Published: 8/27/2020

The past few months have been tumultuous, to say the least. If you’ve been following the news, you may have seen Cuebiq featured in top publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN.

Major publications, journalists, and organizations like the CDC have seen the immense value in using our data to illustrate mobility patterns during COVID-19.

Since the start of the pandemic, Cuebiq has released a powerful suite of Mobility Insights for free.

We believe it’s our duty as a company to share data for the greater good. If you’d like to sign up now, you can see the data in action for yourself.

Learn More

Cuebiq's Data for Good initiative is being continued with support from the Spectus.ai data cleanroom and their Social Impact professionals. Their commitment to positive social impact through the ethical and responsible use of location-based data makes further insights possible. We invite you to visit https://spectus.ai/social-impact/ for more on contributions to academia and research partners.

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When you’re only 17, your first experience in the workforce can seem a little intimidating. You have no idea what to expect and can only hope that you’ll be able to figure it out. Before starting at Cuebiq this summer, that was exactly how I felt. I had already met some of my employees and been briefed on my position, but I was nervous about my first office job. However, I ended up being pleasantly surprised.

My First Day at Cuebiq

On day one, I was placed with the Human Resources team to learn more about their tasks and responsibilities. From the moment I arrived, I was immediately encouraged to get involved. Working with HR meant I got to engage with potential candidates and sit in on interviews. Everyone I met was so open and friendly, and I was amazed by my coworkers’ willingness to allow me to observe their daily work activities and even give feedback. Granted, I initially only gave feedback on their English skills, not on their computer engineering expertise, but I felt like a productive part of the team.

Learning The Ropes in the Milan Office 

I quickly grasped the basics of HR. I learned to read through a candidate’s CV while listening to their interview and to look out for certain characteristics. My manager provided me with insights on the candidates’ performances, which I found not only interesting but useful going forward in my job search. I was also given the opportunity to attend HR meetings. The responsibilities of an HR team at a global company is fascinating - they must be able to communicate effectively with offices overseas, across language barriers, and with employees across varying disciplines.

Company Culture

After working with HR for a few days, I was moved to the product development team. Even though the content became a lot more technical -  and sometimes difficult to understand - I thoroughly enjoyed learning how to manage and direct a team. Anytime I didn’t understand something, I was encouraged to ask questions and my coworkers helped me to figure it out. I was also able to sit in on the project meetings, which gave me a glimpse into the connectedness of Cuebiq’s culture. Each member of a team is part of a larger whole, and in a business, everyone has their own vital role to play in completing the final product. Therefore, it is essential to communicate and be cooperative with your team - something that I consistently saw my coworkers doing effectively. 

Reflecting On My Experience

Despite not knowing which career path I want to pursue, this experience helped me understand what working life is really like. I got a hands-on experience at Cuebiq, and I know I will be able to apply what I learned here at school and in my future career. Everyone I met was open-minded and friendly towards me and though I was only here for a short time as an intern, I can confidently say that Cuebiq is a fun and inclusive space. The world is so fast-paced and is changing so rapidly that Cuebiq’s positive mentality was refreshing. 

Thanks to Cuebiq and its employees, my time here was a genuine opportunity for personal growth. I was able to improve my communication skills by having to present my ideas in a clear and concise manner. I learned about responsibility and teamwork. Needless to say, it was a fantastic first job opportunity and an experience I will never forget.

If you’re interested in learning more about Cuebiq and our company culture, be sure to check out our current job openings.

The post Working in Cuebiq’s Milan Office: An International Baccalaureate Student’s Perspective appeared first on Cuebiq.

Searching for a new job can be a daunting and stressful task; we get it. There are many factors that come into play when making a decision to join a new company, like understanding the company culture, making sure the company’s values align with your own, that there’s opportunity for growth, and that you’ll be working alongside coworkers who will challenge and push you to excel.  

Since joining Cuebiq, while I can proudly say that my needs have been met (and even surpassed) in all those aspects, I have also been extremely impressed by how well they treat every employee when it comes to perks and benefits. In fact, I would go as far as saying they spoil us more than any other company I have encountered in Italy! 

