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

Brett Berson: Well, Jack, thanks so much for joining.

Jack Altman: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. 

Brett Berson: So over the course of the conversation,I thought the place we would start would be, what you've learned and how you approach exec 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.

Jack Altman: 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.

Jack Altman: 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.

Jack Altman: 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 

Brett Berson: 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.

Jack Altman: 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.

Brett Berson: 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 

Jack Altman: up 

Brett Berson: 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.

Jack Altman: 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.

Brett Berson: 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.

Jack Altman: 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.

Jack Altman: 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.

Brett Berson: 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.

Jack Altman: 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.

Jack Altman: 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.

Brett Berson: 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.

Jack Altman: 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?

Jack Altman: 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?

Jack Altman: 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. 

Brett Berson: 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?

Jack Altman:  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.

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

Jack Altman: that's a great question. 

I've never hired somebody where the references were all lukewarm. I have hired somebody where the references were a mix of stellar off the charts and not so hot. And I think, um, there's a couple kinds of references I would describe as not so hot. One is the kind where it's just like a very tepid lukewarm.

Like I'm not that passionate about this. They were just not effective. Like that sort of tone is, is hard, depending on who said that that's, that's tough. Um, what's easier to get through as someone who says, you know, in their own way, yes, they were really shockingly effective, but it was not a style that worked for me and they were too goofy at work or they sort of wanted to do things in their own silo or, you know, like there's versions of this, where the reference will be a version of it. Wasn't for me, I can't blame the results, but you know, this person wasn't for me in these ways. And then there's also cases that I've had where I've done a reference sometimes with another founder about a role. And it doesn't make sense to me because you know, every other reference I've done is good. And then I talked to this one, founder, maybe it was a couple of jobs ago where it was just like not good.

And that for whatever reason, that call was, was odd, but I've, I've then done references on the references there and learned that maybe that founders are really difficult personality or something like that. Or actually like, you know, the candidate was actually being really respectful when they were describing the way in which they left the company to me.

And then the founder was giving this like, abrasive story about it that wasn't wasn't accurate. And so you do need to do a little more diligence sometimes, and you're like a bit of an investigator in those kinds of situations. but the kind of reference that scares me the most is the sort of really lukewarm and dispassionate reference that that would be the worst. 

Brett Berson: why is that?

 it's not like there was a stylistic difference. It's not like, you know, there was some deep contention. They just found them ineffective in a kind of vanilla way. And I think the truth is in any given company, there are a lot of people who are, who are not particularly effective.

Jack Altman: Like, I think there is a real distribution of effectiveness inside of a company. And if you actually looked over the shoulder of every employee at a company, and you just like, looked at their contribution up close with a microscope, you'd see a really wide difference. And I think the, the people where they get a lot done and where they're really impactful employees. they don't always work well together. Like teams work in certain ways together. There are certain cultures where those people are effective. And so you're looking for people who are both effective and will work in your particular environment, but someone who's just not shown an ability to be particularly effective.

And it's not because of any odd contention. I think I just, get more turned off by those sorts of references. 

Brett Berson: This may not be necessarily just related to references, but how do you think maybe more broadly about picking apart someone's own abilities versus the system that they're operating with at any point in their career? Right. In the sense that take a sales leader, you know, a sales leader selling slack in the first year when there's all these people that are clamoring for the product is very different than a sales leader, selling something that no one's ever heard of.

There's no brand awareness, et cetera, et cetera. And broadly my worldview is people generally undervalued the system and overvalue themselves and kind of almost any context. Um, but do you think about that as it relates to execs and like, what is their ability to, to actually drive an outcome versus the system or the tailwind in which they're operating.

Jack Altman: so much, and this is such a good question. 2 thoughts on this one is exactly what you said. the people who are, for example, let's say, let's say an AEs seller, somebody who's out there trying to just convince customers to buy the. I would so rather have the seller who was at the number two company and did well anyway, or the number three company and did well anyway than someone who just hit quota at slack or at zoom along the way when you're on the winning, product team.

And it was so hard to tell, did those sales close, because we all use slack and zoom. And it was really just, how do I, you know, get through your security questionnaire? And like those sales jobs ended up being a lot like order taking, or were you really trying to convince a customer that despite the feature gaps and despite the brand that this other company had, and despite all of these other disadvantages, you should still go with our product.

