Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to the Born in Silicon Valley podcast where we interview startup leaders exploring their journeys, their success, challenges and lessons learned. We hope you be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal and here with us today we have David Hanrahan, the C-, the Chief People Officer at Flare. David, welcome to the show.
David Hanrahan: Hey Jake, thanks for having me.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. I'm super excited to have you uh on the show here today. David, we work with a lot of founders of startups but I always felt like there was something missing and that was the view of the Chief People Officer, specifically at the unicorn level or even at the early stage level. So before we dive in here, I want to give a little bit of background to the listeners of who David is. Um he is um a well-established Chief People Officer with the... with a storied career spanning 20 years um leading uh teams uh and fostering high performing cultures across global organizations including Niantic, Zendesk, Twitter, Electronic Arts, and Universal Pictures. His areas of expertise include performance management, total rewards, DEI, hybrid work practices, leadership development, compassionate people practices, and driving high engagement. David, everything that I just shared in the summary would be something that most companies would love to have in terms of that experience level. We're going to dive into your experience a little bit, about Flare, and then about how you see things from a Chief People Officer's perspective in today's world. Before we do that, where are you calling in from today?
David Hanrahan: I am, yeah, I'm dialing in from Austin, Texas. North Austin, it's a, a little cold uh, cold day here in Austin uh, but I've got a quiet house all to myself.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Very cool. Are you originally from there?
David Hanrahan: Uh I'm originally from Phoenix. I, I, I moved around, I've lived in Arizona and Illinois, California a few years ago. And was, was part of the wave that, that moved to, to Texas just about three years ago. But yeah, in Austin now about the past three years.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, there's a lot of companies and a lot of innovators that have moved to Austin as we all know about from Silicon Valley and California and different parts of the world. So I know there's a lot happening there from an innovation perspective. Um talk to me a little bit about your inspiration about getting into technology and where that came from. And, and more importantly, how you evolved into being a people leader within technology companies.
David Hanrahan: Yeah, gosh. Um I, I'll give you the short version. Um you know I, I went to school, undergrad in psychology and um about halfway through my undergrad I was kind of like, "what am I going to do with this?" I like, I like the topic. Um but the light bulb moment was taking a class that was Industrial Psychology. I had no idea that there was a whole practice of applying psychology in the workplace and that, that led me to pursuing a graduate program. Uh, an original interest in this, in the topic of, of sort of people and people strategy and this function, was, was really union setting. So I, my first job out of school, in fact um, first day on the job out of school, was at an oil company that was going through pattern bargaining. Meaning you know a strike was looming and we had to hash out a contract between you know, the, the, the management, the lead company um and the lead union, uh hash out a three-year contract or else could go on strike. And so I was like, "this is, this is great, this is fascinating. I, I love this, exactly what I want to be doing."
Um, the long story short there is like I kind of grew disenchanted with um what I would you know call a slower pace, you know like really big Fortune 100 um uh heavily rules-based governance, um you know large slow-moving organizations. That just led me... I, I had the itch for more creativity, more innovation. That led me to um smaller companies and smaller, faster um pace growth companies. That's the tech industry, right. So that's, that's tech and, and, and growth private companies. Um first um you know big public company, EA, but then um moved more towards the sort of smaller earlier stage companies. Places like Twitter, you know, and going through the IPO, so being there before the IPO and all the way through the IPO, that was um you know one of the most fascinating experiences. Um, but I've been doing this for 20 years, I've been in this function for 20 years. So much of that has been in the software industry. Um and, and I've seen, seen a lot, seen a lot of, of, of growth and change in these, in these companies that you mentioned at the start.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, you know, there's been a lot of growth and a lot of change in the technology industry, and in particular in, in software companies. Um you know your experience is great. Uh there's social proof that you've been at some of the biggest and the best companies. You talk about Eventbrite, you talk about Twitter, um and now you're at Flare. Just give us a little insight about who Flare is and what, what you do. What problem are you solving at Flare?
David Hanrahan: Yeah, so Flare is a legal tech company. Um, it's a space I was not familiar with. I, I like the consumer side of software. My, my one B2B experience was more, was Zendesk. But places like EA, um Twitter, Eventbrite, that's, that's a product I can use as a consumer, um on a personal level. After I was leaving Eventbrite, I was, I was mountain biking, I was like taking a sabbatical. I, I had, I really didn't know if I was going to continue in the function. I was like at my 20-year point and needed a break, you know. A lot of CPOs have talked about burnout, that was certainly me. I was like, burned out. And you know, the, a summer two years ago, you know, like I, I was um on a mountain bike, I was taking classes, I was really just living my life with my family. And uh I was getting these calls like, "hey, would you talk to this founder that wants some advice? We know that you're not you know sort of exploring things at the time." And I got, I got connected with these two co-founders, Rami and Itai. And the first sort of overview I got of this company, I didn't really get it.
But the, the sort of serendipity moment was on a personal level, I was going through something with my own family, with my brother. Um we're both adults, we have our own families. And uh our elderly father um started to experience a decline in his mental health. And, and for anyone who's, who's been through that before um on a personal level, you know that there's a legal process you have to go to. You have to suddenly become a guardian or a conservator of, of your parent, the person who raised you. And it's, it's tough, it's, it's strange. You get a lawyer, you, you have to potentially take your um you know your father or your mother to court. And um, this was, this was a completely like sort of um unknown um aspect to, to family life for me and my brother. And we, we engaged a lawyer, and the gist was it was a really bad experience. And it was like paying a lot of money, don't even know what's happening. There's all this paper being sent back and forth. Like, there's got to be a more sort of technology enabled way to do this. And a um, something where I could see what's going on and have a much better experience, know that I'm getting matched up with the right lawyer.
