Watching RIVA Solutions during 2023 as they graduated from an 8(a) small business, were named an Elev8 GovCon Honoree – again, scored a number of wins across NIH and the Department of Commerce, continued a tradition of outstanding events, and evolved its growing and thriving team, we caught up with CEO and Founder Naveen Krishnamurthy; Jennifer Bonner, Senior Vice President, Client Delivery; and Alex Love, Vice President of Marketing and Communications to ask the questions on everyone’s minds.
Growth from a Small to Large Business
Understanding the challenges and rate of failure business face graduating from 8(a) to the full and open market, RIVA began making deliberate and strategic investments years in advance to ensure a successful program exit. As a result of thoughtful pre-planning, RIVA successfully shifted the company’s focus from small business-oriented work to large scale, strategic digital transformation, and modernization contracts. “Instead of inorganic growth through acquisition or accepting PE funding, we joke that we did it the hard way, by putting great minds together to figure out how to do it on our own and executing against our plan.”
Noting that the RIVA of today is not the RIVA of even last year, things like transparent communication, employee empowerment, and making hiring investments in the right talent are key to RIVA’s growth and success. Not only has this created opportunity for organic growth with key customers it has also created upward mobility and opportunities for employees to develop critical management and leadership skills. “We have tried to be thoughtful about learning from others, looking at what worked and what didn’t and adding our own spin to it. As we grow, we’re always looking for ways to pay it forward. We openly share our lessons learned with up-and-coming companies; we want our community to thrive and learn from our missteps just as those before us helped forge our path.”
Operating as a Large
Part of RIVA’s approach to maturity has been operating with a large business mindset well before graduation. This includes investing in technical solutions and systems while maintaining the agility and culture of a small. RIVA set a clear vision to become more IT centric and focus on winning strategic digital transformation work, including low-code no-code and application development years ago. “We created the RIVA Optimal Outcomes approach to drive outcome, not output, based results that really create value at every stage of delivery. We are driven by our customer missions and can advance their goals in in very deliberate and tangible ways. This shift in approach has allowed RIVA to become thought leaders supporting larger and longer-term goals for our clients. We’re seeing multiple customers reach out seeking our input, asking if we’re bidding on a particular opportunity, which indicates our strategy is working.”
Culture is not a Checklist
Known for their work hard, play hard culture, one of the top questions the RIVA leadership team receives from industry is, how did you build your culture? “Culture is not a checklist,” says CEO Naveen Krishnamurthy, “Culture is a living entity that needs to be maintained and constantly re-evaluated.”
Since day one, RIVA has worked to build and maintain an authentic, people-first environment where employees are celebrated, and innovative thinking is rewarded. Their intentional focus on culture and employee engagement made the transition to remote work easy and the decision to stay remote post-COVID a no brainer. RIVA says it is now more dispersed than ever with team members located in over 30 States. This requires deliberate and an intentional focus on relationship and community building which is the backbone of RIVA’s strong culture. They have replaced informal office-based interactions with Slack engagement. Employees actively engage in weekly raffles, trivia, and have access to several interest-based channels including RIVA favorite, Fur Babies.
Balancing Virtual and In-Person Relationships
Thriving in the virtual world, RIVA understands there are still many benefits to face-to-face relationships and interactions. Last year, RIVA launched a new program, RIVA IRL (In Real Life) a bi-annual effort to bring employees together at their McLean, VA HQ for a few days of professional development programming, team building activities, and of course connecting in real life.
IRL coupled with RIVA on the Road, a coordinated effort to get the RIVA team out and about, meeting customers and non-DMV based employees at events across the country makes it difficult to attend an industry event without running into a RIVA employee. “We engage our project managers and on the ground employees in our growth efforts, so they understand what it means to build repour and trusted connections with customers. GovCon is an industry built on relationships, we work hard every day to build, maintain, and strengthen our community relationships which continues to provide fuel for our growth engine.”
Investing in Employees
Noting that all companies seek bottom-line improvements, RIVA leadership says business fundamentals always remain a priority. “From a budget perspective there may be the question regarding the cost of hosting events and investing in employee development programs, but you also must consider the cost of not doing it. By focusing on this softer side of the business and making strategic investments in our people, we’ve built a reputation and an attractive culture which has helped us recruit and retain great talent.”
RIVA leadership knows everyone’s career is a journey, no matter how long an employee stays with the company, RIVA strives to be a place where employees make friends, have a great experience, make an impact, and grow personally and professionally. To maintain their culture, RIVA recruits individuals who are hungry and humble, ensuring potential employees have not only the skills to do the job but operate with a growth mindset. “You can teach a lot of things, but you cannot teach someone to care or to move the needle and make an impact. These desires and traits are inherent and are critical to a successful RIVA hire. Rock stars don’t do well here. We recruit those who lead and work with empathy, who favor collaboration, and always celebrate achievements of those around them.”
To Continued Success in 2024
Taking care of its people and ensuring a positive, inclusive culture remains the focus for RIVA in the mid-size market. RIVA’s mascot, the alpaca, perfectly embodies their approach to culture and values. “We travel in herds. We are creative and collaborative which shines through with our customer and partner relationships. We stand by our community and owe our continued to success to so many friends, past and current employees, and industry partners who have helped pave the way these past 14 years. We look forward to our bright future and cannot wait to see what 2024 has in store.”
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