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A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

Welcome to A-Players, where you will learn how to target, hire, retain, and train top performers for your team! In this podcast, Robin Choy hosts top startups execs who share their experience building and scaling their companies. A must-listen if you're building your own team or working for an in-house recruiting team.

"Talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships".

Add me on LinkedIn to continue the conversation: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbchoy/!

Brought to you by HireSweet.

Mike Moriarty, Global Head of Talent Acquisition @Dropbox. Use data to run your Talent Acquisition like a business.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.4K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 34:09

Mike Moriarty is the Global Head of Recruitment at Dropbox, helping to lead a team of 100+ Dropboxers developing and innovating cutting-edge staffing practices and outcomes. Previously, Mike built the tech staffing function at Dropbox from the ground up (2017-2020), and prior to that, rose the ranks at Google redefining the way sourcers and recruiters use data to own and tell their story to business leaders. In this episode, Mike tells us how to build a professional hiring architecture, inspired by the best practices in sales and marketing. Follow Mike here on LinkedIn! And let's connect and continue the conversation here on LinkedIn too!

Alexandre Pachulski, Co-Founder @ Talentsoft. Recruiting and AI in the Pop Culture.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.4K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 30:34

Alexandre Pachulski is a very eclectic person. Founder in the leading HRIS Talentsoft ($100M ARR, 700 people in the team), he's also a movie freak and a big sports fan. When he set out to write a book, it wasn't yet another business book on hiring: it was a book on Artificial Intelligence in the history of cinema. In this episode, Alexandre shares his view on the future of recruiting (with the Beatles), on how to improve decision-making in recruiting (with Brad Pitt's Billy Beane in Moneyball), and on the Golden State Warriors. Buckle up!

Carmen Hudson @ Recruiting Toolbox. A brief history of recruiting!

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.3K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 27:33

Carmen started working in recruiting in 2000 at Amazon. Then Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter. In this episode, she shares her history which crosses that of the Silicon Valley: Dot-com crash, Microsoft-Yahoo war, LinkedIn launch. Live that history with her!

Kris Bondi, CEO @Mimoto. How to align your teams quickly and get into a position to be acquired or IPO!

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.2K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 26:56

Kris is a leading CMO whose sweet spot has been getting companies into a position so they can be acquired or IPO: she has contributed to seven acquisitions and two IPO filings. This expertise requires moving fast and aligning quickly the marketing teams to new objectives. In this episode, she shares the playbook she used at LogDNA and Bitnami. This playbook includes: a full day offsite to map the team’s new roles, have distributed teams act as one, and send grocery cards! Don’t wait for an exit or IPO to apply this battle-tested strategy and start aligning your team now!

Rodolphe Dutel, Founder @Remotive.io. Transition your team to remote work.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.2K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 28:12

Remotive.io has been around for 6 years and is one of the strongest remote workers community. They talked about remote working way before the pandemic. Rodolphe tells us about how remote working used to be a niche phenomenon, how most content on organizing remote teams was not created for beginners and how remote can be one future for work - but not the only one.

James Ellis, Employer Branding @ Roku. Write world-class job descriptions and supercharge your employer branding.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.3K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 34:07

James Ellis is the biggest Employer Branding Nerd on earth (I'm not saying this, Google is!). With great energy and humor, James walks us through the groundwork of employer branding: drafting your company story and hammering it. 86% of people listening to this episode had an epiphany and completely revamped and turbocharged their employer branding. Good for recruiters and C-levels alike! If you're struggling writing your latest job descs, listen to James: he has the answer! 

Yariv Bash, CEO @ Flytrex. Bad managers need good employees.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.2K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 22:19

Yariv is CEO and cofounder at Flytrex, a drone delivery company of 31 employees with a team spread between Israel and the US. Yariv shares his story of building a team (while being right in the middle of the journey), why he crashed a spacecraft on the moon and his thesis on delegating.

Nate Smith, CEO @ Lever. A glimpse at the future of recruiting.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.2K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 32:03

Nate is one of Lever's cofounders - a leading ATS (serving 2,500 customers) that you probably all know. He started as CEO, turned CTO and then CEO again. In this episode, Nate shares all Lever's backstory (starting from the underlying technology DerbyJS), his vision for recruiting, the broader evolution of technology - AND how Lever hire their own team. A great episode that we release on the day we (HireSweet) also celebrate joining Lever's official partners ecosystem!

Kulveer Taggar, CEO & Cofounder @ Zeus Living. Find Product Market Fit. Again, and again, and again.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.3K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 24:36

Kulveer Taggar is CEO at Zeus, a tech-enabled rental company for business travelers. In this episode, Kulveer candidly shares how Covid-19 redefined the company, their struggles when they had to lay off part of the team and how they adjusted to the new environment for the better. His key messages? Listen to your inner voice, learn to make principal choices & your values have to cost you something.

