From Zilch to $2bn

Back in 2018, Zilch was a tiny company with huge ambitions. Newly founded and with the aim of disrupting the fast-growing “buy now, pay later” sector, its staff roster at the time consisted of just three people: CEO and founder Philip Belamant, CIO Sean Hederman and COO Rakesh Harji. Recognising the company’s huge potential and need for top talent, they moved in early 2019 to their current headquarters at WeWork 123 Buckingham Palace Road in London – a strikingly modern building, near Victoria station, with well-connected transport links and space to grow. “That’s when we started to hire,” says Mr Belamant.

The years that followed have seen vertiginous growth for the company as a result of the runaway success of its model, which offers users a card with a personalised credit line, zero interest and no hidden fees. Last October, following its latest funding round, Zilch was valued at more than $2bn, setting a record as the fastest company in Europe to reach $1bn “unicorn” status. Its customer base has mushroomed from zero to two million, and those three employees have now multiplied to more than 200.

Flexibility was a key factor in choosing WeWork as their workplace partner, says Mr Belamant: “You have an aspiration that the business will do well, but you’re not sure when the inflection point will arrive and at what speed you’ll need to hire or where you might need those team members. WeWork offered a very flexible set-up to begin with, and we grew from there.” WeWork provides the option to scale workspace up and down as needed, meaning that companies no longer have to predict headcount and company growth for ten or 20 years’ time, unlike traditional office leases.

Today, Zilch occupies around half a floor at WeWork 123 Buckingham Palace Road. Its full floor office has been customised to feature Zilch's own branding. The space features six meeting rooms of different sizes, breakout areas, a boardroom and a pantry area – all designed for employees to connect and collaborate.

While navigating rapid growth, the company has also had to adapt to new ways of working as a result of the сovid-19 pandemic. When the UK’s work-from-home guidance was lifted last summer, Mr Belamant and his leadership team needed to decide how best to combine the new-found flexibility employees were enjoying with the need to maintain and continue building Zilch’s strong company culture.

“Especially for start-ups, building the culture of the business is fundamental to succeeding and it's very hard to do that on Zoom,” he says.

The answer was hybrid working. A global survey carried out last summer by Economist Impact on attitudes to work-life balance in a post-covid age found that for almost half (46%) of business leaders, the need for flexibility dictated their company’s approach to the return to the office. For Mr Belamant, this was certainly the case, but it was flexibility with a layer of structure, with Zilch employees now working in the office on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and working remotely (or their nearest WeWork) on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Mr Belamant is aware that some companies offer employees a choice on which days they come to the office, but he felt it was important that everybody should come in on the same days, as this negates the possibility of proximity bias, when those who are present are more likely to be involved in projects or gain promotion.

“We wanted to avoid situations where people can say, ‘I wasn’t there, so why did this decision get made?’” he says. “Our view was, let's agree that when we're in, we get everybody in, so that we can all be aligned.”

The ability to work both at home and in the office is a key driver of work-life balance, according to Economist Impact’s survey. However, certain groups are likely to want to spend more time working from home. Given the choice, for example, parents with young children will spend less time in the office.

“We discussed this extensively,” says Mr Belamant. “I don't think you will ever solve it for everyone, but we actually have had feedback from our team saying, ‘You know what, this is fantastic, because I can be around the home more days of each week than I am in the office,’ [...] which means that employees with children may not need childcare full time.” Mr Belamant also notes that employees have the choice to switch days in the office from time to time, as needed.

One of the primary concerns that workers have as they return to the workplace, Economist Impact found, is safety in communal spaces and busy offices (25%). Mr Belamant says the scalability that WeWork provides was a key factor in assuaging such worries. Zilch could extend its office space as needed, allowing working areas to be better spaced out. Furthermore, WeWork implemented health and safety measures across its portfolio of buildings worldwide, which alleviated the work for Zilch management and reassured Zilch employees that the necessary steps had been taken for their safety and comfort. These measures – which include enhanced air quality, more frequent cleaning schedules and behavioural signage to help guide members through its space – were awarded a Global Certificate of Conformity by Bureau Veritas, an internationally recognised testing, inspection and certification organisation.

“[With WeWork], everything works seamlessly for us,” says Mr Belamant. “We had our team over from the US two weeks ago, and they could all use their [WeWork membership] cards to tap in, walk straight into our office here at 123 Buckingham Palace Road, open their laptops and connect to the VPN that we've set up with WeWork worldwide. All of that stuff works well for us.”

WeWork offers companies and individuals options to access hundreds of its locations globally. WeWork OnDemand is a pay-as-you-go service that allows individuals to book workspace and conference rooms, through their phones, by the hour or day – as easily as you would book an Uber. Similarly, WeWork All Access is a monthly subscription membership (like a gym membership) through which members have access to 700+ WeWork locations globally to find a workspace that is most convenient and suitable for them.

In London, Zilch has made use of the "hub-and-spoke" model since last summer, meaning that employees can choose to work from its HQ in Victoria, or visit a WeWork location that is close to their home.

“We first did it when lockdown started to ease and people could go back to the office at their discretion,” says Mr Belamant. “A few of the teams who live close together would spend the day at their local WeWork because they wanted to get out of the house, and that worked very well for us at that point. And now, on Tuesdays and Fridays, if employees have kids at home during term breaks and feel that they need space where they can work quietly, they will actually go to a WeWork that's nearby.”

Mr Belamant’s advice for leaders who are contemplating a hybrid work model is to decide what kind of culture they want to build and then have conversations with their teams to understand their views and preferences. “Align those two things and make a decision,” he says. “And don’t worry if you don’t get it 100% right the first time, because I don’t think anyone has.” That is the beauty of flexibility.