Topic
Hiring & Talent
Finding, hiring, and retaining the right people.
What the experts say
“Benchmark is constantly oriented toward identifying and recruiting special or exceptional people, even if it requires deviating from standard organizational structure.”
Acquired · 1:49:27
“Benchmark is constantly oriented toward identifying and working with special people, even if it requires creating non-standard roles and arrangements.”
Acquired · 1:49:41
“It's important to break your rules when you find an extenuating circumstance, especially when you encounter a special person you want to work with.”
Acquired · 1:49:41
“The partnership uses principles to surround themselves with people who push and challenge them.”
Acquired · 1:47:59
“When you meet someone like Blake who you want to work with, you find a way to make it work regardless of formal structures.”
Acquired · 1:47:59
“Benchmark doesn't have a formal associate program, but hires based on fit and merit rather than predetermined roles.”
Acquired · 1:47:59
“The process of evaluating and bringing on new partners has been different for each person at Benchmark.”
Acquired · 1:31:27
“After seven years of pursuing Benchmark, Ben Gilbert sent Bruce a note mentioning he was working at Excell, which received only a 'good luck' response.”
Acquired · 1:33:00
“Peter Fenton's pattern of repeatedly competing for the same investments that Benchmark was pursuing before joining the firm was a telling signal of his fit.”
Acquired · 1:31:27
“You should break your institutional rules when you find an extenuating circumstance, such as a special person who embodies your values but is at a different career stage.”
Acquired · 1:48:46
“Hiring associates and junior partners has been a good launchpad for people entering the non-principal principal program.”
Acquired · 1:48:46
“The firm is constantly oriented toward working with special people who align with their values, even if they don't fit traditional role definitions.”
Acquired · 1:48:46
“The ideal venture capital investor is a roving, curious person with wide dynamic range rather than a deep expert in a specific domain.”
Acquired · 1:41:51
“An early hire identified the company's problems through their homework and went on to build a competing business around those insights.”
Riding Unicorns · 39:41
Related episodes
talent retention
retention
Team building
basically to do their own thing. And so, you know, it ends up becoming I think we have probably if I were to guess, we'd it's hard to get these benchmarks. I'd say we probably have, you know, world class employee retention, and we've had that for...
“Your first 40 hires will make or break your entire company culture”
I'd like to, build on that. I might like, I I agree with you to a degree. I think those first 40 people you hire are by far the most important of anything. So I think, like, having a view on what...
Their skills, their roles, and culture all need to fit together because trust and collaboration matter just as much as individual excellence. And then finally, and maybe most importantly, and one of the hardest things to do, especially in...
on quality and quantity. But I don't care if they made 35 hires this year versus 43. Because if the 36 hires started being mediocre, I'd rather, we want to help our founders hire less, actually. Often, we dissuade our founders from hiring the first...
by hiring talent in different geographies at different price points. So remember LTVCAC, like, the other way you can influence that ratio is getting talent at a better price point in other countries. I would also say partners matter. I think...
that's been through that journey before, that understands the process of obtaining product market fit, that understands you have to go in and land small and then expand in accounts and and things of that nature. In terms of the actual hiring process...
Hire mission and objective aligned talent. Folks that have the skills to get you to where you want to go. Never skip interview steps. Interviewing is so painful, but what's more painful is cleaning up a bad hire later on. Trust your gut early. Off...
Let's get right into the tactical and what I think will probably matter to many of you, go to market hiring. Hiring mistakes early on are incredibly costly. A mishire can cost over $1,000,000. And this is because if you think about it, it takes time...
Or does that actually impact quality of onboarding and the challenge of ramping them? I do. I think you should hire more than one at a time for a few reasons. Less about the competition. I think that's kinda gonna happen maybe naturally, but it's...
At twenty Sales, one of the most common things that we do is we help our founders look through who should be their first sales hires, and we even help them interview. So make sure that you are leaning on people that can help you guide through this...
Nothing harder. Right? Nothing harder. But they're coming up on 20,000,000, growing over 100% with 110% NRR. And I sat with the head of sales, but I didn't really know her background. She was the first person in. She actually had volunteered to...
there, especially with teams. I spoke to Sujay before the show, and he said in particular that your ability to build the most incredibly talented teams was something that stood out to him. He asked what were some of your biggest lessons on talent...
commercial experience. And different companies call segments different things, and I hadn't done the important work of, like, really diving deep into deal level experiences, like, really early in my sales leadership career. A great lesson. I do...
So we looked for candidates who could clearly articulate how their skills would move us closer to our mission, which is to create AGI, artificial general intelligence, that benefits all of humanity, not just those who are excited by the vision. The...
We mentioned those enterprise customers and revenue paying non friends and family. And now I'm gonna go out and hire my two reps. You said two. I'm gonna make them fight to the death like Hunger Games. Kidding, obviously. That would be immoral to...
We've all seen those people that seem to have a year at a whole bunch of different companies, maybe a more senior title at each one, but what you really want to look for is growth within their current company. People who are primarily motivated by...
We were doing pitches, and his pitch was so smooth. And I was like, oh, great. It was very comfortable off the cuff, blah, blah, blah. And I had asked, but I hadn't done the work of digging deep into what are the types of deals that you've done...
Welcome to the official SaaStr podcast where you can hear some of the best SaaStr speakers. This is where the cloud meets. Up today on the SaaStr podcast And at OpenAI, we held and we always hold the line even when it slows us down because one...
the outcome or the impact that your product is having. You're really just helping them participate in their own rescue. I'm a founder in this hypothetical situation, very early stage company. Do I hire sales reps first? Do they do that data...
So you favor talent over experience, which sounds kind of obvious. Respectfully, you're gonna go for like an it like an experienced, untalented person. But how how do you think about your hiring lessons around experience versus talent? I think...
Have a podcast?
Run your podcast through Clypt
Get ranked clips, hooks, and ready-to-post copy from your own episodes. Free to try.