Recruit Rockstars Podcast
Recruit Rockstars is the only podcast on the people part of PE & VC portfolio companies.
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Coffee, Anyone? (Recruit Rockstars 467)
12/16/2022
Coffee, Anyone? (Recruit Rockstars 467)
As a rule, I don’t have many guests back on the Podcast. (I like to keep it fresh.) But in this case, I made a rare exception. Because Jonathan Treble, Founder & CEO of WithMe, is en fuego. He heads the Chicago-based leader in apartment community amenities. Their shared printers (PrintWithMe) and shared coffee makers (SipWithMe) are now in countless apartment buildings & dorms across the country. Not only is a great perk, but also it allows owners & managers to control expenses & provision supplies. Jonathan & team have partnered with the hardware manufacturers, created the software, all wrapped it all in a outstanding service experience & supplies. The business is backed by New Stack Ventures, M25, Little Engine Ventures, Network Ventures, and Great North Ventures. In this 20-minute conversation, Jonathan reveals how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat.
/episode/index/show/strongsuit/id/25348320
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He’s Driven to be Mission-Driven (Recruit Rockstars 466)
10/28/2022
He’s Driven to be Mission-Driven (Recruit Rockstars 466)
You don't meet many people like Tony Huang. After graduating from Harvard, he pursued education as a fourth grade teacher outside of Boston. He then transitioned to a business career at Axon where he helped commercialize & create the body camera industry that is integral to public safety. Now he is on a new mission: to make financial products more fair & affordable for everyday people. For the past 5 years, he's been CEO and Co-Founder of Possible Finance, which helps communities break the debt cycle and unlock economic mobility. And he's on to something big. His venture investors include Canvas Ventures ,Columbia Pacific Advisors, FJ Labs, Hustle Fund, Union Bay Partners, Union Square Ventures and Unlock Venture Partners. What impressed me most about Tony was how genuinely mission driven he is and how that echoes through the entire organization. In this 20 minute conversation, Tony reveals how he’s done that and continues to attract people who are truly mission driven
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How This Founder/CEO Hired His First 30 (Recruit Rockstars 465)
08/26/2022
How This Founder/CEO Hired His First 30 (Recruit Rockstars 465)
Akshay Krishnaiah is CEO & Founder of Line, the fast-growing fintech company. After a successful career at Paypal & eBay, he stepped out on his own. And he personally interviewed hundreds of people to find his first few employees. Based in SF, Line is the Venture-backed company helping American working-class Americans who are underbanked. Their first offering is a “Get cash now, pay later” service. Akshay & team have built a highly-scalable model. With a team of just 30, Line provides Underwriting, Dispute management, Risk operations, and 24-hour in-house customer support. Clearly, they’re onto something big. Investors include: Techstars, Avesta Fund, CUNA Mutual Group, Goodwater Capital, , SustainVC. In this 20-minute conversation, he shares how he’s put a Rockstar in every seat.
/episode/index/show/strongsuit/id/24173958
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How to Hire for DNA Fit
08/22/2022
How to Hire for DNA Fit
How does a startup with a dozen people change a monolithic industry? Simple (but not easy): Hire for DNA Fit And Brian King does it consistently. He's CEO of Realto, the Kansas-based Private REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) marketplace. Brian & his team saw a gap in the market: there were limited options to buy and sell privately-held real estate. So they created one. Now, what used to be a manual paper-laden process is streamlined to days instead of months. And he's onto something big.... Investors include KCRise & Firebrand Ventures. In this 20-minute conversation, Brian reveals how he & his team hire primarily for DNA Fit (even before skills & competencies). And why it's helped them change an industry.
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How They Assess Candidates for Culture Fit
08/17/2022
How They Assess Candidates for Culture Fit
The only thing better than talking culture & leadership with a progressive talent leader? Talking with two of them. Aparavi helps organizations that desperately need a solution to the mountains of data they need to manage. It's the cloud based platform for finding & consolidating your company's unstructured & distributed data. Speaking of distributed, Aparavi has a distributed team of 100. In this episode, Tania Williams (People & Culture Strategist) and Luis Zambrano (Chief of Staff) reveal how they put a Rockstar in every seat of the business. And how they assess candidates for culture match with Aparavi. Tania was previously a talent leader at 24 Hour Fitness and Sears Holdings. Luis was with HealthTrust Software and MGA Homecare.
