How founders can get executive hiring right from startup to scale — advice from Lattice’s Jack Altman

 So over the course of the conversation,I thought the place we would start would be, what you've learned and how you approach exact hiring.

And I think it's maybe one of the most underappreciated parts of company building. And my own view is that kind of, once you get to some level of product market fit and you begin to scale, I don't know, more than half of your job as a CEO sits inside of the exec team. And so maybe we can start with some of the different frameworks or ideas that, um, you figured out as you've built your executive team over a long period of time.

 There's this great post by Alia Regani that talks about the different moments in time. And there's sort of three stages of a CEO and kind of like what you were saying. You, you start out by building a product and giving customers, and then somewhere around, let's say 30, 40, 50 employees, you hopefully have enough traction and you hopefully have a product that's connected with enough people that now your job as CEO becomes building the company that builds the product and sells to customers.

And there's kind of two parts of that. One is having a clear plan and communicating that well. And then the other part is having a company that's able to execute those plans. So you want to point the ship in a good direction, and then you need a ship that can, in fact. Heading that direction and having a strong exact team is the main vehicle through which, uh, you know, a founder CEO is able to do that.

So what you're looking for at different stages is, is really different. Um, because when your company's 40 people versus 200 people versus whatever else, it's, uh, it's a whole different set of skills. so the, the executives that you're looking for. Throughout the journey as you build the company change. And it's important at any moment in time to find execs that fit the stage that you're going through and the faster you grow, the shorter duration, you'll typically be able to keep execs in the same role.

Uh, this won't always be the case. There are definitely people who, you know, can run a great engineering team when there's 15 engineers and 50 and a hundred and so forth, but you'll often need to make changes. And often people want to work at different stages. I've heard the analogy that, a, company's leadership team has sort of.

Uh, you know, like painting the golden gate bridge where like, by the time you get from one end to the other, uh, you often have to, you know, go back and start repainting right away, because so much has changed. Um, I think it doesn't always go that way. Of course you'll find exactly who can go through long periods of time.

But in general, I would say, look for exact that you think are going to be the right fit for you for the next, maybe 18 months, 24 months, that's the mindset. And then, you know, if, if, if it works for longer, that's great. But that's sort of the thing to key into in terms of what you're looking for early on.

I think One of the easy mistakes people can make is going for exacts that are sort of too quote, unquote big. It's really easy to get sort of enamored by leaders who have worked at these really big companies and have had IPO's and have done these, you know, hugely impressive things on paper and they are hugely impressive, but they're totally different than what a series B startup needs to be doing.

And sometimes people can kind of come down and go back to a very early stage, but it's a different sort of work, you know, early stage executives might not be still, you know, the.

ones who are moving pixels or closing customers themselves, or, you know, designing every piece of ad copy, but to be successful, they have to be in the details, uh, early on, especially.

 I think you're getting at a couple of interesting points, other than thinking about the job to be done as an 18 month sort of window versus a five or 10 year window, what else do you look for at the series a or series B stage when you're thinking about what great looks like from an executive perspective.

 I would say there's, there's a few things, probably the most important if I had to pick one, is who are they going to hire? Like, what's the team that they're going to build. So let's say you're hiring a VP of sales for the first time. You're looking for somebody who is going to. Build a great team first and foremost, and they're probably not going to have a lot of infrastructure.

 They're probably not going to have a big sort of bench of recruiters around them. They're not going to have lots of process that they can lean on. So one of the most important things that I like to talk about is like, who have you hired? You know, walk me through your process as you went and recruited those people.

How did you convince them? What was your angle? What were the stumbling blocks in the recruiting process for someone? Great. How did you get over that, but really going into detail about how did they recruit 

Because I think at the early stages, that certainly is the most important impact that they'll have. There are, there are other considerations too, of course, around people. So what sort of manager are they going to be? This is going to be a culture carrier. Is it going to be aligned with sort of the spirit of your company?

 terms of mindset, I would say that if I had to sort of boil it down, You want to sort of find the leaders where they're going to really have a deep ownership mentality, which is like one of these sort of trite things that everybody talks about.

