Welcome to the first post in our series on operational excellence for founders! The goal of this series (and our others) is to give you actionable tips to uplevel your operations and show how tooling can help save you time and hassle. I’ll focus on the mistakes I made as a first-time founder and the changes that have made running a startup so much easier as a second-time founder. I hope it’s helpful and please send me feedback to @jebank on Twitter!

The first topic to cover is Recruiting and HR. Even when your team is only 3 people, growing and managing it is a TON of work. You’re pulled in a million directions from sourcing, to interviewing, to closing, to onboarding - it’s hard to stay on top of it all, especially when your top priority is finding product-market fit. As a first-time founder, I operated by the seat of my pants, but the second time around, I’ve noticed that adding a bit of structure has both saved me time in the short run and set the company up for success in the long run.

Do you have dozens of awesome candidates begging to join your company? If so, awesome! If not, you’re going to need to put a lot of effort into outreach. While it seems simple to just find a candidate and message them, it’s a lot of work to do it right. Here are a few tips:

: At first, it can seem like unnecessary work to keep a tracker with candidate information and outreach status up to date. But if you’re like me, you’ll definitely make silly mistakes like emailing the same person twice or forgetting to follow up when you said you would. Keeping a simple tracker up to date will help you avoid these common pitfalls, and here’s a 

: Don’t reinvent the wheel every time you need to reach out to a candidate. Make a general script with a few variants of your outreach message, and structure it in a way that is adaptable for the specific candidate and role. You should definitely personalize your outreach to the individual, but you shouldn’t be manually typing in your Calendly link 500 times. Here’s an 

 of our outreach message template for Relay.

: It’s tough to stay on track without a goal AND some accountability mechanism that helps you achieve it. Before I did both, I’d realize that weeks had flown by without me doing any outreach. So now I set a crispr goal (e.g. 5 potential candidates per week) and then I (a) block time on my calendar and (b) include progress in my weekly status update to the team to make sure I get it done.

Check out our step by step process for how to manage candidate outreach using Relay 

Next up, you have to interview candidates. Again, it seems simple to hop on Zoom, conduct the interview, and make a decision. But there’s a ton of coordination behind the scenes to run an efficient process with a good candidate experience. Here are a few tips to streamline and improve your process:

. When I first started interviewing candidates, we would ask duplicative interview questions, forget to incorporate feedback from some of the interviewers, or miss out on assessing key attributes. It turned out that the simple solution of creating a templated, shared document with the assessment criteria, interview questions, and feedback from each person was all we needed. Create a copy of the document at the beginning of each interview process, share this document with the entire interview team, and check in between each interview to make sure you’re covering everything. Here’s an 

 of a notes template that we use at Relay.

 Ensure there is a seamless handoff when introducing the candidate to each teammate who will interview them. Send reminders to the team to remind them about interviews and to take notes in the shared notes document. Before we implemented mechanisms for this, we realized team members would forget to schedule interviews and days (or even weeks) would go by without us realizing. This process has created internal efficiency.

Follow up with the candidate–immediately

. Providing a great experience for the candidate is incredibly important for recruiting efforts and helps with reputation. We used to let days go by without following up with candidates while we gathered notes and thoughts, which was a poor experience for them. Now we have reminders to send follow ups within hours and it has massively improved the experience!

Check out our step by step process for how to manage interviewing candidates using Relay 

You’ve sourced the candidate, you’ve gone through the entire interview process, and you’ve given the offer. So you’re done! I used to think that, but I’ve realized now you’re far from being done, and this is actually one of the most crucial phases. Here are some best practices I’ve learned about closing candidates:

Have team members, inventors, and mutual contacts send encouragement

. I used to just send an email follow up to a verbal offer, and hope that would be enough to show the candidate I was excited for them to join. But I’ve realized now how helpful it is to get the whole team involved. It requires a little bit more coordination, but when you have every team member they met plus investors and mutual connections send words of encouragement to join, it goes a long way!

