for all our processes and knowledge. To make our hybrid model work, we need a single source of truth. If you have a question, check the handbook first. If the answer isn't here, your responsibility is to flag it to your manager so that we can add it.

• Asynchronous by Default: We default to communication that does not require an immediate response. This is critical to bridging time zones and ensuring our Helsinki-based and remote team members can collaborate as equals. It respects focus time and leads to more thoughtful, well-articulated interactions. Real-time meetings are a valuable resource, used intentionally, not as a default.

II. Communication: The Lifeblood of Expanly

In a hybrid work environment, effective communication is more crucial than ever. It's the infrastructure that allows us to build, sell, and support our product effectively, bridging the gap between our headquarters in Helsinki and our global team members. Our approach is designed to maximize clarity, protect focus, and ensure that information flows to where it's needed most. Using the right tool for the job is essential.

A. The Communication Stack: Our Tools & Their Purpose

Each tool in our stack has a specific purpose. Using them correctly prevents information silos and ensures we have a single source of truth for every part of the business.

• Google Workspace (The Single Source of Truth):

  • Purpose: Our central repository for all company knowledge, strategies, processes, and documentation. Our "Handbook" is a curated set of documents within our shared Google Drive.

  • Good for: Documenting strategies (Docs), creating financial models or data analysis (Sheets), and building presentations (Slides). All meeting notes and project plans live here.

  • Key Habit: We maintain a well-organized folder structure and an "Index" document that acts as a master table of contents for easy navigation.

• Slack (The Digital Office):

  • Purpose: Informal, real-time conversations and quick social interactions. It’s our hallway and our water cooler.

  • Good for: Quick questions, urgent alerts and non-work-related chatter (#random).

  • Not for: Making decisions, official task assignment, or critical discussions that should be documented elsewhere. A decision does not exist until it is documented in Google Workspace or the relevant system of record (Linear, Hubspot).

• Linear (The Product Engine Room):

  • Purpose: The single source of truth for Product Development. This is where we track all product-related work, from high-level roadmaps to individual tasks and bug reports.

  • Good for: Managing the product backlog, planning development cycles (sprints), tracking bug reports, and managing the overall product roadmap. All discussions related to specific development tasks or issues happen here.

• Hubspot (The Growth Engine & Customer Success Hub):

  • Purpose: Hubspot is the single source of truth for all customer-facing activities, including sales, marketing, and customer success.

  • Good for: Managing our sales pipeline, tracking deals through stages, logging all communication with prospects and clients, and providing a holistic view of the customer lifecycle.

B. Asynchronous by Default: Protecting Time & Focus

We default to asynchronous communication to respect our global team's time zones and to create long blocks of uninterrupted time for deep work.

• Provide Full Context: Never just say "Hi" in Slack. Write out your full thought with as much context as possible so your colleague can respond productively.

• Default to Public Channels: This makes information accessible to everyone and prevents knowledge silos. Use private messages only for sensitive or truly personal topics.

• Acknowledge and Set Expectations: A simple emoji reaction (e.g., 👀 "I've seen this," ✅ "I'll get this done") is a great way to acknowledge a message and signal that you've received it, even if you can't respond fully right away.

C. The Art of the Meeting: A Deliberate Choice

Meetings are the most expensive form of communication, so we treat them as a last resort, not a default.

Every meeting at Expanly must have:

1. A Clear Agenda in a shared Google Doc.

2. A Facilitator to keep the meeting on track.

3. Documented Outcomes in the same Google Doc, with action items assigned in the relevant tool (e.g., Linear for product, Hubspot for sales).

4. Cameras On to Stay Connected: We always keep our cameras on during meetings. This isn't just a rule; it's a key part of how we build strong connections and truly collaborate. Seeing each other helps us pick up on subtle cues, understand intentions, and feel more like a united team. It’s about being fully present and engaged.