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Transitioning from VC to PE Backed
08/17/2022
Transitioning from VC to PE Backed
There's a SaaS platform for everything... And everyone. Including SimpleLegal, the fast-growing SaaS platform for in-house counsels. It's part of Onit, the leading provider of enterprise legal management & contract lifecycle management software, which is backed by the PE firm K1 Investment Management. Mark Weidick is President & General Manager of SimpleLegal, and he has a unique perspective having joined when the business was VC-backed. Now that the company is PE-backed, it has a different pace, metrics, and cadence. Prior, he was CEO with a number of Venture Capital backed companies and senior executive with Cisco. In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how he's put a Rockstar in every seat. And how he evolved the culture from VC-backed to PE-backed.
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Lure Them to the Office with Free Food (Recruit Rockstars 461)
07/29/2022
Lure Them to the Office with Free Food (Recruit Rockstars 461)
Jeff Grass knows how to get your hesitant employees back to the office. This serial entrepreneur is Co-Founder & CEO of Hungry Marketplace. Based in Arlington VA, Hungry is tackling the $100 Billion business food & events industry with a food-tech marketplace & logistics platform that provides unparalleled food & engagement solutions for businesses, powered by top local chefs. In short, Hungry partners with local chiefs to bring food to your office. So far, they operate in 9 markets with 250 employees. Clearly, Jeff's onto something big. Hungry doubled revenues last year, despite the pandemic. And he's raised capital from leading VC firms: 10X Capital, Bread and Butter Ventures, Evolution PC Partners, GP Ventures, James Madison Innovations, Marcy Venture Partners, Motley Fool Ventures, Sand Hill Angels, Sands Capital Ventures, The Heritage Fund, The Torch Fund After earning his MBA at The Wharton School and a stint with McKinsey & Company, Jeff was Co-Founder of other successful companies LiveSafe and buySAFE, which enables online businesses to increase trust & confidence with site visitors. In this 20-minute conversation, Jeff reveals how he's put a Rockstar in every seat of Hungry (and how he keeps them)
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And You Thought Your Team Was Complex? (Recruit Rockstars 460)
07/28/2022
And You Thought Your Team Was Complex? (Recruit Rockstars 460)
Whether your team is hybrid or distributed or global, you’ve got nothing on Chad Mattix. He’s CEO & Founder of Kinettix, the leading IT field service support company. Based in Cincinnati, Chad & his team deliver 24/7/365 IT field service support on-site in over 100 countries. He’s built a fulltime team of 80 with a remote distributed team of thousands! Their customers are large IT service providers. And for them, they Install & service cameras, digital signage, POS systems, kiosks, network equipment. In this 20-minute conversation, Chad reveals how he’s built a global team of Rockstars.
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How CNBC’s Careers Expert Nabbed the Job She Wanted (Recruit Rockstars 459)
07/10/2022
How CNBC’s Careers Expert Nabbed the Job She Wanted (Recruit Rockstars 459)
(Hint: She didn’t click “Apply” on some job board) Morgan Smith is Work Reporter with CNBC and its industry-leading careers website “Make It” Previously, you’ve read her pieces in People Magazine, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and The Associated Press. Morgan discovered her passion for some meaty topics: the future of work, interviewing, hiring, job search. So, she proactively went after the job she wanted. CNBC wasn’t looking. But she didn’t let that hold her back. In this 20-minute conversation, she reveals step-by-step how she did it. Plus, she reveals the most common mistakes that job-seekers make when looking for their next role.
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How She Brings Lofters Aloft (Recruit Rockstars 458)
06/16/2022
How She Brings Lofters Aloft (Recruit Rockstars 458)
Growth-stage companies don’t get much hotter than Salesloft, the leading platform for sales reps to execute their day to day selling tasks. Put simply, they enable sales teams to drive more revenue. Customers include Stripe, ServiceNow, and Shopify. And the company’s leadership team is committed to culture like few others. Katie Branham is VP People at Salesloft, where she’s tripled headcount to 750 Lofters in just 4 years. Unlike most, Katie & team have developed a crystal clear employer value proposition “we promise you’ll learn more here than anywhere” which has attracted Lofters in Atlanta & beyond. Clearly, it’s working… Investors include Atlanta Ventures, Emergence, HarbourVest Partners, High Alpha, Insight Partners, Storm Ventures, Techstars Candidates are interviewed to ensure they possess the same core values. In this 20-minute episode, Katie reveals how you can do the same.