So all that was on my head, and I got introduced to Rami and Itai. And to make this story short, this is exactly what they're disrupting in general, the family law space. They're building technology for potential clients of family law, whether that's divorce, custody, guardianship, um wills. You know, um people who need family lawyers uh to find the right lawyer, um to engage them, to pay for the lawyer, and then to have your whole case journey through a platform. You could upload documents, you could sort of like, at each step of the way you know where you're at, you know what's next. The lawyers can find their clients, they can manage their entire um caseload on the platform. Um they see all their earnings. You know they can actually do all their um steps um through the case um directly through the platform. And this is disrupting an industry that's about a $30 billion industry just family law alone. And then, then expands from there. You think about immigration or, or tax, you know, or other practice areas. And we're in 10 states at the moment. We've been in operation for about, about three years. Um we're a unicorn company, we're well funded. And it's, and we're just at the beginning of this. And I just have a lot of passion for this because of knowing and seeing it as a personal, uh at a personal level going through this, how antiquated the space is, and how much both lawyers and potential clients kind of want this technology enabled service. Like, bring it into the 21st century instead of do-, doing things on paper and going to, you know, sort of leather-bound, you know, sort of wood paneled offices. And so, um, it's exciting, but we're, we're very early days. We're about Series B, about 260 employees. And um, yeah it's exciting, it reminds me of some of the places I've been at before where there was this kind of buzz, this energy that you know you're onto something.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I, sounds like you're definitely onto something. So I understand the user experience and the benefit they get. What's the lawyer get? Just curious of the value that they get if they're on your platform.
David Hanrahan: It's a great question. So, so Flare is the tech company. So in, in actuality, if you were to use this, you would be using, you'd be experiencing it through a law firm. So if you search you know "I, I need a family lawyer um in San Diego or in Austin, Texas," you might see Marble Law show up. And like, "huh, Marble Law, that's an interesting new type of law firm. What is that?" And you go through that whole case journey, you're talking with someone, you're, you're going through the financing journey. So that your question was, what do the lawyers get out of this? Lawyers right now they go to law school to practice law. So if you're a family lawyer, you're a special, you're a special breed. You actually want to do this stuff, which is intense work. You're dealing with like, "I want my kids back tomorrow, I've got this situation with someone who I loved but now it's not, it's not working out anymore, I've got a parent who I need to take care of." These are intense um life events. We want to be the company that enables strength and clarity through these key life events.
So the lawyers, they have to do all this other work. They have to do all this other work. And you're, for a solopreneur or you have a small, small family law office in you know, in Austin, in Travis County, you have to do customer service. You have to do um financing. You have to do sales and marketing. You know, you have to, you have to run this business. And, and sort of figure out technology to do it. And, but the stuff that you love doing is practicing the law, going to court, um handling these cases. So we do all that stuff for the lawyer that they didn't go to law school for. We get you new cases. We do the marketing, we do the sales. We do the customer support. Um we help the clients get the financing that they need. Um we provide the tech, technology. So we provide the technology that you can use to manage all your cases. So a lot of lawyers who begin working with us, they might retain their own firm, so they have you know um "Hanrahan & Hanrahan LLC" in Austin County. You can retain that, but now you're going to do... you're going to take these cases on contract through Marble as well. And, and what we see oftentimes is they'll double their case earnings just by beginning to work with us. We send them cases, they can do these cases really efficiently, they get a lot of the work out of their hair that we take on for them, and then they could double their case earnings. And then, but also crucially provide really great service to their clients where previously they didn't have the technology that maybe allowed them to do some of the things that they can do now.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: It's amazing. Yeah, I think that's, I, I, I like both sides of that marketplace where you're driving value to the user as well as for the lawyer. So really, really exciting. Uh, in terms of this podcast, which is interesting, um, on this episode, this is the first one we're really getting [the] opinion of a Chief People Officer. And so for the 170 episodes we've had, that have all been focused on the founder of startups, insights we've got out of that were "how do we make our company run better, how do we improve the efficiencies of our operation, how do we make our teams operate better and more strategically and have better results, and what are the tools out there that they should be looking at or what are some of the advice that we can provide to them." And so, um, this is the first time we're having someone from your seat kind of share your insights.
And I want to kind of give the listeners an idea of, of where the podcast is going to go with this episode in particular. We want to talk a little bit about what it takes to, to build and grow a company in today's world, which is very different before COVID, and what you see today from your experience on maybe legacy ways of things that were done in the past versus how you see things today in today's world. Yeah. Um, we'll talk a little bit about uh hybrid versus remote versus on-site. Uh one of the big debates that continually is going on. But I want to kind of walk through a three or four step process we'll go through. But one of the things I want to start with was your experience at Eventbrite prior to COVID, and then the big pivot that happened and kind of the learnings coming out of that. And then we'll from there move forward.
David Hanrahan: Great. Yeah, um it was a, a white-knuckle adventure of sorts. I, I, when I was joining Eventbrite, let's see, that was fall of 2019. So, so rewind that clock if you're thinking back, you know, there's obviously a very momentous sort of global shift just about to take place. Um I had left Eventbrite, sorry, I left, I left Niantic and I was joining Eventbrite. It was a company that was, I was, I was always really interested in. So in this space, you think of companies with great employer brands, Eventbrite is in that space. And, and founder-led companies, Julia Hartz, someone who actually ran the HR team, has passion about it, can speak credibly about this function, it's like, you know, she's a dream CEO in many ways. And, and, and a dream company if you, if you care about building a really great employee experience. They branded their employee experience, I called it the "Briteling Experience." So it was a company I just always had my eyes on. I, I was fortunate to have this moment where like, "hey, they need someone like you at this stage."
And so they were a public company. They were public as of you know, like a year and a half, they had just gone public. When I joined them in the fall of 2019, I joined them, you know, we're setting up a plan for 2020. It's like December, it's January. I go to the sales kickoff in, in Australia. I'm coming back, I'm getting acclimated to the team, getting acclimated to my own team. And I remember sitting down, there was a board meeting where one of the board members was, was really, had this worried look on his face. And I was sitting next to him, he's like, "This, this thing out of China, I just don't think I, I really worry about it for you guys." I'm like, "What are you talking... like, what are you talking about?" You know, like, um, at that time we were all still downplaying COVID. And um uh my mom passes away, and so on a personal level, I'm like I have a lot going on. I, I fly to the funeral in February, I come back in March. It's time, now it's time to pick up the pieces and sort of bring my team together and build a strategy, a people strategy, "Briteling Experience" strategy for 2020.