And let me tell you why. And it has to do with our future and our vision and how we can use things in this particular way and how we're going to meet your specific needs. But it's the real art of selling and, um, And to me, I've just found for that role in particular, for, for a go-to-market role in particular, I've had much better luck finding people who were at, good, but not generationally exceptional companies, uh, and, and made it work there.

And I think this is true for, for many other roles as well. however, I will balance this, which is, I, I think it is good that there has become a sentiment in Silicon valley to not try to over bias on sort of professional pedigree. Like, oh, you worked at Stripe, you must be amazing.

You know, like I think that is they, they very well might be Stripe is full of amazing people, but it's great that Silicon valley has gotten to a point where that's not sort of the, the main thing that we key in. So I do love the experience of working in a company that wasn't great. I think like, you know, I don't know what's the expression iron sharpens, iron, whatever it is, like the hard, the hard experiences are where people grow and where they like really earned their chops. That said there is this other thing too, which is you want, particularly with executives, you want people with good judgment and part of good judgment is personal career judgment.

And so you do also want a career arc that shows that over time, people were able to make good judgments for their own career and were able to join, companies that did in fact do well and to take on roles that were good fits for them and to put themselves in positions where they could be successful.

So the other side of this coin is I don't want to knock somebody for, for working at, you know, or Stripe or someplace like this. I think in the ideal world, you have somebody who has spent time early in their career, working at companies that were solid, but not the number one and made it work anyway.

But then over time got themselves into roles where they were at companies that were leaders and they figured out how to like make those kinds of judgment calls too. And I Do think there is a correlation there. So you know, that that's the other side of the coin is if you can, you know, people who have proven the ability to do both of those things is good

Brett Berson: So zooming back out again, over the years, as you've been hiring executives, when you look back at most of your hiring errors, where you hired somebody that they didn't work out, is there a thread or, or a set of things that tie those mistakes together, that now is a strong part of the way that you run your process, maybe in a different way or something that you keep in mind?

 it's a good topic because, executive or not, no one hires perfectly. You can't possibly get perfect information before you start. And there's contexts that change rapidly when someone gets in startups move so quickly that if you interview somebody in may and you know, they joined in early July and they're ramped by September, but you thought they were going to work on like that project might've been canceled by now.

Jack Altman: Or you might have realized you want a different focus. Um, so there is a lot, both between those kinds of changes in the startups. And between the fact that you just can't get to know a whole person, even in a 15 or 20 hour total interview process with someone you just can't know anything.

I mean, that's only a couple of days of work, you know, in total time spent. people need to go into hiring knowing that a 75% success rate would be extraordinarily good. But most, most of us part with way fewer people than, than, you know, a sort of super rational analysts would tell you to, maybe someone got 60% of their hires, quote, unquote, like super right.

Uh, and they part with 5%. And so that means that 35% of the hires they made are people that they didn't get super right. But that they, that they didn't part with, uh, I don't think hiring and parting ways is this epic failure. I think the most epic failure is hiring and not parting ways.

And I think a lot more time and attention should probably go to that. Then the sort of like the miss hire process. Like I think if you're, if you're too afraid of miss hiring, you're also going to miss the unproven people that, uh, you took a bet on. 

And it wouldn't be a bet if it didn't come with risk. And so in the same way that as a venture investor, it's not a failure to have a reasonably high percentage of your seed investments, not working. In fact, it's a sign that you're doing things, right. I actually believe the same thing about recruiting.

So I, you know, th the starting point is that it's not this failure. It is part of the game. Um, and that's an important Headspace to have as you're going through. It is that you are, you're making investments and you are taking some risks sometimes because people are surprising and we can't predict the future.

 there are a few types of, uh, hiring mistakes that all of us have made that I think you learn from, um, one metal, one that I was talking to a friend about recently is one thing that I think is really, really important as any hiring manager, is that at the end of the process and at the end of all the input and all of the thinking and feedback you've gotten in the references and your peers, and maybe what your own manager thinks or what your board thinks.

Jack Altman: You need to own the decision at the end and you need to really own it. And I don't just mean that you need to take accountability for it because obviously any reasonable manager is going to take accountability for the decision, but you need to make a decision that you wanted to make. you need to feel in your bones, that this is the right thing to do, and you need to not do it because other people's hold you to.

And one of the reasons why that's so important is because with some decent percentage of the time, it's not going to work out. And when that happens, it's just so frustrating. If you didn't listen to your own instincts, you know yourself, your intuition really matters.