/episode/index/show/strongsuit/id/23451965
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They Put the Tech in Foodtech (Recruit Rockstars 457)
06/10/2022
They Put the Tech in Foodtech (Recruit Rockstars 457)
Few early-stage companies combine as many distinct components as Tovala. Based in Chicago, the company pairs a smart oven with a meal subscription service. It truly makes foolproof food. Weekly meals are delivered fresh to the your door. Scan the barcode & you’re done. Home-cooked meals that cook themselves. And clearly Tovala is onto something big. They’re venture investors include: Comcast Ventures, Finistere Ventures, Left Lane Capital, New Stack Ventures, Origin Ventures, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, RiverPark Ventures, Service Provider Capital, Y Combinator Mike Mason is Tovala’s Talent Acquisition Manager, which puts him in the crucial role of scaling this hypergrowth organization. I just had the change to speak with Mike about how he puts a Rockstar in every seat. (And how you can do the same.) Yum.
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5 Questions to Unleash Your Company’s Hidden Power (Recruit Rockstars 456)
05/19/2022
5 Questions to Unleash Your Company’s Hidden Power (Recruit Rockstars 456)
Few things wag my tail like meeting with a CEO who puts talent at the top of their agenda. Here’s one. Matt Hulett is CEO of publicly-held PetMeds, America’s most trusted pet pharmacy with 11 million customers. Matt has driven more than $2 billion in value creation as a four-time public company CEO/President and a two-time private company CEO. He’s led multiple turnaround successes at companies you know, including Rosetta Stone, RealNetworks, and Expedia. And this week, he released his new book “Unlock: 5 Questions to Unleash Your Company’s Hidden Power” - It’s fantastic, regardless of your company’s stage. I just had the chance to speak with Matt about what role Recruiting has played in his personal success & that of his companies. Arf! Arf!
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2 to 80 employees in just 2 years (Recruit Rockstars 455)
04/26/2022
2 to 80 employees in just 2 years (Recruit Rockstars 455)
In business, few missions are more vital than protecting & improving the health of Americans. Sadly, 89M of us are pre-diabetic. Dan Zavorotny & his team are out to change that. He’s Chief Operating Officer & Co Founder of NutriSense, the fast-scaling VC-backed company that helps people prevent diabetes & heart disease. NutriSense’s innovative model pairs glucose monitors, predictive software, and a team of live dietitians. They combine to form a cohesive program to improve health. Clearly, Dan’s onto something big. The business has scaled from 2 employees to 80 in just 2 years. And revenues, while confidential, are mighty substantial. Investors have noticed, too. Backers include Milkbox Partners, LAUNCH (Jason Calacanis), Sutton Capital, Standing Oaks Venture Partners, and Techstars. In this 20-minute conversation, Dan shares how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat. And mistakes to avoid along the way.
/episode/index/show/strongsuit/id/22916072
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How He Went from Startup ➡️ IPO ➡️ $4.5B Revenues (Recruit Rockstars 454)
03/27/2022
How He Went from Startup ➡️ IPO ➡️ $4.5B Revenues (Recruit Rockstars 454)
So few entrepreneurs “go the distance” from startup to IPO. Most are “promoted to Chairman” at some point by their board of directors, because they fail to scale their personal skills as rapidly as their business. But I found one. Martin Babinec is Founder & Former CEO of TriNet, the legendary hypergrowth Professional Employer Organization (PEO) that got its start in Silicon Valley before becoming a global phenomena. Serving more than 15,000 clients and their 325,000 employees, TriNet is the largest independent cloud-based HR provider leveraging the Professional Employer Organization model. Martin founded TriNet in 1988, served as CEO until 2008 and Chairman until 2010. Along the way, he raised $130M in 5 rounds of equity financing, completed 6 acquisitions, and grew the PEO industry over two decades. Today, TriNet is a public company with 3,500 employees, doing $4.5 Billion revenues annually. I was a TriNet customer, and I simply couldn’t have started my companies without it. Because they handled all of the people part - payroll, benefits, administration, legal - which let me focus on what we did best. Now, Martin is a leading venture investor in Upstate New York. As Managing Director of UpVentures Capital, he funds early stage technology companies. Portfolio companies include people.ai, Bungee, Carta, BrandYourself, Outmatch, and Drafted. I asked Martin what made it all possible. His answer was instantaneous and authentic: core values. Martin was inspired by Jim Collins and EO & understood the importance of building TriNet based on distinct & authentic core values. They became filters for deciding would you join the company. He didn’t just write down some core values a the beginning, but he operationalized them thru the interviews, reference checks, Test Drives, and assessments to ensure that poor hires couldn’t slip in. In this 20-minute conversation, Martin walks you through how to do the same at your company.
