It's great to see you

Hello again my friend,

There’s something I say at nearly every beehiiv all-hands. Very simple, and feels like small talk, but there’s a little more to it.

“It’s great to see you.”

If you know me, you know I’ll really mean it if I’m saying it. But I’ve said it a little too often over the years. It has become one of those slightly awkward things that’s now turned into a kind of bit.

But I mean it every time, and it’s not just a greeting. It speaks to something I didn’t fully understand at the time: the right people can make hard work feel less lonely, or better yet, they can make or break work altogether for you.

I’ve been thinking about it now because last week was our annual beehiiv offsite. Everyone (from our otherwise fully remote company) flies in from all over the world to work together, hang out, and bond beyond screens. It’s one of my favourite weeks of the year.

During offsite, I realized I don’t just like team-time because it’s fun or we get to chill and relax. Your colleagues are often the only people who can understand life at a startup, at least for me, especially in beehiiv’s early days.

When we were 10 people, the company looked very different. The product was rougher. The systems were scrappier. The days were longer. Everyone had too much on their plate, and most of us were doing jobs that did not fit neatly into a job description.

And it was also during that time when everyone was always helping each other out anyway. When it felt like nobody cared about title, position, or status.

And do you know when I got to see the team, laugh, play a little Virtual Vacation, and ask for help, which I got? It was during all-hands. You better believe I was happy to see everyone after twelve hours in a room overlooking the grey Vancouver sky.

And when I say “it’s great to see you” now, I sometimes remember how it felt back then.

Today, we’re diving into all of this.

Let’s lock in.

I was spending twelve to fourteen hours a day talking to customers. Emails. Twitter. Support tickets. Help articles. Bug reports. Random fires. Confused users. Angry users. Fraud reviews. Manual approvals. Calls with customers we desperately wanted to win.

At one point, I was the person answering for almost everything. And because the product was still young, there was a lot to answer for. Metrics were wrong. Bugs showed up. Users got confused. Things broke. People got frustrated. And when people got frustrated, I was usually the person they found first or second.

That kind of work does something to you.

You can believe in the company and still feel exhausted by the complaints. You can know the product is getting better and still feel the weight of every person telling you it is not good enough yet. You can be grateful for the opportunity and still have days where you feel like all you did was absorb disappointment for twelve straight hours.

Then all-hands would start.

I’d see the team. I’d hear the numbers. I’d hear how fast we were growing, what was being built, and most of all, that help was coming. And maybe most importantly, I’d remember I wasn’t alone and I probably wouldn’t have an opportunity like this again.

Most meetings with more than 5 people often feel like corporate theatre to me. These didn’t. So when it was my turn to speak, I didn’t want to bring the energy of the inbox into the room.

Not because the problems weren’t real. They were. But because I knew everyone else was carrying their own version of the same thing.

Engineering was shipping under pressure. Growth was pushing. Leadership was selling the vision. Everyone was stretched. Everyone was trying. Everyone was hanging on to some part of the machine and hoping it kept moving.

So I way over indexed into being positive.

Not fake positivity. Not pretending everything was perfect. Just the honest reminder that I was lucky to be there.

It really did help my morale, and hopefully the others too.

A great team is not just a collection of talented people.

Talent matters, obviously. I’m lucky to work with people who are much smarter and more capable than I am. But talent alone is not what makes a team special. It is not what makes a team better than the sum of its individual members.

What matters just as much is how people behave when things are messy. The character of the people matters more than anything, especially now that technology is so good.

That’s the difference.

A great team makes the best version of each person easier to access. Even when there is disagreement, or hard conversations, or down times. It’s rare, and worth protecting if you find it.

Not every company has it like this. Most don’t.

Especially as companies grow and care more about titles, hierarchy, etc, they become the opposite. They’ll make you feel small on purpose. Or hide your mistakes from you so they can use it as ammunition later to keep you small. They’ll talk behind each other’s backs to keep other people down.

And now this is going to sound harsh, but it’s important.

When you share the weight with losers, they’ll pickup less, act like they have the most, and tell everyone else you’re not doing enough. The right people care about the outcome more than the credit.

It often comes down to repeated behaviours that change. When 90% of the time, everyone’s helpful, and then a year later it’s 60%, and then another year later it’s 30%, you can see the culture erode. “Helpful” is an example, you can replace that with any quality.

Great cultures are protected when these behaviours are protected. A kind reminder. A thoughtful reply. A willingness to jump in. A refusal to make someone feel stupid for missing something. A little more patience than the moment requires. High standards, high support. Which in turn, yes, does have people staying a later and working harder than if they didn’t care at all.

That’s how great teams stay great.

Finding the people worth building with is actually the hard part.

Not just people with the same job title, or in the same industry. People who understand what it feels like to care deeply about building something. Ambitious without being cynical.

And when you do, don’t be too cool to tell them what they mean to you. I know it sounds cheesy, and if overdone, can turn into a bit. But it’s so true.

That’s the part I think people miss. We spend so much time trying to look impressive that we forget to be openly grateful for the people who make the work amazing.

So yes, I still say it. “It’s great to see you.”

The company is bigger now. The meetings are different. The stakes are higher. There are more people in the room, more projects, more customers, more everything.

But when I say it, some part of me is still back in those early all-hands meetings. It was never just a greeting. It was gratitude. It was relief. It was me looking at the people building beside me and remembering that great work is easier to survive when you’re surrounded by great people.

And if you ever find yourself in a room like that, don’t waste it.

And every once in a while, say the obvious thing out loud.

Thanks for reading. It means a lot to me. I appreciate you.