So what is it that they offer that makes Cuebiq so much better? Read on to learn more about just a few of these amazing perks and benefits.  

1. Office Atmosphere

First and foremost, let’s talk about the day-to-day easygoing atmosphere in the office. With an open-space concept, there are a ton of common places to do work or relax away from your desk like a lounge area with couches, a game room, and even a café. Since the office becomes everyone's home away from home, Cuebiq understands the importance of having an environment like this that’s both comfortable and conducive to productivity. Employees are also given “smart-working” opportunities, meaning they are allowed to work from home one day per week.

2. Food & Drinks

Cuebiq knows the ultimate way to keep us motivated — through food! We have a fully stocked kitchen filled with snacks and drinks, and we love having daily breakfast and coffee together in the common areas. Being in the center of Milan, we have access to the city’s best restaurants and enjoy going out to team lunches. We also have weekly happy hours, aperitivo, on Fridays at 5pm to unwind from all our hard work and enjoy some food and beverages with our colleagues.

3. Language Classes

Have you ever worked at a company that offers language classes? How about free ones? Well, if you work at Cuebiq you can quickly put a check next to that box. Being an international company with several offices in the United States including NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco, we are constantly in communication with our colleagues abroad. So, to help overcome the natural language barrier and allow us to work together more effectively, Cuebiq offers weekly English classes.

4. Travel

Every year Cuebiq hosts a retreat bringing together all employees from every office. This provides us with yet another outlet to relax and unwind from all our hard work, and, most importantly, mingle and bond with each other. Most recently, we went to the Bahamas — you can read about the details of our experience in our retreat recap blog. And that’s not all for travel. Some employees get to travel to the NYC office, and everyone receives a free yearly ATM pass for local travel in Milan. We are also each given an annual learning budget that allows us to travel to conferences all over the world.

5. Additional Benefits 

While the food, travel, and games are awesome perks, Cuebiq also covers the fundamentals and provides robust health benefits. Most prominently, we are provided with extra health insurance that covers specialist visits, which is something that other companies don’t offer.

Interested in working at Cuebiq to receive these extraordinary perks and benefits? If yes, be sure to check out our careers page for new job openings in Milan.

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A few years ago, we hosted a pivotal company-wide retreat in Nassau, Bahamas. Company culture is integral to working at Cuebiq, and the theme was “Cuebiq Connect.” All the events we participated in were grounded in this concept, including various workshops, games, and dinners. One of the main exercises of the retreat was brainstorming and developing Cuebiq’s core values. The goal was to establish values that everyone in the company could agree on and embody in the workplace. 

We spent hours discussing what different ideas meant to us, presenting our thoughts to coworkers, and voting on which values were our favorite. In the end, the leadership team selected five values based on our conversations, and these have become intrinsic to life at Cuebiq. This process allowed every employee to have a say, and so it resulted in a set of values that feel authentically us. Here at Cuebiq, we live by these five values and let them guide our beliefs, decisions, and actions.

1. Connectivity

Just as Cuebiq connects data to create insights, Cuebiqers connect to each other to increase operational empathy, better ourselves and our clients, and achieve more as a team. We strive for open dialogue across the company and do all of our work on interactive platforms like Slack and Google Drive. Connectivity is an elemental part of our collaborative company culture. We empower our employees to think outside the box and use active listening to affirm their ideas. We also place importance on bonding outside work — there are weekly happy hours in the office; softball, soccer, and bocce teams; as well as a book club and Italian language lessons, just to name a few.

Our retreats are a great example of how Cuebiq stays connected, especially with offices around the world. It’s crucial to communicate frequently and effectively between Milan and New York so that everyone is on the same page. In the Bahamas, the entire company came together, and we got to know our coworkers from NYC, Milan, Washington DC, and Chicago. This was an excellent opportunity to have conversations face-to-face, without time zones and an ocean between us.

2. Transparency

Transparency is critical at Cuebiq and involves being honest, providing feedback, and ensuring clear communication in order to instill trust among coworkers and clients. Internally, teams are encouraged to talk openly about problems, challenges, priorities, and goals. We share our projects with each other and make them easily digestible and accessible to establish a common understanding across departments. There is a delicate balance between privacy and transparency, and we aspire to maintain the highest level of integrity both internally and externally in how we manage this balance in our projects and relationships. 

