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Turpentine VC - Episode E71: How to Scale Talent | Andy Price, Artisanal Ventures
Episode Overview In this episode of Turpentine VC, host Erik Torenberg welcomes Andy Price, a veteran executive recruiter and venture capitalist, for an insightful discussion on the intricacies of hiring, retaining, and developing top talent within organizations. Price shares his experiences from working with leading companies, including Snowflake and DocuSign, offering valuable insights into executive recruitment processes and the importance of creating a conducive environment for talent to thrive.
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Key Themes and Highlights
- Success Rates in Executive Hiring
- Reality of Hiring Success: Even top firms like DoorDash see success rates of only two-thirds in executive hiring. Many firms report success rates closer to one-third.
- Complexity of Human Dynamics: The complexity of both candidates and organizations contributes to hiring difficulties - understanding organizational needs and dynamics is critical.
- Mitigating Hiring Failures
- Understanding Organizational Warts: Recruiters must dive deep into understanding not only the strengths of a company but also its weaknesses to avoid mismatches.
- Importance of Back-Channel References: Engaging in thorough back-channel referencing is crucial but must be approached cautiously to respect candidate privacy.
- Successful Executive Transitions
- Seamless Transitions: Successful companies ensure continuity during executive transitions, understanding that a well-orchestrated change can significantly impact overall performance.
- Advisory Networks: Investing in advisory networks and strong board members can help up-and-coming executives scale effectively.
- Recruitment and Career Management
- Top Executives and Job Hunting: The best executives seldom actively job hunt; instead, they cultivate relationships with select recruiters and stay informed about industry trends.
- Career Trajectories: A history of multiple one-year tenures can indicate a lack of commitment or poor judgment; executives should focus on longer stints (3-6 years) in successful companies.
- The Role of Founders and Boards
- Involvement in Hiring Processes: Founders should be closely involved in hiring processes, ensuring that existing executives are integrated into discussions about new hires.
- Cultivating a Healthy Company Culture: Building a collaborative culture where existing executives feel valued is essential to reducing turnover and retaining talent.
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Key Takeaways
- Understanding Needs: Recruiters and founders must have a thorough understanding of their organizational needs and culture to successfully match candidates.
- Deep References: The quality of references is more important than quantity; meaningful conversations with a small number of credible references provide better insight than a larger number of vague references.
- Executive Development: Organizations should invest in the growth of their existing talent through training and mentorship, creating pathways for development rather than solely focusing on high-profile new hires.
- Authenticity in Recruitment: Maintaining authenticity and open communication throughout the hiring process enhances trust and improves outcomes for both candidates and organizations.
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Recommendations and Resources
- Invest in Advisory Networks: Organizations should prioritize establishing strong advisory networks that provide mentorship and support to new executives.
- Building Trust: Foster trust and transparency in the hiring process to ensure that candidates feel comfortable discussing both their strengths and areas for improvement.
Episode Links
- [Artisanal Ventures Website](https://artisanalv.com/)
- [HR Heretics Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hr-heretics-how-cpos-chros-founders-and-boards-build/id1712407491)
- [GiveWell](https://www.givewell.org)
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This episode provides a comprehensive view of the complexities involved in executive hiring and the importance of nurturing talent within organizations, making it a must-listen for founders, investors, and HR professionals alike.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:06Welcome back to Turpentine VC, the podcast where we discuss the art and science of building successful venture firms, VC to VC. Today, we're airing an episode of HR Heretics, another podcast from Turpentine that every investor should hear. Andy Price, who brings the dual perspective of both VC and elite executive recruiter, shares insights from his work with companies like Snowflake, Confluent, and Amplitude. What makes this episode particularly valuable is Andy's candid breakdown of how great companies handle executive transitions, why seemingly perfect hires fail, and the often overlooked dynamics between boards, founders, and executive recruiters.
0:42His insights on the true cost of getting these decisions wrong and how to get them right are especially relevant for anyone guiding portfolio companies through critical growth phases. Now here's HR Heretics with Andy Price. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of HR Heretics. Today, we have Andy Price on the show. Andy, you're a VC and And you're also one of the best exec recruiters in the world. You've worked with huge winners along the way, including Snowflake, Confluent, MuleSoft, and Amplitude, just to name a few of those. We're stoked for this conversation. Welcome to the show, man.
1:20Thank you so much. So honored to be here. Thank you. All right. So I'm a fanboy, and I'm really excited to get into the nitty gritty of executive recruiting, especially from you. So I want to start with some of my learnings at DoorDash. I worked really closely with Tony and he always said the Michael Jordan of exec recruiting gets it right two out of three times. Why is the hit rate for execs so low? By the way, for him, it might be two thirds because he's one of the best founders ever. I think that guy is a superstar and a great human and is really committed to building an A plus team. And he's thoughtful, very thoughtful about hiring, as you know.
1:57So I would say two thirds in the world of Tony is one thing. The reality is like most often, I mean, I had a partner with one of the best venture firms in history. I want to talk to, probably guess which one it is, say to me, we get hiring right one third of the time. So I think that the reason for that is very simple. It's like, if you look at humans and then you look at companies, you have complex organisms, right? Every human is a complex collection of molecules sort of strung together, right? And the same thing is true of companies. Although what you do is you look at companies, are far more complex than any individual human being.
2:32So if you thought about this as a parallel to like genomics, for example, right? And you're going, okay, can we understand genomics and then figure out like how to build drugs that fit this person's specific genomic profile, thereby increasing efficacy, then you say, okay, that's a huge win in healthcare. So by parallel to making hiring go to more like three out of three, as opposed to one out of three, although Tony is again being generous at two thirds, you know, you really would have a tough time. The reality is, is that there's so many variables that throw off because you could have a great candidate, right?
3:05And a great company. And yet those two just don't make it because of variables you cannot possibly see. And in my mind, the mitigation factors are really understanding who you are as an organization, what you need in the standard BS, like, oh, we're this culture and this person has to be a culture fit. Do you think your culture's wrong or it's immature or it's like incomplete or it's a collection of subcultures and it needs to evolve here and the exec's supposed to take you there. But the resistance to that, you know, impact that these people are here to make, right? There's no exec that's hired that's not there to improve something, right?
3:41Or change something. So by definition, everyone's into change management without even really even being able to articulate that. So I feel like mitigating these blow-ups is all about being really pragmatic as opposed to quote unquote aspirational about whether or not the person coming in your company or the company you're joining, if you're the candidate, you know, we're going to be this perfect harmonious situation. You have to strap in for some vibrations and wildness and chaos and ambiguity in order to be pragmatic about, okay, they're not perfect and neither are we. Let's try to figure out how we mesh together and give this person a chance to succeed.
