10 Years of Ninety: What EOS® Leaders Can Learn About Building Better Companies

I’ve always loved small businesses. Growing up, my dad started his company when I was around 10, and I always saw him putting in the work and genuinely enjoying building something from scratch. So after college, when I got an offer to work with two founders who were just starting out, I jumped at the chance. Working from their kitchen table to start, and eventually getting an office with a few more employees, was an eventful beginning to my career, to say the least.

Fast forward a few years later and I find Ninety, a startup built for helping small businesses win. I was drawn to it right away, the idea of making an impact in these companies at scale. 

When I joined, I came in with a marketing background and a clear idea of what I thought the role would be. Marketing and Client Success were the plan.

As Ninety grew and evolved, so did my role. Looking back, I had no idea the journey that was in store for me. I’ve had five different Seats, including Chief of Staff, and now I’m the Head of Professional Services. But those titles don’t even begin to capture the work behind them.

In the early days, it was a lot of fighting fires and figuring it out as we went. Someone had to listen to customers, talk through product priorities, explain what teams needed, help them understand what was urgent, and keep everyone moving toward the same objectives. Most of the time, that meant doing work that didn’t fit neatly into one department. I already knew that’s what happens when you’re part of building something from the ground up, but what I didn’t expect was the joy I'd find in solving those hard problems along the way.

Ten years in, what stands out most isn’t just the start of the company or celebrating our anniversary. It’s the customers who believed in what we were building and fought through the imperfections with us. They gave us invaluable feedback that shaped our product and helped us reach the next level. And of course the team members who joined Ninety knowing their role wouldn’t fit into a perfect box but wanted to help us tackle our ambitious goals anyway.

The exciting part is that the work hasn’t stopped. Ninety is still evolving because the way companies run, lead, and use information keeps evolving too.

So what can EOS® leaders learn from 10 years of Ninety? From where I sit, the greatest lesson I’ve learned is that building a company that lasts takes more than a great idea or a strong first product. It takes a team willing to listen, adapt, and keep improving the way work gets done as you grow. To see what that looks like in practice, it helps to start with where Ninety began and what the EOS community taught us early on.

How Did the EOS Community Shape Ninety’s Early Days?

In the beginning, we weren’t doing a lot of traditional marketing. There wasn’t a polished go-to-market machine. We were working with early advocates, learning from the EOS community, and serving a specific need. We were doing things that were highly unscalable to make sure we learned from each interaction and use case.

Companies running on EOS already had tools they believed in, but many of them were still using spreadsheets, whiteboards, and documents to manage the work. A lot of conversations early on were an uphill battle because to the community, software still felt like something that didn’t belong in a Level 10 Meeting® or Quarterly and Annual Planning.

That’s hard to picture now because most teams are used to having everything immediately available on a laptop or mobile app. But at the time, there was resistance to bringing technology into EOS conversations.

We needed our early product to earn their trust. For companies running on EOS, the concern wasn’t just whether software would work. It was whether software would get in the way of the human connection that makes EOS so powerful. We had to show them that Ninety could support those conversations, not replace them. The right software shouldn’t make the work feel transactional. It should help teams create more clarity, stay connected, and make better decisions together.

Those early days forced us to ask better questions and keep iterating: Does this help the team follow EOS more effectively? Does this make the work clearer? Does this support the way companies actually run their meetings, set Rocks, review Scorecards, and solve issues? Does it help them connect with one another?

That discipline shaped more than the product. It shaped how we worked. We needed to listen first and then build carefully so we could make sure we were supporting EOS instead of getting in the way of it.

Why Did Customer Experience Become Central to Ninety?

Customer experience has always been personal for us. People still go out of their way to tell me, “You have the best people, you have the best support.” That didn’t happen by accident.

From the beginning, we genuinely cared about being available, responsive, and honest. If we didn’t know the answer, we’d go find it. If a customer was stuck, we wanted them to reach a person who could help. If something wasn’t working the way they expected, we wanted to understand why.

A lot of this started from the very beginning because I was interacting with every person. I very acutely felt their pain points and wanted to make sure we solved their problems. And Michelle Rose, my team member who was serving the Implementers, thought and acted in the same way I did. We both believed in doing what we said we would do, then going the extra mile when people needed more support.

That kind of customer experience became ingrained in how we operated. It wasn’t just about support tickets. It was about the relationship. We were serving entrepreneurial teams that were trying to build better companies, and we had the chance to make an impact with one team that could impact tens or hundreds beyond that one interaction. 

While our customers were working through people issues, unclear priorities, and meetings that created more questions than answers, we knew the product was only part of the solution. The way we supported people carried just as much weight. Founders, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and Integrators don’t just need software. They need confidence that their business operating system will support the work they’re already trying to do.

As Ninety has continued to grow, we’ve added more automation and more ways for customers to get answers faster. But through every change, our goal has stayed personal: to help customers feel supported, understood, and confident in the work they’re trying to do. Automation can help with speed and scale, but real people are still here when you need someone to help you keep moving forward.

