In 2012, two former students from the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in the northern Dutch city of Groningen took a big gamble. They made a list of 100 companies they'd like to work for—including Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, and Uber—and challenged them. As you can imagine, this little stunt definitely got their attention.
Now, $159.4 million in investment later, their cybersecurity company, HackerOne, has reached unicorn status in 2022 and counts big players like Nintendo, AT&T, Hyatt, GM and even the Pentagon among its clients.
HackerOne is a bug-finding platform that allows companies to enlist the help of ethical hackers around the world to identify and mitigate security vulnerabilities and data breaches, costing companies an average of $4.35 million.
While founders Jobert Abma and Michiel Prins now live in San Francisco, where HackerOne is headquartered, they surprisingly decided not to move their development team across the pond. In fact, more than 50% of their engineering and product team is still based in Groningen today.
The question is, does it actually make sense to keep half of your development team in a different time zone, and is it a strategy other founders should really consider? And why Groningen? With a global tech powerhouse like Amsterdam just a few hours away, why keep the team in this northern Dutch city?
Sun tracking model
The story of HackerOne's founders is a typical technological fairy tale come true. Abma and Prins grew up across the street from each other in a small town in the north of the Netherlands and spent their time playing video games, building websites and, of course, pulling the occasional prank.
Together, they went to the Hanse University of Applied Sciences in Groningen, where they discovered a major data breach in the institution's system. Realizing that this could be a successful business venture, they started a consulting firm and built a small team of like-minded ethical hackers.
After gaining the attention of Silicon Valley's biggest names, they realized it was time to spread their wings abroad.
At the same time, keeping part of their development team in Groningen represented a great opportunity to introduce a "follow the sun" model, ensuring that someone is always online and ready to solve any problems that arise.
“The internet has no borders,” says Abma, “every day we have tens of thousands of people using our platform to collaborate and collaborate. We rely on such a distributed hacker community that I don't see why we can't do that as a company.”
HackerOne really facilitates this exchange between global ethical hackers and companies by providing a platform where they can connect without having to worry about tax forms, background checks, payment security and other obstacles.
SOME WHO VISIT FALL IN LOVE WITH THE CITY AND MOVE PERMANENTLY.
A distributed development team has a number of advantages, but it also brings its challenges.
“Working in different time zones requires everyone to be good at written and asynchronous communication. It's important to give people time to become good written communicators,” says Abma.
Another important point he shared is to ensure that engineering and adjacent roles continue to have regular exposure to other departments such as sales, marketing and customer success. This helps build context, breaks down silos, and enables teams to create better solutions.
One of the ways HackerOne does this is by sending its team from Groningen to visit the headquarters in San Francisco several times a year and vice versa.
It is important to allow people to build a stronger bond by spending time together in person, at least twice a year. They love this aspect of a distributed team because they can visit different cities and meet new people, but still have the comfort of being able to live in Groningen, which I think is a great city to live and raise a family.
The advantages of a cosmopolitan city on a smaller scale
Beyond the business benefits of maintaining a distributed team model, Abma explained, most of the team simply didn't want to follow them to San Francisco.
"A lot of people were starting their families and had significant others there, so they couldn't move to the other side of the world, and we didn't necessarily want to."
For a city of just 235,000 inhabitants, Groningen has an extremely cosmopolitan feel. Through its two universities and growing startup community, it attracts nearly 6,000 international students and a growing number of expats annually.
Some HackerOne employees who visited the Groningen office from San Francisco fell in love with the city and decided to move there permanently. Abma suspects that it is these "expat ambassadors" who have become hiring managers who have been key to attracting more global talent by sharing their first-hand experiences of moving to the city.
For Isura Ranaweer, Principal Software Engineer at HackerOne, moving his family to Groningen was an easy transition.
“What I like about Groningen is that it is less busy and compared to other places I find it a quiet city. Also, I feel safer here, so it's a good place to raise my child. Another bonus is that the city is very green, with lots of trees.”
Another great HackerOne policy is that they pay developers in Groningen the same rates as they would in Amsterdam.
As an expat, settling here was easier compared to my friends who settled elsewhere in the Netherlands. Housing is available and affordable, which benefited me when I migrated to another country. Keeping costs down is important and living here helped me keep my housing costs down during the first few years of my stay. Commuting is also easy as you don't really need a car. We live here with a child and a dog without needing a car, which is great. I also like to stay away from the chaos of big cities.
Being based in a university town also has the added benefit of access to a pool of young talent. Groningen in particular has two great universities located in the city that attract students from all over the world. Zahra Putri Fitrianti, a software engineer at HackerOne, was hired after studying and working at the University of Groningen as a teaching assistant.
Personally, I really like the atmosphere in the city, it is very suitable for students and workers. The city has a sense of calm that helps me be productive at university and at work. There are also lots of great centers to work in, such as the Forum cultural center which provides great support for people spending their day there, although it does get quite crowded at times, especially during exam period.
Groningen is changing, but hopefully not too much
Groningen is quickly becoming a household name in the global tech community, with new startup success stories and university spinoffs putting its ecosystem on the map. However, there are a few changes that Abma still hopes will help
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