Summit | Chris Preston (ZEREN) & Rishabh Kaul (Hoxton Ventures): Building AI-native leadership teams

0:00Chris Preston:This episode is brought to you with Luxembourg Venture Days, back on the 14th and 15th of October. It's where Europe's venture community comes together, private capital, corporates and high growth startups, all under one roof at Lux Expo, The Box. Last year, 3 ,400 attendees, more than 400 speakers and 330 plus investors actively scouting deals. We'll be there with the EUVC studio recording on site. If you're building, raising or deploying in your, this is your room. Head to venture-days.lu and do tell them that EUVC sent you.

0:36Rishabh Kaul:I feel like the reverse is happening today, where in some ways, if you bring a chief people officer, you want them to hang out with the 18 year olds to know what's happening, right? Like they need to know because.

0:47Chris Preston:And it is much less about what you've done in the past, because so often people are learning as they go on that topic. It is much more about how they're thinking, and to your point, how are they using AI in their personal lives? How are they thinking about technology in the future?

1:02Rishabh Kaul:The strongest signal is that you've actually been going and building stuff. Every general partner in a VC firm today sitting and using OpenClaw and building tools, they might not be the best tools, but you're at least aware of what the limitations are. What is it used for?

1:16Chris Preston:They have to really demonstrate the curiosity, the pace, the experimentation. It's almost personality traits are there to reinforce the functional skill and technical ability. We are live. We are live. In five. We are live. Four. We are live. Three. We are live. Two. We are live. One.

1:45Chris, you founded CERN Global.

1:48Chris Preston:You're one of our core partners when it comes to recruiting. We recommend you to everyone and anyone that we know. You've helped us a bunch. You've helped many of our closest a bunch. Rishabh, you've not only just invested in a ton of companies, You've also founded companies and one of them in this particular space of recruiting. So for that reason, that's why I thought this would be the panel. You're now with Hoxton as a venture partner. If I set the context the way I think about this space, three times a week, two times a week, I do some type of announcement episode with founders who have just raised every single time.

2:29I ask them, what's your key problem?

2:32Chris Preston:What's your key, most important message to get out? It's always hiring. But at the same time, I can also see that what they're saying is we're looking for very different talent than before. So I'd love to start there with a very open question of how have you seen AI change the demand in talent? If we start with you, Chris. I think it's a really good point. And AI usage and integration through product and technology is sort of table stakes, right? So everyone obviously needs that, and it's a very common ask. The big shift we've seen in, I'm going to say the last six months, is clients. And when I say clients, I mean founders, I mean CEOs, investors coming to us and saying, this new CFO or this new chief people officer has to be ideally experienced in how to integrate AI into their own organization or and this is more prevalent they have to really demonstrate the curiosity the pace the experimentation so it's it's almost personality traits are there to reinforce the functional skill and technical ability.

3:51Chris Preston:Are you seeing the same thing with Sharp? Is that also how you're seeing it develop with founders?

3:56Rishabh Kaul:Yeah, absolutely. It's very interesting where there are some companies that are getting so many applications, and then there are companies that are not getting any applications. And they're not getting any candidates when they talk to search firms. and it's really interesting that dichotomy, how it happens and things change, things can flip but you know just I think two or three things that we're seeing right people are a lot of them end up getting a lot of people talking to them but they're looking for the right fit so like the example that I sort of think of is when I started my company are co-founders, like all of us were fairly young.

4:46Rishabh Kaul:I was 24. My co-founder was 19 and he was our head of product. And in a software company, the head of product is probably the most important role, at least in a SaaS business of that era, right? And one of the things that we used to do was you were like, you know what, we had the choice to hire somebody much more experienced and we were like, that's going to disrupt the culture. Let's bring them on as advisors, right and that's a very common thing that you notice that you have these early state startups with 18 19 year olds and you bring an adult in the room i feel like the reverse is happening today where in some ways if you bring a chief people officer you want them to hang out with the 18 year olds to know what's happening right like they need to know because how can you talk about ai if the last 20 years you worked in a company where either ai was not happening and even if it was you're so distanced from it and everything you know is from an hbr article which probably is not at the forefront of ai anyways it's probably a couple of blogs um and so i feel like that's the kind of discussion that we end up having especially around leadership how do you expose them because there are certain skills that they bring um but how do you expose them to what's happening so that you're aware and there's a bunch of other things which i'm sure we'll cover we just to add to that

6:01Chris Preston:We have a client who hires fantastic people, really, really top draw people. And as part of their final interview process, whatever the function is, they ask the individual to write essentially a debate document. And they have a two-hour session with key stakeholders in person to debate the future of AI integration into their given function or given department. and it is much less about what you've done in the past because so often people are learning as they go on that topic. It is much more about how they're thinking and to your point, how are they using AI in their personal lives? How are they thinking about technology in the future?

6:44Chris Preston:And that's framed as a debate. And if there are no fresh lines of thinking or anything approaching original ideas, then they're just out of the process. Is that how you see, like that's an example of a way to run a process that uncovers whether people are truly AI native? Is that how you see the best founders now searching for talent, testing talent? And do they truly rank stack the capabilities of this applicant? And I had this discussion with David earlier today, literally about hires we're about to make, saying, because to add to it, the fact of the matter is you're probably not going to find a CFO with 20 years of experience and AI excitement and curiosity.

