Creating an Atmosphere for Innovation

In my opinion, perhaps above all else, innovation requires a great, diverse team. At Sigma we try to adhere to respectful challenge: the belief that no one-person has the monopoly of ideas and that we should be able to ask questions to build understanding. We’re predominantly a team that works remotely and in many respects that would make it harder to collaborate and innovate. However, in fact the opposite is true. Because we are mostly remote, we work harder to collaborate. VC is a norm for us but in addition we use a variety of tools, such as Slack (for chat), Notion (documenting ideas as a team), Trello (to plan) and the standard software collaboration tools such as GitHub. I love that our team gets frustrated if we over-use DM in Slack rather than using channels — the latter ensures we can actively build out our corporate history and helps us learn from our mistakes. And this is tremendously important.  

Sigma is not delivering the commercial product that we thought we would be doing at the start of this journey. We have had to shift, change and respond to customer demands. We have of course made mistakes and we will undoubtedly make more mistakes. But as long as the team works together and innovates, we’ll be ok. We really do adhere to the mantra, fail fast and move on.  

Our innovation is not restricted to product; it extends to the working practices, processes and working environment. I genuinely believe we’re world-class. We’re only 3 years old and yet we’re already generating credible revenues for such a young business and working with some of the world’s leading institutions. Doing so means we cannot tolerate sloppy attitudes to delivery and must meet the timescales we set with our clients. 

I’ve worked in larger organisations, with bigger budgets and bigger teams, but never have I seen the pace of product innovation that I see from our team at Sigma.  

The challenge for us will be scaling the organisation. We will need to expand our objective & key results measurement, without getting dragged into the mire of undue, bureaucratic process. We operate our own agile approach and these are linked to product pipeline and customer delivery. Again, this will have to scale. We don’t doubt that scaling whilst at the same time retaining our style and culture will be hard, but it’s down to the team, whom I’m incredibly proud of.  

We stand-up for each other, support each other and challenge each other. But always with respect. Our senior team is passionate about our culture and laser focussed on the drive towards break-even. Those two aspects are not mutually exclusive, and their determination is infectious, noticeable in the discussions we have at our regular team days. I believe that’s a great foundation, which will enable us to scale in a positive manner without losing our culture of innovation. 

By Andrew Simpson, Founder and CEO of Sigma Financial AI

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