Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology
00:04:57 · Shah Ramezani, Hector Mason
[00:04:57] S1: Well, it's hard to say. I mean, first of all, there are these core values. Right? First of all, like, I think very important, like, strong values, good people, like, very open mind. I don't need to read all of them, but I think it's very obvious. Like, we don't wanna make a compromise on people's values. Think it's very important for us because that makes a team work better. But then it needs to have that strong drive, extreme drive, almost like a spark. But again, that spark doesn't show with every people the same way. You know, like I think someone like very introverted, you can't see that in the interview. That is one that you want to see that drive. But then you also want to understand for the role required, how is the brain wired? Does it require an autistic person? Does it require like an extrovert? Like you have to understand how they work and why and what drives them. So I think in between all of that, make a decision. But I think values are important. Ambition is important because if they are on ambition, you can't make them go through a lot of difficult time because they don't know why they should do it. So... Yeah. And then I guess feel well in team composition, low ego, but that comes all with good values then. [00:05:52] S2: So I'm really curious about what you said around, do we go for, like, an extroverted or an autistic person? Because there are two buckets. There's some overlap. But what what would be examples of roles where, you know, sometimes an extra... An autistic person is great, but, you know,
00:06:05 · Shah Ramezani
[00:06:05] S1: what So for example, like, your product you need, like, often... I mean, depends on what kind of... There are some products that are interacting a lot with the sales team so that they didn't have, like, a combination of some sort of autism, but also, like, very good with, like, extraversion. But then you have some that you just need absolute truth seekers. Like it's like zero or one and you don't wanna have any deviation from that plan. They will tell you as it is and they will put a roadmap with dates and like all. So you need that person who say some enrolls in product units or even engineering, you need people like they're actually truth seekers, like everything is binary. And then in some roles, it's just not not useful. I mean, sales, for example, there is no boundaries. Like, there's a block of 50 shades of gray. Okay. The person doesn't wanna buy the product, but I kind of felt some hints that there is an opening, so we will work on that. And then there's actually more than just these two profiles. There's more to that. There's much more to us. We try to go through them and then send if that person fits in the role. Sometimes we also have people that are in the wrong roles and then we move them around. They do really better. So there are people made for certain roles, and then they're gonna absolutely love it because they just know that naturally they're better than everyone else.
00:07:01 · Hector Mason, Shah Ramezani
[00:07:01] S2: Yeah. I think you're quite open about the approach that you take to hire people on the on the anti cell, which is something that's talked about in StartUpLand where, you know, in the final stage, you're saying why people shouldn't join. [00:07:14] S1: What's the [00:07:15] S2: chaotic about Noah? And tell us about your approach there and why it works and how people respond.
00:07:19 · Shah Ramezani
[00:07:19] S1: So normally, first of all, like, why would someone join? I'm... First, understand the angle. Right? Like, so, okay. If it's, someone who's super hungry and just wants to move up the ladder, I get it. You know, I get it why we joined the company because we'll provide that. But then if it doesn't be clear, I try to understand it. So I try to like really dig in and understand you just want a job. That's not the place for you. But I would say we try to scare them a bit with the amount of work and intensity. And normally I see two reactions. One is the person starts not speak and get quiet, and I can see that they're almost scared. And then the second person would be their eyes are literally lighting up. They're like, this is exciting. You know, I I worked at a company where I felt I could have had done more, but they didn't want me to do more. So I think we're trying spot those guys that were actually wanna get thrown out a lot, wanna get a lot of complexity thrown at them and work through solution finding and and work with team who are incredibly in ambition and learn as a result a lot. So you normally see that in the nonverbal communication quite quickly. As you can imagine, the verbal communication people can manipulate that, but they'd have no control over the nonverbal part. So... Yeah. So I think we are knowing that with people that we don't get it why they wanna join. We just don't understand it, and everyone just like, dig it, dig it down, and understand what is the real motivation, and sometimes we're missing something from the profile or interview. So, yeah, it's a very big component for us to try those guys away that are really not understood that what this place is about.
00:08:32 · James Pringle
[00:08:32] S0: Yeah. And I'm sure that the process is very well thought out, but naturally, there sometimes are hiring mistakes. How do you go about correcting that? What's your process when someone joins? How do you prove now that they're in the building that they are at the standard? And, you know, what's your probation period? How do you manage that early stage to correct any mistakes that do happen?
00:08:57 · Shah Ramezani
[00:08:57] S1: Yeah. Mistakes happen. I think first we try to understand the process, what was wrong in the process. I think that's important. We try to tweak it, learn from it. And then I think sometimes we hire people that are great. We thought they're great. They had great energy. They're... Everything was great, but this is wrong role. Literally wrong role. Like, the person thought it was made for that role x, but actually they were made for role b. And often they have a bit of a hesitancy, but then, you know, we try to convince them, but then often they do it really well. And then, yeah, think mostly like switching the role or trying to give feedback. I think one good sign for us is like if someone takes feedback really well. I always tell people, I mean, what you don't wanna have is people if they're giving you good feedback because that doesn't do anything. Right? I mean, if anything just makes your ego bigger. If you make people comfortable just to give you feedback all the time, you learn them fastest. And by way, you don't have to take everything to heart. You can just say, okay, from the tenth thing I heard, I think five are bullshit. I can't change anything about it, but that's up to you. But if you're a difficult person to get feedback from or, like, at least accept feedback, people will stop giving you feedback. And at some point, they will just remove you or put you in a different position that you don't want. So I think that's a good signal. We don't give up on people who are working really hard, and they're trying to get better, and they're learning fast. We never give up on those people because I think we see that in a three to six months, they will get there.