4:18Does that make sense? And the fact that the industry is so immature still around organization development, HR, processes, onboarding, stuff like that, those are all factors in why you have what I call tissue rejection. So I want to know what you do to try and mitigate that. So walk us through. You close a client. Now we're about to kick off a search together. What is your process to try and mitigate that outcome? Yeah, so just quick detail. I run our fund. I do not even run our search firm. So all I do is I help with every search that's meaningful, effective, you know, mostly the ones that our fund is involved with.
4:55But, you know, if you're a high profile company and you're backed by one of our strategic partners, I will give you more of my time than normal. Yeah. So so say artisanal kicks off a search. What is the artisanal process to mitigate a bad executive outcome? Good question. I think the best way to mitigate a bad outcome is you actually have to soak with a company. So when we designed our search firm, it was always with the view that if you had more time to dedicate to an existing company, then you would actually understand what's really going on. What happens in most exec searches, I'm going to get on a call because the VC said, call Recruiter X, Y, or Z.
5:29And there's some really great ones out there. The great ones that I know that are competitors to our search firm, Artisanal, have the exact same thing in common with Artisanal, which is like, okay, let's do not just one flyby meeting. Okay, I need this. Okay, great. We'll go find that person for us. Send us a contract. We'll go find some people for you. That's like a simplistic way of going. And it's a reckless approach. The better thing to do is go, okay, what are you doing? Tell me everything's wrong with you. Tell me all your warts, all your problems, all the things that are not working. Don't tell me how awesome your company is.
6:00Tell me where it's going to go wrong. So the more we understand that, the more A, we can say, okay, the candidate's smart. If they're good, they're smart. They're going to figure this out on their own. Let's mitigate the concerns ahead of time so we can actually close them. Once they've been closed, how they are successful is they understand the work ahead of them. That means pulling out of the company. What is up with your company? What are your hopes? Yes. And where are your points of failure? So if you really holistically understand the company and then you go after the candidate, so that's the company side.
6:28You have to soak with these companies and understand what is really going on there. And the founders have to be super transparent and build some trust with the recruiters and say, look, I'm not perfect. Because any good recruiter will be like, we know there's something wrong. He's not telling us. That's where the magic is. And then on the candidate side, I'm going to tell you what I always tell founders, like interviewing, most often you're likely to screw it up, add the wrong people. They've got an agenda. They don't want to get top. The finance person doesn't like salespeople. Some issue is going to happen inside your process that's probably going to be problematic.
7:00Process is overrated. Hiring process. This is the one magic thing you have to nail every single time. How do you back channel the hell out of somebody with people you trust in a contextually accurate way? Meaning don't just back channel and talk to the person that worked for them 85 years ago, like that maybe knew them when they were 25. It's just an irrelevant reference. If you go after the people that you know, you might have some connectivity to, you get the real book on this person. What is wrong? The more you know about what's wrong with people, the more you'll be able to understand what your tolerances are for the realities of their human self.
7:34Right. And that's the important piece is how safely, because you can't just go back channel people. A lot of these people are gainfully employed. The best ones usually are. You can't just back channel these people without taking some risk. And it's bad form, but you have to do that work. So the referencing is where the rubber meets the road, where the client understands, okay, I'm going to get some questionable back channels on these people. Are they character related? They got fired for cause. They drink too much, use drugs, whatever they do. They are inappropriate with people of opposite gender, whatever.
8:06Any of those character things, you got to walk or run away from that person. But at the end of the day, if you go, okay, this person doesn't understand demand gen as deeply as they should, but they're amazing at product marketing and general management of a marketing function. Can we live with this inadequacy of this skill gap is an easy one? The referencing piece is the number one factor. Andy, Back Channels was on my list for you because we've talked about it. a few times on this show over the past year or so. And I had to hear it from you, kind of what your fundamental beliefs and philosophies are around back channeling, the do's and don'ts.
8:41How do you engage in that process versus the company? Because I've hired CXOs for a while now, and it can be a nutty feeding frenzy. Everyone's freaking throwing snowballs and doing back channels. And all of a sudden, it's a big mess. How does that work for you? What do you do around that specific? Well, I mean, anybody who's experienced enough, I mean, this is the interesting thing. It's like, if you ask me if I was not involved in recruiting and I didn't have a recruiting company, I would say objectively this, there are 28 year olds in the industry that are more interesting and smarter and harder working than anybody at my level and all over the place, all over the industry.
9:21And they should be used to hire the kind of the up and coming, lower risk, lower visibility people. But when you go after a C-level hire for a company that aspires to be a$10 or$20 billion,$50 billion market value public company, you are trying to de-risk that asset. I know people don't go, oh, hiring is about de-risking, but that's just naive. You hire people to de-risk the long-term viability of your asset, period. I'm sorry, but that's what I believe after 30 years of doing this. And so doing that means that you need to have recruiters that actually understand who the target is. So a lot of times the VCs or whoever will refer recruiters.
9:57And sometimes even we get calls we're completely unqualified for. Sorry, guys, call this person. There was a semiconductor call the other day and said, hey, call this guy at Special Stories, the semiconductor guy. So you should only use recruiters that have native familiarity with the candidate you're hunting, meaning they should be specialized. They should be a go-to-market person or engineering product person or finance and HR recruiter or CEO recruiter, whatever they are. They should be specialists and natively understand the people you're chasing. And then in terms of orchestrating that back channel, this person that is senior enough to say, to have the trusted relationship with the person that was at Coupa or Snowflake or whoever these outsized outcomes were, you always want to try to aim at people that were with some meaningful company.
10:38You know, you're looking for operators with some serious experience behind them. You should be able to get to hold that person. And this is what you do. You just call them and you say, Hey, I'm doing this. Do you have any ideas? First of all, I'll see if they offer up your candidate. That's easy. And then if they don't offer up your candidate, you go, hey, you know, I'm just kind of curious about this person. You don't tell them I'm looking for a, you know, president of a billion dollar privately held company. You don't name X. You just go, hey, I've just heard some things about this person. I'd love to get your take.
