Seyi Oluwasanmi: the reality of working in operations at a startup

We chat with Jumpstart Alumni Seyi about Scribeless, operations, and finding the right startup for you.

Hey Seyi, thanks for chatting with us! Could you first tell us a little more about your startup, and what your role involves?

Sure, I work for a company called Scribeless, and we’re on a mission to allow brands to build a more personal connection with their clients and customers. We do this by creating AI-generated handwritten notes – we can convert any type-text into handwritten notes for a variety of contexts, ranging from e-commerce companies wanting to welcome clients, to large sales companies looking to spice up their outbound outreach.

And I’m Operations Manager. This is a really broad role, meaning day-to-day I might be working with the operations team, the marketing team, or doing some back-end management. But mostly, my time is spent overseeing operations between our UK, US, and Canadian facilities.

I ensure our operations run smoothly, make sure our clients get what they need, and pretty much just help keep the company running!

Amazing! Operations is such an interesting area to be working in, what do you enjoy most about it?

As part of my role, I work with a lot of different teams. And I love learning from them all – I’ve been able to pick up knowledge on sales, negotiation, content creation, automation. I just really enjoy learning about a ton of different things. 

Great to hear you’re learning so much on the role! Scribeless sounds like a really cool company too – how would you describe the company culture?

I work in a really fun, dynamic team. We’re all really young, hungry, and motivated, which means everyone comes into work ready to put in 110%. This creates a culture where everyone is super focused on the long-term goals of the company, which helps us grow and scale as fast as possible.

It was a while ago when you joined Jumpstart now (September 2021), but we’d love to hear a little more of your experience! What do you remember of the programme and the application process?

Jumpstart was absolutely amazing – when I found the programme, I’d just left a job in a startup, but was hungry to remain in the startup world. I ended up googling startup graduate schemes, and found Jumpstart pretty organically. 

After the initial application process, which was really straightforward (just a CV review and an interview with Kabir), I was fortunate enough to get accepted onto the programme, which was really exciting.

I particularly enjoyed the startup spotlights – I thought they were such a unique way to work with startups, flipping the recruitment process around like that. It felt great, like I had a buffet of startups to choose from!

It was kind of difficult narrowing down to my top choices because there were so many great startups. Ultimately, however, I selected startups based on the roles where I felt I would learn the most, and the missions I felt most passionate about.

But more generally, the spotlights really opened my eyes to the different startups out there – I learned there’s a startup for almost anything!!

We’re glad you enjoyed the Spotlights (they’re our fave part of the programme too)!

You’ve now worked in a couple of startups – looking back on your experience more generally, what would you say is something people often get wrong about the sector?

I think some people have the impression that startups just magically grow and become huge overnight. But in reality, it’s a lot of hard work – it takes a while to find the right product market fit, to prove that your product works, and just finding the right time and space to launch. 

Really interesting! Thanks so much for sharing your experiences and insight. One last thing before you go – do you have any advice for the Jumpstart audience?

Give it a shot! I mean why not, right? There’s just so much to learn by being on the programme, so just give it a shot!