And we go, and there's a, there's starting to become warnings around COVID and travel. And we have a, an offsite for the people team, the, the BX team in Nashville where we had [a] big office. The first week of March, and I remember this moment where like, kind of talk to the CEO and the CFO. I'm like, "Should I cancel this?" And, "Well, let's just make sure everyone knows it's optional." At that time there wasn't, there wasn't restrictions, so you could still travel. And so everyone optionally said, "Okay, let's go." Like, you know, "We can go," like um, "Who, who knows what's going to happen?" And we go to Nashville to have a kickoff of our, our BX team, me as a new leader to set a strategy for the year. And the first night a tornado rips through town a mile away from the hotel. And um I was in the top of the tower and the windows are being sucked in and out. And it's like, you know, emergency lights are on, get down to the basement. I remember thinking like, "Maybe we shouldn't have had this offsite." Uh, also thinking like, "This is, this is going to be a weird year. It's already really weird."
And um uh, so we realized shortly after that, that our entire industry is going to get wiped out. Um the whole live events industry. So, so COVID... we basically get back from Nashville, we start seeing the news articles, like travel starts to get shut down. But crucially for us, live events start getting restricted, locked down all around the globe. This was our business. We didn't, we didn't even, we didn't have a business around virtual events at that time. We were concerts and comedy shows and cooking classes, everything live. And so in the matter of a couple of weeks, we made some decisions to pivot the entire business model. And, and without going into detail on what those were, they were major. They were going from a sales-driven business to a more technology-driven business. They were going from a vertical, vertical business to horizontal. Going from being in 90 countries around the globe to like, you know, six or seven or something. Just massive pivot, all in one. Like, but here's, here's what's interesting, which will get me to like the learnings and sort of like "where, where did I take this" and "what, what could the listeners apply."
We decided from then, from that point, "we're going to emerge stronger from this." Which at the time was audacious because there were live events companies going out of business. The- these small sort of regional live events soft- software companies, they were going out of business next to us. They were running out of money, they couldn't get capital. And we had to raise debt capital, a lifeline. Um, but we said this, we had this audacious goal, "let's emerge stronger from this. We don't know what this, like, what our destiny holds, but let's emerge stronger both culturally and in the business." And um, and at the same time we had to go through a 50% layoff. In this new business model, this pivot we were pursuing, we just did- with so much of the business was l- legacy, we couldn't, that we didn't have a home for a lot of sales, like live operations, like sort of concert operations, we just didn't have it anymore. Um, so we went through that April 2020. So this is just a matter of a couple weeks. Well, navigated a whole big playoff, a business model pivot, and then the morale just dropped. But then we picked up the pieces from there, rebuilt from the studs, both on the business and the culture. And so I'll stop there. But like that, that's kind of setting the scene for my Eventbrite experience.
The next two years was doing exactly what I just said, was emerging stronger. So the Culture Amp, our engagement score plummeted and then, then that continued to, to rebound from there, eventually emerging stronger. Our engagement emerging stronger, our P&L emerged stronger. Um and really the leadership team and the sort of dynamic of the company emerged stronger as well. So lots of lessons I could dive into, but um, yeah, that, that was like a um, like a case study of, of change management and transformation.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, it's a case study that I think others should hear about because it seems to be very common in today's world. If you look at, you know, big tech in general, you, you hear about companies like Meta and Zuckerberg's "year of efficiency" and looking at how do you take the company that's already doing really well, but you know, reduce your headcount and improve operations and look at improvement of margins. And you know, what it does to the stock, and you know, a lot of people left that had been there for years because, you know, the stock was so down, they were underwater. They felt like they could be on a different um you know journey that could be more productive and maybe more financially rewarding. And, and then you know, fast forward six, eight months later, 12 months later, they're you know, again emerging much stronger and then performing much better. And you know, maybe there isn't um a need to go back and, and build as big of a team. But oftentimes the founders or the CEOs don't have that insights about track- tracking what's really working well and kind of the underlying data that you can really understand about how your team is performing, whether it's marketing or sales or product.
So I guess from your perspective, give us your insights or your opinion about um operating in a way that's, today's world, maybe more efficient versus just hiring a bunch to build out a marketplace. And then understanding that you've got too many people or maybe you're not, not really at the margins you need to be at. What are some of the lessons that you also have learned over your last experience and kind of in today's current market condition?
David Hanrahan: Yeah, gosh. Well, uh during the Great Resignation, um regretted attrition was a metric that consumed a lot of my mental energy. And uh I don't think as much about it anymore. I definitely think about engagement, I definitely think about whether we have everyone mission-aligned to what we're trying to accomplish. Um but you know, now if someone wants to move on, I want to get to that realization quicker. So that like we need everyone on the bus, mission-aligned and, and putting 110% in. And, and if you're wavering, I'd rather you move on. I'm not, I'm not going to worry about saving every person. And that was, that was a weird sort of mental sort of hangup I had at Eventbrite where we're like, "let's try and save as many people as we possibly can, let's try and convince them of this." But the reality is there's just going to be certain people that just sort of like, they opt out. And in, in an engagement survey, this is, these are the people who are, are in the red. They've already made their decision, they've already made their decision to leave. It's just a matter of time.
But um, going back to, going back to lessons learned and sort of like you know kind of "how do I think about applying uh, applying lessons and building, building a company, building a company culture." Um you know, in today's age, I think we've just come from a period of, of individualism and social isolation. You know, with, with COVID, we've come from a period where there was a lot of people forced to think about themselves. And for- forced to think about themselves in isolation. Uh and, and encouraged to do so with the Great Resignation, encouraged to um you know take things uh that was you know sort of the "the grass is always greener over there." I think we're emerging into a period of perhaps collectivism. And I think, I think of that as like um the rise and importance of community. And feeling as though I can be part of something where there is a team. Part of how this shows up is um really interestingly um you know, I think there's this mistaken impression that the next generation entering the workforce, "hey they were raised on Zoom, they had classes on Zoom, they had graduations on Zoom." And what I've learned, um both anecdotally and some data, is um you know they want the flexibility. They want, they want flex work, like want work-life flexibility and sort of be able to sort of come and go as they want, but they actually want a team. They want to be part of a strong team. They don't want to be um individual um you know sort of mercenaries.
And so this period of collectivism, taking it to a learning that I've had in terms of how I, how I think about sort of people strategy differently. Um in individualism, um performance reviews. Individual performance reviews, your listeners will be familiar with this. We've all gone through this. Performance reviews are a really central concept in people strategy. How do you do it? Do you do it quarterly? Do you do annual? Do you have ratings? No ratings? Do you, you know, do you tie it to comp or not? Um these are important things, we should do performance reviews. Performance reviews, let's be honest, they, they govern conversation. So like what you're going to get from a perfectly honed performance review process at your company is clarity. Clarity at the individual level. Performance reviews are a byproduct of individualism. They're, they're, they're really, they're inextricably linked to individualism.
