This time, the founder interviews the operations lead.

Bohdan Hlushko: Imogen, you joined when we were three people. What did you change first?

Imogen Holloway: I made you write things down. (laughs) Specifically, I made every meaningful decision live as a one-page document in Notion. Title, date, decision, alternatives, rationale. You hated it for two weeks. Then you started doing it without me asking.

It sounds bureaucratic for a small team. It is the opposite. Without it, decisions get re-litigated forever. With it, they are made once and stay made.

BH: Why a paper notebook on your desk, then, if everything is in Notion?

IH: Because some thinking only happens with a pen. The notebook is for the messy first draft. Notion is for the clean final draft. They are different tools for different stages.

BH: What is the boring decision you are most proud of?

IH: The off-site backup policy. Every repo, every Figma file, every Notion workspace, every Linear export is backed up daily to two regions. Boring. Cheap. Has been running for two years untouched. The day we need it, we will be glad. Most studios our size do not bother. It is the kind of thing that distinguishes a real company from a hobby.

BH: Communications. What is your principle?

IH: Be honest, be early, be brief. If a release slips, we say so before we have to. If a feature gets cut, we explain why. If a user has a problem, we reply within 24 hours, even if the answer is "we are looking into it."

Indie companies often hide because they are small. I think the opposite is the right move. Smallness is an asset. Honesty is a moat.

BH: What surprised you about Tappa after joining?

IH: How seriously you take saying no. I had never worked in a place that killed more ideas than it shipped. It is a cultural choice, and it is the right one.

BH: What do you wish more people understood about operations?

IH: That it is the foundation. Sales and design and engineering get the attention. Operations is the soil they grow in. Skip it and everything wilts in two years.

Also, that operations is not boring. It is the work of making a company that can keep doing the interesting work for a long time.

BH: Thank you, Imogen.

IH: Thank you. Now go write that decision document I asked for.

Imogen Holloway is Operations and Communications Lead at Tappa. Before joining, she ran operations for a Manchester-based consumer-tech startup.