11:06You're very vague about why. If you have a good relationship with that person, they'll offer it up. If you don't have a good relationship with that person, you shouldn't have called them. But being sloppy with back channels or just not doing them is worse than taking a little bit of a calculator risk. You just ask them about the person. But I don't recommend adding the additional context about what specific company it is and what specific role. You're just checking to say, what's your opinion of someone? Does that make sense? And then from there, you're digging into specific questions. But you just don't want to reveal who the client is because you've got to assume these people are like in a high school locker room and they can't wait to tell somebody that they got a call about so-and-so and about this topic.
11:43I mean, people chatter. It's really kind of ridiculous and immature, but that's systemic in tech. Wow. So that's really interesting. What I'm hearing you say is the recruiter is actually doing the back channel. Are there times when you think the CEO should be doing the back channel? Yes, but tightly orchestrated. And this is the key thing. I mean, very few founders are really well connected to the executive network, right? So like, what's the likelihood that they were a C-level person at some A-plus company? It's usually like these younger people that come up, pop out of an interesting company and they're 28-year-old and they're trying to start a company or whatever, they won't have that connective tissue to safely back channel somebody who's gainfully employed.
12:20So what happens is a recruiter does it first. It says, listen, I'm not going to tell you what this person said. I just teed it up. Now we're in safe mode. This conversation has already happened. Hey, there might be a founder. You think you're willing to spend some time with this founder extremely confidentially. If that person trusts you and you trust that, clear. If there's a lack of trust, be careful. I would just get the candidate to point that's the last thing i'll say unless you guys have more questions then wait until the person's somewhat in the tractor beam right they're getting pulled towards the death star and i can't resist the metaphor sorry that person's the tractor beam you know they're committed to the company that's when you're more in the safe zone you have to say the person hey listen i'm going to check you out you good with that like if people are worried about being checked out it's a pretty big flag the best people get call anybody you want i'm fine i'm committed i'm really excited about this company.
13:08You still want to have some decorum, still want to have some hygiene is what I would call it. Back channeling hygiene. We're not just flying around, but you absolutely are correct to bring up the fact that the founders should do the back channel. You might just have to do the same one you're doing at a certain phase in the process in the tractor beam. Does that make sense? Is there a magic number, Andy? We were like, that is way too fricking many. Stop. Or does it depend? People always go, I got to do 20. That's just hyperbolic BS. Nobody does 20. You don't need 20. You need really like five to seven ones that count.
13:40Even three really count. I knew this person. I worked with him for years, hired them several times, fired them. You know, there's some like deep familiarity. You can get deep color. It's really about how much color you get as opposed to volume of people. It's depth of conversation, depth of context, as opposed to breadth of people, that number. Yep. I have one more. On this. In doing this, in my experience, well, Andy, the thing that I've seen, you guys said two thirds and one third, I usually say it works out 50 % of the time, just because my brain works simply. And usually the reason for it not working out, in my experience, isn't the person's technical or functional skill set or whatever.
14:21It's the personality fit. It's the vision fit. It's the dynamics once you get in there and you really are living with someone and you figure out you can't live with this person. And then I've gotten, right, well, let's get rid of them. 60 days, call the search firm. They didn't do a good job. They're not fit. How have you handled that? Because that's something that's where it gets really messy. I mean, look, recruiters are the most overpaid people in the world. Back in the 90s, it was like mortgage brokers and recruiters. They were the same. And now it's like a recruiter let's be honest so the reality is is that the recruiters have to get plant the right person and then be in constant contact with them you should be talking to your candidates that you hired once a month once a quarter and you're going to detect what's going on and the early vibrations if you're doing the real work actually happens after the hire i mean the hire is not that complicated people over complicate it all the time your real work is making sure that organism that you just planted in this other organism doesn't have tissue rejection or organ rejection And so I think what you have to do is detect early issues.
15:26Did we overhire? What's happening here? Hey, we call our candidates all the time and say, listen, you should probably, we recommend you worry about sales ops, for example, to hire a CRO. Hey, we're hearing a little bit of chatter about gaps. And some of the gaps have to do with just, you know, data and analysis and coverage and the financial side of this. We highly recommend you hire an ops person to mitigate that. You have to have trust with your candidate that they don't freak out because you've got, you give them some free advice. And it's really just a heads up. So you can mitigate a lot of blowout risk by doing that.
15:55And also being a person that the founder or the VCs or both trust enough that you say, look, it's the founder's problem or it's a market product. We have these early stage companies all the time. They have no marketing, no product market fit. You know, there's not a there there. And so these sales execs are flopping around trying to find some traction, some repeatability. And in those early days, it's such a risky, chaotic thing that you really have to make sure that everybody's heads are screwed on properly, even before you start a search. A lot of times we look at these searches where you're like, you don't even need to do a search.
16:29You should definitely not pay any money to hire anybody, yet you are too early. Founders really need to lead sales, for example, and seed to A. You should never hire a VP of sales before an A, before some meaningful product market or traction. It doesn't have to be PMF per se, but repeatable traction. And so people, when they either overhire or hire too early, that's where we see a lot of volatility. And mitigating those things is either not doing a search in the first place and convincing the client, the founder to wait until they're ready, or having sanity checks early and often about what is appropriate at this particular stage of a company.
17:02You know, there's not a lot of Chris Degmans out there that can go from zero revenue making cold calls. I think he made a thousand a week or something like that in the beginning of Snowflake, all the way to$3 billion public company. There are about maybe five of those in history. That's not normal. That's not normal. Hey, we'll continue our interview in a moment after a word from our sponsors. Love the fact that the work starts after the hire is made. I can't tell you how many execs don't have an onboarding plan. It's just kind of like, right. And I've always been very close to the exec recruiter and the hire, right?
17:38That chief people officer of that company, it's almost like a triad, a trusting triad between the exec recruiter, the CPO, and the new officer on like, we are here to hug you, make us accessible, good, bad, or ugly. And that doesn't happen a lot. Be surprised. It doesn't happen. I don't think I've ever seen it. And I love the idea of the exec recruiter post hire, giving asymmetry to the new hire, like, hey, you need to cover this blind spot because that's like everyone's incentives are aligned right because if that person turns out then you're doing the search again they don't want to get fired the company doesn't want it to to fuck up i love like that as a practice and i don't think i've ever actually seen anyone do that which brings me to how should companies vet search firms that's a tough one man um you know the candidate i'm trying to hunt period how natively do you know this world when And this is why I left my last company.
18:34It was a solid company. It just wasn't completely focused on specializing. And I learned from a competitor that specializing was the only way forward. This is eight or so years ago. And I felt like if you're going to survive and actually thrive, you have to be deeply specialized. And so I looked at other companies that were really doing well and really kind of owned that. We will not have any generalists in our search firm. And so I think that, you know, looking at a wide sample, like saying, okay, have they done relevant searches in our space fairly recently? And then when the search firm comes to the table, they should be coming in their first meeting with ideas for the founder to consider, period.