And it's easy to make this mistake where you're not sure, and you defer to the crowd and it's really important not to do that. So that is one sort of diagnosis I've I've had in the past. Um, I think another I've made is when you're growing quickly.

Um, you can, you can feel tempted to just close the role and to just like, get it done because you are, you are often in during a lot of pain and this is something that people don't always see from the outside is when you're 30 people and growing super fast, like it's unbelievable how busy a founder is in that situation.

Like it, unless you've been through it, it's like hard to fathom how many things are coming at this person and how little resources they have to deal with it. And so if on top of all of your other. You also don't have an engineering leader. And in addition to trying to talk to customers and managing a bunch of people and doing lots of hiring and maybe talking to investors and you're doing media stuff, and Lord knows what else.

But on top of that, you've got to manage nine engineers directly because you don't have an engineering leader. You're just like, I cannot possibly do this, the next warm body I'm going to take. And it is really easy to get them to that mindset. And that is a trap. that is a really ripe situation to compromise and to make a hire that you shouldn't.

And so that's one example of the moment, it's probably the most common example of the moments when you are sort of like weak and not going to stick to your hiring. Prince's. So that's another source of error. Um, and then maybe the final source of error is, you know, I talked about how you, you want to hire for the next 18 to 24 months.

Like, you know, lattice today is 500 people. We shouldn't be hiring people who, you know, where their sweet spot is 10,000 employees. And that's how they know how to operate because it's just not gonna match up. Well, um, on the other side, you do need to hire a head a little bit, and this is where there's like a little bit of art and judgment.

And you know, it's a little bit of a balance, but, you know, by the time the person starts and onboards and gets comfortable and gets to know the company, like your company might be twice as big and the needs might be totally different. So.

you do need to figure out how to like time the person's comfort in stage two, the rate of growth that you're having.

And, uh, that that's definitely, uh, a mistake I've made during fast growth periods is not hiring ahead far enough. 

 one thing I wanted to spend some more time on is the topic of, of letting people go and when to do that and how to do that.

 and maybe one place to start would be when you hire someone.

 how do you figure out what great looks like in the first few months and how do you balance kind of giving the person a chance to build context and understand. With kind of getting things going and delivering results.

Brett Berson: and I think with the exact hiring, it's particularly important to know when, to let someone go because the cascading mess that can be created is kind of staggering, right? You have a sales leader in the wrong role for a year. They might have hired 20 reps burned a ton of capital, et cetera, et cetera.

So curious, maybe we could start it by what you think. Excellent. Looks like for an incoming executive that might give you a sense of whether this is a star or whether you have a problem.

 there's two phases of the onboard. And they're sort of demarcated by this switch that flips. And, um, that basically What I'm referring to is when you get, when you get in for your first, let's say 30, 60, maybe up to 90 days, you really want an exec to be learning often, you know, in a startup.

Jack Altman: Hopefully if you're in a position where you're hiring, you know, some new, some new exacts things are usually going at least somewhat well. And so most of the time, not always, but most of the time, you're not looking for them to come in and, you know, tear the house down and start fresh.

You're looking for them to build on what's already there. And so a great exac will come in. And the first thing that they will do is, is, is basically nothing. They'll listen, they'll learn, they'll understand the lay of the land. They'll get to know the people. They'll start to build trusting relationships.

They'll understand how information flows around. They'll try to understand what's been working well in their function. What's not been working so well. They're really gonna learn. they're gonna take the time to like, get a feel for things. And they're also going to get a feel for what decisions need to be made.

You know, like maybe during the interview process, I learned what the founder thinks is most important or what, you know, some other peer of mine thinks is going to be most important. But now that I'm here and I'm the VP of product, what do I think is most important? now that I know the people a little bit, I know how things have gone.

I've talked to a bunch of customers. I've gotten a feel for this company. Like what do I think the priorities are? what are the most important decisions I, as this head of product need to make in the next year? how am I going to move the needle? And I think that takes a little bit of time and a little bit of patience and.

 you can also get really easily trapped as a new exec because you want to, you want to make an impact. Do you want to start contributing right away? You're seeing all these people around you doing stuff and moving balls forward. And it's actually really hard to sit on your hands, particularly for somebody who's had, a very sort of ambitious career and that's what you're used to. And you're like, you know, I, might've just taken like a little break in between jobs and now I'm here and I'm not really making decisions. What am I doing? But I think it's really important that new executives take the time to do that and to get the lay of the land accurately, you can't make good decisions before, you know, what's happening around you.

