Effective communication can make or break a startup, and few people understand this better than someone who lived it from the inside at one of Latin America's fastest-growing companies. Isabela Orduz, one of the first employees at Rappi, later an investor at Marathon Ventures, and now a founder herself, shares practical insights on how startups should handle internal and external communication as they scale.
Why is centralizing communication critical for startups?
When Isabela joined Rappi, the team had roughly 100 to 120 employees [01:36]. Around 30% of them were focused on customer success and satisfaction. As the company scaled rapidly across countries and cities, the communication challenge became enormous. New projects meant working with people you had never met the day before.
The initial instinct, especially in Latin America, was to rely on WhatsApp [02:35]. Isabela warns against this from the very beginning. WhatsApp lacks the structure a growing startup needs. Instead, platforms like Slack offer critical functionalities:
- Creating dedicated channels for each major initiative.
- Using threads to keep conversations organized.
- Building sub-groups by area such as operations, commercial, or product teams.
- Including all relevant stakeholders without overwhelming everyone with noise.
At Platzi, for example, Slack serves as the main communication channel for hundreds of employees [03:12]. The ability to segment conversations prevents teams from getting buried under messages. This idea of assertive communication, where the right message reaches the right people at the right time, is foundational for any startup scaling quickly.
How should startups handle documentation and knowledge sharing?
Beyond day-to-day messaging, startups need a centralized place to store their mission, vision, project plans, and strategies. Isabela highlights that documentation [04:24] was something she and her teams learned to prioritize later in their careers, but it should be a starting point.
The tool she recommends for simplicity is Google Docs [05:02]. The key is writing documentation in simple vocabulary that anyone can understand, so new employees can onboard themselves without depending on someone else to explain everything. When a startup grows rapidly and hires new people constantly, having self-serve documentation becomes essential for maintaining speed.
What role does documentation play when working with investors?
Investing in a startup is a long-term relationship, not just a financial transaction [05:55]. Investors need ongoing communication, regular updates on traction and growth, and access to key metrics. Isabela describes this as a two-way street: founders ask investors for feedback, introductions, and support, while investors need data reports and dashboards to track performance.
Tools like Periscope Data and PowerBI [06:52] help startups share metrics with their VCs in a visual, standardized way. Aligning all co-investors on a single reporting format reduces friction and keeps everyone informed.
What are the best tools for communicating with investors?
When it comes to presenting a pitch deck or managing a data room, Isabela highlights DocSend [07:52] as a standout tool. DocSend lets founders track who is viewing the deck, how much time each investor spends on specific slides, and which sections generate the most interest. This gives founders a powerful signal: one investor might care deeply about market size, while another focuses on the team's experience.
Other tools she mentions for different purposes:
- Zoom for meetings, both internal and external with clients and investors [08:18].
- Notion for building playbooks and managing projects with standardized templates [08:35].
- Google Docs for quick, day-to-day calculations and adapting playbooks to operational needs [08:52].
- Slack as the backbone of all internal communication.
How should you choose which tool to use?
Isabela's guiding principle is simple: adapt to your main stakeholder [09:10]. If your investor prefers a specific platform, use it. If your client works with certain tools, meet them there. The goal is always to minimize effort for the most important person receiving your message. All modern tools are user-friendly enough that switching between them should not be a barrier.
She also stresses that while documents should be accessible to everyone, you should craft the message primarily for the main stakeholder [09:45]. Others on the team can still get context, but the communication should be optimized for the person who matters most in that specific situation.
Isabela's current project, Puras Dudas [10:18], is a platform that empowers women leaders through a podcast and monthly offline events, aiming to educate and inspire the next generation of leaders. Share in the comments which communication tools you use daily in your startup and whether any of these were new to you.
