"Outside your comfort zone is where the growth truly occurs." When my college communications professor, Denise Besson, first gave me this advice, I couldn’t have possibly imagined how much I would learn to live by it. 

Fast forward to February 2024, I joined WisdomAI as Executive Assistant/Business Operations Manager. I was employee #13, which means I’ve played a leading role in building our company and culture. Over the last two and a half years, I’ve done a bit of everything — from recruiting and onboarding to logistics and HR and much more.

This month, we hit a major milestone: we recently hired employee #100. To celebrate, I invite you on a journey down memory lane, reflecting on the moments that led us to where we are today and some of the lessons learned along the way.

When 13 people felt like a full house

The early days were small and intimate. We worked out of a 3,000-square-foot office that never felt empty. We had lunch together every single day — conversations bounced from weekend plans to whatever someone was building that morning to the demo of the week.

When I started, I thought being good at my job meant having the answer to everything. Now I know it often means listening — asking others for their perspective, accepting feedback, and being able to admit that something that worked for yesterday's company won't work for tomorrow's. Building is learning. That’s why authenticity and transparency were some of our first-defined cultural values. 

Here’s another: we practice first principles, grounded in reality. That’s especially true when growing to 100 employees. You build a process. You hire more people. When the process stops scaling. You change it. Someone new looks at it fresh and asks, "Have we thought about doing it this way?" You change it again.

Building a foundation that lasts

Employee #113 will walk into a different company than I did. We’ve upgraded to a 8,000 square foot office, opened a second office in Bangalore, and hired lots of new faces that call in from all over the world. That’s growth. And while the people, processes, and product have changed, some things have intentionally stayed the same. 

Daily team lunches, weekly happy hours, Sports Day — these are the relationship-building moments that mean something when we all log off for the day. Those lunches were part of WisdomAI when I joined, and even in a much bigger company, we’ve made strategic investments to ensure they stay the same.

To ensure we preserve this culture, we’ve encoded them into our CRAFT: 

• Customer Trust

• Relentless on Outcomes

• Authenticity

• First Principles

• Transparency

These principles aren’t just words. It’s how we hire, promote, and make hard calls. In recent exit interviews, our summer interns kept bringing up this exact thing — these values reflect how our team actually experiences WisdomAI: trust people, take ownership, challenge how things have always been done, communicate openly, and focus on what moves us forward.

The moments it hit me

When I think back on our growth, there isn’t one moment that stands out to me — there are dozens. Our 2024 holiday dinner sat 13 people around one table. In 2025, I booked a private room for 50. Then we moved from a 3,000- to 8,000 square feet office. From November through February, we had new team members starting practically every week. 

So how did we get here?

This isn’t a story about headcount or funding or square footage — that’s the setting, not the plot. This is a story about a team that believes in what we're building, a team that enjoys building it together, the partners who have helped us along the way, and the customers using our product to drive real transformation in their business.

That’s the kind of story that makes me excited to show up every day. Somewhere along the way I realized that while we’ve been building the company, the company was helping to build me, too.

If you’re interested in joining our growing team, check out our open careers page and apply today!