Jack Altman: And so that is one hallmark of an exec that I think is super effective as they, they really are controlled. In that beginning phase and they control themselves, they control the situation. They keep things moving at a pace that makes sense. They know, all right, there are a few light things that I need to do just to keep the lights on.

And I can kind of tell the difference between those and the big decisions they don't have the context to make yet. So I think that's what you're looking for. And I think the way, you know, that is in a new execs first month or two, you should always be spending a good amount of time with your executive team.

But, you know, as time goes on, you'll have stretches where you are not as close to an exact day-to-day work. And you know, it's better for the executive, better for the founder. Uh, but in the beginning you want to be close to people and you want to be spending lots of time with them and talking to them and brainstorming and hearing about what they learned and helping sharpen their picture on things and giving them insight into what's on your mind.

And you'll know that someone is doing well in the beginning, even before they've. Even before they started making decisions and contributing by how, how quickly are they grokking the situation around them? Are they understanding what matters are they understanding how the different players work? Do they have a sense of how, you know, the product team or the marketing team or whatever is going to fit into the rest of the company's strategy this year?

Are they learning at like a good rate? Um, and then you can also tell by the way that they're sort of like, you know, fitting in with the people around them, are they building good relationships? Are they earning trust? Are they figuring out how to, you know, find light ways to, you know, help other people out around them?

Um, are they, you know, building strong rapport with their team? So those are a couple of the things. And then I guess also, you know, still talking about the first couple months of an exact role, sometimes you will have a clear handful of tasks, whether it's making a couple of really important hires, or we need to get this one particular thing launched, and you can sort of say to the exact, before you have context, I've got context and I promise this thing is worth doing.

So just like do this as you're learning and often in a project or two like that, you can kind of see, all right, this person is able to like pick up what we're doing and execute really fast. So those are probably some of the things I think about in the first couple of months,

Brett Berson: One of the, one of the other really difficult aspects I think of, of letting folks go is how you choose to communicate that with other people inside of the company. And I think that there are many different schools of thought to this. And I think in some ways that it's based on the culture of the company and the scale of the company, but I'm curious, kind of how have you approached that over time and sort of, I assume wanting to balance the, the respect for the individual that's leaving.

With sort of some level of transparency or directness or honesty with the people that are staying and anything come to mind.

Jack Altman: yeah, I don't, I don't claim to have a perfect answer to this and I, I don't know that there's a right or a wrong, this is one of those topics where I think there's probably a right or a wrong, depending on what your company culture is like. And so I think having a general. You know, approach to this that resonates with the rest of your values and your culture.

And the style of working that you have is, is the right way to think about it. Like I could imagine companies where, you know, it was like a super impersonal thing and it was like, there were no sort of secrets, nothing was veiled about it. It just like, yeah, we let this person go because they weren't meeting these clear goals that you all know, you know, we all abide by and that's what that was.

And like, yeah, there's probably a culture where that works, you know, at lattice, we are at our core, very, very employee centric. And this is a good example of a place where that culture shows up is how do you choose to, to handle those situations? And so, to me, I've never been interested in making an example out of everybody.

I don't find that to be something that resonates with my own values. I wouldn't want to be treated like that. I wouldn't want to work at a place where other people were treated like that. So for me, The kind of company that I want lattice to be is one where, when we make these hard decisions, we do as much as we possibly can for that part of that employee to have the transition experience go the way that they want it to.

So my preference is always to talk to the employee about, Hey, we are going to make this change, but like, I want this to happen on your terms. Like, you know, we can have some flexibility on timing and messaging and communication sequencing and the rest of it. and there are other, you know, people who would say there are trade-offs to that. And, and there certainly are. Um, and, uh, it's not like it is, uh, only a positive way and that I would recommend every company do it. But for us, that, to me is the clear way to handle things, given our culture. So I would take it on a culture by culture basis. 

Brett Berson: Zooming back out slightly. Uh, when you think about an exec that at some point you've questioned whether they were the right person, if they were performing, if you had to part ways, have you found that a decent amount of the time that 

Jack Altman: that 

Brett Berson: when you kind of called things into question, the person actually made a turn and were hugely successful, or when you look back at your own questions and doubts, there are, they're sort of entirely spot on and maybe they're spot on because you had a good sense or maybe it's confirmation bias.