/episode/index/show/strongsuit/id/22586018
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How Talent Experts Clean Up Talent Problems (Recruit Rockstars 453)
03/21/2022
How Talent Experts Clean Up Talent Problems (Recruit Rockstars 453)
The bigger a company becomes, the bigger its organizational challenges become. Liz Steblay saw it over & over at the large companies she joined. Now, she’s Founder & President of ProKo Agency, the consulting matchmaker that connects Fortune 500 leaders with pre-vetted consultants who specialize in organizational effectiveness. ProKo represents high-calibre organizational health consultants, who are deployed to help companies clean up their talent-related messes. Business is booming. Liz is also Co-Founder of PICA - Professional Independent Consultants of America, which teaches consultants how to build their career & client base. She’s well-suited to do it. Liz began her career in Organization Development at Intuit, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Levi Strauss & Co, and Medtronic. In this 20-min conversation, Liz reveals the talent problems she sees most often, and how to tackle them.
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How he invented the ‘Functional Healthwear’ category (Recruit Rockstars 452)
03/11/2022
How he invented the ‘Functional Healthwear’ category (Recruit Rockstars 452)
Healthcare fashion used to be horrid. But Chat Razdan is rapidly changing that. He’s Founder & CEO of Care+Wear. Based in New York, they combine fashion & function to take people from home to hospital and everywhere in between. Their products include scrubs, port access shirts, post surgical bras & a ton more. The goal is a more human healthcare experience for patients & clinicians everywhere. Between the aging population and a global pandemic, it’s no wonder business is booming. Investors include MedStartr Ventures and Grape Arbor Venture Capital. Chat began his career at Goldman Sachs and Kearney. In this 20 minute conversation, Chat and I “chat” about how he’s put a Rockstar in every seat of his company.
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He’s Behind the eCommerce Brands You Love (Recruit Rockstars 451)
03/07/2022
He’s Behind the eCommerce Brands You Love (Recruit Rockstars 451)
Whew! I finally finished paying off all my Amazon holiday gifts. Guess I’m hooked on eCommerce. Turns out I’m not alone. And I have proof… I just interviewed Dusty Holcomb. He’s CEO of fast-growing Red Stag Fulfillment. Based in gorgeous Knoxville, Red Stag is the world-class order fulfillment company designed to unleash scalable growth for eCommerce companies. In short, they do the picking, packing, storage, shipping, and returns for a ton of eCommerce companies (including the ones you used this past holiday) And they’ve carved out a unique 3PL niche… Red Stag specializes in large, heavy, bulky products. Think expensive inventory, like those high-end office chairs. With 1.1 Million feet of warehouse space in Knoxville & Salt Lake City, clearly Red Stag is onto something ‘big.’ They’re backed by leading Private Equity firm Mollenhour Gross. Prior to his appointment, Dusty was with AAA for many years. He now leads over 500 full-time employees. I wanted to find out how he’s scaling the company that scales other eCommerce companies. In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how to put a Rockstar in every seat.
/episode/index/show/strongsuit/id/22366070
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Our Spiciest Episode Ever (Recruit Rockstars 450)
02/18/2022
Our Spiciest Episode Ever (Recruit Rockstars 450)
Sir Wellington? An amazing mustard, mushroom and shallot blend Smashing Salmon? The mystical miso, soy and Shiitake blend Vampire Killer? Garlic parmesan blend, of course. Yum. Chip Overstreet is CEO of Spiceology, the nation’s fastest growing direct-to-consumer and direct-to-chef provider of innovative spices. And apparently, investors are hungry for it. Spiceology has raised capital from the likes of Jackson Square Ventures and Cowles Company. Formerly, Chip was VP Business Development at Affirm, the fintech wonder. But he packed up from Silicon Valley and moved to Spokane Washington, where he now leads Spiceology’s 150 employees. In this 20-minute conversation, Chip reveals how he’s put a Rockstar in every seat. (And which yummy spices are coming next.)
