The head of Facebook's answer to Slack says they made 'every possible mistake we could have' (FB)

Julien Codorniou

Julien Codorniou, the head of Facebook Workplace, says the company made "every possible mistake we could have done."
He talked about his past, why he viewed working as an auditor as like being in the army, and what's next for Workplace.
Codorniou spoke to Business Insider after being named in the UK Tech 100, a ranking of the 100 coolest people in the UK tech industry.

Launching a new business is never straightforward — even if you're Facebook.

Just ask Julien Codorniou, the head of Facebook Workplace, a work-focused version of the social network aimed at companies and organisations. It's one of a flock of new services that is trying to kill off email and transform how companies organise internally, alongside the likes of Slack and Microsoft Teams.

"We've done every possible mistake we could have done," the French-born, London-based executive admitted. "The pricing was wrong, the way we'd gone to market back in the day was wrong."

Today, two years after launch, Workplace has more than 30,000 customers, including Walmart, Spotify, the World Wildlife Fund, and Virgin Atlantic.

But Codorniou's remarks — made in an interview with Business Insider to mark his inclusion on the UK Tech 100, an annual ranking of the coolest people in the British technology industry — illustrates the hurdles that can befall even the biggest companies in trying new things, and the radical changes required to succeed.

From dissatisfied auditor to Facebook executive

Codorniou, 40, grew up in Paris, and says he knew he wanted to work in software since he was eight years old. "I had a computer at home, a British computer, an Amstrad computer, but I did not know it was an industry," he said.

"I did not realise people actually made a living building apps and games every day. So when I realised that, I knew I would be doing that for the rest of my life. There was no other option."

But he got there via a circuitous route: First, working in venture capital investment after graduating, and then joining the auditor Ernst & Young — a job he hated — to improve his financial prowess.

"People who know me will tell you I don't behave or I don't look like a financial auditor ... I went to financial auditing like people go to the army: To learn something tough, to do something that they have to do to get stronger. It's painful for a few years, but you feel much stronger after that."

It was after that that he finally made the jump into the world of tech, working at Microsoft, and then moving to Facebook in 2011. At the Menlo Park, California, company he first did work on platforms, then helped lead the gaming partnership efforts.

Meanwhile, what would one day become Workplace was growing behind the scenes.

facebook workplace

Facebook Workplace is Facebook, for workplaces

Workplace is basically Facebook for work. It operates in much the same way, with private messages, groups, public posts, and so on. It began life as a purely private project at the company — a way for Facebook employees to communicate and coordinate.

But following inbound interest, Codorniou said the decision was made to start offering it to outside organisations, and the company started looking for someone suitable to lead these efforts. And that's where Codorniou, with his SaaS (software-as-a-service) experience from Microsoft, came in.

In those early days around its 2016 launch, he admitted, Facebook made mistakes.

"When we started, we thought Workplace would be a product you could sell online without building a sales team ... with a lot of virality, and guess what? It did not happen," he said. "The way we sell Workplace today is company-by-company ... with sell cycles of a few months."

Facebook, with its historic focus on advertising, had simply never done anything like this before: Selling subscription SaaS software directly to business customers.

In building the team, Codorniou set a goal: 50% of Workplace employees should be from Facebook, and 50% should be outside hires.

"I wanted to bring the Facebook DNA. The ambitions for the product, for the mission ... that obsession with growth," he said. "But I also wanted to build a SaaS product that had a lot of credibility when I talk to IT, when I try to sell to companies." As such, Workplace hires have come from Microsoft, Slack, Salesforce, Dropbox, Box, and beyond.

facebook workplace chat

The future of Workplace

Today, Workplace has grown to more than 30,000 corporate customers — more than double it had around this time last year. Slack, by comparison, has 70,000 paying customers, while a further 430,000 organisations use it for free.

Workplace is increasingly integrating other software directly into it, from SurveyMonkey to BlueJeans, and Marketo, tying users ever-more closely into its ecosystem. And it now offers "Workplace for Good," a free (and fully featured) version of its product for non-profits and educational organisations around the world.

It's also a rare thing among the big American tech companies: A significant product that is led not from Silicon Valley, but Europe. "The goal has always been for Workplace to build it out of the US, and to prove that a company like Facebook can build something completely different but yet very ambitious from London," the exec said.

Looking forward, Codorniou sees the future of Workplace in emerging economies. "[In coming years] I think you will see Workplace more and more in emerging countries with a population of workers who have never had an email, never had a desk, never had a PC, who grew up on mobile message apps," he said.

"I think the vision that we've had which is now shared by a lot of big companies ... is it's time to connect everyone and to prove that having the right tools can change how the company is run."

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