Now collectivism, what would be something, would be a sort of turning that on its head? A practice that we might consider that actually helps us more address the bigger picture issue, which is the company needs to perform. Venture capital out there is, is much harder to come by. We have less runway. We have to show margins to go, to go public now. You can't just be like "Wow, look at this revenue," it has to have, we have to have margins. We have to, we have to perform as a company, performance being topline and bottom line. So what you want with a collectivism mindset is to know that all your teams are performing. So, so think about this. Do you have team performance reviews, you know at your company if you're a listener? Like, you got the Eng team, you got the design team, you got the product team, you got the sales team, the marketing team, the sales, the supply team, the finance team, the people team. All however many teams you define it, whether it's 10 teams or 20 teams or... do we know where those teams sit on a spectrum of high performing to low performing? Or "these teams um are viewed very favorably in terms of expectations of their stakeholders. These teams are viewed very negatively."
And so at Eventbrite, we, we did this. We did, we stack ranked teams. We stack ranked teams um almost more as an accident. We were trying to sort of get to a definition of what is a high-performing team at this company. We, we were, we were scratching our brains at this because it was so important for us. We were debating performance and we, we took it up to team performance. "What are the high-performing teams?" We kind of had this debate and we started to drop down principles of high-performing teams. We said, "What, what would have happened if we just stack ranked all our teams? If, you know, against these definitions that we're creating." And all of a sudden all these unlocks came out. And it was like, "This team over here is viewed really favorably. Why?" And all these traits were sort of emerging. "This team over here was viewed very negatively. They were not performing." And it were central to the thesis of our rebuild. And like, "Whoa, that team doesn't have a winning strategy. That team is not positioned right in the roadmap process. That team has a talent issue at this level. That, that team is, is over-resourced or under-resourced."
All these unlocks come out for the leader where they're like, "I didn't know this stuff. I didn't know my team was viewed that way and I've got some work to do." And so we're doing this now at Flare. And I think as a people leader, if I'm like... if I want to affect company performance, again, I could do the best sort of individual performance review season or cycle ever, and it's not going to move the needle on company performance. Now, if I do this thing though, I could, I can move the needle more tangibly because I'm also unlocking all these other levers beyond just "have a tough review with that person or reward them with a comp increase." I'm unlocking all these other aspects of org design, strategy, resourcing, positioning, um leadership talent versus lower-level talent. And um it's, it's been kind of a game changer and linked back to this idea of, of collectivism. Um so in any case...
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. So for founders out there that are building their current companies and maybe they're not at the 270 employee mark today, but you know, performance management is important, understanding your teams and how they, how they work and being able to, to inspire them and measure what they're doing, their output, and, and being able to optimize you know your company, I think is very, very important, especially at a, at a leadership position. They might not have a Chief People Officer yet today, but in the future they will. What would be your advice to building a high performance team from the ground up, and a culture from the ground up? Or maybe if they already got a team in place, how do you rebuild it so that you can improve their performance and their culture? Are there any tactical tools or any, any technologies or processes that you can share? You mentioned kind of high level which I think is great, but can you dive a little bit deeper on that?
David Hanrahan: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I'll just, a couple, couple thoughts on culture and building a high performance organization. A lot ultimately is a byproduct uh of the co-founders and their sensibilities. And so what, what I mean by that is um you know if the co-founder says, "Hey, that's, I want a, I want a high performance culture. So hey Chief People Officer or hey CFO, whoever, whoever like, I'm going to delegate this to you, can you go kind of go define something?" Or you know the founders, the founders go out and say, "I'm going to pull from all these companies the best companies ever, and I want that." There's, there's this dissonance that emerges from like what you want with like what is reality and like what, what am I going to role model. There's been a lot of research that have shown that like um the, the values that espouse versus the behaviors that are actually shown from the executive team, it's those things that, behaviors are actually shown that wind up being pervasive throughout the rest of the culture.
So I think it's an important exercise to do with your executive team as a, as a um as a founder, that you can bake into an offsite or sort of regular planning meetings. Like, "Hey, let's carve out some time to talk about culture. What do we believe in?" And um the tension, the, the sort of the or the magic that is made is when we can debate, we can chew on something, and we can see where something sits on a spectrum. So at Eventbrite, we re-, reimagined the culture, we reimagined the values because we actually had this kind of like branded exercise we did, where the values through the transformation they were no longer relevant because these were values that were like a whole another era of Eventbrite. This, everything has changed on us. We got to, we got to come back to this. How are we going to do this?
The way that we decided, me and Casey um the Chief Product Officer, we read an article called "The Culture Factor" and which is an HBR article from a couple years back, really good, really fascinating. Sort of lays, lays down corporate cultures um on an X/Y axis. And then really outlines eight different types of company cultures. We created essentially a survey um, and you can read "The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture," which is an offshoot of that, that article um that allowed each of the executive team to sort of like plot where they sit on these, these, these axes. Um and you could find that there's mission-based cultures, there's learning-based cultures, there's um results-based cultures.
And um what was important in that article, what was important to us as an exercise was convergence. So meaning um if you're an exe-, if you're a founder and you're trying to go through this and you're like, "Okay, I get it. It can't just be what I want. It has to be what we can actually really not only aspire to but actually live up to, and I see myself in these things, but the ex-, other executives can too." There's natural t- tension in it, but these things are unique. We know what they mean. They're sort of, they're going to guide us when we need to make decisions. Um and, and they're not in the middle of, of each axis. They actually, there's, there's things, there's tension points here. "We're more mission-based than, than this company over here. We're more empathy-based than this culture which is results-based." Um what was um what was, what was important for us in there is convergence.