7:35Chris Preston:I'm trying to find one at the moment and it's really difficult.

7:39Rishabh Kaul:I mean, the truth is that typically some of these learnings are slower, right? Like we'd like to think that people are thinking that way. I don't think they do. They start thinking that way when there's some sort of a fire. People say that necessity is the mother of invention, right? And you see that. So for example, let's say your CFO just quit. Why? Because they can't do 996 or whatever. I mean, I don't know. There can be hundreds of reasons, right? It didn't work out, culture, whatever, performance, anything. Now you're like, I need to hire. I feel like you're more likely to try out something new at that point, saying that, you know what, let's think about either promoting somebody from within and they're showing all these traits, oh, and they're also AI native, versus going to a search firm and asking them for advice.

8:35Rishabh Kaul:You have to be a very brave search executive to be able to go tell a company, like, you know what, change the entire playbook. It's hard, right? How do you go about that?

8:47Chris Preston:Respond to it, Chris. I think it's right. Are you brave? No. Not at all, but it depends on the client and it depends on the relationship and so on. So I think it can be done, but carefully. Tell me. Because there are real consequences to getting that wrong. What do you do as an investor? Because this is what I'm talking to a lot of investors on the podcast about is saying, we all say that the most important trait of investors is the pattern matching trait. and you see the very best companies, and I've had many on the podcast saying the very best companies are on the cutting edge with applying AI, and they see them taking off.

9:31Chris Preston:Those that have those characteristics, even if they're not building in an AI-native mode or a product necessarily, they're saying that they see that cohort taking off completely compared to the rest of their portfolio, and for that reason, they're trying to bring them together as often as they can so that it ideally can rub off on the other founders that haven't yet taken up that AI adoption level. So how do you advise founders when it comes to this?

10:02Rishabh Kaul:I mean, we look within the portfolio. Typically, the companies which are earlier on in their journey, pre-seed, seed are willing to take on more risks. Also, depending upon sort of the maturity and the age of the founders, it can vary. And then you see some examples there, and then you share it among the portfolio and say, is this right? In some cases, you maybe don't need somebody, like there might be certain roles where you're like, you know what, I want somebody who understands what this technology can do and its limitations so that they can go empower their team, right? And you can do that in different ways, right?

10:39Rishabh Kaul:The strongest signal is that you've actually been going and building stuff. Like every general partner in a VC firm today sitting and using OpenClaw and building tools, right? They might not be the best tools, but you're at least aware of what the limitations are. What is it used for, right? The other way is, you know, at the leadership level, some of these people have started advising startups, and they're starting to see what is possible. Many of them constantly get pitched by other companies, so they're able to see. I think that ends up sort of being something that's important. because there are certain roles where you just need somebody with that experience.

11:15Rishabh Kaul:Like if I was a fintech and I need to hire somebody who has deep relationships on the regulation side, I mean, sure, like AI native would be great, but like I just want somebody who knows the FCA guys, who knows, you know, the SEC folks. Like, I mean, I'm not going to try to find an AI native guy just because, but are they on top of the regulations? Do they understand what's happening with stable coins? like you know so so tech can take different ways there because I want to

11:42Chris Preston:ask you and we're coming up on the end here I want to ask you if you should advise people that are recruiting now one core thing that they should change and how they used to think about hiring what would that be I think from a practical perspective we're seeing a lot more usage of contract interim experts for roles that are still poorly defined. So get someone in that can help shape the role, help shape the need for six weeks or six months, rather than as a very early stage company or a business going through some sort of tech or AI transformation, trying to hire as you're iterating through that bigger wholesale change.

12:27Chris Preston:So I think using resource, human resource differently, is something that earlier stage businesses are starting to do a lot more of, whereas in the past, it was more the preserve of later stage businesses. Rajab, I want to ask you, if there's one thing you would say that founders should stop doing when it comes to hiring,

12:48Rishabh Kaul:what would that be? A lot of founders don't just focus on the strengths. You know, it's about the spikes, right? Maybe my view is more early stage, but like it's all about the spikes. Don't bother about the downsides. There are some serious downsides, like you can imagine what some of those are, but like most cases, nobody's perfect. People have certain spikes, focus on those spikes. And that's one of the challenges with reference checks, right? You do enough reference checks, you will find something. If a person has been in the industry for long enough, there are going to be skeletons, right?

13:21Rishabh Kaul:You should just focus on the part that they're good at. How good are they? Are they amongst the top? And that might very well mean that they're the right person for the next couple of years. And after a couple of years, they might not be the right person, right? Now you can choose to have that conversation with that person, or you can make a mental note of it, but like enough founders spend time trying to find that perfect fit. Oh, they've also done this, and they haven't done that. Like you can't find such a person. And if such a person were to exist, they're not going to join you. They want to start up themselves, right?

13:49Rishabh Kaul:Like, I mean, so I think focusing on the spikes and not paying too much attention on the downsides would be my feedback.

13:58Chris Preston:I don't know how much smarter we managed to make the room. I think it's very telling for the moment we're in. Everything's changing. Everything is moving really, really fast when it comes to AI. I want to thank both of you for the important work you're doing and for joining me here on stage.