Startups, People, and Equity: Recent Episodes

Tamas & Spela

Startups (and the world) are just a bunch of people collaborating with each other. Equity is the necessary and attractive way for startups to pay, attract or retain people to collaborate closely with them.

Welcome back! In this episode of the EquityPeople podcast we chat to Christoffer V. Herheim. We cover a lot of different topics such as:
🚀 Optio's Growth Journey: From bootstrapped beginnings to a recent funding round in Q1 2024.
💼 Company's Evolution: Started as a service firm, now specializes in cap table management for listed and pre-IPO companies.
🎯 Market Focus: Solving equity management challenges for listed firms, with a focus on automation and compliance.
💡 Unique Selling Proposition: Tailored solutions for managing employee equity in listed companies.
📈 Insights for Late-Stage Scale-Ups: Tips on IPO preparation and early equity management systems.
💼 Key Considerations for Listed Companies: Post-IPO employee program management and financial reporting.
💡 Challenges Post-IPO: Managing worldwide share transfers, cost minimization, and market fluctuations.
💪 Strategies for Employee Motivation: Adjusting incentive programs and strike prices for engagement.
🔍 Expert Advice: Third-party perspectives for navigating post-IPO challenges.
🌍 Common Concerns: Addressing worldwide share transfers and cost management.
💡 Convincing Unlisted Companies: Demonstrating the value of automated equity management.
💼 Employee Engagement: Improving understanding of equity incentives for better adoption.
💼 Effective Equity Management: Ensuring participants understand the value of their equity holdings.

EquityManagement #IPOPreparation #ListedCompanies #CapTableManagement #StartupJourney #ScaleUp #Entrepreneurship #Investment #Compliance #Automation #OptioTechnologies

Join Natalie Pierce, co-founder of the FutureKind Collective, as she shares insights on creating company culture!
🏢 Learn how Natalie's background in economics and design led her to specialize in culture creation. Evident, right?
😂 Discover Natalie's improv comedy journey and how it fosters trust and creativity.
💡 Explore Natalie's definition of culture as a social contract guiding behavior and interactions.
🌍 Discover how culture extends beyond the workplace to shape communities and nations.
🔑 Hear Natalie on the importance of alignment, communication, well-being, and empowerment in company culture.
🚀 Address common challenges like misalignment, decision-making bottlenecks, and poor hiring decisions.
👥 Recognize the crucial role of founders and leadership teams in shaping company culture.
💰 Listen to Natalie advocate for generosity in employee equity distribution and fair terms.

CompanyCulture #Leadership #EquityDistribution #CultureCreation

🎙️ Dive into our latest podcast episode with Eva Spexard where we unveil the secrets of:

🌐 Creating an inclusive equity scheme relying on extensive research and peer advice
🤝 Shifting company philosophy to involve every employee in the VSOP plan, fostering belonging and commitment
📊 Practical steps, including a Google Doc for insights and leveraging an existing leveling system
💡 Streamlining equity percentages based on seniority and department impact
💻 Aligning with remote work strategies for a global team in 25 countries
🏡 Insights on remote work challenges, strategies, and creating a remote-friendly culture
Join us for an engaging discussion on equity plans, remote work, and nurturing employee engagement. 🚀 #EquityScheme #RemoteWork #EmployeeEngagement #PodcastEpisode

🎙️ Tune in to this episode of our podcast, where we explore the dynamic world of startups and the synergy between people and equity with Ian Whiteford. 🚀

Ian, journeyed from studying geography to Goldman Sachs and later joined the metaverse tech company, Improbable. Under Ian's leadership, Improbable scaled from 75 to over a thousand employees! 📈

Discover his personal transition to solo consulting, helping both Web2 and Web3 companies shape their people strategies.

In our conversation, we dive into his Goldman Sachs experience, the culture shock at Improbable, and he overcame that. 🏦➡️🌐

We explore Improbable's growth phases, lessons learned, and succession planning. Ian shares insights into HR practices in Web2 and Web3. Flexibility and ownership emerge as key takeaways for Web2 businesses. 💡

Join us for a dynamic discussion on startups, people, and equity. Don't miss this exciting episode! 🎉🔥 #Podcast #Startups #Web3 #HRStrategy

🎙️ Tune in to Startups, People and Equity as we chat with Jabu, an experienced Chief People Officer and consultant who has worked with companies like Nordstrom, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit. Discover her insights on taking risks, failures, and the role of a CPO in balancing employee advocacy and company needs.