 But I think, you know, it, when you see it where somebody is so invested in what's happening and They see themselves as so accountable and so responsible that for example, you would never hear them make a complaint about us. Someone didn't do this thing because they're like, well, I'm the one who's in charge.

I've got the empowerment to do what I need to do. So anything that, you know, doesn't work, I'm going to take accountability for, and I'm going to, I'm going to drive that and you almost want them to sort of feel like late co-founders I think 

 You talked a little bit about this in, in the, in the sense of, uh, how do I identify somebody that's good at hiring? What about in this ownership mentality? And we're going to talk a little bit more about the exact hiring process, but, um, if you're sitting down with someone or referencing somebody, what are you doing or what are you asking them to get to your own conviction?

That this is somebody that is going to have sort of spike and ownership.

 I think there are some classic red flag type of things for example, one, One

thing that I really like to do in any. Is ask people about their last job or last two jobs, depending on how long the stints were.

And I like to really go deep on like, what were the big projects? And I really like to pull on those threads. So I would ask them about what was your role like when you got there?

What were you brought in to do? How did it evolve over time? Tell me about some of the big projects. What were sort of the biggest successes you had?

What were some of the biggest things that didn't go the way you wanted to, and then I'll ask why and I'll ask what, and I'll, I'll pull on those many, many times. And I think in the process of really teasing apart, what they've done in their last roller too, you'll hear the language that they use and you'll hear the sort of focus on why things went well or why they didn't.

And are they self-reflective of this, didn't go the way that we wanted it to, because I didn't do something that now looking back I've learned, and I could have done something different or is there a mentality of, oh, well, you know, this counterpart of mine didn't do what they wanted, or we didn't have the budget we were supposed to or, you know, the founders, you know, were, you know, setting things up for failure and these kinds of ways, and, and those things might be true and there's always obstacles and it's never, you know, one person's success or one person's failure, no matter what happens.

But I think that mindset really comes through in the language people use in what they focus on when they go through those stories. So that's, that's the most reliable thing that I've sort of found to try to suss that out is to just ask them about the stories of what they've done and pay attention to the lens that they have on it.

 to take a quick step back. Something we didn't talk about is, um, actually who to focus on or who to source or where to source. And I think one of the things that I've noticed is that early on in a company's life, I think a lot of founders in this stuff tails slightly with what you were talking about in terms of over-hiring.

Um, but the nuance in terms of what I've observed is, is people tend to over hire from a titling perspective and effectively hire like a, B or C quality person who's more senior as opposed to hiring an up and comer 

 that you might actually be able to recruit. Right. Because when you're a series, a company and a lot of people don't know about you, it's very hard to get a true star.

I don't know, pick any title CFO from another company. Um, and so I'm curious how you think about that. Like where to focus on and sort of what level of seniority to go after, when you're, when you're initially building out, uh, the executor.

 I completely agree with that point. And I would even say if startups could have only one special ability, if there was only one thing that differentiated to start up, I would say the most valuable skill that could have would be accurate assessment of discovering undiscovered talent, because exactly what you said.

If you're a series, a company, you can't get somebody who is both, you know, absolute, top of their, their field all the way through and has tons of experience because those people are now at a point in their career where they're getting, you know, C-level jobs at public companies and it wouldn't make sense for them.

So in general, a startup is space with the choice of betting on undiscovered earlier, talent or betting on. Proven, but maybe less exceptional talent. And I would say nine times out of 10, it is better to go for the former. It's better to make your own assessment and make an investment in a person and say, Hey, this person maybe doesn't have the experience.

They haven't seen exactly what we're going through, but they're extremely smart. They've got great intuition. They're very hungry to grow and succeed. And they're the only sorts of people, investments that I've really seen path for early stage companies.