Transparency has played a massive role in our growth as well as in our data collection strategy. This past June, we launched our Consent Management and Data Provenance (CMDP) solution, which enables users, partners, and customers to provide proof of consent and data provenance across all Cuebiq solutions. This blockchain-based solution promotes transparency, so that Cuebiq customers making an information or product request can be fully assured that the data they use is always compliant with GDPR and CCPA.

3. Customer Centricity

At Cuebiq, our customers are our priority. We power long-term relationships with them (as well as partners, internal stakeholders, and data subjects) by building trust, solving problems, and adding value to their investment. All of our actions are aligned with customer needs based on feedback and analysis. We keep customers constantly informed and pride ourselves in anticipating issues before they happen. We tackle complex customer challenges with comprehensive solutions and always aim to provide the most positive customer experience we can.

4. Innovation

Innovation is key in our fast-paced, data-driven world. At Cuebiq, we value ideas that challenge the status quo, disrupt the market, and provide thought leadership. We cherish intellectual curiosity and we learn from our mistakes. We have a bold, “fail fast” approach to what we do, which creates an environment conducive to creativity and respect. We are also always forward-thinking, and we consider our current privacy policy “future-proof.”

One way in which we’re innovating outside the typical scope of our business is by using our data to support nonprofits and universities. We call this our Data For Good initiative, and through it we’ve contributed to hurricane relief assistance and natural disaster planning. In one of our most recent projects, we partnered with MIT to use our offline first-party location data to understand spatial economic inequality in Boston. 

5. Get Shit Done

This value is all about putting our ideas into action, and it showcases who we are — passionate, resourceful, accountable, and committed. Our objective is to achieve our common goals and deliver measurable results at the right pace with excellent quality. This mindset keeps us innovative and easily adaptive to change. We don’t take “no” for an answer and we don’t give up until we find a solution.

Strong core values guide how an organization thinks and behaves, and they result in the most successful business decisions and the strongest relationships because they are authentic to who we are. Core values should be visible in every aspect of company operations, and at Cuebiq, they are apparent in everything we do, from groundbreaking nonprofit research to fun after-work softball games.

If you’re interested in learning more about Cuebiq and our company culture, be sure to check out our current job openings.

Cuebiq's Data for Good initiative is being continued with support from the Spectus.ai data cleanroom and their Social Impact professionals. Their commitment to positive social impact through the ethical and responsible use of location-based data makes further insights possible. We invite you to visit https://spectus.ai/social-impact/ for more on contributions to academia and research partners.

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We’re delighted to announce the launch of our Founders Series, a sequence of interviews to help you get to know the four amazing individuals behind Cuebiq!

For our first interview, we sat down with William Nespoli, our EVP of Product Ecosystem and OKR. William recently made the move from Milan to New York and is passionate about promoting a strong company culture at Cuebiq. Bringing coworkers together has always been a top priority for him, and he hopes to continue fostering communication and collaboration in both offices. Keep reading to learn more about William’s role as EVP of Product Ecosystem and OKR and his unique perspective on bridging the gap between US and Milan.

Can you tell us about how you and the other three founders started Cuebiq?

After meeting our current CEO Antonio Tomarchio at Politecnico di Milano, where we were both students at the time, I started working with him and our other two founders, Walter Ferrara and Filippo Privitera, on an idea for an ad server. This became our first startup, AdRight, which we eventually sold. We then founded a mobile marketing company, Beintoo, which we spun off to ultimately create Cuebiq. The four of us turned the Cuebiq dream into a reality and have been working together ever since!

How has the product organization changed over time and where is it headed?

We started when it was just me doing everything product-related, then we hired Ivan for product. After that, we started moving in the direction of data science, getting a team under them and eventually a pod. We are hiring more and more, and the biggest change is hiring product managers in our NYC office. This is pivotal for us because the Customer Success team is there, so having Product Managers in that office is critical to share knowledge in a more direct and streamlined way.

What new product development are you most excited about?

