Samuel Huba (Shoptet): Culture is what people do when you’re not in the room

In this episode of the CEO na ostří nože podcast, we talk to Samuel Huba, CEO of Shoptet, a platform used by more than thirty thousand online stores. During Covid, the company grew by more than 50 percent year on year, then by another 30 percent, while also entering the Slovak and Hungarian markets. Huba has led Shoptet since April 2021. Before that, he was managing partner of Impulse Ventures, the fund whose portfolio includes Shoptet, and he had also served as the company’s COO. So he wasn’t stepping into the unknown.

Company culture, Huba says, is best defined by what people say about the company. New joiners most often mention that people help each other and are open and friendly. In his view, this culture is shaped by the business itself. Shoptet helps customers fulfil their entrepreneurial dreams, and “if we help our customers, we have to help each other too”. Values aren’t born in the boardroom but with the customer. “Culture is what people do when you’re not in the room,” he says. The job of the CEO, managers and team leaders is to keep explaining what the company does, for whom and why.

According to Huba, customers don’t need to understand the technology, and they shouldn’t have to. Store speed, payment gateways and conversion rates are Shoptet’s problem. Customers should focus on their own business. That’s why customer care matters to the company as much as technology does. Support answers not only the question a customer asks but also the problem behind it, which a new entrepreneur often can’t yet put into words. This is also where Huba sees the biggest risk. A company that starts treating customer care as a cost centre and cutting it back loses what it was built on. Customers start to leave, and it only shows up in the numbers months or years later.

Covid brought rapid growth. Customer care had to double in a short time, and every department was hiring. The biggest challenge, Huba says, was holding on to what the company had grown on: making sure every new joiner sees a clear line between their work and the customer. Middle managers and team leaders play a big role in this, because they spend the most time with people and answer their hardest questions. That, he admits, is an area where the company still has catching up to do. The same approach applies abroad. Country managers in Slovakia and Hungary make sure the values work the same way as in Prague, and leadership visits regularly.

In hiring, Shoptet focuses mainly on what’s hard to teach. A smart person can learn to code or set up a campaign quickly. Empathy for customers and the ability to collaborate within and across teams are a different matter. Every interview therefore includes a culture check, and the company actively approaches the best people itself, because they usually aren’t looking for a job. Parting ways is also part of growth. In a company of more than two hundred people, it happens every month, Huba says: “It’s like relationships. If they don’t meet expectations on both sides, there’s no point staying in them.”

What else will you learn in the podcast?

• Why values are born with the customer, not in the boardroom

• Why customers don’t need to understand the technology

• How to keep the culture when headcount doubles

• Why middle management is key to passing on values

• How to carry the company culture to Slovakia and Hungary

• Why cutting back on customer care can kill a customer-focused company

According to Samuel Huba, Shoptet’s success rests on a simple idea: everything starts with the customer’s problem. Margins and profit matter, but they follow from how well the company solves customers’ needs. And the culture of mutual help that grows out of this is what new joiners value most about Shoptet.