D. Our Communication Cadence: The Rhythm of Our Work

To ensure information flows effectively within and between teams, we operate on a clear cadence of communication rituals. These are our primary venues for synchronous collaboration and alignment.

• Daily Stand-ups (Asynchronous): To foster cross-company visibility and alignment, all team members post their daily updates in the unified #standup Slack channel. This is for tactical updates on progress and blockers.

  • How to Post Your Stand-up: Keep your update short and sweet to respect everyone's time. Use the following simple format so the team can quickly scan for progress and identify where to help.

    • Yesterday: [Your key accomplishment]

    • Today: [Your main focus]

    • Blockers: [Anything preventing you from making progress. If none, write "None."]

• Weekly Team Syncs (Synchronous, 30-45 mins): Each functional team (Product/Dev, Sales/Marketing, Customer Success) has one weekly tactical meeting. The purpose is to solve problems that are difficult to handle asynchronously, review the week's priorities, and align on the immediate work ahead. This is not a status report meeting.

• Weekly "Company Pulse" Meeting (Synchronous, 30 mins): This is our one mandatory, all-hands meeting of the week, held every Monday.

  • Purpose: To keep the entire company aligned on strategy and connected as a team.

  • Standard Agenda: 1) Key Topics or News from each department; 2) KPI Snapshot; 3) Open Q&A.

E. Foundational Policies for Global Communication

To ensure seamless collaboration across borders, we have two simple foundational policies:

• Our Official Language is English: All written communication in shared channels (Slack), documentation (Google Workspace), and internal tools (Linear, etc.) must be in English. This ensures that every team member has access to the same information, regardless of their native language.

• Our Reference Time Zone is EET/EEST (Helsinki Time): While team members work across multiple time zones, we use Helsinki time as the default for scheduling company-wide events like the "Company Pulse" meeting. This provides a single, consistent reference point for everyone.

III. Ways of Working: Our Build-Measure-Learn Cycle

Our entire company operates as a cycle designed to help us learn and grow as quickly as possible. We use two key frameworks to guide us:

• Lean answers "WHAT to build?": It is our strategy for discovering the right product for our customers. It guides our high-level decisions: what assumptions to test, what the next Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is, and whether we need to pivot or persevere.

• Scrum answers "HOW to build?": It is our tactical framework for efficiently building the product in an iterative way. It guides the development team's execution.

This creates a powerful loop where we use insights from the market (Lean) to feed a highly efficient development engine (Scrum).

A. Product Development: The "Build" Engine (Scrum)

The Product team operates in a lightweight Scrum framework, managed in Linear. This is where hypotheses from the Lean process are turned into tangible product features.

• Sprints: We work in two-week cycles called Sprints. Each sprint delivers a small, valuable, and potentially shippable piece of the product.

• Linear Board: Our board has columns for the Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, In Progress, Review, and Done. This provides full transparency on what is being worked on.

• Key Events:

  • Sprint Planning: We decide what will be built in the upcoming sprint.

  • Daily Stand-ups: Held asynchronously in Slack (#dev-standup) to share progress and blockers.

  • Sprint Review: We demonstrate what was built during the sprint.

  • Retrospective: We discuss what went well and what we can improve in the next sprint.

B. Marketing & Sales: The "Measure" and "Learn" Frontline

The Marketing and Sales are the front-end of our learning loop. They test our value proposition in the real world every day.

• Hypothesis Testing: Every sales call and marketing campaign is an experiment. We are testing messaging, pricing, and features with potential customers.

• Data Capture: Hubspot is our lab notebook. We meticulously log all interactions, objections, and feedback from leads. This raw data is a goldmine of insights. For marketing we track all relevant touchpoints, such as conversions, leads and website data. 

• The Output: The key learnings from sales and marketing are a primary input for the Lean process, helping us decide "WHAT" to focus on next.

C. Customer Success: Closing the Learning Loop

Customer Success provides the most crucial feedback: how our product performs with actual, paying users.

