Manish Goyal believes in putting technology first at his LA-based Friendbuy.
“A lot of the companies we work with are reinventing e-commerce,” said Goyal, founder and CEO. “They’re actually reinventing commerce, period. You have to have a technology-first mindset to work with companies that are innovating through tech.”
Goyal is himself a technologist, holding a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. He drives this tech-forward ethos at Friendbuy, whose core product is a customizable widget that entices online shoppers to message their friends when they make a purchase, incentivizing those friends to buy the same product or service.
Friendbuy’s ranks are full of employees who talk tech fluently, often even if they hold non-technical roles. And the work is structured so that engineers, collaborating closely with the product team, can affect business outcomes.
“Developers shouldn’t build software in isolation,” said Jeremy Cummins, Friendbuy’s director of technology. “It’s better to be consumer focused, which means being product focused. When we began to think of the development team as part of the product team, it was a big paradigm shift.”
We sat down with the company’s key players to find out what it’s like to help clients reinvent the commerce landscape through tech.
FRIENDBUY AT-A-GLANCE
FOUNDED: 2010
WHAT THEY DO: The referral marketing software company delivers sales conversions, data tracking and analytics for innovative clients in the e-commerce space.
WHO THEY DO IT FOR: Clients include newer innovators like Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, Birchbox, ClassPass, Away, Glossier and NatureBox, as well as major established brands like Walmart and Intuit.
FUTURE DESKMATES: Join Friendbuy and work with mostly engineers.
IDEAL CANDIDATES: Engineers who can think outside of their specific silos, offering ideas and insights for both product and engineering.
WORD FROM THE LEADER: “We want you to bring your best ideas to the table, and the team will support you.” — Manish Goyal, Founder and CEO
SERVING INNOVATORS BIG AND SMALL
Your clients range from newer tech innovators to large enterprises. Is it a challenge to work with such disparate companies?
Goyal: Yes, and that’s why this platform is interesting. Our vision is to deliver a product that’s truly extensible, customizable and malleable, something to meet the needs of every small, medium and large ecommerce company. We want Friendbuy to fit seamlessly within their business model and user experience.
You also serve different customer types: the end user and the businesses you’re providing the referral platform for. How do you approach that?
Samantha Samuels, Director of Customer Success: The goal is to make the referral program as brand consistent as possible for the merchant. We also want to make it easy for the customer to refer their friends, customize messages and share their purchases across social media. So we’re merchant focused but also consumer focused.
What are the technologies you work with daily?
Cummins: Our platform is built on a Python Flask API on the back end. On the front end, we’re using JavaScript. We’re currently refactoring our retailer-facing application using React. We’re a JavaScript/Python shop.
A TECH-FORWARD PARADIGM
The majority of Friendbuy’s employees are engineers. What is that like?
Michael Kulinski, Software Engineer/Developer: If you’re a software developer, the best place you can work is a software company. Our product is software, so being able to help drive the company toward the bottom line is definitely cool.
Ian Ezra, Head of Product: Manish is Friendbuy’s CEO, but he’s also the technical founder. Any tech company that comes from a technical-founder background rather than a CEO-with-a-business-idea background naturally crafts a technology-forward paradigm and culture.
Cummins: I think at least 70 percent of our employees and contractors are developers. I wanted to work here because it was very much about building quality software before selling it.
MORE TECH, FEWER MEETINGS
What does a typical day at Friendbuy look like for an engineer?
Ezra: It looks different depending on what you’re working on. Mike is working on refactoring parts of our front-end code, for instance, and they’re using different technologies like React. If you’re working on an initiative to spin up something new, you might focus on frameworks, with lots of time and freedom to explore that. If you’re working on a project to add a new feature within an existing framework in our application, you’ll be doing something completely different.
Kulinski: The cool part is that we do a lot more development than meetings. As a software engineer, I like that.
So there’s no risk that you’ll be stuck on a project indefinitely?
Ezra: Definitely not. We want everybody to do both front-end and back-end work. Everybody’s doing everything. We have a lot of fun projects going on in various stages. We give people a lot of freedom to research frameworks, technologies and different coding practices, and to discover new tools.
Are there projects that the engineering team is working on as one unit?
Cummins: Our platform, historically, has been a monolithic architecture. My primary short-term goal is to break out Friendbuy into a more service-oriented architecture. We’re looking to introduce serverless technologies, especially for capturing the large data that we process.
Are team members fairly self-directed? Do they do a lot of solitary work?
Cummins: We encourage pair programming here. You might work on your own for a good portion of the day, but we want you to tap a colleague for help if you get stuck or if there’s a direction you’re not 100 percent sure about. We believe in bouncing ideas off one another.
Ezra: Every team at Friendbuy runs on Agile. That means you interact with people every day. That facilitates an open, transparent culture for the development team.
Samantha, even though you direct client service, I understand you have some background in tech.
Samuels: Before I joined, I happened to work at a company that used Friendbuy as a merchant. When I met Manish at General Assembly, he invited me to consult — to look at the platform and offer improvements. That turned into sales, onboarding, account executive duties, and Manish let me run with customer success. It’s an amazing thing about Friendbuy. You have the flexibility to try things and figure out where you thrive.
RUNNING THE TECHNICAL GAMUT
What are some of the technologies you’re enthusiastic about?
Kulinski: The whole reason I joined Friendbuy was because of the cool technologies we’re building with. We use React and Redux, ES6/ES7 syntax for JavaScript and serverless technology. All of the newer stuff we’re gearing toward is very exciting for a developer.
Cummins: As the technical leader of the company, I’m excited about the potential applications of serverless technology. I really enjoy working with the serverless framework, and I love using AWS. It saves time and effort when it comes to managing our company’s DevOps.
Has the company’s approach to development evolved over time?
Cummins: When I started at Friendbuy, I saw the need to focus more on product-first development as opposed to just writing code. When we began to think of the development team as part of the product team, it was a big paradigm shift.
Ezra: It’s easy to lose sight of that when you’re heads-down building stuff. We want to be a successful software company, which means building things that are really geared toward the right business use case. I encourage the UX and design directors to work closely with the developers and have them iterate within the development period. Ultimately, what we build needs to meet expectations and our business goals.
RESULTS OVER WORK HABITS
What’s the best thing about being an engineer at Friendbuy?
Amer: Support and flexibility. I get a lot of technical help when I need it, and if I need anything else — a day off, to come in late, to talk about anything — I can just ask.
Kulinski: I appreciate the working environment in general. Nobody questions what you’re doing and when you’re doing it. It’s not about how or when you do your work, just as long as you get your work done.
Cummins: As a manager, I’m interested in results over work habits. Obviously, you’re expected to perform and meet goals. But as long as project milestones are achieved and work is done in a timely fashion, we give you the flexibility to arrange your hours to suit your needs, and we offer ample vacation days and time off.
What would you say to engineering candidates about joining Friendbuy?
Goyal: I think now is a particularly exciting time to join the company. We're making major strides in analytics and optimization. This team is eager to embrace leading-edge technologies. We're leading the charge when it comes to innovation.
Want to work at FriendBuy? Check out their open positions.