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Compare Hiring Notes with a CEO (Recruit Rockstars 449)
01/27/2022
Compare Hiring Notes with a CEO (Recruit Rockstars 449)
Isaiah Bollinger is Co-Founder & CEO of Trellis, the fast-growing full service eCommerce digital agency. Based in Boston, Trellis creates eCommerce businesses on Magento, BigCommerce, and Shopify. And he’s onto something. Trellis recently was named to the Inc 5000 list, making it one of the nation’s fastest-growing companies. Isaiah invests the better part of his week on recruiting & leading a team of 80. This conversation reveals how he does it.
/episode/index/show/strongsuit/id/21927335
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How He Reached Near-Perfect Employee Retention (Recruit Rockstars 448)
01/22/2022
How He Reached Near-Perfect Employee Retention (Recruit Rockstars 448)
How’d you like to build a company with a 90% offer acceptance rate? With near-perfect employee retention? And with 50% of employees comprised of under-represented minorities? Sean Byrnes has done it (and the company doesn’t interview candidates… at all) Based in San Francisco, he’s Founder & CEO of Outlier, the VC-funded business intelligence company. His customers are large consumer-facing companies with an immense amount of data. Outlier watches all of your business data & lets you know when unexpected things are happening, anywhere in the myriad metrics and dimensions of your data. Outlier plugs into your business data where it lives (e.g. Google Analytics, Adobe Cloud, Salesforce, Stripe, SQL databases) and understands your business cycles, trends and patterns. Clearly, he’s onto something. Outlier’s investors include: SV Angel, Capital One Growth Ventures, Emergence, First Round Capital, Susa Ventures, Ridge Ventures, In-Q-Tel, and Homebrew Prior, he served as Founder/CEO of Flurry, the mobile analytics company, which was acquired by Yahoo. In this 20-minute conversation, Sean reveals how he puts a Rockstar in every seat (and how he keeps them)
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Miserable Apple Employee ➡️ Successful Amazon Entrepreneur (Recruit Rockstars 447)
01/15/2022
Miserable Apple Employee ➡️ Successful Amazon Entrepreneur (Recruit Rockstars 447)
Seth Kniep has a remarkable entrepreneurship origin story. He found himself working at Apple, leading a 20-person team of tech support advisors. But he was miserable, working as a cog in the world’s most valuable company. Fascinated with an idea, he went about doubling one dime 20 times. He shared his vision with random strangers & asked them to double his dime. He turned it into $400, just by asking. Discouraged, $24,000 in debt, and living the death-by-paycheck cycle, Seth believed in a better future for himself & his family. He poured his heart into learning online eCommerce. In 2016, Just One Dime was born, based in Austin. He began teaching & training people how to sell on Amazon. He’s trained multiple students to become Amazon eCommerce millionaires. Amazon even flew him to its Seattle HQ for his consultation on improving their third-party platform. Now his company builds Amazon stores for people who don’t have time to do it on their own. It’s a turnkey service, and they share the revenue. Seth has recruited & leads a team of over 100 at Just One Dime. In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how he puts a Rockstar in every seat.
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The Real Skinny on Writing Your Résumé (Recruit Rockstars 446)
01/07/2022
The Real Skinny on Writing Your Résumé (Recruit Rockstars 446)
There are a gazillion ways to write your résumé (or LinkedIn profile). Because everyone has advice: “Do it this way.” “No, do it that way.” But what if you want to do it the best way? The right way? I wanted to find an expert… the guru… who has the answers and can tell you everything you’ve always wanted to know about résumés. I found him. Marc Cenedella is uniquely-qualified to answer these questions, because he’s spent decades on the topic. Based in New York, he’s Founder & CEO of Ladders, one of the nation’s leading online job boards. And if that wasn’t enough, he’s also Founder of Leet Resumes, which actually will write your resume for free. Free! Prior, he led finance & operations at HotJobs, acquired by Yahoo for $400M. And he began in Private Equity with The Riverside Company. In this 20-minute conversation, Marc reveals the biggest mistakes people make when writing their resume or LinkedIn profile. And how to do it the right way, the best way. (You’ll love the speed round, where Marc aced all the tricky job search questions.)