Help get their family excited about the opportunity

. Taking a new job at an early-stage startup can be scary for both the candidate and their family, so you want to get them excited about the change. Gifts and company swag are nice, but it’s even better to set up a meeting directly with the candidate’s partner to understand their perspective and address any concerts they have. This can swap fear for enthusiasm and it leads to higher conversions–it’s well worth the extra effort required!

Act as if you are working together already

. I used to patiently and quietly wait for a candidate to make a decision, but I’ve realized now the opposite is actually far more effective. As soon as you make the offer, get the candidate excited about what it would be like to work with you. Share progress updates, loop them into documents, invite them to meetings, and treat them as if they’re already part of the team.

Check out our step by step process for how to manage closing candidates using Relay 

A new team member – exciting! But now comes the tedious process of setting up their email, getting them a laptop, connecting them to all of the systems they’ll need, making sure their payroll information is in place, and more – this can be as many as 50 steps for each employee! Here are some tips to get this process right, every time:

Have a system for completing paperwork and providing account access. 

For every employee you need to complete a handful of paperwork and give them access to a handful (if not dozens) of tools. I used to do this off the top of my head for each employee and sometimes weeks (if not months) would go by before I realized I had forgotten to give them access to an important tool. Actively keep track of all the tools they need and check to make sure they’re set up before the new hire starts.

Make sure they are in the right meetings and communication channels. 

We all know what it feels like to be accidentally left out of a meeting or a communication channel. You definitely don’t want your brand new employees feeling out of the loop like this. Have a clear list of everything they need to be added to and a process to make sure it happens.

Personalize their getting started guide and over communicate everything. 

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel with a new onboarding doc for every employee. I used to waste a ton of time digging up info and starting from scratch each time before I finally put in the work to make a strong template. Now we have a clear process for using the onboarding template to start, but then personalizing it for each employee with things they specifically need to know. The more you communicate, the more quickly they’ll succeed!

Check out our step by step process for how to manage onboarding employees using Relay

Sometimes team members need to move on to new things. It’s important to handle all of the logistics to ensure the transition goes smoothly. But each time the day comes around, it’s hard to remember exactly what all of those offboarding steps are and to complete them in a timely manner. Here are some key steps we’ve decided are worth doing in the offboarding process:

Have the employee transfer ownership of all documents and events

. Nothing is worse than realizing you need to edit a document or event that no one is the owner of any more. Save yourself the headache later and while the employee is still onboard, ensure they pass off all key resources to a new owner. This work up front will save you massively down the road!

Review and change access levels to all tools

. Create a list of all of the systems you need to change access levels to, I recommend doing this once and running through it each time so you don’t forget one. Then go through each and change permission levels, remove accounts, or take any other required action. This keeps things secure and saves money in the cases where you are paying per seat.

. This one isn’t just for BigCo HR departments, it’s actually an incredibly valuable opportunity to both review ways the company can operate better and cover any final logistics that may be causing your departing teammate anxiety (COBRA health insurance, option purchasing, final paycheck, etc).

Check out our step by step process for how to manage offboarding employees using Relay

Ready to start using Relay for your HR processes and more? Try for free 

Operational Excellence for Founders Ep. #1: Recruiting and HR

April was a packed month! We launched tons of new features, including highly-requested integrations with Gmail, Hubspot, Pipedrive, and Trello. 

We’re continuing to hear how valuable Relay is for Customer Success teams. Check out these new demo videos below for two essential CS playbooks: customer onboarding and QBR planning. Feel free to send these along to the CS leader in your company or 

Relay playbooks are now more connected than ever! This month, we launched 

. This means that you can now connect multiple external data sources to your playbooks.

Before data sources, playbooks were limited to importing data from just the external playbook trigger. Now, you can connect sources like your CRM, calendar, and project management tool all to the same playbook, and the data will be available to use anywhere in your playbook.

This is great for playbooks like customer onboarding, which typically rely on data stored in multiple apps. For example, when onboarding a new customer, you might need to email customer contacts stored in your HubSpot, as well as customer champions who are tracked separately in a Google Spreadsheet. Now, both these data sources can be connected to a single playbook.

To use Data Sources, connect a new source in your playbook’s Data tab.

After adding a data source, its data is available to use anywhere in your playbook. Data sources show up everywhere you may use variables.