You know, when I go back and I look at like lattices first 10 employees, for example, You know, my co-founder and I were like 26 when we started lattice. And that was probably like around the average age, uh,

of the first 10 employees. And So, we looking back, it was an incredible group. Many of them still allowed us many in leadership roles who have really grown with the company, but it wasn't like we started with people who, you know, if you pulled up their LinkedIns, it would be, you know, these super obvious profiles for the roles we, you know, through interviews and through spending time with people, we, we sorta took bets on people.

And I think that extends even for when you're hiring your first executives. You know, I think you can strike a somewhat different balance once you're, once you're going up into the more leadership type of roles and you will be able to attract people a little bit further along, but I think the same principle applies.

And I think in general, building the muscle of becoming good at finding talent. That's not obvious on paper is the much more important than the much more likely path to say.

 So, can you bring that to life and maybe share a couple early executive hires that illustrate this point and kind of what the story is behind them? Like how you found them, what, what they looked like at the time and maybe kind of what that first year looked like once they joined you.

 Yeah. Um, so one of the most common hires that you'll hear founders ask about, which is a hard one is early marketing. How do I get my first marketing leader? What am I looking for? What is this profile of person? How do I find it? How do I attract them? It's really hard. And great marketing is obviously critical for startups.

And I think as the world has gotten noisier and there's so many, you know, SAS companies for every little thing and, and, and just startups in general, I think marketing is a critical breakout. So. You know, how do you find that first marketer? You're not going to find some, big name, VP level person from some already super successful company.

So what do you do? We hired a guy named Alex who Brett, you know, who joined us, I guess like a year into starting the company and he had had marketing experience. He had worked at a marketing agency, so he knew a lot of marketing fundamentals, but, you know, he was early in his career.

He was a few years out of school. He had, you know, sort of the traits I was describing before sort of enormous ownership mentality. He really felt, you know, like a, a clear owner of, of what we were doing. He was extremely eager to learn. He had very low ego mixed with high conviction in his ability to, to discover things, which I think is like a critical trait.

He had what I would actually describe as like a real founder mentality to things, he would try lots of experiments at once. He was willing to, you know, do a decent job at a lot of things at once so that we could test tons of marketing programs. I don't think he had hired people before, but then he came in and figured out how to, how to do all of that.

 And he ended up, you know, becoming a manager and then a manager of managers and, you know, an executive company and, you know, stayed with us for, for over four years. He ended up going on to start his own company, but hiring that sort of profile and taking a bet on somebody who you think is going to become.

And extremely good marketer as they grow with your company. I think that's more likely to, you're both more likely to find that person and they're more likely to be successful 

So that's the sort of, profile I'm talking about for the, for the early stages, kind of betting on unproven, people who you think have the potential to grow, where their, where their slope is steep. Even if the y-intercept is, is still early on.

 I think this is a good time to spend some more time talking about what your end-to-end interview process looks like. Um, and maybe it's today, or maybe it's back then, but obviously a big part of, of making accurate hiring decisions in particularly an undiscovered talent is that assessment piece, because you don't have a resume or a set of credentials that are a proxy for ability. And so we'd love to learn about how you architect in exec hiring process, um, and to end.

 hiring is one of those things where doing it well requires just an unbelievable amount of time. And I used the word unbelievable.

 Meaning like people literally won't believe you when you tell them how much time you spend recruiting. Like lattice is over 500 people today. And I probably still spend over a third of my time on. And an actual third, you know, I probably spend 15 hours a week recruiting and I've always done that. And part of that is because you have to meet a lot of candidates and first passes.

But part of that too is because a good interview process. If Someone's got a shortcut.

I'd love to hear it, but I don't know of one, other than a lot of time with somebody in the same way that once you start working with people a lot, you know, once you've worked with someone for, for weeks or a month or months, most of us know now, all right, this person is, is really great for the role and they're super talented or, or they're not.