And so in this article the whole concept of it is that when you, when you get to a set of values, as you scale... you go from 20, "Okay, yes, these mean something to us." Now we're 200, now we're 2,000. The values are really effective um as a, as a guiding light in the company in terms of how we make decisions, how we sort of describe behaviors that are important to us. They're effective if we, if we continue to have convergence on them. They're, they're less effective if we have divergence. So meaning, as we grow, you know that the Chief Revenue Officer kind of nodded their head, but they actually have a wildly different culture in the sales team. The culture in the, in the Singapore team is super different. "Yes, they nod their head at these things that we talk about, but, but slowly but surely we're all actually saying different things and living different, different things." Divergence is the killer. Convergence is what you're really hoping for. But, but in that article, like the punchline, it doesn't really matter what culture you go with ultimately. Like "Hey, we're, we're realizing we're mission-based. We're realizing we're results-based. We're realizing we're a learning, learning based organization." Doesn't really matter in terms of net outcomes of profit, um uh customer satisfaction, all the, all the metrics you can think of. What matters is convergence. Um so anyways, some, some lessons learned from our exercise.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. Yeah. Uh I know that there's a lot of companies that are growing and scaling, uh some are downsizing and some are just staying flat. Um there's a couple different ways to grow and a couple different ways not to grow. Um from your experience with this decision around distributed teams, on-site teams, hybrid teams, what, what, what do you think are some of the, the, the pros and the cons behind building a team that's remotely? And more specifically, maybe some of the tools that or the infrastructure that you think is important to have in place when you're building a remote team versus building an on-site team. Because I think it's different. I think if you're going to have someone come in the office every day, you're going to meet with them, you're going to interview them, you're going to use um a different methodology to really onboarding. It's different than if it's a team that's in Israel or that you'll never see in Latin America or in Canada. So from your experience, kind of just give us your opinion on, on what you see and maybe some of the tactical tools and methodologies that you, you've seen work.
David Hanrahan: You know, it's, it's funny this, this um this topic. I think if um, if it was a year or two, two years ago, it was probably the top item on the list of like "people strategy for the year," like "I got to figure this out. I got to figure out our working mode." And it certainly was at, at Eventbrite. Um the, the tension, the, sort of the worry, the sort of like "we got to figure this out. Are we remote first? Are we hybrid? Are we sort of in office?" And um I'll preface everything I'm about to say with saying like, I don't think it matters. I, I really, I really don't think it matters too much uh in terms of what you choose. In fact you could have, you could have a situation where in this country it is all in office, over here we're in this other country we're all remote first. I think defining and knowing how it works and making it really clear uh will, will be important. So clarity for employees and candidates who want to join, like "Is this a remote first job? Is this, am I, am I going to [be] expected to go into the office?" That certainly matters.
But there's pros and cons ultimately. What I, what I mean by "it doesn't matter," what I mean by that is, is there's not, not one of those is going to be inherently better than the other. It's going to really matter for the company. It's going to really matter for the company, the culture and sort of what we're trying to do. So um you know, if the founders believe that the market for talent is global. You know if the founders believe that, "I just like, I don't think it makes any sense to spend money on an office." Uh if the found- founders have kind of grown up you know working distributed and remote and that was, what, what works for them, then that's probably what they'll gravitate to. If the founders have really grown up with it, with an office um and like "hey, this is how I do my best work. I need to be able to whiteboard" um some other people early on who joined early on kind of believe the same things, that's kind of what will ultimately um take place. I, I think it's harder to late, later stage make a major pivot. So 10 years on we're going to go remote first. 10 years on we're going to like call everyone back to the office. That's certainly hard.
Um at Eventbrite we decided to be um largely hybrid, and what I mean by that is like we have offices but it's up to you if you want to go in. And now hybrid I think means like "you're going to be in at least three days a week." Um what, what we found was really important was, was the documentation, the clarity. Um creating norms around communication, creating predictable norms around communication um and uh on, on the team basis. Um doing some work around sort of time zones and, and making sure we're sort of creating like hygiene around when people meet. Like "what is Zoom for? What is Slack for? What are in-person meetings for?" Um having that clarity and getting a little bit better at meeting culture. So reducing like how many meetings we actually have, being more conscious that like, "hey, if we have a company with a lot of engineers, I think it's better... or salespeople, it's better they're talking to clients, it's better that they're actually coding than being in a bunch of meetings." So, so that actually wound up being much more, more of a thing that was important rather than like defining what we are was actually getting understanding our meeting um suck.
And um so what, what I'll, what I'll say about like at this point right now, I, I feel as though the hybrid versus like remote versus in office, I feel like that debate is just sort of like somewhat stabilizing. And what, what I'll, what I'll say is really fascinating to me though is that um there is now a new like tranche of companies, AI companies. Like the technology we're all excited about. They're building very fancy offices and it's like it's all in San Francisco and it's like that's where the center of [the] universe. It's like "hey, San Francisco's back," you know is this, is this article I've read. I'm like "really?" And when I talk to people who are living there, like, "yeah, they're building, they're building these fancy offices and no one goes in." And it's this really, it's this really weird like um just like can't make heads or tails of it.
Um, but um and I'm really dodging your question here, but, but like what, what I think is fascinating now is um on this concept of, of hybrid. Um on this concept of hybrid where it means you know "working three days in the office," there's, there's a belief, I think there's a belief that what that could do one day is, is, is pave the way for a three or four day work week. And so um Bill Gates has come out you know not too long ago to say that he thinks AI, not the hybrid working model, but AI is actually going to reduce our, you know, how much hours we have to work. So I know that I'm switching around topics, you also want to talk about AI, but what's interesting is this, this sort of hybrid work you know sort of adoption proliferating around the same time AI is happening, allowing people to work like less in the office if you will, but you know, and then is that going to do something, are these things going to converge to do something so that right now AI is the thesis for layoffs. AI is, is what's, is the reason why companies are laying off a lot of staff. Perhaps one day though, AI is the reason we're not laying people, people off. And so I, I kind of took your question and sort of like took it in a different angle there. But um back, back on the sort of hybrid versus distributed, um you know there, there's pros and cons there and like what I've learned to do is to not profess one, one thing is better than the other, um but, but to just have clarity in terms of clarity for internal and external on, on what we believe and generally how we work.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I think it's great. And I, I agree with you, I don't think that there's a right or wrong answer to it. What we've seen happen over all the interviews we've done is it's really, it comes down to a lot, a lot of times the founder is just putting a line in the sand and saying "well, we're going to be this," and either you're on board or you're not on board. And that's kind of, that's kind of worked. It's just making the decision and living with the results and then building around it. So yeah, I don't believe that there is one right or wrong way to do it. It's, it's a learning process for every company and I think maybe you have a little bit of an edge if you're starting fresh from the ground up where you don't quite have a culture that has to change or pivot. It is what it is and you just move forward and you get the right people on board that are, are looking for that.
