Humans of Startups: Recent Episodes
Shail Daswani
From startup jobs being risky, itโs slowly becoming riskier to NOT work at a tech startup. More & more folks today are joining startups, & are adopting startup life as their defacto way of working & living. On the contrary, building your early team as a startup founder is increasingly becoming more crucial to success. And the HR ballgame has changed - hiring in startups is completely different than HR in MnCs. The mission of this podcast is to fundamentally question founders about the core problems they're facing (or faced) while building their early team, & identify best practices for the ๐
I'm sure you've seen notion docs that capture the hiring & culture practices of a startup. But how often do you find team salaries, onboarding docs, & other tiny details in this doc?
Mati migrated to India in 2020 to start Even healthcare with the sole purpose of building India's best health cover. If the doctor says you need it, it's covered! She was born and brought up in Italy, traveled across the world for work and studies, started a company in London right after she graduated, then moved on to work for a venture fund in London before starting Even.
From Day0 of starting up, Mati's goal is to make Even the most transparent org. on the planet! Here's what we discussed -
- Mati's personal and professional journey before moving to India to start Even.
- Having the same co-founders for multiple ventures
- Hiring the first 20 team members at Even
- Creating the hiring guide - the why and how of it
- Why is transparency so important?
- Importance of having a strong onboarding process
- Concerns and Challenges while scaling the team culture
- Hiring fast vs. slow
- Hiring generalists vs. specialists
- Talent in India
- Learnings from angel investing in 50+ startups across the world
Tune in for some golden insights!
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"I had never hired people before I started Procol.", mentions Gaurav when asked about how he went about building his core team at Procol. As a first-time founder, Gaurav seems to have learned so many things on the way, but he has always stuck to one hiring philosophy from day 0 - "The very best people in most professions see themselves as artists and athletes. They love their craft and they want to be the best."
In this episode, Gaurav and I talk about
- His journey leading up to starting Procol in 2019
- How hiring processes have evolved at Procol over the last couple of years
- The what and the why behind drafting the culture document at Procol
- Importance of L1 leadership in his company being a first-time founder
- Hiring people who give a "shit"
- Solving for company's growth by maximizing personal growth of people
- Trial Week at Procol - a one week "no commitment" arrangement where prospective hires work with the team for a week and then get directly hired
- Remote vs. Hybrid vs. In-Office working
- Top 3 responsibilities as a CEO of a startup that wants to be people-first
- The stoic philosophy of being grateful that founders should practice
This episode contains conversations across multiple facets of hiring, but what stands out is how Gaurav makes me realize the importance of passion while building a company. If you're passionate about something, passion attracts this energy of other passionate people. And you will eventually attract the right kind of talent :)
To drop your feedback and stay updated, follow our Twitter channel. For more details, write to me here.
The Indian Startup Ecosystem, in its current avatar - is competitive as ever. VC money is flowing in, companies are mushrooming everyday, multiple founders are tapping the same target market / business models and are building replica products. In such an environment, how do you win as a company?
Arnav Kumar, Co-founder & CEO of Leap believes that "winning" as a framework should be incorporated into the smallest things that a company does. Hire people who love to win, enable managers to define what winning looks like, build a "winning" culture, do whatever it takes for your employees to win! His startup is modelled after a winning sports team apparently.
Leap is Arnav's third startup, and has raised USD 80 Mn in venture funding in just two years since inception. He was also the co-founder and CEO of GoZoomo - a used car marketplace he started back in 2014. He has seen both sides of the spectrum - having worked as a VC with SAIF Partners (now known as Elevation Capital) for a couple of years.
In this episode, he talks about his transformation as a CEO from his first company to his current one, the way he went about building a culture at leap, hiring the first 25 employees, traits he looks for while hiring, his outlook on the current hiring scenario in India, biggest challenges in hiring, retention as a moat, learnings from his stint as a VC, entrepreneurship as a career, and much more.
Tune in for some golden insights!
Kshitij started his career in the year 2000, and is a techie by heart. He worked with more than 10 organisations before finally starting his own company. Before 100ms, he spent half a decade working with Facebook U.S. and Disney+Hotstar where he built and led engineering teams to do magical stuff and bring ideas to life!
In this episode, he talks about the journey of starting 100ms & finding his co-founders, followed by -
Culture-Building
- What does culture mean to him?
- Building blocks of a great culture
- Letting the "micro-culture" brew
Startup Hiring
- Hiring the first 20 folks for 100ms
- Traits to look for while hiring your first few employees
- His involvement in hiring as a CEO
- Biggest challenges in startup hiring
- One golden rule behind retaining employees
Best Practices and Hiring Insights
- How tech-hiring has changed over the last 20 years
- Importance of side-projects
- Current hiring frenzy for indian engineers
- Future of tooling - no-code platforms brewing new builders globally
To drop your feedback and stay updated, follow our twitter channel. For more details, write to me here.
Stay tuned as I bring you insightful conversations with some of the most known entrepreneurs, and some not known at all!