Some roles are built around one clear function. Others grow naturally from being close to the business, close to the people, and close to the problems that need solving.
Over the past 10 months, Merilin has worked across several key areas at Bisly, including Growth, Partnerships, and now Business Operations. That journey has given her a broad view of how Bisly works across markets, partners, customers, projects, and internal teams.
In her new role as Vice President of Business Operations, Merilin will focus on the areas that connect many parts of the business: operations, project management, customer support, and growth. The goal is not to add process for the sake of process. It is to create more clarity, improve execution, and make sure that as Bisly grows, teams can work better together.
We sat down with Merilin to talk about growth, operations, customer experience, and what it takes to build structure in a fast-moving company without losing the energy that makes Bisly what it is.
You've worked across Growth, Partnerships, and now Business Operations during your first 10 months at Bisly. How has that journey shaped your view of the company?
Ten months, three areas, either I have commitment issues or Bisly just keeps handing me interesting problems. I'm going with the second one. Growth taught me how we operate and win deals in the Baltics, Germany and Poland. Partnerships taught me that half our success depends on people who don't work for us but with us. And Operations is where I found out what actually happens after someone says "yes" to Bisly. The big lesson: nothing here lives in a silo. Now my job is making sure all those moving parts move in the same direction. Wish me luck.
What has surprised you most about Bisly since joining?
That an Estonian company looked at an industry run by hundred-year-old giants and said "we can definitely do this better" and then, annoyingly and successfully keeps proving it. I expected ambition. I didn't expect people to casually jump across roles, pick up problems that aren't technically theirs, and solve them before anyone assigns an owner. It's chaos, but the productive and supportive kind.
Operations can sound like processes, structure, and rules. What does good operations actually mean to you?
I know that "VP of Business Operations" sounds like I'm here to invent forms for you to fill in and guidelines for the company to follow. I'm not. Good operations is invisible: projects hand over cleanly, customers get answers fast, and everyone knows who decides what without a two-hour meeting about it. If a process doesn't make execution faster or the customer happier, it gets removed or changed. Structure should be the reason a fast company stays fast. If you ever catch me adding process for the sake of process, you have my full permission to remind me of this interview. But I do love processes and thinking about how different tasks and teams are connected into one system. So go figure.
What is one thing you've learned from working with Bisly's partners and customers that you want to bring into the operations side?
Nobody has ever been impressed by a vision slide. Customers and partners judge us on the boring stuff: did we answer quickly, deliver on time, and own our mistakes. Reliability isn't a nice-to-have feature, it is the brand and how we are seen from all different endpoints outside of the organization. So, here's the thing I keep repeating: every internal process eventually shows up in the customer experience. Response times, handovers, support quality – that's not back office. That's the sales pitch we make every day after the contract is signed. And it's the one pitch we can't fake with good design. And we won't.
What is one operational challenge that fast-growing companies often underestimate?
The hero problem. Fast companies run on a few people who carry everything in their heads – and it works beautifully, right up until those people go on holiday. When knowledge lives in humans instead of systems, growth stalls for the dumbest possible reason: internal capacity. The fix isn't bureaucracy; it's making context and decisions scalable so the company can grow beyond individual heroics. The best compliment an operations leader can get is that things ran perfectly while they were offline. That's the standard I'm building toward for the whole company, myself included.
What is one thing you think Bisly should never lose as it grows?
The directness. Anyone can raise a problem, decisions get made without three committees and a steering group, and people care about the whole outcome, not just their corner of it. My entire job is to add clarity without adding heaviness. The day when following process matters more than customers or common sense, we've lost the plot and I'll consider it a personal failure. So no, I'm not here to make Bisly more corporate. I'm here to make sure it never has to be. Because at the end of the day, the thing that makes Bisly work isn't the structure or the strategy, it's this team. The best one I've been part of.
Before we wrapped up, we asked Merilin a few quick questions, the kind that show how someone thinks when everything is urgent, but only a few things actually matter:
- One thing you always try to simplify? Processes. If it takes a Figma diagram to explain who does what by when, we've already failed.
- City break or nature escape? City girl 100%, no contest there.
- Best sign that a team is working well? Nobody asks "whose job is this?"
- Slack message or quick call? Slack. Who even calls these days? If my phone rings, I assume something is on fire.
- Early bird or night owl? Both. Early mornings for deep work, late nights for ideas.
- Five tabs open or fifty tabs open? A hundred. And roughly the same amount in my head.
As Bisly continues to grow, Business Operations will play an important role in connecting teams, improving execution, and making sure the company can scale without losing focus.
With Merilin stepping into the role of Vice President of Operations, Bisly is strengthening the foundation behind its next stage of growth. Her experience across Growth, Partnerships, and now Business Operations gives her a clear view of both the opportunities ahead and the practical work needed to turn them into results.
Congratulations, Merilin. We are excited to see how this next chapter takes shape.