We're also seeing a lot of candidates that want to be in an office much more than I thought we'd see. I thought, you know, it would be, you know, "three days a week is fine." But you know, more the younger generation seems like they want to be around people and the older generation are more about "I really like spending more time with my kids and family now and I'm getting the same production done, so I don't need to be on a road in LA, you know, two hours a day, let me work from home." So that's kind of what we see um often from that perspective.
David Hanrahan: I think that that's right as well, and I'll just say I think, I think that maps to like if you have young populations, so we have entry-level sales, we have entry-level engineering. Mentorship. Mentorship. It's hard to do over Zoom. I think mentorship in the office, mentorship where "I'm going to whiteboard, I'm gonna sit next to you, we're gonna do code pair, you know, paired coding or whatever." Mentorship for junior staff is not only something that they actually prefer to be live and sort of like with high touch, um but tends to work better, is, is a, is a sort of thing I, I believe in.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. I want to go back to what you brought up, AI. It's a big topic on everyone's mind. Is it going to increase your production? Is it going to reduce your production? Are you going to have a job, you're not going to have a job? You know, there's a lot of fear. There's also a lot of optimism. Um when you look at AI just the technologies, what have you seen or have you yet experienced some success around implementing um some of the technology tools, whether it's in HR or marketing or sales or operations? What's been your experience so far with AI?
David Hanrahan: We, we've used AI on the uh, on the technology side for um for clients uh to essentially help the counsel, you know, our lawyers um scale. So um clients um of family law, so imagine you paid $6,000 for a lawyer to take your case. I kind of want to know constantly what's going on. And this has traditionally been a problem for lawyers, like "I'm in court, I'm, I'm like drafting things, I can't..." And then I have one paralegal and that person's phone's always ringing. "I don't, I can't give you all these updates all the time." But all this information is living in, in a platform. It's living in our platforms. There's, there's, there's back and forth and in email and, and sort of documents that we have digital access to.
So AI can give these generated case updates through the platform. "A motion has been filed, um there's a meeting, there's a court meeting on Friday, you know, there's no action for you, um uh opposing counsel is deliberating, um you know uh the um the court has received documents," whatever. All those things have lived in a platform that otherwise would require manual sort of like, "okay, I'll type this up or I'll go through the case for you and I'll, we can get on a phone Friday." And, and now we can just sort of generate those. And so that's one use case. I think there's other use cases for like how we scale just the live interaction that everyone is, is thinking about like Klarna, you know, there's an article on Klarna the other day, talks about how they've, AI has allowed them to do the, the work of 700 people or something like that, and crazy, right, I saw that.
And so, you know, behind the scenes from a corporate productivity, I'm certainly using it to sort of draft job descriptions. I'm using it to summarize you know some survey text and get some really quick insights out. So I think we're probably, we're just at the early stage of this, but from a, from a people leader what I, what I believe will happen... and maybe other business leaders or founders or whoever you know listen to this and sort of thinking about for their own use case, like in marketing or product or whatever, is um I hope, I hope AI is a technology like the internet in that I don't need a separate AI application for every single thing I want to do, but that AI is, is baked in. It's omnipresent in every technology.
So an example in the people world, we do performance reviews, there's a platform for that. We do engagement surveys, sometimes those two things are on the same platform. We have an HR Information System, we have a comp module, we have um uh you know a leadership development program, you know we have a 360 coaching thing. AI is, is in, is in... starting to get into some of those. Recruiting, so AI sourcing. So like, "hey, this thing will just start generate, to qualified leads and actually facilitate outreach right off the bat, I'm going to serve up these warm leads to you for recruiting, and they're great, they're perfect, these are perfect candidates who've used AI to surface those for you." Um you know, my, my hope is that these, these platforms, you know, the current platforms right now adopt AI and make it, make it you know sort of part of the experience. I say that because I'm using a very large widely known performance and engagement platform right now that it doesn't have AI. And I would rather not have to just sort of do an RFP for a new, an AI performance platform, but rather, again, AI is a technology that lives, that lives throughout all of these things. And that it is almost um invisible, so that like I don't have to go into the AI module, I don't have to um...
But I, I think that's what we're going to start to see unlocks. We're going to start to see on the performance side, on the people side, AI is going to accelerate a lot of, of learning. It's going to accelerate people. It's going to get them faster to uh insights on coaching uh for, on a personal level. Uh I can have my own sort of AI coach, I can have my own AI manager who's taking feedback from me, who has access to all my Slacks and my emails and will sort of tell me what's, what I'm really missing right now. Um engagement survey will sort of kind, create clarity as to what the action items are for us. Um compensation will get us faster to insights around what's the right way to pay. Um you know, all of these things I think are going to create faster um more uh tangible uh and in- and insightful um learnings for um the user on the people's side.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I love that. And you know from just a company perspective, ours included, you know we're here in the US, in Lat-, Latin America, in India, in the Philippines, in different parts of the world. You know, we have meetings that we set up weekly now, which is you know, "this is going to be an AI focused meeting of what are the tech, technologies we need to be looking at, what are the processes we could automate, how do we um you know look at AI in a way that's going to improve how we do business with customers." And ultimately, you know, it's, it's like its own meeting, you know. It's such a priority for how we grow our business um not in a way that's going to take anything from the business but how do we embrace it, how do we maximize its value and where does it really help solve problems for us and for our customers. So I, I think as it continues to evolve there is going to be a need to really put a target on AI and as a company figure out where can we utilize it, and then who are the companies that are building products that can help in a specific domain make our operation run better. I, I don't see it going away. We, we work with hundreds of startups and you know it seems like you could throw a rock and hit a startup that's building something with AI today, which is great. They're not all going to make it, a lot of them will make it, and innovation it's coming out of, it's just very, very, very cool to see.