19:12Like, I did my homework on the thing. I looked at your website. I looked at your competitors. Here's my observations. And here are some ideas. It might be terrible, but it's early A-B testing. And the founder should be sitting there being like, does this person kind of come prepared? Like, that's a good sign, you know? And there are people, like I said, these 28-year-olds that will come. There's one guy in a competitor of ours is a 28-year-old CEO recruiter. And this guy's amazing and really impressed me. I mean, I just got to know him. And I have a lot of competitors that I really deeply respect and learn from, even if they're younger.
19:41And this guy has a down on prepping and coming to meetings, ready to think about, okay, what could make sense for this kind of company? Like I said, even if they're wrong, it shows they care about prep work. They studied your company. They thought about it. They didn't even smell it in. So people should look out for sloppiness. They should look out for search firms that have no A-plus clientele. What happens is a lot of times people go, oh, just call so-and-so because you can get a search done more cheaply. There are search firms out there that will give away the service. And you go, okay, well, let's look at their clientele.
20:13It's a bunch of F-minus companies. So if you're a candidate and you're well-placed, which is where all, like I said, the best people are 90 % currently employed. And that's the bane of the recruiter's existence. You're carving people out of situations. They don't need to take your call. You got to give them a good reason. A good reason is having an A-plus clientele and really saying, this is what we stand for. We don't take companies that are turnaround, shrinking, this, that. And there are a handful of recruiters out there that figured this out a while ago, and they're snotty as hell. And I think what you need to do if you're a quality company aspiring to hire quality people is have, A, native familiar to the animal this company needs to hunt, whatever stage, whatever category it is.
20:52and then B, some cachet, some kind of marketing punch. So the candidates look at that and they go, you know, I've got 10 calls this day. I'm taking these two. These two firms called me and I looked at their website. I looked at the way they approached me. This is a group that's highly professional. What happens, like I said, is there's this fee erosion in the industry. Certain firms are sold out. I won't name them. Certain firms are sucking wind and getting caught in half in a year. This has been a tough economy for 90 % of the industry. So they're willing to take deals and then do 30 of them at a time for under 100K per.
21:25And some of these founders go, oh, yeah, I can get a search for 60K from a C-minus search firm. And then a year later, they wonder why they got a C-minus candidate. Okay, well, you get what you pay for. And I'm not saying to promote artisanal. There is another firm that's more highly priced than artisanal that I won't name just because I actually don't know if the founder who's a friend of mine would want to be named, but they go really high end and they do very small amounts of projects and they're extremely bespoke and they have a great clientele. We really love and respect those guys, even though they're arch rivals.
21:56And we think that's the correct way to do things. Be selective with your clientele. So a lot of the founders just aren't equipped to ask the search firms these questions because the VCs are kind of like, yeah, yeah, talk to these five firms. And the founder goes, okay, whoever sends me the lowest price contract is the service provider. That's a really naive way to think about it. Yeah, I've worked with a lot of search firms, Andy, over the past 15 years or so. And I'd love for you to like break this myth I have in my head and I'm just going to be vulnerable here. Like the name droppers, I can't handle.
22:24Like, is that a thing? Because I've never actually asked the person, but I've gotten on these calls or like, yeah, yeah, I've been around. I know this person. They're a friend. We'll give them a call. Yeah, I know this person. I mean, it's like the name dropper. And it was just like, am I at a used card lot? Like what's going on here? And I've had founders be like, they know everyone. This is great. I'm like, no, this is not great. This is weird. And it feels off and you're one of them. And I'd love to know if that's a thing or not, if I'm making this up in my head, because I'm personally annoyed this is happening.
22:55No, I mean, look, people should infer based on who your clientele is that you know, interesting people and other people should do your selling for you. If you have earned the right as a recruiter to be in interesting companies, having interesting clientele, it's because you work for other interesting clientele and the companies did really well and your hires did really well. Now you've earned the right to work for A plus companies. If you have not, your portfolio of clients, your logo page, whatever you want to call it, tombstones, it's going to be pretty obvious who knows who, and you shouldn't have to even tell anybody.
23:29They should be going to you going, oh my God, you were with these companies. And even then the best recruiters are usually going to say, yes, thank you. I did what I believe was good work, but the founder was amazing. And they're deferring credit to their clients and other people involved and they're not ego driven the best recruiters are interested in one thing they have one thing in their scorecard which is like are my clients badass or not did they make it or not and the problem in the industry is like it's much it's way too easy to get a bunch of transactions totally okay here 100k there 200k here 200k there and the money is so easy it's like being a drug dealer how it's like it's insane and so you go well how do i not go to sleep hating myself for being overpaid.
Read the full transcript
24:12I have to over deliver. The high integrity people go, okay, my scorecard is very simple. How did my founders do? They are my founders. When a good search firm takes on a company, they need to think of themselves as an extension of that company, as if they work within those companies, quote unquote, walls. That company is their baby. That company is feeding their families, putting food on their table, rent, mortgages, college, 529 plans, cars. You do not live without your clients and people that have that view, everybody knows who they are. It's the people that care and they're manifest. That caring is manifest in how well their clients held you over the years.
24:49Does that make sense? Yes. Thank you. Thank you for validating that. Andy, you had mentioned that 90 % of the best talent is currently employed. What I continually hear right now in today's market from founders is, oh, there's so much great talent on the market. I don't even need a search partner. I'm going to run this search on my own. What would you say to those people? Good luck. I mean, we love it. I mean, like sometimes I've seen go, wow, oh my God, they got that person. How they do that? And I said, okay, we did it in our network or some talent partner at Andreessen or Sequoia or whoever did an amazing job.
25:24I mean, you grab somebody out of the network that made sense. Yay. That's what you want. I mean, honestly, as the, I'm not really a VC, I do VC and recruiting are kind of weaved in. I'm a company builder or a helper to founders to build companies. Don't really have a title. So don't think of me as either one, really. Yeah. So a lot of founders right now are saying there's a lot of great talent on the market. I can run this search on my own. What would you say to those people? Yay. Great. Good luck. This is how you should do it. What happens is a lot of founders get inbounds from their VCs and go, oh, just call this person or that person.