And once you call someone into question, it's very hard to be open-minded enough to actually see them change in performance. But curious with your own judgment or instincts around talent, how often, you know, when you're questioning something, do you end up being wrong?

 this is a really, uh, interesting thought because I've I, now that you asked this, I think I believe Something different than the generally accepted wisdom. I think the generally accepted wisdom is once you're having doubts, it's over once you're having doubts, you know, 99% of the time, it's not going to work out and that person's wrong.

Jack Altman: And like, once you're asking it's over, I think it's sometimes is. But I'm now thinking back on examples of, you know, even people who are still at lattice and absolutely thriving today have two-way conversations I've had with that person where, you know, either they were like, oh, I don't know if I want to keep doing this.

And you know, maybe I even said to them, well, you know, if things stay like this, it's not going to be successful for anybody. And, this is with like highly trusted employees where I've got a long relationship, but like that's happened. And, um, You know, all the people I'm thinking of right now, which is not, you know, just one or two are peer and doing well and thriving and happy.

And, um, I, I have seen it many times. I think what has to happen though for that to happen is an internal fire needs to be reignited and a new spark needs to be there. Not just have them like, oh, I'm going to like, not a fire. Like I'm going to work hard, but like, uh, a re a reaffirmation and almost a recommitment, uh, and a new mindset.

So these are cases where it's not like the person doesn't have the talent and the ability, it's just a matter of like, do they want it? And part of wanting it is bringing. You know, uh, certain, uh, you know, enthusiasm to the work in a certain discipline to what they're doing and, you know, a certain way that they interact with others around them.

And I, yeah, I guess I, I have seen it, it, there are moments when a hard conversation can be a turning point. And it's just like in a, you know, in a personal relationship and you think about, you know, a close friend, a family member, or a significant other, I think those relationships too can have, you know, turning point moments when things were headed in a direction that, you know, we might not have wanted.

And you talk about it and you recommit to why you are, why your relationship is so valuable to one another and why it is a good fit. And, uh, you can absolutely come through that. 

Brett Berson: Something that you mentioned earlier on that I, I sort of believe in strongly as this idea that, um, you should be focusing on hiring somebody that you think can be exceptional for 18 to 24 months, not five or 10 years. I'm curious though, when you look at the, um, when you look at the exacts that you've hired, that have scaled beyond that, what was special about them, or if you kind of diagnose what was going on that allowed them to go far beyond that.

Jack Altman: I think it's two things. One is that they approach problems somewhat first principally rather than through a playbook. And they are interested in what other companies Do They're interested in, what best practices might look like, but they're going to make decisions about how things should work based on a whole sort of host of inputs.

And they're ultimately going to make their own conclusions about things. And I think that is a very. Sort of approach than the I'm just going to like read books or I'm going to like talk and see, like, what did they do at, you, know, name, name, some great company. What did they do at Shopify? And I'm just going to copy paste that here.

So I think a PR people who approach things from a first principle that I'm going to decide for myself at all times that is a critical input to someone who is able to be successful at 25 people and 200 and 500 and so on. So I think that's one, I think the other is, uh, open-mindedness and flexibility.

Anybody who is going to scale with a fast growing company for three or four or five years is going to undergo not just so much change over the years, but like month by month, it's going to be different whole projects that were a priority last quarter are no longer a priority or changes that completely upend the model of what their days look like are going to happen.

They're going to take on completely new responsibilities that they never even thought of when they joined the company, they're going to give up responsibilities that they held dear in the past, there's just going to be so much change. And the people who are resistant to change, or whenever a change comes up, their first instinct is wait.

But what we're doing is good. Why are we doing this? And are constantly resisting there that doesn't work. It just, it just, it just ends up being too abrasive for themselves, for the people around them. you need an openness and you almost need to invite change. I would say. So th those would be the two is thinking from first principles and, and, and high openness, and even excitement for change because those things are going to happen.

And you can't possibly, you can't possibly scale through all of the ebbs and flows. If you're, if you're resisting,

Brett Berson: Do you, do you look for that in the interview process now? And is there particular points or ways that you get at that?

Jack Altman: I think the first principle one I do. Yes. Um, I think I do try to identify in the process of asking them about the big things they do. I try to ask them like why they made the decisions they made. And I'm looking for them to have a really clear explanation of the logic for it. You know, we segmented out our go to market, Oregon to these four segments and these territories.