Um when you talk about downsizing and scaling up, it's a topic that comes up a lot with the companies we're working with. Downsizing has been more of the topic over the last 24, 36 months, but now rightsizing and starting to level up and starting to scale is, is coming back. You've been at companies that have scaled up. For the, for the founders that have never scaled up, oftentimes it takes them weeks, months sometimes to hire people. When you're at a different level where you have the funding, where you're ready to really grow and build, what have you seen that's worked uh tactically from scaling a company, from changing how you recruit to changing how you accelerate onboarding. What's, what are some of the things that, lessons you can share with others that at some point if, if they're an AI company or otherwise are going to have to go through a scale up. What, what, what, what advice can you share?
David Hanrahan: Yeah um it's a great, a great question. Um I think uh a lot, um a lot will go into having the right plan at the beginning. Um so what I mean by that is there, I think there's a tendency in, in fast scaling sort of startups, so "go, go, go mode" of just like "hey, you got this headcount approved, just go," and you know "we whip up a job description," like you know, maybe the risk is "we're just going to use AI to whip up a you know engineering job description and barely even think about it," and like "use AI to sort of like what's a great interview process" and use this stuff. And then realize halfway through we're not finding the right people, you know, or we're leaning too much on AI and, and, and so I, I say that because a lesson learned is that not having the right plan at the beginning.
Plan takes a little bit of energy. Like "we got to sit down, we got to do a kickoff, we got to do a strategy. What are we looking for? Let's pressure test this job. Who's it going to intersect with? Like, we are the stakeholders for this role. Um you know, how do we think we're going to hire? Like what's the right sort of um behaviors." 80% of getting the hire right is the behaviors. And that, that's been my experience. So meaning like, I'm probably not going to miss um a functional skill set. If I'm, if I know engineering, if I know machine learning, I can probably find out, my sort of, my, my, my coding test there to figure out this person knows what, knows their stuff. They know the law, I'm hiring a lawyer, they know the law, they know um uh compensation. But behaviors is 80% of where it will get wrong. If I have to let someone go someday, it's probably going to be a behavioral mismatch. So getting the behavioral assessment, so understanding how to do behavioral-based um interviewing, um understanding how we're going to do that, do that in a consistent way. Um understanding STAR model, just under- like understanding um uh behavioral-based interviewing I think is a big part of getting hiring right.
And I think that doesn't require a lot of bureaucracy. And in fact um at one startup I was at, they, they believed in hiring committees and hiring packets. And it just, it was a lot of bureaucracy that was, that was not, ultimately didn't, didn't prove successful. Um but the speed was the plan. So um so moving fast if we're in a scale up mode, pretty soon here speed is the plan, of having that, having that aligned uh and having a process that, that we think can work. That, that's, that's building it at the beginning before we start rather than just jumping in and, and moving really quickly. And you can do that. You can put a behavioral-based assessment in. You, you can have a process in. You can sort of understand the p- the hiring panel. At 20 employees you know, or at 200. It doesn't require a big you know um fancy people team or a Chief People Officer or someone with experience to do that.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Take a little bit deeper on behavioral interviewing because I think for the most part you know, when you build a company, and myself included, when we first started you know, you've never interviewed anybody. And then you have an idea and a product and you're going to grow a team and you know, you're first trying to figure out "okay, what function do they have to do and what, how much do I need to pay them and how do I attract them and what's our story." And then you get them on board and the culture fits wrong or the behaviors that they have aren't what you thought. Like how do you really flush that out in the, the, the interview process and specifically on the behavior side? Is there tools that you've used? Is there methodology? Is there books that you've read? Like for the listeners what can you share that they can sort of lean into?
David Hanrahan: Yeah, I'll kind of make it more clear on what this behavioral-based interviewing is. So behavioral-based interviewing is the opp-, op- of um... structured behavioral-based interviewing is the opposite of unstructured relational interviewing. So uh unstructured relational interviewing is, "I'm going to go in here without a plan and I'm just going to ask some questions. I'm gonna ask some questions, you know, like what do you think about this technology? You know, because I'm an engineering manager, I'm gonna ask you what you think about it. I'm gonna ask you... I'm gonna try and sort of test out what you know." That's, we're not getting into behaviors. We're getting into sentiment. We're getting into um around things like um "what companies you admire" or sort of like "how do you spend your time on your weekend" like you know um "what type of teams you like working in." This is unstructured relational. "Whether I relate to you as a person."
And this um study done a long time, called the Schmidt and Hunter study, said there was basically three... there's basically three validated ways to make good hires. One was um work samples. One was um cognitive ability tests, which are controversial but you look at a company like Coinbase and they're um you know they're basically bringing these back into fashion. Uh and then structured behavioral. So a good behavioral-based question is let's say we did that values exercise we talked about at the beginning and we believe um in uh let's say like um "being candid with our colleagues, we believe in assuming the best intent, we believe in uh collaboration even if it hurts," whatever, p- whatever pithy statement, there's something in there. So collaboration is key for us. Um effective communication is really key for us. Um uh you know um uh I don't know sort of "positive intent" or something like that.
And, and you can map these to behaviors. And just Google "behavioral-based interviewing guide" and you will get a long list of topics. "So I need to assess for communication. I need to assess for um um proactive nature. I need to assess for um uh interpersonal skills," whatever like whatever, however you, you dice, slice and dice it, there will be questions in there that are suggested. And the questions are basically, "Tell me about a time when you're dealing with a tough coworker." So inherently it's telling me about time, and there was something tough that we're going to test on collaboration. Collaboration is tested when you have some, a challenge, and the challenge is someone tough I had to work with, and "what did you do about it?"
And so then the answer what you're looking for is "okay the person understands um the situation" and then they're going to tell you situation, task, action, result. And they're going to describe a situation that they actually were in previously where "I had a colleague um and I was dependent upon them and they were um really difficult and combative in u- in these meetings that we were in. And it was not my, my direct report, it was my peer. And so I kind of took it upon myself to pull them aside one day and I learned about their psychology. I got an objection from them, it was very hard but I kind of kept at it and here's a sort of interesting, clever sort of thing that I did, sort of got through to them. And I, I did this one thing in the next meeting to help prevent it from happening again." And then the action, that's what the action was. And the result was, was this.