. If a data source you need is currently not supported, let us know and we’ll look into it!

🏅 Data Sources in action: Customer Success

Two of the most essential playbooks for Customer Success teams are customer onboarding and the preparation of Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs).

The playbook demos below integrate with various apps like HubSpot, Asana, Jira, Google Sheets, Docs and Slides to significantly increase the efficiency and consistency of these processes. Of course powered by Data Sources!

Here is the full list of product updates that we shipped in April. We love to hear your feature requests and we respond to every one of them – just send a note with your request to me via 

💙 Data Sources: Connect data from anywhere in your playbooks

💙 Send an email: Support for file attachments

Hubspot: Company, Contact or Deal property changed

💙 Simplified & unified task + automation configuration dialog

Improved usability when using trigger variables

Supercharging Customer Success playbooks with external Data Sources

March flew by! Over the past weeks we've been focused on making Relay great for Product Ops use cases like managing launch processes, user research planning, project management, and more. We also shipped a whole bunch of new features and customer requests including new integrations with tools like Linear, Jira, Salesforce, Notion, Google Workspace and Slack. 

If you're interested in using Relay for Product Ops, we'd love to do a personal demo to show what Relay can do for you. Just 

We regularly get asked how we use Relay ourselves. This short video shows how we use Relay to run our own continuous discovery process – specifically how we welcome new users and organize user studies.

Forms are a powerful feature, and essential in many playbooks. Forms let you gather information from an assignee during a run, then reference and use that information in tasks and automations later in the flow!

Example: In a customer onboarding playbook, assign a form to a Customer Success Lead to gather information about the new customer and assign a CSM. Relevant tasks will then be automatically assigned to the newly assigned CSM.

Setting up a form is as easy as clicking “Add a form” on a task. From there, select the inputs that you need from the assignee.

Assignees are notified via email and/or Slack when there’s a form ready for them to fill out. Naturally they can fill it out in Relay, but what’s even easier is filling it out right from the interactive Slack message – this has proven to be an incredible time saver!


Here is the full list of product updates that we shipped in March. We love to hear your feature requests and we respond to every one of them – just send a note with your request to me via 

💙 Nudging: message task assignees with a personal nudge outside of the regular notifications they receive from Relay (see gif below)

💙 Templated variants for email & Slack messages

Support for date offsets when using date variables

Google Drive: Copy a doc now supports folder selection

Google Docs: Replace {{placeholders}} in docs

Google Slides: Replace {{placeholders}} in slides

Salesforce: Record changed (contact, lead, opportunity)

Jira: Issue field value [changed/added/removed]

Introduced a left navigation for improved navigation

A brand new Inbox (evolution of “Your Tasks”)

Significant performance improvements – even when you have thousands of runs

Usability improvements of the rich text editor for email and slack messages

Visual improvements to Slack notifications coming from Relay

Making Relay great for Product Ops through new integrations

We've made a ton of improvements to Relay this month, including new ways to pull in data from external sources, flexible webhooks to interact with other tools, and lots of new integrations (Asana, JIRA, Salesforce, Reply.io). Here's a brief update.

: a single place to manage variables and data used across the playbook. We’ve also made significant enhancements to the data model for each playbook. You can now define default values for variables, turn variables into required playbook inputs, and last but not least, easily link and import data from external sources.

 experience. With webhooks, Relay makes it easy to integrate with pretty much any enterprise software, including your team's internal systems. Watch this video to see how to set it up.

Here is the full list of product updates that we shipped in February. Don’t hesitate to 

You can now require approval before running any automation

You can now require approval to start newly triggered runs

Simplified variable imports from external sources

More flexibility and improved usability of logical expressions

New workspace Admin controls for auto-join

Support hour- and minute-level step activation delays

New Data tab to manage and configure playbook data

Improved user experience for setting up inbound webhooks

User feedback tool featuring a screenshot annotator

Hover cards on the dashboard showing detailed run info

New in Relay: Data tab, more integrations & webhooks

It's been a busy month at Relay, shipping a lot of new functionality and content! Here's a quick update with lots of content and feature updates that will help you get the most out of Relay.