• Real-World Validation: Hubspot is our reality checks. It tells us if the features we built are valuable, if they are easy to use, and what problems our customers really have.

• Quantitative and Qualitative Data: We track customer health scores and feature usage and gather direct feedback and frustrations through Hubspot tickets. In the future, we also track how our customers use our Expanly platform and deep dive into the data on how we can improve the customer experience.

• Fuel for Iteration: This feedback flows directly back into the product backlog in Linear, informing bug fixes, enhancements, and ideas for the next major feature.

• The Voice of the Customer Channel (#voice-of-the-customer): To ensure everyone stays close to our clients, we have a dedicated Slack channel where we share noteworthy feedback. This includes positive testimonials, insightful feature requests and key learnings from Hubspot. Every employee is encouraged to read this channel to build empathy and understand the real-world impact of their work.

D. Closing the Loop: The Milestone Product Council

The most critical part of our Build-Measure-Learn cycle is ensuring that "Learn" consistently informs what we "Build" next. To formalize this, we hold a tactical Product Council meeting every six weeks, which we call “Milestones”.

• Purpose: To review real-world feedback from sales and customer success and translate it into actionable priorities for the product team.

• Input: A curated list of key customer feedback and common objections or feature requests from Hubspot.

• Output: Validated ideas are prioritized in the Linear Product Backlog, ready to be considered for upcoming sprints. This meeting ensures our product roadmap is always guided by the voice of the customer.

IV. People & Culture: Growing Together

Our success is built by our people. This section outlines our commitment to your growth, well-being, and connection to the team. We are as intentional about our people operations as we are about our product development.

A. Onboarding: Your First 90 Days at Expanly

Your onboarding is a structured journey designed to set you up for success. Our goal is to provide you with the context, tools, and relationships you need to feel confident and effective as quickly as possible.

• Before Day One: You’ll receive all necessary hardware and a personalized onboarding plan. We'll help you get set up on our core systems (Google Workspace, Slack, etc.) so you can hit the ground running.

• Week One: Immersion. Your first week is focused on learning, not doing. Your primary goals are to read this playbook, get familiar with our product strategy, and understand our company goals. You will be assigned a dedicated “Tutor”, who can help you with general topics not related to your job description. We also encourage you to reach out to anyone on the team for a quick introduction. 

• Your 30-60-90 Day Plan: You and your manager will co-create a clear plan with specific, achievable goals for your first three months. This document removes ambiguity and ensures you know exactly what "success" looks like in your new role. 

B. Performance & Growth: Your Trajectory at Expanly

We are a culture of continuous learning, for our product and for our people. Growth at Expanly is an ongoing conversation, not a once-a-year review.

• Outcomes, Not Optics: We manage by results. Your performance is measured by the tangible impact you have on your goals and the company's success. We value clear outcomes over "perceived busyness."

• The Weekly 1:1: Your monthly 1:1 meeting with your manager is the most important meeting you'll have. This is your dedicated time to discuss progress, get feedback, and talk about your development.

• Continuous Feedback: Feedback is a gift that helps us all improve. It flows in all directions, up, down, and across teams. We encourage direct, constructive, and kind feedback as part of our daily work.

• Clear Writing is a Core Skill: In a hybrid company with team members in our Helsinki HQ and around the globe, the ability to communicate ideas clearly in writing is not a soft skill, it is a core competency. We value and encourage the development of strong writing skills at all levels.

C. Well-being & Flexibility: Sustaining Our Engine

We trust you to be the expert of your own productivity and well-being. We offer flexibility not as a perk, but as a requirement for sustainable high performance.

• Your Work, Your Schedule: Outside of core collaboration meetings, you are the owner of your time. We trust you to structure your day in a way that works for you, your family, and your team.

• Communication Boundaries: We use Slack's "Do Not Disturb" features and respect them. We avoid sending non-urgent messages on weekends. Taking time to fully disconnect is essential.