25:58And the founder thinks the VC will have vetted that candidate when in reality, they may or may not have. Maybe they came and said, look, this person was the CRO of my last company. They sold it for billions of dollars. It was a great company. You should 100 % hire this person. And if the VC knew that person really well and was able to give the founder, you know, an A plus deep reference, then you can accelerate your process, avoid the headaches of a search, avoid the cost. That is nirvana. So when I say that, I'm not saying that as a VC or a recruiter. I'm saying that as a helper to a company builders, right?
26:27To founders. It's like, if you can avoid doing a search, you should. The problem is, is a lot of these people will try. I know this one company is worth four plus billion now on about 150 million error. Won't name the company. They've been trying to hire a CRO for over a year on their own, failing miserably. The person who's in seat right now is killing it and getting no credit. It's amazing that they've held on to anything at all. You feel like the company might just hit the wall any minute right after doing the big financing. And I think the real challenge there is the founder's calculus was completely wrong.
27:00Oh, I can save time if I do it myself. Search will take three months. I can do this in one month. And a year later, they still have not hired anybody. That's a real problem. As you know, hiring sneaks up on you. Time is not your friend. You have to hire ahead of the actual need because the people have to come in. There's a lead time. They got to bring their people with them, hire them, train them, onboard them. Entertainment kind of goes all over the place. So just in the case of sales. So I always say to people, try, but fail quickly if you're going to fail. Having said that, I'm not sitting there telling founders to, in fact, we help the founder that we're backing avoid a sales search.
27:33help them hire somebody that came out of their network. Person was at home run. We were the company from one to 15 to 50. That's not bad. And the company's worth, you know, it's a unicorn. It's a really A plus cloud company. I mean, it's this guy, and we're rooting for this guy all the way. So when you can't avoid a search and you get a high quality person, you should absolutely do that. The problem is founders just don't know how to score the risk versus reward. And the time value, if you just fail to actually hire that person, last thing I'd say is that what founders don't know, they don't know what they don't know.
28:03They don't know when to do referencing. The candidate kind of wants to talk to somebody else and be like, hey, this founder kind of screwed something up. I met this person. I really liked him. Can I trust the founder to give him the feedback? I need a third party to broker that feedback. I mean, there's a lot of things that you need from a third party that they don't get. So the founder will be like, oh, I already hired somebody. And then on the one-inch line, the person vaporizes and they wonder what happened. Now they're starting from zero. Have to go hire the search firm. Search from this good is always sold out.
28:28Needs a little lead time to get started. it. So, you know, you can exponentially score your time value in terms of lost opportunity and say like, okay, for every month that I waited, I probably actually lost two or three months. Yep. I could not agree more at the time thing. It's like starting the Titanic engine takes a while. You know what I mean? And I've always been a fan of staying close with the search firms that you work with, you know, always have the wheels greased, have lunch, have a drink, have dinner, understand what's going on in the market, right? I mean, is you don't have to, that engine doesn't have to go to a stop is what I'm saying.
29:04And that's beneficial even when you don't have a search. Exactly. But like I said, there's an example. I mean, you know, I would love to name the company. I'm just itching to, because this founder is Israeli, brilliant, 8 ,200, you know, veteran and the founders are the, you could probably guess who the backers are. And this guy popped up in this founder's field of India and said, what do you think? I said, let me make two calls for you. Made two calls. They were A++ plus back channels, we said, you know what? We can try for three or four months to hire somebody that might be incrementally done on this person, or we can land them and go for it.
29:37We landed them, went for it, and the company is trounced every competitor by miles. So that's an example of like, okay, if you can do it and you can do it quickly and with conviction, do it. Now I'm going through all the companies in my mind trying to guess it, of course, but... Yeah, and I'm going to stay on with you after I think I know who it is. Okay. So I want to talk to you about up-and-comers. And I think there's this big debate that's gone on forever, which is, do we hire for experience or do we hire for trajectory? I want to actually talk about one of your recent LinkedIn posts that just absolutely went off.
30:12You describe a situation where the up-and-comer gets the opportunity to run the show. They crush it for a few quarters, but then they miss badly and they don't know why. The CEO decides to layer the up-and-comer. In most situations, the up-and-comer leaves, but what you're describing in your post is a few recent situations where the person puts their ego aside and decides to stay for a year or two learning from their new manager. What are these CEOs doing that are able to keep these people around? Well, it's not just the CEOs who are doing it. It's the person that's layering the incumbent. Okay.
30:47Oh, interesting. Important thing is for the person, I'll give you an example of how it was really, really well-requestrated. You guys know Confluent. When Erica Schultz came in over Todd, Todd had done a great job. He grew the company from zero to a hundred million. That is extremely hard, as you know. That's the real work through the jungle with the machete and Columbia kind of work, right? Because brutal, dangerous, brutal, perilous, okay? Hard. Those people are the heroes of tech in my mind. They're really early, nitty gritty, greedy, dirt under the fingernail people. But Erica came in and was like, you know what?
31:21Just give me a year. You're going to invest more stock. We'll figure things out. It'll be, you know, they convinced us. The founders and the person who come in both go to the existing person and say, hey, thank you for the amazing work, as opposed to here's where you screwed up. And Todd wasn't missing quarters per se. It was really just about how much can we build capacity wise going forward? And can we look like a public company and do the beat and raise thing? And the theory was that Erica could do it in a way that the incumbent couldn't do it. And so at the end of the day, though, hate to name names, but Todd was a total class talk about it.
31:54Stayed there, made sure that his people were cared for. He was a total adult about it. And then Erica was smart because she didn't come in saying, oh, I just have to fire a bunch of people and bring my own people in. This is what's the standard operating procedure. So you have really two, three players. The incumbent has to be an adult and care about the company that they just built. Two, the person coming in has to be classy, humble, listen, treat them like a partner. Three, the founder has to support this architecture and this ethos, this approach to make sure it lands. And you shouldn't be talking to candidates that are going to top somebody unless you're saying to them, how are you going to engage the existing team?
32:31Because, you know, when you think about engineering and sales, right, you take those two functions. That's usually like 70 percent of an employee count. You have a few people in finance, a handful of people in marketing, some other things. It's usually around engineering and sales. They're the big employment centers. If you screw up and misorchestrate a hire in leadership in either one of those functions, you could find yourself getting cut in half, which decreases product velocity, sales velocity. All kinds of chaos can occur. So I just believe in continuity and seamless transitions. I think those are the things that I look back on these companies that made these great transitions.