And time gives you a few things. It gives you sort of the serendipity of seeing things arise that you might not have even thought or known to ask about. It gives you the chance to see them in a lot of different dimensions. So can I see what happens when they. You know, a little stressed or if they're struggling with a problem or what happens when I'm talking to them about something that's deeply within their area of expertise, do they take credit for things or do they sort of share credit when they can, do they solve problems privately or collaboratively?

 there's a lot that comes up as you clock hours with people. And so early on, we would try sometimes not just to do, you know, hours of interviews, but we would even sometimes say, Hey, do you want to work with us for just a week as a like consulting thing, we'll pay you, but like, let's get 40 hours together and see how that feels.

 Obviously, you can't always do that. And, you know, depending on where the candidates have they have a different job or something like that, it doesn't always work. But a spirit of we're going to spend a lot of time together in order to figure these things out, I think is a baseline critical part of, of a good interview process.

Another thing that I've found really helpful is. And there's different schools of thought on this, but I find trying to give people fabricated exercises is not nearly as useful as workshopping with them current, real problems that you would sort of start with them if they, you know, joined the company on Monday and that can look really different in different cases.

And, you know, it might be harder to do for some roles than others. But I think in general, you can talk with people about real world. Existing current business problems, and that'll give you such a different tactical feel for what it's like. once you, as the hiring manager, whoever that is has spent sufficient time with the person personally, I believe it's really important to have them spend a lot of time with the teams they'll be working with too.

So, you know, other leaders around the company, maybe the people who will be on the team that they work on, but you want sort of a 360 perspective because different people are going to identify different stuff. So I think that is that's an important part too. And then the last thing I would say is. I spend a lot of time on references.

I think a lot of people do, but I think I lean on them pretty extensively because I sort of know that I'm never going to get the number, particularly as you grow and you have more people, you just can't, you know, put the number of hours into it as you can when it's early. But references are amazing because you can talk to people who worked with them for years and who know what you're trying to know.

And so. What's hard about it is you often don't know the people you're referencing, you know, like you're talking to people who, you know, if I Brett were asking you about somebody, I know you and I know what you value. I know what you think. Good and bad look like. but I don't know a lot of, I don't know the majority of the people I'm talking to when I do a reference.

So you do have to take things with a grain of salt. Sometimes you have to, this will sound a little crazy, but sometimes you do references on the references. If you get a confusing reference where you can't piece a story together, uh, sometimes you do references on the references, but in general, you're trying to build this constellation of whether I'm talking to their direct report to their peers or their manager from the past, or maybe a board member, trying to get a sense of what those people valued and then really trying to tease out particulars from those people.

 So before I ask a few follow-up questions based on what you shared Jack, can you stitch this together and explain how this actually looks, maybe think about an exact hire you made in the last year and what, what those different pieces look like in what order

 well, an exec, an executive that I would meet now would have been, uh, typically not always, but typically brought to us by an exec recruiter that we work with. I never would do an executive search without using a retained.

 From, uh, I would also source candidates of my own, but I'll always have that going as well. And So let's say it gets brought to us from this person it's already vetted. You know, they've already spoken to exact recruiters who I've got a relationship with, who know me and who know that us and know what we value and all of that.

I've also spoken to the recruiter about the candidate and I've researched, you know, a little bit about their background and I've heard some of the texture of their work history from the recruiter. So I've got a sense. That's not just a superficial LinkedIn sense, but I know a little bit of color commentary and then I would have a first meeting with them.

And typically in the first meeting I'm selling. So usually the first meeting is for me to convince them. You know, the candidate that this is an opportunity worth them pursuing and taking seriously, because, you know, in the interview process

It's more time consuming for the candidate then for any one individual on the recruiting side, because they're not just going to spend time with me, they're going to spend time with other leaders and people in their teams and our board and, and whatever else. So my meeting number one is, is me selling, and, you know, the way I sell is I'll tell the story, I'll explain like why we're doing what we're doing, what our, you know, our mission is, how we're trying to pursue it, what some of our big initiatives are and our goals, you know, what's happening in the world of the role that they're talking about and you know, what we would want from them and why this is exciting. And I would leave them a lot of space to ask questions, and then I would try to answer, you know, whatever, whatever I could for them, uh, in that first hour, I, if there's time, I will lightly start the process of learning more about them.

