Remember how you used to celebrate the hundredth day of the year in elementary school by bringing in 100 items (like pennies or paperclips)? We couldn’t think of 1 billion things that would fit in our office, so to celebrate our customers indexing their 1 billionth post in our app, we went rock climbing instead.
In this busy world of product launches (hello, Instagram Insights!) and social media outages (sigh, Instagram), it can be tough to carve out an afternoon away from our computers, but our team is committed to time together for a strong and productive culture.
Our Head of Culture, co-founder Seth P., is always on the lookout for team-building opportunities, and when we saw we were about to cross a major milestone in our app, he got to work. He set up an office pool (sadly, not an actual pool :-() to pinpoint the date and time of the 1 billionth post (congratulations, Mark!), and then solicited team suggestions for a proper celebration.
Suggestions…varied widely.
We opted to leave our axes at home, since our team of veteran climbers and newbies alike were most excited about rock climbing. Climbing was the perfect mix of challenging and social: everyone could find success on a challenging route, and there’d still be plenty of time for hanging out while others climbed.
Putting the “vertical” in Vertical World.
When we arrived, we couldn’t stop craning our necks–that joint is tall! We knew we had our work cut out for us.
Some of our more nervous climbers (ahem) were grateful to have experienced folks in our group who could help belay and plot routes. We spent the day laughing, climbing, and experiencing increasingly shaky muscles. We worked routes that were more challenging than we thought we could do (shout-out to the especially voracious Customer Success team!), and spent lots of time chatting between climbs too.
Head of Customer Success Halina rocked the tough climb that felled some of our other teammates.
And, of course, no Rival IQ outing would be complete without a happy hour. (We were bright enough to know that booze should come after climbing, not before.)
Product Manager Tiffany is ready for aprés-climb.
Spending time together and celebrating wins (both our own and those of our customers) is really important to everyone at Rival IQ. Finding time to let loose in between squashing bugs and juggling work, family, and life can be tricky, but it’s a big part of the culture here.
Seth P. is such an experienced climber he doesn’t even need to look at his hands (or co-founder Seth B.) to belay safely.
Plus, there’s no finer reminder of the fact that our founders have our back than when they literally hold our lives in their hands…
With muscles like that, right?
Thanks to our data-obsessed customers for a great milestone to celebrate, and to Vertical World for having us!