And here's why, and the reason why is not, because that's what my boss told me to do, or that's what, you know, these other companies do. That's the standard. I read it in a book. They do it because we learned by doing deep customer research, that the way customers buy. Below a thousand employees and above a thousand employees is really different.

And the result of that is that we need a different type of sales training and sales enablement in those two different segments. And we're going to hire a different profile of seller for those. And therefore we're going to need different leadership for them. We're going to need a whole different system for onboarding them.

And so we decided to break that up once we got into the enterprise, because of these reasons, those sorts of explanations for why decisions were made is what you're looking for, as opposed to, you know, the sort of like I did it because it looked like the right answer on the test. Um, so I do think I still very much look for that?

And the way I look for it is like, what's the reason, like, give me the, I don't care. Who said what you tell me the reason for why this decision was the right one, something we haven't talked about that I'm super interested in over the course of lattices history is how has your thinking about internally promoting someone into an exac versus hiring external.

Brett Berson: Changed if at all and kind of, do you have any worldviews or, or approaches to that?

Jack Altman: Yeah. Well, one thing to remember is you're building a team. It's not just individuals, you're building a team. And so you want to think of it like constructing a portfolio, like a good leadership team for a company is going to have not just people who do the different functions, of course, but different perspectives, different backgrounds.

In my view, you want to mix of people who are, you know, the super strong up and comers mixed with people who have deep expertise and have seen a bunch of rodeos before. And I. Kind of assessing that balance in your team and wanting both of those ingredients is really important.

So I do think it's important to, you know, sort of bet ahead on some of your executives in general, the larger the company gets the harder this becomes because there are these prerequisites to being, you know, a, to holding sort of like a C-level job at a company of a certain scale. At some point it requires enough prerequisite experiences that it's hard to ask somebody to grow into those quickly enough, who doesn't have a lot of the sort of stepping stone, at least experiences that prepare you for that.

Um, so it does get harder, not impossible, but it gets a little bit harder to get quite as far ahead sometimes, uh, But early on, especially, um, I do think you, you really want to do this often, not even like a couple of times, I think you want to do it often, like, you know, just to sort of put a, take a swag at it out of a, you know, an eight person exec team at, you know, a series B company with, you know, 120 people I'm just started making up a story here.

I would hope that, you know, at least three of those eight executives were sort of internal, uh, promotions or people that, you know, came in as a, you know, sort of director level leader. And then you kind of like, you know, put, put a bigger bet on. Um, and I do just think that, that mix of perspectives also with the sort of context that those people have, like a lot of these.

Seen the company grow from its earliest days and stayed ahead of the curve and learned a lot. Like you want that DNA in your leadership team. They're just going to have so much rich context. And also, by the way, it's good for culture. It shows other people that you're a company that will bet on internal talent and will give opportunities to people, you know, as, as it's appropriate and they've earned it.

And I think that goes a long way too. 

Brett Berson: From a tactical perspective, do you run a normal exac hiring process and consider an internal candidate or you need to short circuit it or manage it in a way in very early on decide, let's say you're hiring a marketing leader. I'm actually going to promote from within.

Jack Altman: Um, I have, I have done both. in one instance, I, that I'm remembering there was somebody who we were on the cusp with about promoting them. You know, uh, uh, a management role into an executive role. And it was like, uh, you know, it was an extremely talented person who was phenomenal culture fit.

 it was just a real bed ahead in terms of experience. Um, and I did add in that juncture, engaged a search firm and met other candidates and ended up deciding to go with the internal person. So I have done that. And then other cases, you know, have just made the promotion without meeting any candidates, because it was, you know, an easy choice to see that, you know, this person could, could do it and was ready.

Jack Altman: And I didn't, I didn't need to go out and run the search cause we had someone great right there. So I've done both 

Brett Berson: Is there anything you've figured out when you have an internal, an internal candidate who throws his or her hat into the ring. And you choose not to put them in that seat that increases the chances that they'll actually stay and be productive because I think a default scenario is somebody wants the top job.

They don't get it. They're disgruntled. And then they end up leaving.