And so you're, you're testing them um in the moment of this topic, communication, collaboration, etc. Um around really clever and interesting ways that they um stayed focused to deliver on that and actually show you that they have this muscle. So the scale of like one through five, you know, one is like the skill is not present, five is like it's highly present. Um you're looking for evidence. You're looking for evidence that like they actually demon-, demonstrate this. And I'm even going to probe, I'm going to poke like, "Hey, can you tell me more? Did you do that or did your colleague do that? Like, like why did you do that? What did you learn from it?" And so that's behavioral-based interviewing in a nutshell. And there's probably a little PDF guide out there that can like you can Google to sort of learn more. But that's, that's what the research shows is if you're going to get behavioral behaviors right, and that's much of it, you do behavioral-based interviewing. Um and I think a lot of smart technical people choose to not do behavioral-based interviewing because I think they believe they have um you know little brain teasers or sort of like little sort of thought, you know, provoking questions they can, they can put out there that relate to the person, which is not going to give you an accurate answer.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. And I think that's such a lesson learned for, for so many companies that are growing and, and trying to get it right. Um as we wrap up here um David, I want to ask you, you know, from your position as a Chief People Officer in 2024, what is the role that you see that other Chief People Officers um are playing today? And as this role continues to evolve, what takeaways can other founders look towards potentially hiring in their future when they bring on a CPO? What should they be looking for there?
David Hanrahan: Yeah, uh I love this question. You know I kind of think of a, a Chief People Officer as a "Chief Convergence Officer" on back into that culture and the values. Like getting convergence on our rapidly transforming culture into the sort of the new realities uh of, of a business that we need to pursue to become a more profitable business. And, and realize that our, our culture has to adapt to that. Um but I think the role of the CPO is going to be to lead ongoing transformation. Specifically the transformation where business and people are intersecting. Where business and talent internally are intersecting. Where um skills are going to have to transform. The way that we design organizations have to transform. How we work has to transform because there's this business goal. So I'm employed by this company. We have viability because we have a customer, we have a service that we sell. Let me first as a CPO, I first and foremost need to understand this business. What must be true two to three years from now from our business to be successful? What then are the people implications for that? What are the skills that we need? What, what do we, what we currently don't have? What has to change? How do we need to lead differently? How does the culture need to adapt? And I'm going to be that bridge. I'm going to be the bridge between business and people in this transformation effort.
Um meanwhile, what I'm doing, I think of a Venn diagram of a CPO as balancing strategy, relationships, and execution. Sometimes CPOs are good at one of those things. They're really good at a people strategy, but they can't you know, build the relationships necessary to execute on it. Or they, they're good at execution, but they don't have the relationships enough to actually you know, hone a strategy that we can sort of co-own. We can co-own this people strategy. So I think about that is, as really "lead the transformation by being a bridge between business and people uh and balancing strategy, relationships, and execution along the way."
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. I want to ask one last question. There's a thousand more I'd love to ask you so probably have to, c- you come back on the show at some point. But um, you know from the employee's perspective, HR oftentimes is this nebulous "not sure whose side you're on." Are you you know supporting the company's direction and, and supporting the executive team of what they're looking to do with the organization? Or are you supporting the employees? When they have an issue, can they come to you and tell you their problems? Or does it roll up to someone and eventually gets to you? There's always this side of "who do I trust here," and it's a balancing act that you need to manage. What would you share about that topic with employees listening about how they approach HR when there's areas of concern, or executives how they should utilize and maximize the role of the Chief People Officer or HR?
David Hanrahan: Well I think one, there's like a um a disconnect that can happen if I don't even know what HR is. "For the very first time I got to go speak with HR and this is kind of scary. Like, are they going to make it worse for me or what?" When you go to HR for a challenge um, "I'm a new manager, I'm a new employee, I'm an employee and I just have a challenge I'm dealing with," success to me is someone who is like your partner who... look, "come to me for advice. If you're coming to me for advice, I'm going to give you advice that allows you to go back and own that. And like get better from it. Like HR gave me really great advice and I trust, I trust their advice. If you're coming to me because I have a problem I can't resolve, I need you, I need you to help me to resolve it and that's like I, I have a complaint and like it's, it's not okay anymore and I need you to resolve it," I also need to trust that you handle that well. That you handle that well and you use good judge- uh and that ultimately I may or may not agree with the resolution, but I trusted you along the way and I understand in the end the resolution that we're pursuing, might not agree with it, but I get it and I understand it. Again, I go back to trust.
So HR has to be trusted in either, in either scenario. And, and your question like "are you for the employee, are you for the management?" I'm for neither. I, I'm here to help the company be successful. And in some cases, the management [might] be holding us back. And my role is like, "I really need to sort of figure out like resolving this management issue." In some cases I might say that the employee like, "Hey, this is on you. Like you need to own this problem." But I'm, I'm, I'm here to help the company succeed and bridge that, that business with the people, that people aspect. But ultimately um if I'm viewed as indispensable, you know, if I'm viewed as someone who I can go to, they are approachable, like I, I get what they do, I'm trusted. And so trust is my lifeblood you know, as, as a function.
If we are trusted by the leaders but we're also trusted by the employees, I can tell you an answer you don't like, employee or manager, and I can navigate those, I can kind of challenge both. And I'm trusted and I'm not viewed as like "in cahoots with one or the other." Which can happen, there can be HR teams which are viewed as like, "hey, they are a challenge to the leaders because they're not helping us, they're, they're basically trying to do like only things that the employees want. But we can't as an executive trust what David's, his instincts, because he's not helping us sort of bridge the realities of our business to the people." So I have to be trusted across both employees and, and management.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Well I think you've wrapped that up real nicely and um I'm so thankful that you came on giving the voice of, of your background with what the future really holds for a lot of companies and the value that someone like yourself can bring to an organization. If anybody wanted to learn um more about HR or just wanted to connect with you, where would they go?
David Hanrahan: Uh LinkedIn. I'm no longer on Twitter or, or anywhere else on TikTok or anything like that. So, so LinkedIn, I, I, I, I try and post anything I'm fascinated with, new, new research or articles or sort of management practices I'll... LinkedIn is the place for me.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. And a shout out to your company, Flare. If they want to find Flare, where do they go there?
David Hanrahan: Hello@flare.com and, and if you need a lawyer um marble.co. So Marble is where you find uh the lawyer.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Very cool. Well, again thanks so much David for coming on today and thanks for the listeners for listening. It means the world to me that you spent your time with us. I'm the host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to catch up with you all in the next episode. Until then, take care.
Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.
This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market. And they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.
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