It’s hard to pick just one. Measurement is very exciting because we are in the phase where the product has been developed and established, so we’re in a growth phase rather than discovery phase. We are currently adding different channels for Measurement, expanding our focus to out-of-home and TV as well. It’s exciting because you can merge the layers and different channels together and at the end observe the ideal media mix for your campaign, to get the best ROI.

What’s something you’re proud of that you’ve accomplished at Cuebiq?

I’m really proud of the culture we’ve fostered. I think everyone enjoys working in the environment we’ve developed and is happy to come to work, which is important to me as a founder.

Why is Cuebiq transitioning to an OKR methodology and what are the benefits?

I am building a Cuebiq version of the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) methodology, a system that should increase transparency and clarity across the company. It’s a methodology that will create alignment and engagement around measurable goals, so that everyone in the company knows what each other is working on and striving toward. Adopting this methodology will be key to driving the growth of our company and setting us up for continued success.

What is Cuebiq doing to achieve hyper-scalability?

We have recently created a Product Ecosystem area at Cuebiq, which will be essential for our company in achieving hyper-scalability, one of our main goals. We are looking to integrate with a variety of external partners, and in order to do that we have to build an ecosystem where we can raise our product availability to the whole market. This will be a major focus of ours moving forward.

What do you find to be the most valuable aspect of the Cuebiq platform for clients?

While there are many valuable aspects of the platform, one key point is the transparency we give to clients. We are providing clients with a holistic solution to map, target, and measure the offline consumer journey. Location intelligence gives them a window into real-world actions of consumers that they previously couldn’t access.

I’m also really excited about our predictive and prescriptive analytics capabilities — clients can now target audiences based on churn and other prescriptive insights.

You recently moved to the NYC office from Milan. Is there anything you want to establish in the NYC office?

I’d say in general, people in Milan feel more free talking with one another and expressing their opinions. When things don’t work, they’ll try something else. I’d love to bring that sense of direct communication and willingness to experiment to the New York office.

Also in Milan, employees gather in common areas for coffee and breakfast every morning. Even chatting for 15 minutes before diving into the daily agenda helps build a sense of camaraderie among the team — and it also spurs many great business ideas! Outside the office, I personally want to learn a bit more about baseball and bring the Milan team outside NYC to see a game when they visit!

Interested in working at Cuebiq? Then be sure to check out our current job openings in both New York and Milan.

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A five-day trip to the Bahamas... for work? It sounds too good to be true, right? Well, for Cuebiq last week, this was our reality. Every year, Cuebiq hosts an annual company-wide retreat to a different location, and this year it was in Nassau, Bahamas, at the lovely Atlantis resort.

What exactly does one do at a company retreat to the Bahamas, you might ask? From team-building exercises to dynamic presentations to themed dinners, our days were full of different activities. Read on to learn about our experience in the Bahamas.

Connecting With Coworkers and Collaborating Cross-Departmentally

The theme of our retreat was “Cuebiq Connect,” so every event — from conference sessions during the day to social events at night — revolved around this concept. This past year, we more than doubled in size of our workforce, so as you might expect, not all of us knew each other well. On top of that, we work in NYC, Milan, San Francisco, and Chicago, so many of us were meeting for the first time at this retreat. As such, it was a fantastic opportunity both to bond with existing colleagues from other departments and to get to know new coworkers.

One exercise we did that facilitated this connection was called the Collaboration Marketplace. Our moderator, Ariel Halevi, worked with several Cuebiq employees to develop this game, which encouraged collaboration and communication across teams.

How did it work? Cuebiq employees were broken up into their respective departments, and then they received three “dollars” from a “bank” that they could submit to other teams in exchange for completing a request. For example, one team asked another to be brought along to client meetings with them once a month.

This was a really interesting exercise, because it forced teams to identify their top needs from other departments and then ask for them in a very direct way — without the typical obstacles of time differences or distractions. For me, it was really effective to think about how my team, marketing, could interact with teams we often don’t work with — such as product development, for example. This led to new ideas for collaboration that we might not have conceived before.

At the end of the exercise, each team presented a summary of the requests they had accepted, announcing their commitment to carrying out the requests in front of our whole company. This was a great way to hold teams accountable and help them identify their top needs from other departments. In the end, not only did this exercise reveal new ways for departments to save time by working together, but it also led to increased innovation across the company as a whole.