Michael Seibel, CEO @ Y Combinator. How YC picks founders and how to hit Product Market Fit with your team.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.3K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 29:40

Michael is the CEO at Y Combinator - the world's most famous accelerator who launched over 2,000 startups. In this episode, Michael shares YC's 5-step recipe to select the best founders and the the main advice he gives to pre-Product Market Fit and post-Product Market Fit startups. Listen to it if you're a founder, point blank!

Romain Lapeyre, CEO @ Gorgias. From $1 to $10M ARR, what changes?

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.3K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 25:39

Gorgias grew from 20 people to 90 people in the last 12 months, one of the fastest ramp up we've seen, right in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis. Romain is one of the most impressive entrepreneur I've met - and a long-time friend. In this episode, he shares his personal experience on going from $1M to $10M ARR. He shares his view on building a team of executives (promote the most promising existing employees), on keeping a strong team culture while growing the team 5X (write it down), on the advice he'd give to his $1M ARR younger self (hire engineers earlier) and a lot more!

Alison Eastaway, VP of People @ Sqreen. Recruitment is broken - but we can fix it.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.3K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 30:54

Alison joined Sqreen super early (Employee #13) to help the founders build a great team and culture. She believes recruitment needs to be fixed and shares her tips on moving from transactional to relational recruitment. Listen to her now! 

Tido Carriero, Chief Product Development Officer @ Segment. Build a world-class engineering team.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 960 views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 32:19

Tido built engineering teams at early-stage Facebook, Dropbox, now Segment - his mandate has always to build world-class engineering teams. Learn how to work with agencies, how Segment built their strong engineering brand and how to improve intake meetings!

Chris Shaw, Head of Talent Acquisition @ Apollo Graph QL. Build a distributed engineering team of A Players.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.1K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 28:20

Chris has 23 years of experience in Talent Acquisition in the Bay Area - with a strong tech focus. He ran his own agency, he worked in sourcing, recruiting, people ops. Twitter, Google, now Apollo. He shares his experience building robust interview processes, how everyone should start a process with a MOC (Mission, Objectives, Competencies) and how he built a Door-to-Door referral technique. 

Bryant Chou, CTO & Head of Growth @ Webflow. Hiring when hitting stratospheric growth.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.1K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 29:11

Bryant, Sergie and Vlad co-founded Webflow in 2013 with a very strong focus on building the best team. The three of them hired the first 100 people in the team, a dedication that's rarely seen in founders. Created in 2013, a Seed round in $3M in 2014 and then a massive Series A of $72M in 2019 - they're even  growing faster during Covid. Is the dedication to hiring A Players the reason why Webflow is unstoppable today? Listen to the episode to hear Bryant's thesis on hiring, his tips on recruiting as a founder and his formula to hiring ICs and strategic roles.

Charles Guillemet, Recruiting Manager @ Facebook, ex-Head of Recruiting @ Neuralink & @ Gusto. Build a standardized hiring Machine.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 970 views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 27:47

Charles has seen recruiting as every possible stage of a startup. Hear his learnings from scaling Gusto from 30 to 600 employees in 3 years, learn how to set up a scalable, standardized and unbiased hiring process and take your referrals to the next level!

Phil Strazzulla @ SelectSoftware Reviews. Pick the best tools and build a great recruiting stack.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.1K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 31:26

Phil and his team spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software to build deep and unbiased buyer guides. In this episode, he tells us about how to accurately assess a new tool, what he thinks the next generation of CRM/ATS will look like and how to build business cases to push new tools.

Chez Jennings, Tech Recruiter @ Lever. A recruiting nerd shares her best tools & trade secrets.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.1K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 27:48

Chez worked in recruiting for 7 years, starting in the agency side and made the move to in-house recruiting. In this episode specifically tailored for recruiters, Chez shares her current tech stack, somme key numbers and her top inspirations as a recruiter. She also shares her vision on building diverse teams and how to minimize hiring biases.

Ross Mahaffey, Senior Recruiter @ Uber. How to grow as a recruiter.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 870 views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 31:50

Ross currently leads a Talent Acquisition team at Uber and believes Talent Acquisition roles evolved (and will keep evolving) into a much more strategic role. In this episode, he shares his vision for the future of recruiting and his best recommendations to grow as a recruiter.

Jason Boehmig, CEO @Ironclad. When & how to hire a rockstar team of executives.

A-Players - The top startups' recipes to build teams of top performers

  • 1.2K views
  • over 3 years ago
  • 28:38

In less than six years, Jason grew Ironclad to a company of 160 employees and raised a total of $84M. Jason faced two stages at Ironclad:  #1 - Find Product Market Fit (where founders should do most of hiring) #2 - Scale as fast as possible (and hire a recruiting team) In this episode, Jason tells us about this journey and about why he thinks you should hire a great exec team as soon as possible. Let's connect and continue the conversation on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbchoy/!