🚀 Explore the value of communication, alignment, and understanding between leaders and employees, and learn how humility, authenticity, and listening play a vital role in leadership.

💡 Delve into the challenge of proving HR ROI, the significance of retention rates, and the struggle for HR professionals to gain a seat at the leadership table.

🌟 Uncover the complexities of equity in promoting diversity, the benefits of joining startups, and the importance of embracing life's adventures.

💥 This episode discusses leadership, organizational dynamics, equity, diversity, and human resources. Learn about fostering loyalty, creating an open culture, and embracing diverse viewpoints.

🤝 Jabu emphasizes the role of HR professionals in building trust, navigating complexities, and championing individuals in the workplace.

🔗 For insights into leadership, HR, equity, and startups, subscribe now and gain valuable takeaways for your professional journey!

Leadership #HR #Equity #Startups #Diversity #Inclusion #EmployeeAdvocacy #OrganizationalDynamics #ProfessionalJourney #OpenCulture #Communication #Alignment #Podcast #ChiefPeopleOfficer #CPO #HumanResources"

🔎 Podcast Overview

In this thought-provoking discussion, we delve deep into the world of startups, people operations, and equity. Our special guest, Chloe Paramatti, partner at Hyple, a prominent London-based consultancy for early-stage companies, brings her expertise in people operations to the forefront.

💡 Key Topics Covered

VC-backed vs. Non-VC backed companies: Unraveling the differences in growth ambitions.
Shifting VC trends: Exploring VCs' focus on profitability potential over hyper-growth.
Navigating people operations across industries: Understanding the industry impact on HR practices.
The rising significance of the people function: How it shapes the startup landscape.
The training gap: Addressing the lack of proper training for managers and people functions in startups.
Candidate's checklist: Identifying companies with a people-centric focus and unique values.
Beyond the basics: Important questions for candidates to ask during interviews.
Navigating career progression discussions: Challenges faced by junior candidates.
Equity's role in success: How it fosters unity and growth.
Going beyond retention: The true essence of equity as a powerful tool.
Educating on equity: The industry's need for better understanding and improvement.

Join us for a knowledge-packed conversation that unravels the dynamics of startups, people operations, and the true value of equity in fostering success and growth.

🔔 Don't Forget to Subscribe!
👍 Like and Share
🗣️ Join the Conversation
📢 Spread the Knowledge

Startups #PeopleOperations #Equity #VentureCapital #HRManagement #BusinessInsights #Entrepreneurship #StartupAdvice #CareerGrowth #EmployeeWellbeing #BusinessEquity #StartupCulture

In this episode we chat to Zach Esrig from Assemble, a total reward and DEI intelligence software. Zach shared his experiences on:
- tranferrable skills from consulting to SaaS customer experience which he nicely rebranded to deployment strategy
- Current comp trends
- His experiences with employee stock options (ESOPs)

In this episode with Sara Brioschi we focus on getting the people foundations in startups right. We cover topics like:
- Filtering through best practices to get to your practice
- Embracing culture changes as your company grows
- Getting decision-makers aligned on important topics

Hope you will enjoy watching and listening!

Sara's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarabrioschi/

In this episode of EquityPeople we chat with two Ledgy employees who have moved from Customer Experience to the Product Management and Product Marketing departments. They share how they feel as startup employees in general, how the move was for them and of course what their view is on equity.

Mitch is going through his second economic turmoil as an entrepreneur. In this episode he talked us through what it was like to wind down a previously very successful startup during the COVID-19 pandemic and what it is like to be the COO of an up and coming one right now. He speaks eloquently about not only the processes but how it was and is like for him amid all of these events.

Akbar is the type of person who you are really eager to learn from as he has his opinions fact-checked and backed by research. Not just stand-alone studies from your local journal of esoteric sciences, from meta analyses and Google stuff. He is also open to challenges, so he is just Talent Hall of Fame if you ask Spela and Tamas.

What did we learn in this episode?

Optimal hiring sequence (with async participants)
R.I.P CVs and reference calls
How to get to DEI nirvana (remote first & work sample tasks)
Fire if you have to but keep a friend

If you still ask for CVs from your candidates you might want to give this episode a listen.