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How a Husband & Wife Built an 8-Figure Business in 3 Years (Recruit Rockstars 445)
01/03/2022
How a Husband & Wife Built an 8-Figure Business in 3 Years (Recruit Rockstars 445)
“I now pronounce you successful entrepreneurs.” Nothing brings out the romantic in me like a New Year. The fresh possibilities, the clean start. And a super-cool online business. John Ruggiero & his wife are co-Founders & co-CEO’s of Manly Bands, one of the fastest-growing direct-to-consumer brands in wedding retail. The couple quit their jobs, drove cross-country, and setup shop in Utah. Following their own endless search for wedding rings, they decided to redefine the formerly-conservative category with unique & affordable ring designs for men. And in just 3 years, they bootstrapped an 8-figure company from scratch, which is now an Inc5000-ranked company. For the first time in human history, men are free to choose a wedding band that is more than just a boring silver or gold ring. Their options include rings made of wood, meteorite, antler, carbon fiber, even dinosaur bone. In this 20-minute conversation, John reveals how he & his wife scaled Manly Bands by putting a Rockstar in every seat.
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How Smart VC’s Give Their Companies an Edge (Recruit Rockstars 444)
12/24/2021
How Smart VC’s Give Their Companies an Edge (Recruit Rockstars 444)
The smartest Venture Capital firms invest heavily in talent for their portfolio companies. After they cut the check, the hard work just begins. Here’s an example. Jason Felger is Head of Operating Platform at Chicago-based Jump Capital. He works with the CEO’s across Jump’s portfolio to help them scale their businesses, particularly by putting a Rockstar in every seat. Says Jason: “Right now, it’s all about the recruitment & retention of talent, more than I’ve ever seen.” Jump Capital, which recently raised $350 Million for its 7th fund, provides series A & B capital to data-driven tech companies in FinTech, IT & Data Infrastructure, B2B SaaS, and Media. It also invests globally in cryptocurrency companies & projects. Portfolio companies include Fast Radius, M1 Finance, Upshow, AcreTrader, Autopay, Balto, Sporttrade. Jason’s unique qualified, as he’s sat on both the investing & operating sides of early-stage companies. As CEO, he led Food Genius (acquired by US Foods) following his service at Redbox/Coinstar & Chicago Ventures. In this 20-minute conversation, Jason reveals what VC’s look for when they hire. And his observations on the biggest mistakes business leaders make when scaling their team.
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2 IPO’s ➡️ 8x Midas Venture Capitalist (Recruit Rockstars 443)
12/22/2021
2 IPO’s ➡️ 8x Midas Venture Capitalist (Recruit Rockstars 443)
If you’re like most business leaders, you spend plenty of time designing your company’s business model. Mike Maples warns that you need to spend as much time designing your team, based on your company’s stage & strategy. He should know. Mike is Co-Founder & Partner at Floodgate, one of the original early-stage venture capital firms (i.e. writing the first $1M check) he formed 15 years ago. Mike’s been named to the Forbes Midas List 8 times in the last decade, and for good reason.. He was an early investor in the companies you love: Twitter, Lyft, Bazaarvoice, Storable, TaskRabbit, Twitch (acquired by Amazon), Chegg, Demandforce, Smule, Outreach, Okta, Weebly (acquired by Square) Better still, he’s built companies on both sides of the table, starting as an executive at back-to-back startup IPOs: Tivoli Systems (acquired by IBM) and Motive (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent) He’s one of the most insightful investors I’ve met. Which is why I’m hooked on his Starting Greatness Podcast. On it, he talks about teams & hiring Says Mike: “To build your bench, you must spend 25% of your time on recruiting, no matter what.” Something tells me if Mike wasn’t a legendary VC investor, he’d make a remarkable recruiter. In this 20-minute conversation, Mike shares how to design the right team for your business model & current stage.