33:04In Snowflake's case, they went through three CEOs. Now they're on CEO number four. People don't realize it was Spizer, then Muglia, then Slootman, now Shree. And so you go, okay, well, that's four CEOs and a company never missed a beat. Databricks, second CEO. People think Ali was the original CEO. It was the second CEO. Palo Alto Networks went through like five or six of them. These are A-plus world-class companies. And so they orchestrated these transitions pretty well. That spoke to a pretty strong board and a pretty strong foundation and strong founders. But it was about orchestrating kind of the new person weaving in from the last person.
33:37And whatever function is, whether it's CEO or head of engineering or head of sales, these are high-risk situations. And people treat these situations in a cavalier way, and then they wonder why they blew up. It's because it was treated in a sloppy, cavalier way. I mean, this is not rocket science. Yes. The orchestration is so important. Proactive, thoughtful. And then the mindset and the ego, which I distilled from all those characteristics you just said, of all three of those parties, just has everything to do with it. And everyone wins. They become a better leader long term. They get rewarded.
34:10The company goes better. I've seen it flame out. The ego's high. Bad orchestration. Shit show. Person leaves because of that. Takes another CEO role just to show they're badass. Fails miserably. Flames out. Like, it's bad. It's bad. And so. A lot of success has to do with just people being less elegant than they need to be, less thoughtful. Let's slow down to go faster. Let's think this through. What is this organism called the company X? What is this company's situation holistically? And can it absorb the impact of a new player and some disruption? But trying really hard to be thoughtful, elegant, empathetic.
34:51I know these are kind of soft words right now, but like at the same time, I really believe that they matter. And studying people saying, you know what, this person wasn't perfect, but damn it, they got us to 100 million bucks and they slogged through the trail of, you know, the sewage to get here. Shawshank Redemption style. I mean, those people deserve a lot of love and a lot of respect and a lot of not empathy. Yeah, some empathy. But I think at the end of the day, some it ultimately comes down to respect. And then they end up on a beach, sandpapering a boat, like he did at the end of Shawshank, just to stick with the program here.
35:24Hey, we'll continue our interview in a moment after a word from our sponsors.
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36:18You can make tax-deductible donations to their recommended funds or charities, and GiveWell doesn't take a cut. If you've never used GiveWell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to$100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to givewell.org and pick podcast and enter econ102 with Noah Smith and Eric Torenberg at checkout. Make sure they know that you heard about GiveWell from Econ 102 with Noah Smith and Eric Torenberg to get your donation matched. Again, that's givewell.org to donate or find out more. It's so well said, Andy, but I do feel like a lot of founders get really attached to the shiny new toy and they get really attached to like new recruiting.
37:02Like new recruiting is exciting. It's fun. And they forget the people that got them there. I want to quickly talk about this like up and comer situation who gets layered. How involved should that person be in the interview process? Yeah, it's a good question. This is a tough one. It goes person by person, company by company. Some people, as you know, are great performers, but they're innately insecure. And so if you tell them, hey, I'm going to go layer you and you're the reasons there, even if you're the most elegant person in the world and the orchestration is flawless, you might still get a person as a premium in honor or just insecure and kind of lets their insecurity run the thing and then they leave.
37:38It's like, you can't help that in a perfect world. Founders have a lot of trust with the person that they're layering and say, listen, it's time for us to bring in somebody over you, but here's how I'm going to treat you. Are you on board? Or they start playing with the idea way before they execute a plan, test the person out, build them out. Hey, what would you say about bringing in somebody that you might be able to learn from? And then, you know, a lot of times, believe it or not, this is the existing sales exec or existing marketing exec or whomever will be like, you know what? I would love to learn from Denise Person from Snowflake about what world-class marketing looks like.
38:11I'd love to work for students. No one left Snowflake after the IPO. No one. And so why is that? Because people, and I ask these guys, I'm like, you've already made all your money. Why are you still there? I mean, I'm happy they're still there because it's a company I'm always going to care very deeply about. But they were like, I'm learning what world-class looks like and skill looks like. I can't learn that anywhere else. If I go do another start, but Series A or Series B, sure, I might make more money, but I'm not going to learn what world-class looks like. So they stayed for Frank. So if you organize, you know, the conversation early enough, and you're kind of treating it almost like it's a theoretical situation, and you test the person, person reacts well, then you go, okay, I've got a clear path to move forward.
38:50But at the end of the day, you have to take care of your business. And that means somebody is tapping out. Here's one other thing I'll say. A lot of times, the fix, actually, it's very interesting. There's another company that's growing in a quantum range, It's one of our companies, a venture and search firm portfolio company. And what's happening is the people that are getting layered are actually, it's in multiple situations. And those conversations are going on really early where it's like, okay, we're going to take care of you in this specific way. And this is what we're going to do. And we're going to have a long-term process.
39:21And to answer your question, we are going to make you involved in the recruiting process. You will absolutely get to meet your boss, but here's how you have to behave. You can't grill the person. It's not your role to eval. your role is to get to know and make sure you're comfortable with this person, but you can't sit there and grill the person so that it looks like the fox has got in the hen house. The next thing you know, the candidate walks away. So to answer your question most specifically, you have to feel people out and see if they're going to be a team player or not, then make your plan from there.
39:48And the plan could go either confidential search or open search and, hey, we're going to have some disruption. But like I said, not thinking through these different things and these different personalities where people get in trouble. And not setting expectations. I mean, there's so many searches where I had to jump in and like have another pre-brief and have a chat on the different roles of the different interviewees and what's the, and so many people don't want to have that conversation because it's not comfortable that Andy, you're going to have lunch, but you don't have a vote, so to speak in an elegant way, but that usually doesn't happen.
40:18So they go to lunch and they think they can veto the thing and it just all goes to shit. And then you have to save it, fix it, rewind and smooth it out. But listen, let's back up for one second. think about these world-class companies and what they had in common. What they had in common is that they had these seamless transitions. If you look at like, for example, Databricks, right? So Databricks brought in Covoid over Gabrisco, but Gabrisco is still there. And it's really Gabrisco's show from a day-to-day execution perspective. And then Andy is obviously getting the company IPO ready, but that partnership is like this, right?
40:51And if you think about the McMahon and Degman combination, where you had a board member mentoring the sales exec at Snowflake, these people are going into billions of dollars of revenue, solidly performing, didn't need to get changed out. What founders should do is study these successful examples of continuity and say, okay, what were these companies doing behaviorally speaking? Who are the people there not getting blown up or topped or whatever? And then what were the founders doing to make sure that those people were evolving appropriately along the growth curve of the company? That's the ultimate goal.