Jack Altman: I so sometimes that'll happen. So sometimes when you hire over somebody who really wanted the job, there's just nothing you can do and they're going to leave and, and it might even be rational for them to, it might not be sometimes people's egos are getting the best of them. Sometimes people actually are being rational to say, look, I'm at a point where I want to, I want to run a design org and I'm ready to run a design org.

And if you want to hire, you know, a VP of design over me, then I'll respect it, but I'm going to go somewhere else where I can be in charge or I'll do it here. And so, so sometimes that's, that's reasonable and there's nothing you can do about it. What I've often found though, personally is. If you can, uh, involve the person in the process of hiring their manager.

And this goes whether they wanted the top job or not. I, and th this also by the way, flies somewhat in the face of a lot of conventional wisdom, like this is not necessarily the, the most common recommendation. A lot of people will say, you know, it's too awkward for people to interview their manager and they're going to have all this bias and, you know, it's just going to be uncomfortable.

And they're going to try to, put like a wet blanket on the process and all this stuff, and that there's there's truth and all of that, but I've just found that, um, Trusting people to be adults and to, you know, say, look, this is important. This your relationship with this person is, is more impactful to your life.

Then it's going to be to mine as the person's manager. So I really want you to have a voice. And I really want you to be part of this. I've found that, you know, 80 plus percent of the time, people are really responsible about that and really appreciative. And so in my view, including people in the process of hiring their manager is, is a benefit.

And this is not by the way, like what most exact recruiting firms will tell you to do or what most boards will tell you to do. So I, I could be off on this one, but I've, I've always approached things this way.

Brett Berson: So maybe to wrap this up, I'm curious, who's, who's kind of taught you the most about this craft of hiring and building an exact team if anyone comes to mind. And is there anything that you gleaned from them or that they explained to you? That's been really valuable outside of some of the key ideas that we've we had discussed in our conversation.

 there are a lot of people I think team building obviously is like one of the most important jobs of the CEO And it's like a core competency. So I think anybody who finds himself in this role should, should really treat it like something to improve on.

Jack Altman: And it's a real discipline and you should like treat it like a serious part of your craft. So you should be looking for advice from, from wherever you can, other founders, I think that the very best source is going to be founders of companies that are a stage or two ahead of you who have been through what you're trying to go through and can like give you the real talk on it.

There's obviously other sources too. You know, if you've got investors who have got a lot of experience with it, those can be. Um, your own execs can be really good, actually. So like a lot of, particularly as your company grows, you'll start to get to higher execs who have, you know, hired a lot of execs of their own, who you can like, you know, thought partner with on a lot of this stuff.

So I think that becomes a source of wisdom too, for me, like one person who I definitely have asked the most questions to is uh, Sagi, who's the founder and CEO of Benchling. Um, I think he's exceptionally strong at thinking about exact recruiting, how to do it, what to look for, how to, you know, convince people how to triangulate on their experience through references and what they've done in the past, how to go deep with people.

Society's definitely the person who I've asked the most about who I think is just particularly phenomenal at this. And, and his company is, you know, a click ahead of ours. And so I've, you know, at each stage being able to ask him things like, Hey, you're, you know, a year or two ahead of where we're at. What, what, what can I glean from you as somebody who has like gone a little further down the path and can like, tell me like, Hey, there's a, there's a tree in the way there watch out.

Brett Berson: And is there anything that he taught you or kind of insights that you glean that sit outside of what we've covered thus far?

 one thing that he has, uh, shared with me over and over, which I think he was very right. Is, he has encouraged me to try to hire for profiles that are much more experienced than I think I've got that I might think I have access to her, then I might think I need, because the exponential growth of a startup is so unintuitive and sort of the mindset that yes, you're hiring for 18 to 24 months ahead.

Jack Altman: But like, don't forget how different your company's going to be in two years. And you really need people who are two years ahead of you like now. Um, and like that, that, that's what you're looking for. And I think that has pushed my thinking. Uh, in terms of like the backgrounds and the experiences, a lot of, you know, what this is, this is for once you're in real growth scale mode, and you're adding hundreds of people a year that you really want to start bringing in, not necessarily for every role, but you do need people in the company who have real scaling experience at a level like beyond where you're at.

And with that, the scaling will go a lot more smoothly and without it it'll just be a lot more painful. So I think just the focus on really getting people who are, you know, believe in your future growth and like really stretch towards, uh, what, what that's going to be for the candidate. 

Brett Berson: Great. Well, thanks so much for spending all this time with this jacket. This was a lot of fun.