D. Building Connection: We Are More Than Just Our Work

We are intentional about fostering the personal bonds that create a strong, cohesive team.

• Virtual Social Spaces:

  • #random: A Slack channel for sharing hobbies, weekend plans, and anything non-work-related.

• Annual Company Retreats: Once a year, the entire company gets together in person for a couple of days. This is our time to work on big-picture strategy and, most importantly, connect as human beings. The company covers all travel, lodging, and primary meal costs for this event. This is a critical investment in our culture.

• In-Person Team Collaboration: In addition to the annual retreat, we leverage our hybrid model for focused collaboration.

  • Helsinki-Based Collaboration: Teams located at our headquarters regularly collaborate in-person. The office is a hub for strategy sessions and deep project work.

  • Remote Team Workshops: Remote-first teams (like Sales and Customer Success) have the flexibility and budget to organize their own focused, in-person workshops 1-4 times per year.

  • Cross-Functional Summits: We may also bring remote team members to the Helsinki headquarters for key cross-functional planning sessions. The company covers all associated costs for travel, lodging, and meals for these approved events.

V. Tools & Operations: Our Toolkit

This section outlines the practical tools, hardware, and security practices that enable us to work effectively and safely.

A. Essential Hardware & Home Office Setup

We are committed to providing you with the core equipment you need to do your job effectively.

• Company-Provided Laptop: You will be provided with a modern, powerful laptop for your work. You can choose between a PC or a MacBook, within a reasonable specification range approved by your manager. This device remains the property of Expanly.

• Home Office Stipend: To ensure our remote employees have a comfortable, ergonomic, and professional home office setup, new remote hires receive a one-time stipend. Your manager will discuss and confirm the specific amount for your location with you as part of the hiring process. This can be used for items that improve your physical workspace and your remote presence, such as an external monitor, a quality chair, a good webcam, a microphone, or dedicated lighting for video calls. If for some reason you can't work from home, let's discuss the possibility to rent a co-working space near you. For team members based in Helsinki, our headquarters provides a fully-equipped, ergonomic workspace.

• Your Responsibility: You are responsible for providing a reliable, high-speed internet connection, which is essential for remote collaboration.

B. Software, Systems & Access

We use a specific set of cloud-based tools to collaborate and manage our work.

• Our Core Stack: As outlined in Section II, our primary tools are Google Workspace, Slack, Linear, and Hubspot.

• Getting Access: Your manager is responsible for ensuring you get access to all the systems you need for your role. On your first day, you will receive invitations and login instructions.

• Requesting New Software: If you need a new tool or software license to do your job better, please discuss the business case with your manager first. We will evaluate the request based on its potential impact and cost.

C. Security: Our Shared Responsibility

Our clients trust us with their business data. Protecting this data is a responsibility we all share. A security breach could fundamentally damage our reputation and our business. Therefore, we take security very seriously and require every employee to adhere to these core practices.

1. Use a Password Manager: You are required to use a password manager (1Password) for all work-related accounts to generate and store strong, unique passwords. Do not reuse passwords.

2. Enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): Our company policy is that 2FA must be enabled on every account that supports it.

3. Keep Software Updated: Always apply software updates for your operating system and applications promptly.

4. Lock Your Screen: If you step away from your computer, lock the screen.

5. Report Suspicious Activity: If you receive a suspicious email or see unusual activity, report it immediately to your manager and in the #security Slack channel.

A Living Document

This playbook is a living document, just like our company. It is not meant to be a static set of rules, but a reflection of our current best thinking on how to operate effectively.

As we grow, we will learn, adapt, and improve. We share our playbook publicly as a commitment to that process, believing that transparency fosters trust and leads to better conversations: with our team, our partners, and our future colleagues.

Whether you're here to join our team or simply to understand how we operate, we're glad you stopped by. This is how we're building the future of e-commerce, and we're just getting started.