41:22In Nirvana, you would have no executive recruiters because you would build a killer team early on, Maybe the recruiters do not. And you never need the recruiters again through IPO. But that's not normal. So I do think that more studying of A-plus situations where continuity was a major theme and the early team is mostly intact, studying those situations is a good place to start. That is great advice and feedback. And so speaking of like the Nirvana situation, if I'm a founder and I have a team of up-and-comers, what should I be doing to help these people scale? Yeah, you have to bring in, you have to invest in advisory network and a solid board.
42:00I mean, one of the things that people do is like, oh, let's bring this celebrity operator on the board. This is really great. The person's already an existing CEO of a public company, has about one minute a week to spend on this. What we did with one of our favorite investing partners, can remain nameless, we brought in one of the best sales execs in history guys who retired to be their operating partner and teach them how to not screw up hiring, go-to-market hiring. because when you have an operator who's actually already done it before, they can zoom into a situation and say, you know what? This Andy Price guy, man, he's not going to make it.
42:32He's just flaky. He's not going to do this. You need to change him out. Or, hey, this person's got their, you know what, together, you're the problem. And so you kind of need that third party to A, train up the person, B, give the sanity check to the founder that, hey, there are issues that are beyond this person's control, or we can build underneath them. Let's try that to a certain point, build around this human being. So investing in your existing execs and knowing that they can't do everything themselves. When you hire a VP of sales, you can't expect them to be world-class sales ops, orchestration, productivity, coverage, comp, the P &L, attainment.
43:07You can't expect them to do all that and then hit a revenue growth number that's always ridiculous. Everybody's always got these ridiculous expectations. About 1 % of them actually hit or beat those expectations, right? So I think that the most important thing is saying, OK, what do I do to equip this person so that they can actually shoot laser beams out of their eyes and fly? They don't just come in your company with an S on their chest and a red K. You've got to help them. Right. And so I think that's what happens. Founders just go, oh, I expect this person to do all these things. And then they don't invest in the team around them to actually help them grow.
43:39And they don't they resist investing in that human. So they put more money into other things and then they wonder why a person's flaming out. But there's always a story that's way deeper than anybody's advertising. Anytime a person's quote, unquote, vibrating or needing to be replaced. That story is where the rubber meets the road. Getting to that story of being like, okay, what really going on here? Do we even really need to change this person out at all? Or do we just build up around them so that they can go farther or mentor them with an advisory network or a board member? That is the best articulation for advisors and coaches that I've ever heard.
44:11and I just find that founders think like these people are going to come in and solve all of their problems and it turns out we're all people we all have strengths we all have gaps and so ideally you're finding advisors and coaches that can round out the gaps and help improve people in those areas so they can continue to scale with the company and augment the founders who usually are not great at giving feedback developmental feedback all these things they they self-proclaim that too. So. Well, it's because they have imposter syndrome. They're worried that if they say something like, Hey, Andy, you're not that great.
44:45I'm sorry. You're doing really well here, but there are these issues and the person's going to walk out the door because insecure to know that the person that they hire is actually an adult probably. And if you say something in an authentic way, that's data oriented and not hyperbolic or overly negative about some little tiny thing, and you're balanced about how you're positioning the person, hey, these are the things that are working, these are the things that are not working. Let's team up and figure out how to address the things that are not working. They'll do a part of that conversation, but the holistic conversation wasn't had.
45:17So when you diagnose bad hires and flame outs, usually it comes down to that. You're absolutely right to flag it, that if a person was there for a year or two and then all of a sudden they just kind of blew up, it was because a meaningful conversation wasn't had and then acted upon, they had to do with let's make this person successful. We'll take, for example, Schneider and Haverty and all these guys at ServiceNow. We're talking about one of the best companies in modern history. It's worth$150 billion in the last time I checked. These people built that company from$60 million all the way through.
45:45And their prior company had topped out at$300 million and got acquired by IMC. It was a good run, data domain. They were not equipped to run a$10 billion company. But Slootman kept working on them. They kept working on the people underneath them. And they saw themselves as needing to hire great people around them and underneath them. and ServiceNow invested in the bench. By the way, they were also, just so you know, a little wisdom to pass on, they were empowered to hire their own people and build their own teams, do their own recruiting. It wasn't controlled by centralized HR. So they could shape the teams in their own images in terms of what they perceived they needed and it turned out to be right.
46:20So if you look at Schneider and Haverty and the team that they built around them, that system that they built, it endured far past them leaving. They brought the European guy now, he's the sales exec, he's the revenue exec. So you have a lot of continuity in another size absurdly successful company, how to do in investing in the people around the key leaders. Yep. All right. Last topic I want to hit is executive career management. And so my take is, is like careers are a game. And I find that the best execs play that game insanely well. What are the common patterns of how the best execs manage their careers?
46:55Best execs are somewhat selectively listening. They're never out looking because why? Because they chose a good company in the first place. And one of the questions is, is that good company starting to flame out or getting acquired or taken private or whatever? What's their motivation for moving on? Or they're going to say, hey, I have this person I brought in and cultivated. Now it's time for me to go off and do another one because I'm kind of bored and this is a little programmatic for me. I want to grow something again. So when you think about the motivations of people, that's one thing. But in terms of them managing their own careers, the smart ones watch the industry in their spare time.
47:30They don't do it during their work hours. They're heads down operating. But then they take their spare time and they're like, hmm, interesting. This generative AI thing might turn into something. Maybe I should watch open AI in Anthropic. Or maybe I should watch this company or that company. Or should I think about workflow? Or should I think about the tuning companies? Or should I think about Cerebras doing this ridiculously screaming fast chip that they built? how should I look at this space? Because I think I want to participate in it. So they start studying the category and building a little thesis in their own minds about companies they'd be open to.
48:00And then they hang around the right people. There are three or four go-to-market recruiters that are, you know, all the A-plus late-stage things. And there are a bunch of them that do the middle-stage stuff, a bunch of them do early-stage. Knowing who to listen to and build trust with it. And then telling those people, don't ever call me about companies like this. I will, it'll harm our relationship. They actually work with recruiters in a pretty bespoke way where they say, if you show me things like this, I'm more actively listening. If you show me things like that, I literally don't return your call.
48:28And the smart recruiters give them only the things they ask for. And then you have some ball control on that person. But in terms of people managing their careers, they're always kind of looking, okay, spaces. Should I be in this category? Is DevOps going to be more interesting space than generative AI? is big data kind of getting overwhelmed by AI, which is another way of thinking about big data. In other words, they're looking at the categories in which their earth currently operating or wants to operate in. If you're at Varonis, for example, and you're doing data security posture management, you might be like, hmm, Sire and these other guys are kind of coming up the curve really fast.