But if there's not, from those questions. You can learn a lot about people. So I am trying to lightly suss out what I like a second call here during the first call. But primarily my objective in that first call is convinced the candidate that this is worth their time and that they should stay in the process and, you know, be willing to give it, you know, 10 plus hours potentially.

So that's meeting number one, assuming they come away still interested and I come away, you know, still interested. We would do another call and that would still be me and the candidate typically. And that would be. Uh, I don't want to say the tables turned. That makes it sound a little bit antagonistic, but you know, this is now me learning about them.

 I'm typically trying to understand their experience. And, um, you know, I'm feeling out them interpersonally through all of this, but this is the one where I'm really trying to suss out what have they done?

 What are their skills? where are they at in their career, in their interests, in their goals where they, you know, sort of strongest, where do they have gaps? Um, and so the sort of the outline for how I typically like to run these is I'll start with their current or recent job.

And I. I basically just have them take me through the story of, you know, it doesn't have to be like a complete, you know, exam, but like, let me, let me in on what really happened. And, you know, I, I'm looking for some realness in there. you can kind of feel when there's this switch flip, when you go from, I'm telling you what I just did in my last job, like a interview to now, I'm trying to get you to tell it to me more like a friend.

And I'm trying to sort of break through a little bit of the ice and the formality. And I'm trying to, you know, pause the story and click into something interesting and like get the person out of their shell a little bit and, you know, start talking to me for real about like, what did they just do?

And in that process of really trying to understand, like, not just like the headline bullet points of their job, but like, what were your Tuesdays like, what happened to you, you know, when you had to reorder your team like this and what was the tough part and how did you manage the coms of that? When you needed to bring in a new leader, over an existing manager on your team, how did you run that process?

And what did that look like? And were you able to retain the employee? And what were you scared of? you're a sales leader, you got a big goal. What did you think going into it? What did you need to do? Like who are your counterparts? What were your dependencies?

So I would just try to pull that all open and in the process of going deep with people, uh, I think that's where you, you know, tease out a lot of skills, interests, style, how do they think about themselves? How do they solve problems? And then, you know, if there's time I would try to keep going back, you know, multiple jobs, but often those are depending on how far in the past, those are sometimes less relevant, but one, or hopefully two jobs I would run through like that.

 And then depending on we come away strong from there, then there's a couple of things. One is I would spend real personal time with the candidate. So that might be a dinner. It might be going for a long walk. It might be having coffee, but ideally it's in person. If you can't do it in person, which, you know, that's been the case often in sort of the last couple of years, you know, maybe you just try to do like a more casual zoom or phone calls or you start texting, but I'm trying to get to, like right now, I want to suss out, does this do, do you mean this person get along?

 Is this going to like, be an easy relationship to have then from there I would go into. Meetings with like a panel. So that panel might look different depending on what the role is, but it would be some combination of, uh, their peers, uh, our board and their direct team. Um, so there might be three to seven interviews of those sorts, depending on the role and levels of conviction and all the rest of it.

And then, you know, the candidate and I are hopefully talking the whole time, we're texting, we're doing calls and maybe we have check-ins in between them and we have debriefs. Um, and then at the end of that process is when the candidate and I get back to our one-on-one time and we start either talking, Hey, let's start thinking about really what it's like to work together, or, you know, we're, we're realizing that it's not the right thing references I do early and often.

So I'm doing references. that whole time. So that's like a layer that's happening throughout the whole process with a concentration at the end often, but I'm trying to do them throughout if possible. 

 So let's spend a little bit time on the references. Can you talk specifically about how you run them and are there different types or do you have a specific set of questions that you're always, uh, going to in your own process?

