Journey of a Global Company
I routinely get asked about the journey that Derek and I are on with Evolve HR Solutions. Here is generally how the conversation goes.
“Wow, it takes a lot of courage to start your own company. Especially since the economy is not great.” They state.
“Yeah, but I am fortunate that my partner, Derek, has successfully started a company. So that really takes some of the stress of the unknown off the table. But don’t get me wrong; a ton of work goes into getting a company started.” I respond.
At this point, the conversation will go one of two ways. The first is asking how the business is going. The second is asking what steps we had to take to stand up a global company. I wanted to share about our journey so far.
Starting a global company
Starting a company is generally not for the faint of heart. I had been asked on a few occasions over my career to leave the corporate world and start a new venture. My response was always the same. I was interested but never had the courage to take the plunge. Until Derek made the offhanded comment about going into a partnership together. It is all about timing. Once we launched Evolve HR Solutions, it was about learning what it takes to get something off the ground. Here is a simple rundown of everything we had to think about and do to get Evolve HR Solutions up and running.
What to name our company - Derek has liked the name Evolve for a while, and it is a great name for what HR generally helps organizations do. So I was all for it. However, we reviewed some iterations before settling on Evolve HR Solutions. We started with Evolve Search Group. However, we realized it was more than an executive search capability. By adding HR consulting and an HCM system, we had to have something that would be all-encompassing. So we played around with various ideas until we settled on Evolve HR Solutions.
Figure out all of the legal stuff - We had a name and needed to determine if anyone else was out there with it. When we looked at the US, we found that Evolve HR Solutions was unused. So we set up an LLC based in Texas (super friendly to companies). This solidified our name as a certified company in the US.
Get a logo and a URL - Once we knew our name was good, we made the logo, fonts, and colors and needed a URL. It doesn’t help to have a great name if you can’t get the website. We set out to have some cool fonts, unique colors, and a fun logo. We may be partial, but we are really happy with the colors and logo.
Establish a Website - now that we had our name, colors, logo, and URL, it was time to get our website up and running. Which meant writing a lot of content. This takes some time, but we are happy with how it turned out.
All the other stuff - we had all of the big items done, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. We ha to get a bank account, create a partnership agreement, set up accounting processes, get corporate credit cards and start building content.
With all of this in place, we are now ready for business. Of course, you don’t really need all of this to get going. We built our LinkedIn company profile before the website; we started getting clients before our bank account was set up. So much of this can be done in parallel.
We have had a lot of fun building Evolve HR Solutions and getting our first clients on board. We are more convinced today about the niche that we are in. There is a huge need for strategic HR, and we are well-positioned to fill that need and help organizations with their HR challenges.
About the author
Jeff Lupinacci is a former Chief Talent and Integration Officer with over 25 years of corporate experience in HR, Talent, Finance, and IT. He recently teamed up with Derek Lutz to create Evolve HR Solutions, a connected HR Talent, Advisory, and Software Firm solving the HR Puzzle. When he is not at his desk, he usually spends time with his wife of 31 years and two children or preparing to teach the eMBA class for Baylor University. He also has written one book and is in the middle of a second one.