49:04And so what do I do about that? Maybe is my founder on top of this or is my CEO on top of this? Do we have a game plan to stave off the hoard or is this the end? You know, when people in New Relic towards the end were like, God, DataDog is going to take us, you know, take over the world. The smart ones saw that and the company somewhat reacted and they did some good things. They had a nice outcome. But at the end of the day, people knew DataDog was just going to win. You could see it. And so I think that the smart people are really aware of their own situation and the futility sometimes of the situation that they're in early and often.
49:38And either they do something to fix or they go, okay, I'm on the wrong horse. and then I'm going to move with this horse, but they have a point of view on the kinds of things they're open to and why. So a point of view was just in my head. That's so funny because I get questions. Hey, should I take these, all these exec recruiter calls? I'm getting five a week and like, don't, don't take a damn call unless you have some point of view on who you are, what you're open to, where you're going, why, and what that looks like, because you're going to have to answer those questions anyway. And you can spend all your time taking exec recruiter calls.
50:07My last question, Andy, is about exact tenure. Back in the day when I was young, it was three to five years. It was this. And then I've heard it's all the way to one year is acceptable and everything in between. And there's just a lot of noise out there on tenure and whatnot. I just love your thoughts on that. I put out a LinkedIn post. I got so much hate on it one time. I can't remember how long ago it might have been 10 years ago, it might have been two months ago about this topic. Like, I hate the one-year BS. It's like you can have one or two of those in your career. You have three or four.
50:40It tells you everything about somebody. And then somebody was like, oh, it has to do with the psycho founders. Like, no, it does not. If you are smart and you're judicious, you know how to vet a human being. Otherwise, why does anybody give you the right to hire anybody? If you're not a judge of character, you shouldn't have the right to be a manager or a VP or a C-level, whatever. Totally. So you should be able to look in the eyes of the founder, ask them questions, test them. One other thing I'll quickly say is people don't ask each other hard questions early on enough and gauge how the other person can handle a hard question.
51:11That's really important. And so I think tenure has to do with people being flaky and being like, oh, OK, well, I'm going to go make this money there, make this money there. And they're like little squirrels running around the forest, blindly trying to grab the acorns, stuff them in the tree for the harsh winter. And they're scrambling around. But there's no game plan there. Right. They're not the alpha of the forest for a reason. They're lower on the food chain. So when you think about the people that really kick ass, you look at their career trajectories, they may go through four or five major runs, three, four, five, six years at peace, 20 years too long, five years.
51:44Yay. One year, like I said, things go crazy. A company can get acquired. They can run out of money. There's all this volatility in the industry. One hundred percent. Give people some passes for these couple of these things here and there. But if you have a succession of one year things, it's like, I don't want to see or buy. I have some better judgment and come back to me. I always tell people when you hit me on LinkedIn, I'm like, I'm sorry, but your bio is like a dog's breakfast. You've done nothing. You need to go do something with someone else and come back to us in three years when you've gone and killed it somewhere and proven you can stay somewhere and make a contribution.
52:15In a year, you can barely find your way to the office in the first year. I mean, come on. Well, I was expecting a strong, strong response here, and I got it. So thank you. We didn't even. I'm serious. It's like the people we all aspire to and we all admire. Most people I know in the industry do admire people with grit, determination that did hard things very well. And you can only do hard things very well over an arc of time. It's not a one year. You can't do any meaningful impact in a year. I just really believe that. I don't really care if people agree with me or not. Okay. Resilience is definitely coming back in style.
52:49And I think that's actually been one of the nice things from this macro environment is like those people that are persisting are going to have great stories to tell just like you. Absolutely. People like millennials and these Gen Zers, man, people always hate on these kids. One of the things they will say is that they really value authenticity. Authenticity is like the number one buzzword for them. It's getting old for some people. I'm like, I'm just not getting old to me at all. Authenticity is like, if that's your core belief that authenticity is like number one factor, then you have more, you know, more real conversations with people and you, you can actually work your way through things.
53:24You're not pretending. There's no BS in sight. If you have that true north. So I actually think that the industry has been driven that way, largely by the obsession with authenticity from the millennial, which they pass down to these Gen Zers. The best Gen Z people think about that first and they know they have to live it too. Yep. Andy, you're a legend. Thank you so much for the time today. Thanks so much, Andy. Guys, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. Turpentine VC is a podcast from Turpentine, the network behind Moment of Zen and Econ 102. If you liked the episode, please leave a review in the Apple Store or rate us on Spotify.
From the publisher
This week on Turpentine VC, Andy Price, a veteran executive recruiter and venture capitalist, joins Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich from HR Heretics, a Turpentine podcast, for a deep dive into the crucial aspects of hiring, retaining, and developing top talent. Andy has built leadership teams for renowned companies like Snowflake and DocuSign. Check out HR Heretics for more conversations like this one (links below)
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RECOMMENDED PODCAST:
Listen and subscribe to HR Heretics:
- Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hr-heretics-how-cpos-chros-founders-and-boards-build/id1712407491
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1WML9AfadzaH9WCR4HHqbZ
- Substack: https://hrheretics.substack.com/
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LINKS:
Artisanal Ventures: https://artisanalv.com/
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FOLLOW:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyprice1/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nolan-church/
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HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Even at top companies like DoorDash, executive hiring only succeeds two-thirds of the time, while most firms see one-third success rates.
- To mitigate hiring failures, recruiters must deeply understand a company's problems and weaknesses, not just focus on their strengths.
- Back-channel references are crucial but must be handled carefully, with recruiters making vague inquiries without revealing specific roles or companies.
- The ideal number of references is 5-7 meaningful ones, focusing on depth of conversation rather than quantity of references.
- Founders often get attached to "shiny new" executive candidates and forget about the people who helped build the company.
- When layering an existing executive, the person needs to be involved in the interview process but with clear expectations about their role.
- The best companies like Snowflake and ServiceNow succeed through seamless executive transitions and continuity.
- To help up-and-coming executives scale, companies need to invest in advisory networks and strong board members who can provide mentorship.
- The best executives rarely actively job hunt - instead, they study industry trends in their spare time and maintain relationships with select recruiters.
- Multiple one-year executive tenures are a red flag; ideal careers show 3-6 year commitments at successful companies.