 So the most important thing to remember about references is that you are talking to a biased party. You're not talking to somebody who's objective. This is double true. When the reference was given to you by the candidate, they're checking first, Hey, I'm looking to, you know, have somebody speak to a future potential employer.

 Are you willing to talk to them? Obviously, you're only going to make that introduction. If the person's like, yeah, I'm going to go to bat for you. So that's what you're, that's what you're up against. You know, you are, you're in a situation where you are trying to learn. Is, you know, I'm interviewing Brett and Brett has now given me a reference from somebody that he's worked with for a long time, who thinks highly of him and wants the best for him and who has agreed to take this reference call.

So that's what I'm up against is How do I accurately learn about Brett from this person? Um, that's like the first mindset that I think is, uh, is critical. And there's a few ways to get through that. Obviously what I want to know is, you know, the basic questions of what's this person like to work with, what are their strengths?

What are their weaknesses, maybe I want to check are the things that they took credit for is that indeed how, how it went, uh, are there, you know, are there stylistic things that are unusual about them? are they one of the best you've ever worked with in this role? Uh, how do they compare to others?

So I'm trying to figure those things out, but I'm up against the bias party. So there's a couple of things you can do there. One is You can actually disarm the conversation directly and I I've done this when I felt like I was dealing with a particularly biased, but like a particularly valuable person for the context they would have is to say, Hey, look, this is how references go.

You understand that? we all kinda know this dynamic, but it's really important to me. And it's really important to this candidate who you care about that we don't just like, try to get to a, yes, we try to get to the right answer. And so like, if you can put your biases aside and like try to like give it to me as straight as possible, I'm just trying to figure out, will this be a good fit?

And it's better for this person who you care about to, if we actually get to, is this a good fit? So like, I've actually found that that sort of just breaking the fourth wall, call it like it is and just kind of acknowledge it will kind of like, let people take this break and say like, I'm not on stage right now.

I'm just trying to. People get to the right answer because if I don't get to the right answer, I'm not helping anybody. So that's one thing you can do. Um, you can also just remember to Dean, take every piece of praise down a couple of notches. So if I say, how good was Brett compared to others that you've worked with in a similar role?

Was he in the top 50%? Was he in the top 25%? The top 10%, the top 5%? Like how would you, how would you stack Brett up a great reference? The answer to that question will be out top. None of those top 1%, top number one is the best I've worked with, or you know, him and one other are the top two, but it's, you know, these are, these are the best.

A a sort of medium reference would be, yeah, probably top 10. You know, I would, even though if it, if someone's actually top 10%, that's good, you know, in a reference that them, them taking that choice is, is okay. And if someone says top 25%, like at that point, you're like, okay, now, now I've got to knock that down a couple pigs.

So, so there is the sort of just idea that remember to kind of turn the dials, you know, down on whatever you heard. Um, and then the last thing that you can do to sort of break through this bias. Is to really force detailed answers in the same sort of pattern as you do with a candidate when you're asking them about their history in general, what I've found is the way to get down to someone's substance on a topic is to just keep poking at it.

And it can feel a little uncomfortable and a little annoying because you're kind of just like keep teasing at this thing and you're going deep. You know, they, they think they've answered the question. Now you say, I want to follow up on that. Can I ask you about this specific thing? Can you go a little bit deeper, but that's where you get the real answers.

 Have, have you ever hired someone after a pretty negative reference? And if so, what did you learn about their actual performance?

Photo of Jack Altman against brick background

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Jack Altman, co-founder & CEO of Lattice, shares tactical advice for assembling your startup’s executive team — from common traps and hiring profiles, to the end-to-end process of interviewing, checking references, and evaluating performance.

How to get executive hiring right at every stage — Lattice’s Jack Altman

Tactical advice for hiring execs, from common traps & hiring profiles, to the end-to-end process of interviewing, references, & evaluating performance.