Over the past few months, we’ve learned a ton about the use cases where Relay is most helpful. Specifically, we’ve seen that operational playbooks that are mission-critical, run relatively frequently and have multiple people involved are when Relay really shines.

In particular, we learned that Relay has been specifically valuable for Customer Success leaders. CS leaders and their teams of CSMs and TAMs depend on a multitude of operational playbooks where it's essential that there is a human in the loop for certain stages. Think of playbooks ranging from customer onboarding, to re-engagement, to contract renewals and managing escalations. As we're seeing a lot of traction within CS, we're currently doubling down on excelling in this class of use cases.

For example, last week we built and shipped our first powerful integrations with products like Salesforce, Hubspot and Zendesk! Check the quick demo below to see how Relay can supercharge a customer onboarding playbook.

In January, we've shipped dozens of new features and updates to Relay that make capturing and running your operational playbooks even eaasier. Our primary focus has been on strengthening the foundations of our powerful human-in-the-loop workflow automation product, including polishing many rough edges.

One particular new feature that we love, is what we call “double check” – a basic approval flow that lets the assignee review (double check) and personalize email or Slack communications that would have otherwise gone out automatically. You can optionally enable this feature for any communication step in your workflow. See the gif below for a quick impression!

While we're focusing on CS integrations, we'll continue to focus on evolving the foundations. For example, expect a much improved experience to manage data and variables for your playbook over the coming days 😊

Below is the full list of updates to Relay from this past month. 

 if there’s any specific feature that you’d like to see!

“Double check”: human-in-the-loop email/slack message approvals

@-mentioning other people in automated Slack messages

Inline images in email and Slack messages

Logical expressions to automatically set the value of Conditions

Improved experience for setting triggers +  support for pausing

Form steps to get input from assignees (can even do this via Slack!)

Ability to apply changes in playbook to all active runs

New system variables: current date, current time, Run Owner

: trigger based on a newly scheduled event

: trigger when deals reach a specific stage

Revamped user experience for picking an Automation

Showing step & section numbers across all relevant places in the UI

Simplified user experience for sharing & collaborating on playbooks

To help you get the most out of Relay as quickly as possible, we recorded a series of short 101 videos to get help you get familiar with the basics of Relay. We hope they're helpful! Don't hesitate to 

 directly of course if you bump into anything!


 creating and running your first playbook

 setting up a trigger, advanced usage of variables, updating a spreadsheet

That’s it for this time – thanks for getting all the way to the end and follow us on 

January 2023 update from Relay

 makes it easy for leaders and operations pros to run a tight ship by capturing, running and automating collaborative workflows. Sign up 

“We have to present to 100 people at the All Hands tomorrow, and we haven’t done anything yet!”

When I was leading the Gmail team, I’d have a panicked thought like that one almost every day. Running an organization is not easy. To build an effective team, you need to nail your all hands, leads meeting, executive updates, product reviews, business reviews, newsletters, planning process, onboarding, project tracking, feature launches, customer updates, and much more. And it’s important to get all of these things right, as they make the difference between the whole organization feeling informed, energized, and empowered, or… not. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably keeping all of these workflows in your head or in a document that’s getting stale every minute. We think there’s a better way to do it.

Relay makes it easy for leaders and operations pros to run a tight ship. It’s a new kind of collaboration tool that will (1) help you capture effective workflows, (2) give you peace of mind that they’ll be done on time, and (3) automate tedious tasks and coordination. Relay combines the best elements of to-do lists and automation tools, enabling people to focus on their best work and taking care of the rest.

To see it in action, here’s how Relay can help you run your All Hands:

We’re building Relay to give you peace of mind, save you time, and help you run an effective team. Once you see it in action, you’ll want to use it for everything you do over and over again.

Our founding team includes product, design, and engineering leaders from some of Google's biggest productivity products, including Gmail and Google Calendar, and we've raised a $5M seed round led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Neo, BoxGroup, SV Angel, and several angels.

We’re already working with select design partners, including emerging market leaders like Ramp and fast-growing startups like Lumos, and we’re opening up our product for 

I’m eager to hear your feedback, so please send me a note at 

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