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What He Learned by Interviewing 2,000 CEO’s (Recruit Rockstars 442)
12/21/2021
What He Learned by Interviewing 2,000 CEO’s (Recruit Rockstars 442)
Like you, I’m just too busy to listen to cruddy podcasts. So, very few survive on my Podcasts app for more than an episode or two. Mixergy is one of them. I never miss it. Its creator & host Andrew Warner started Mixergy back in 2006, making it one of the top-ranked & longest-running business podcasts. Since then he’s interviewed over 2,000 entrepreneurs, business thought leaders, and authors. (…including me in 2012 when my hair was thick & lustrous) Andrew’s story is fascinating. In his early 20’s, he started an internet company Bradford & Reed with his brother. They hit it big …like crazy big… by creating a website for sharing electronic greeting cards which processed over 400,000 greeting cards per day. With $1M in monthly revenue, the website’s traffic was ranked in the top 25 of ALL internet websites during the year 2000. Then, Andrew burnt out. He sold the business, and decided to build a company helping entrepreneurs build their companies. In addition to Mixergy, he’s also author of the new book “Stop Asking Questions: How to Lead High-Impact Interviews and Learn Anything from Anyone” If you interview candidates, guests, customers, anyone… you’ll get a ton out of it. In this 20-minute conversation, Andrew reveals how he scaled both businesses & what he’s learned from the world’s best entrepreneurs about the people part of growth-stage companies.
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How He Built an Inc5000 MarTech Company (Recruit Rockstars 441)
12/19/2021
How He Built an Inc5000 MarTech Company (Recruit Rockstars 441)
Charleston, South Carolina might seem like an unlikely place to find one of the nation’s fastest-growing tech companies. But it’s home to Digital Ignite. Mike Samet leads this rollup of adtech, martech, and data businesses that was recently named to the Inc5000 list. The full-service digital marketing agency using radical data-informed strategies to grow businesses & ignite sales Their clients include national players like Hoover, Dominos, and Harris Teeter. In this 20-minute conversation, Mike reveals how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat of the company.
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How He Earned Inc5000 by Dominating His Niche (Recruit Rockstars 440)
12/13/2021
How He Earned Inc5000 by Dominating His Niche (Recruit Rockstars 440)
They say that “the riches are in the niches.” Well, Jason Hennessey proved them right. He’s built a highly-successful SEO firm within the legal vertical (a niche of a niche?) He’s CEO & Founder of Hennessey Digital. His LA-based agency has been named multiple times to Inc5000’s list of the nation’s fastest-growing companies. Since 2001, Jason has been reverse-engineering the Google algorithm as a self-taught student & practitioner of SEO and search engine marketing. He started Hennessey Digital in 2015 and has grown a small consultancy to a $10MM+ business with 130 employees. Jason is also author of the #1 Amazon Bestselling book “Law Firm SEO: Exposing the Google Algorithm to Help You Get More Cases” (but it’s equally applicable to every industry) In this 20-min conversation, he reveals how he’s scaled his team & put a Rockstar in every seat.
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How He Earned Inc5000 by Dominating His Niche (Recruit Rockstars 440)
12/12/2021
How He Earned Inc5000 by Dominating His Niche (Recruit Rockstars 440)
They say that “the riches are in the niches.” Well, Jason Hennessey proved them right. He’s built a highly-successful SEO firm within the legal vertical (a niche of a niche?) He’s CEO & Founder of Hennessey Digital. His LA-based agency has been named multiple times to Inc5000’s list of the nation’s fastest-growing companies. Since 2001, Jason has been reverse-engineering the Google algorithm as a self-taught student & practitioner of SEO and search engine marketing. He started Hennessey Digital in 2015 and has grown a small consultancy to a $10MM+ business with 130 employees. Jason is also author of the #1 Amazon Bestselling book “Law Firm SEO: Exposing the Google Algorithm to Help You Get More Cases” (but it’s equally applicable to every industry) In this 20-min conversation, he reveals how he’s scaled his team & put a Rockstar in every seat.
/episode/index/show/strongsuit/id/21459686
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How He Built a 2-Time Inc500-ranked Company (Recruit Rockstars 439)
12/05/2021
How He Built a 2-Time Inc500-ranked Company (Recruit Rockstars 439)
Based in Golden, Colorado, Scott Lewis is CEO of Spartan Investment Group. Spartan syndicates investor capital to develop & operate real estate assets. Under Scott’s leadership, the business has pivoted from residential real estate to commercial, much of which is self-storage. It’s the 2-time Inc500 ranked company, making it one of the nation’s fastest-growing. Following a successful career in the US Army, Scott started the company which now has 70 employees. He’s got some no-nonsense views on leadership & building an organization. And in this 20-minute conversation, you’ll discover how to do the same.
/episode/index/show/strongsuit/id/21382199