Participating in Debate-Style Breakout Sessions

One of my favorite exercises we did was participate in debate-style breakout sessions. We selected topics of interest to us in advance, and then broke up into smaller groups based on those. Each session had a moderator, who structured a debate around the topic.

For example, I participated in a session focused on out-of-home advertising and Cuebiq’s place in that market. Cuebiq’s own SVP of Innovation & Strategic Partnerships, Lawrence Chan, moderated this session and started it off with an overview of the OOH market and Cuebiq’s OOH measurement product. Then, he divided us into two teams to debate a topic, one “pro” and one “con,” complete with opening statements, rebuttals, and closing statements.

In this exercise, what was interesting to me was that it really didn’t matter who won the debate — the purpose was more to get us thinking about both sides of an argument before reaching a decision. Moving forward, when our company is facing an important decision, structuring a debate around it would be a fantastic way to hear everyone’s perspective and come to a well-reasoned conclusion. This was a great takeaway, as I’d never thought of structuring a meeting as a debate before!

Enjoying Team Themed Dinners and Social Events

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not talk about all the fun social events we participated in after the daily conference sessions. Let’s start with the themed dinners, of which there were four: Tropical Island Themed Dinner, White Party, Under-the-Sea Themed Dinner, and the Cuebiq Academy Awards. Our team went all out with the themes, from one employee wearing not just one but 10 leis for the Tropical night, to another wearing a snorkel to the Under-the-Sea Themed Dinner. We also went all out in dancing — the first night, a surprise band appeared at dinner playing all kinds of different instruments, and the Cuebiq team had no problem joining in to dance, even forming a conga line!

Perhaps my favorite night was the last, when we had our own version of the Academy Awards. Our CEO, Antonio, wore a top hat and gave out prizes to several Cuebiq employees — such as Most Frequent Ping Pong Player, Most Active on Slack, and Most Frequent Traveler. These awards were mostly lighthearted, but they still captured our company culture of fun, effective communication, and travel between our global offices.

This awards ceremony was a fantastic cap on our trip, and I still have the dulcet tones of the “L’amour Toujours” remix ringing in my head — which our DJ dubbed the “Cuebiq Song” — along with a mental image of our whole company fist-pumping and singing along together. Needless to say, I can’t wait to see what’s in store for our retreat next year!

The post From Conga Lines to Cross-Departmental Collaboration: Cuebiq Retreat 2k18 in the Bahamas appeared first on Cuebiq.

For our third employee spotlight from our trip to Milan, we’re featuring Cuebiq’s own Head of Product Development, Ivan Parenti. We had the chance to interview Ivan about his experience at Cuebiq, where he has served in many roles and eventually grew to become Head of Product Development. Ivan constantly works with many different departments, so much so that he is the most active member of our company on Slack — in fact, he won an award for this at our Cuebiq Academy Awards ceremony during our recent company retreat in the Bahamas! Read on to learn what it’s like to be Head of Product Development at Cuebiq, from Ivan’s perspective.

What does a day in the life of Head of Product Development look like?

To start off, I have at least four meetings per day. Usually I need to prepare for those, send a couple of emails to top managers asking for updates and giving new ideas for projects, and then set up more meetings with Engineering and Data Science to coordinate and size projects. I also meet with the product managers themselves, though they are pretty independent — we have a weekly sync. After I handle all that in Milan, the US team wakes up and starts working (we have a 6 hour time difference), so then I start coordinating with Operations and Product people there. Fun fact: I’m the top one in Slack rankings because I’m always talking with people to coordinate projects!

What made you want to work in product, and how did you wind up in the position you’re in now?

I studied marketing and then came to Beintoo, where I entered a job rotation program. I started in operations for adtech and then moved into sales, yet while I’m interested in working with people, sales was not my thing. So, I moved into tech ops and worked on the competitive analysis. I was good at that, and I was eventually noticed by Willy and Antonio, the product people there at the time. They needed to manage audiences and build taxonomies; I then went with them as they formed their new company, Cuebiq. I was the first person in product at Cuebiq after Willy (one of Cuebiq’s founders), which was awesome.

