I was pretty interested to read about Snapchat’s DAU numbers and their culture of secrecy. At first, I was pretty shocked to read about the stories employees told about the lengths the company goes to in order to keep its information private.

It’s consistent with anecdotal stories I’ve heard about Snap (they’re serious about privacy and keeping their own information a secret), but I always try to take these stories with a grain of salt.

I immediately thought about how we try to do things differently at HubSpot. Two elements in the HubSpot culture code are using metrics and transparency in the organization. I thought “we’re totally different than that here at HubSpot”, and I bet many of you thought the same thing when reading the Snapchat article. While I think we strive to be different, we’re far from perfect and are constantly trying to improve. Some of the questions I asked myself (and ways I want to hold myself and our teams accountable):

• Does everyone in the organization have access to data (behavioral analytics, data warehouse) that helps them make better decisions?
• For those that aren’t technical, is it accessible with non-technical tools?
• Just because they have access to the data, do they leverage it in their ideas, analysis, and proposals?
• Do we have sufficient documentation about how to use the data that’s available to all employees?
• Do we make an effort to train people on using the data so they are as self sufficient as possible?
• Do we create a culture of sharing and encouraging others to showcase their findings?
• Do we enable others to reproduce analysis that has been done in the past?

While I like to think we’re better than the portrayal of Snapchat in the article, I’m not 100% satisfied with the answers to the questions above.