Last week, almost all of the Light team gathered in the beautiful hills of Piedmont, Italy, for our company-wide hang – the Starsite. That's 70 people (Lighters? Lighties? We're still working on it). We have nearly doubled in size since the last one in September, which tells you something about the year we are having.

The format stays the same: get everyone together, talk honestly about where we are, and work through what comes next as one team. The venue, it turns out, is also part of the formula. A restored village in Piedmont, stone buildings, terraced gardens, long dinners. The kind of place that raises the bar for the quality of conversation.

What we covered

The week mixed structured sessions with open conversation. A few highlights:

• Q1 retrospective. A full cross-functional look at the quarter, honest about both the momentum and the gaps. Every team presented, and nothing was smoothed over.
  
  

• Q2 roadmap and growth strategy. Where the product is heading for the rest of the year and beyond, including the markets we are focusing on and the bets we are making to get there.
  
  

• AI on the Light platform (and everywhere else). A preview of the AI infrastructure we are building, including agents that will change how finance teams work day to day. Plus, how we can incorporate AI into our regular day-to-day work internally.
  
  

• How we make technical decisions as the team scales. The biases that creep in, the processes that catch them, and the culture that makes honest feedback safe to give.
  
  

• A conversation on the market opportunity. We were joined by two board members: David Clarke, former CTO of Workday, and Dave Kellogg, Entrepreneur in Residence at Balderton. They helped us pressure-test our thinking on the scale of the opportunity and sharpen our focus on the markets where we have the clearest right to win.
  
  

Why we do this

Light's values are Simplicity, Speed, and Transparency. Starsite is where all three show up at once.

We believe people do better work when they understand the full picture. Sharing context openly, including the difficult parts, is something we take seriously. Starsite is also a reminder that the best thinking tends to happen in person, when the conversation can go somewhere unexpected – and you can collectively celebrate the wins we're having.

Join us on the next one?

We do this twice a year, and that will not change. The event gets more complex to run as we scale, but the value it creates more than justifies it. It is one of the clearest expressions of the company we are trying to build.

If this sounds like the kind of place you want to work, we are growing across engineering, sales, customer success, and operations. You can find our open roles at light.inc/careers.