What has been the most rewarding product you’ve worked on so far at Cuebiq?

Analytics, because I’ve seen it through from beginning to end. Our Analytics product enables brands to unlock insights about their consumers’ offline behaviors as well as gain competitive intelligence. I wasn’t involved in the design of our Attribution product from the very beginning, because that product was developed earlier, and I was more junior at the time.

What is the team culture like at Cuebiq? Do you think it’s different between the Milan and New York offices?

It’s definitely different between the offices. We only have tech people here in Milan, who typically work in a different way than client-facing employees — they often have headphones in for a long period of time and then take a break. And as a result of not hosting meetings with clients in the Italian office, our space feels more casual than the New York one.

In terms of similarities, people like to have fun in both the Italian and New York offices and not take things too seriously. Everyone is very motivated, and we’re hiring a lot of talented people who want the company to succeed. However, that doesn’t necessarily entail working overtime. For engineers in particular, working overtime can be problematic — it causes them to make more mistakes, and then that results in a negative feedback loop.

In Milan, we also have a variety of social events, such as aperitivo (happy hour) in the office and beach volleyball nearby. We go out for lunch more than the US team, which is a good way to break up the day!

If you’d like to work at Cuebiq, be sure to check out our current job openings in both New York and Milan.

The post Working in Cuebiq’s Milan Office: A Q&A With Ivan Parenti appeared first on Cuebiq.

Are you interested in what makes a successful product manager at a tech startup? From creating sound processes to being able to motivate a team, being a product manager requires a unique skill set that relies heavily on working with people. Read on to learn four secrets for succeeding as a product manager at a fast-growing company!

1. Create Sound Product Management Processes

One of the most important skills a product manager needs to have is being able to create sound processes. Especially in a company that’s growing quickly, scaling up the product team by adding more product managers and establishing processes across multiple offices can be a challenge.

At Cuebiq, a specific obstacle that our product managers face is the six-hour time difference between our two main offices in NYC and Milan. To manage this, the Milan product team has established a schedule with certain product people working on the US time zone, once per week. Some product managers in Milan quite like this setup, since then they get to keep their morning free and catch up on other work before the US team wakes up, at which point they start working together.

[caption id="attachment_3932" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Some of the Cuebiq team meeting in the Milan office[/caption]

2. Communicate Effectively

Communication is also essential for success as a product manager, since much of the role involves coordinating others and enabling them to work at their full potential. Having empathy is very important in this respect, because it can help you connect with your team and even foresee issues that might arise down the line. This in turn can inform how you plan processes moving forward, and help you make them as efficient as possible.

Looking at our own global organization that’s split between Milan and the US, we face the communication obstacle of bridging two languages. Since Cuebiq’s business operations are conducted in English, it can be hard for some of the non-native English speakers to work in a language that is not their own. To manage this, the Milan office brings in teachers every week to host English classes of all levels, to help Italian employees refine their English and be able to communicate optimally at work.

In addition to English classes, our product managers in Italy like to take advantage of conferences in the US and visit the New York office frequently to practice their English. They’re also trying to speak more and more English internally in the Milan office!

3. Be Organized, Yet Flexible

As a product manager, you have to be organized in managing processes but flexible enough to spot new opportunities for success. You need to be creative enough to imagine things you haven’t built yet and then deliver on them. Being flexible and fast enough to adapt continuously is key, because on the development side, everything is constantly in flux. What’s more, as your team grows, you have to change how you manage the roadmap and how you distribute the work.

Being flexible also includes being able to wear many hats, which is essential for a product manager, especially in a startup environment. Product managers are often juggling many moving parts, in addition to managing a large team with disparate wants and needs, and they need to be able to take on whatever responsibility is necessary at a given moment.  

4. Be Able to Motivate and Influence Your Product Team

At the end of the day, being a product manager is all about being a people manager. To this end, it’s essential to be able to influence people to take action. This means you need to understand what motivates your team, what they like, and what they need in order to operate at their top level.