We apologise for the subotimal sound quality on certain occasions in this episode

In this episode we get to know David who went from entrepreneur and early employee to investor and from the US to Europe.

He talks about:
- Airtable, Peloton, Uber, Airbnb, Sequoia, Benchmark, Lightspeed etc...
- Esoteric SaaS
- Running a fund that is not yet top tier and the challenge of attraction
- His distribution of time between LPs, founders, advisors and admin
- How he is learning about coaching founders

...and Tamas talks about Dennis Rodman. 🤦🤷

Bradley has a talent for selling. He also invested a lot of time into educating himself of this complex process. Icing on the cake: he sells a software to help unbiad your hiring process. We surely learned a lot listening to him, hope you will too.

We chated about:
- How Bradley got into sales from studying geography
- Training sales people in a startup environment
- Biz dev vs sales as an analogy for people vs HR
- What makes a great demo
- IC to manager transition in sales teams
- Ideal sales tech stack
- Ideal comission and OTE ratio in SaS sales
- THE optimal hiring process

...and much more!

Yes, Maddie is every bit as awesome as you’d think.

If you’re in any way connected to the startup world, I’d recommend you listen to this episode.
She shared her insight on a wide range of topics:

Maddie’s thoughts on the current situation in the startup world:
What has been Peak’s strategy going through the last years of high valuations
What can founders of startups that raised at these high valuations do now?
What are companies cutting out of their budgets now and what are they doubling down on?
What does Peak focus on when investing?
What does: Making rich men richer, mean to Maddie?

And SO much more! This is an episode filled to the brim with useful information.

Did you know that Friedrich is not her real name?
An impressive episode, tackling everything from:
- working in a 3 person team to post IPO
- attracting talent as a small startup vs a bigger, established company
- changing the department's name from HR to People
- successful recruiting practices
- organizational structures
- examples of great internal communication

We're talking with ZS who has led talent departments in the public and private sector, and most recently at Onfido. Currently ZS is working as the director of people at the People Collective.
In the previous episode, we covered everything from talent learnings, from the public and private sector, and also touched on how similar the people department structure is to an entire company structure.

Unfortunately, the people department doesn't have as high of regard in some conversations. We paused right before diving into the people debt conversation. And that's where we want to pick up the conversation today.

ZeShaan Shamsi has led in-house Talent efforts for public, semi-public, and private space entities such as the UK government’s Digital Services arm, the BBC, and Onfido (scaled Onfido from 50 to 250+ people across 7 global locations). After this experience, he was employee #1 in the PeopleCollective where besides of course owning and developing everything Talent, he is also responsible for the general quality of all the different consulting pieces.

In this episode we had the enormous pleasure of talking to Makenna Smutz. Makenna, is the co-founder at a brand new project called Wavr. Before this she was co-founder at Meeshkan a SaaS solution targeted at product teams aimed to ease UI testing. We talked to her about:

her journey into co-foundership,
challenges of refocusing a company on a new product,
strategies to develop and market a SaaS product,

and much more. Hope you will enjoy this episode!

You can find Timon's two mentioned blogs and a brand new one via these links:

Psychological Safety (https://medium.com/luminovo/on-the-bare-necessity-of-psychological-safety-bdb34e311b8c)
Performanced-based hiring (https://luminovo.ai/blog-posts/why-we-banned-requirements-from-our-job-descriptions)
Good feedback (https://medium.com/luminovo/giving-feedback-d2d3c25f058d)

Enjoy! :)

Employee equity grants are a contract and as such have certain clauses that can seem tricky. However, as soon as they are understood, the clauses can help you negotiate and understand the consequences of your actions.

Sources mentioned in the episode

Almanac: Discussing equity with an applicant. https://almanac.io/docs/script-discussing-equity-with-an-applicant-abdf5a26e11003ed511bfae5d59e1260
Chris Voss: Never Split the Difference: Negotiate As If Your Life Depended On It: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26156469-never-split-the-difference
Prospect theory: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1914185?origin=crossref

European startup ecosystem is booming and with it the innovation is following. The US has successfully awarded equity to employees for years, now Europe is following. In this episode we discuss how to judge the equity offer you or your friends received and tell you the questions you need to ask the employer.