What Changed When the World Needed Digital Tools?

Our biggest turning point came in 2020. Before then, a lot of teams still needed convincing that digital tools belonged in their EOS practice. Then the world moved remote, and those teams suddenly needed the exact thing they had once questioned. And they needed it fast.

Our existing customers started telling us that having their work in Ninety was how they were able to stay in business. They didn’t have to try to rebuild everything from scratch while also figuring out how to work from different locations.

New customers were flocking to the product realizing they needed a clear way to make decisions, show accountability, and work in this new world.

That period also pushed our product forward. Customers had been asking for more support around Quarterly Sessions and Annual Planning. Once remote work became the reality for so many companies, the need was immediate. We built quickly because customers needed the tools right away.

At that point, the question wasn’t whether software belonged in their EOS practice anymore. It was, “Can my team still run the business this week?” They needed their meetings, Rocks, Scorecards, and issues in one place so they could keep serving their customers.

The companies we work with now are trying to go even deeper. They’re not only asking how to run EOS at the leadership team level. They’re asking how to roll it out to departments, connect their Rocks to longer-term goals, use Scorecards across teams, share knowledge, and make better decisions with the information they have. I love getting to do this work with clients now through Professional Services.

That’s the throughline from 2020 to today. Customer needs are always changing, but our purpose is still the same. We’re in it for the long haul, to help teams see what needs attention, stay aligned, and move their business forward with more confidence.

What Can EOS Leaders Take From Ninety’s First Decade?

When I look back at Ninety’s first decade, the clearest lessons came from the decisions that didn’t have easy answers: Which customer requests should we build right away? Which ones need more discussion because they touch how EOS is taught and used? How do we keep supporting people through change when we’re still figuring it out ourselves? How do we add automation without losing the human support customers count on? Those choices shaped what Ninety has become.

And from everything I’ve learned, here are the lessons I’d bring into any EOS team trying to build a company that lasts:

1. Stay close to customer feedback: Customers usually knew exactly where our product needed to get better, and they wanted to tell us. It was up to us to listen without getting defensive, then decide what to build, what to hold on, and what needed more discussion.

2. Build around the way your customers already operate: Early on, customers would point out what they could already do in spreadsheets, like adding notes to a Scorecard. Sometimes they were right. That feedback helped us see where the product needed to support their EOS process more naturally without making the system feel harder to use.

3. Protect the customer experience as you scale: As a company grows, it gets easier for customers to feel further away from the people building and supporting the product. We’ve had to be intentional about that. Automation can help people get answers faster, but it should never make the experience feel colder or less human. Experience spans from product, to education, to support, and every way that your customer interacts with your brand.

4. Use structure to help your teams move faster: EOS works because it gives teams a shared way to clarify the company vision, set priorities, review data, solve issues, and create accountability. Structure shouldn’t add extra work. It should make the next step clearer and help teams spend less time trying to figure out how to work together.

5. Stay willing to adapt: The way customers use Ninety today is different from how they used it 10 years ago. We’ve had to add departments, rethink support, expand the product, and build for companies using Ninety across more teams. Adaptation doesn’t mean starting over. It means paying attention to what customers need next and being willing to adjust how you serve them. 

6. Know what kind of work gives you energy: One of the biggest personal lessons for me has been learning that I love the unknown. I like taking on challenges and doing the thing that isn’t defined yet. That’s also helped me see how important it is to understand what kind of work gives a team energy. Not everyone wants the same level of ambiguity, and that’s okay. The more clearly you understand how your people work best, the better decisions you can make about roles, priorities, and where each person can have the most impact.

These lessons will continue to show up in new ways as your company grows because each Stage of Development asks something different from your team. It’s your job to keep listening, making adjustments, and figuring out the next right thing together. 

What Does the Next Chapter of Ninety Look Like?

Ten years in, Ninety is still evolving. We’re not the same company we were in 2016 or 2017, and we shouldn’t be. Our product has expanded, our customers are using it in deeper ways, and over the next decade, we’ll keep thinking differently about technology, leadership, AI, and operating systems.

But even with all that change, the reason we’re building has stayed the same.

Growing companies need clarity. They need alignment. They need a way to connect vision to weekly execution. They need systems that help them scale without making it harder for people to do their best work. So over the next ten years, I predict we keep working relentlessly on that North Star. 

For any EOS leader in the middle of figuring it all out, this is what I’d hold onto: You don’t have to have every answer upfront. You just have to keep listening, keep adapting, stay humble, and let what you’re learning shape the next decision.

That’s what we’ve been doing from the beginning at Ninety, and that’s the work we’ll continue from here. I’m proud of what we’ve built, and even more excited for the next chapter of figuring it out together.

Interested in hearing more from EOS companies working to build something great? I co-host a podcast with Kris Snyder called Impact Moments where we have weekly conversations on leadership and company building. We’d love for you to check it out.