In terms of management style, it’s key to manage softly and not be authoritative — especially since product managers can be very independent and entrepreneurial in their products. Typically, they want to be guided, but not micromanaged. To help achieve this fine balance, you can try gathering various points of view of your team members in advance, so that when you arrive at a meeting you’re prepared and have a sense of how to lead the meeting to cater to everyone’s needs and strengths.

Oftentimes as a product manager, you have to expect that your team members are more experienced than you in their individual disciplines, but it’s up to you to understand what they do and tie them all together to create the best processes for the product as a whole. In this respect, being a product manager requires a certain degree of humility in knowing that you’re not always the expert. At the same time, it’s essential to be proactive and constantly strive to learn everything you can about the product and its processes.

If you’d like to work at Cuebiq, be sure to check out our current job openings in both New York and Milan.

The post 4 Top Secrets for Succeeding in Product at a Tech Startup appeared first on Cuebiq.

Wondering what goes on behind the scenes with Cuebiq’s Attribution product? Then you’ll want to hear what Bruna Coppolino, Product Manager on the Attribution team in Milan, has to say. This past summer we got the opportunity to sit down with Bruna and learn about how her team is innovating with the Attribution product, how she establishes process management, and her experience working at Cuebiq so far. Learn about all this and more in our Q&A with her below!

What was your experience like starting at Cuebiq?

In the first month I started working here I spent a lot of time learning about the company, not only the business line, but also Analytics and Audiences. I come from another industry, and while I previously was working in SaaS, I was not in the digital advertising or big data space. After diving into this new experience and learning a lot more about the industry, I was able to achieve ownership of my pod in my second month at Cuebiq. Shortly after, we started onboarding two more engineers. Needless to say, my time at Cuebiq has been very rewarding.

What made you want to work here?

I already knew the company, since it’s part of the startup industry in Milan. I wanted to bring my SaaS experience to the table, as well as gain more experience working with data — in order push myself out of my comfort zone.

What’s the culture like in the Milan office?

Cuebiq Milan is a dynamic office, a family-like environment, where everyone is friends. The company is growing super fast — every week someone new starts. Also, there’s the international aspect of our company. Since our headquarters is in NYC and we have several offices throughout the US, there are often Cuebiq employees visiting our office from abroad — and vice versa, many of us in the Milan office are lucky to travel to the US often!

Besides traveling between Milan and the US, how does your team bridge those offices?

For my team specifically, I’m trying to pick people who are collaborative and have the energy to build bridges internationally. It’s all about identifying the people who have the right attitude, and then supporting them in building working relationships between our Milan and US offices.

How are you innovating with the Attribution product?

We are improving how we build processes; on the tech side we’re innovating with the way we measure TV, which will be very impactful to the industry. We’re also making strides in refining and improving our cross-channel attribution solution, which will help our clients better define their core brand audiences and help them improve their media mix. In terms of how we sell the product, we are innovating a lot. With our platform, we’re selling Attribution as a part of a holistic location intelligence solution — from providing location Analytics, to targeting Audiences, to optimizing and measuring campaigns with Attribution.

How do you establish process management?

In my previous job, I had a team of six developers and two designers. When I left after a year and a half, I had over 20 developers and 4–5 designers; the wider the product lines, the more you have to split the teams. Here at Cuebiq, I assume it will be the same — the R&D department is growing fast. What’s interesting is not just building up Attribution for TV, but also growing the team. It’s exciting to manage the innovation stream for TV, as well as the incremental aspect of the Attribution product.

What’s your management style?

I try to manage softly; I don’t like hierarchies. I like to get things done, and I need the team for that — I try to commit people by setting a goal and helping them achieve it.

What’s the biggest challenge in this growth period?

There are three big ones — two for me, and one for the company. The first is about processes. It’s crucial to be flexible and be able to adapt continuously, because everything changes frequently on the development side. As the team grows, you have to change how you manage the roadmap and how you distribute the work. Sometimes, you have to split the team or recombine resources. The second challenge is communication; you need to be able to motivate people to follow you in new processes and ensure good communication, all while still delivering the product and innovating. The third challenge is maintaining a strong company culture while the company scales, which is not easy, but at Cuebiq, we are doing a great job so far.

If you’d like to learn more about Cuebiq’s Attribution product, schedule a meeting with us.

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