Lessons from one of the world’s top executive recruiters | Lauren Ipsen (Daversa Partners, GC)

0:00 regardless of whether or not you're hiring you should always be keeping a pulse on the market that is the most important thing and I think that should be the case for both candidates and you know folks that are hiring like you never want to put yourself in a position where you have no idea what good looks like whether that's from a company standpoint or from a candidate standpoint so both parties should always be having a good

0:24 understanding of which companies are thriving which individuals are building great things and are well-known Commodities in their organizations and get great references oftentimes I you know encourage Founders to simply chat with what good looks like and get a really good sense of kind of what Benchmark candidate profiles could be and who knows where that person will be in a year or what have you but staying really really close to really great people and using them from

0:54 advising capacity or getting them ingrained in some type of involvement in the product prior to actually having that specific need I think is really important welcome to Lenny's podcast I'm Lenny and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products today my guest is Lauren Ibsen one of the most important skills for Founders and Senior product leaders to develop is the ability to hire great people you won't be able to build the

1:22 best company or the best product if you can't hire the best people and Lauren is one of the most experienced and successful people in the world when it comes to hiring product leaders she's placed over 80 senior product leaders across tech companies and has worked with some of the biggest companies out there when I asked a bunch of really smart product leaders who their favorite product recruiter was Lauren's name came up a ton in our conversation we get

1:47 super tactical about what Founders need to do to find the best product Talent what product managers should be doing during their career to give themselves the most opportunity and we also touch on what recruiters themselves often get wrong when trying to attract great talent this episode is Rich with actionable advice for basically everyone and I'm really excited to bring it to you with that I bring you Lauren Ibsen who has an opinion on internal tools Journal tools are something you probably

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4:26 head on over to my mirror board at miro.com Lenny to see my most popular podcast episodes my favorite Miro templates you can also leave feedback on this podcast episode and more that's miro.com Lenny Lauren thank you for being here welcome to the podcast thanks so much it's great to be here I've been meaning to do an episode on product hiring and recruiting product people for a while and when I

4:56 asked a bunch of smart friends who should I have on to talk about the stuff your name came up a bunch and so I'm really happy that we're finally doing this me too absolutely I'm grateful that you asked so to help listeners get a sense of just your background and kind of the journey you've been on to get to where you are now can you just spend maybe just a minute kind of talking through the wonderful things you've done in your

5:18 career and what you're doing now yeah absolutely so I started my career in broadcast I originally thought that I wanted to be on the news and quickly realized I didn't necessarily want to be the face of sadness there's a ton of that happening in the world so made a pivot pretty early on and thought where could I use the communication skills that I've been working so hard on and do something that's impactful in a big way but maybe

5:48 just with a little bit of a different angle and stumbled that cross-executive search exec search is not really something that people major in college by any means or think they're going to end up doing so it was something I found fascinating I had applied to all of these different companies like Twitter and snap been Pinterest hadn't heard back from any of them was a name in the resumes and thought how cool would it be if I could work with all of them and

6:15 have an opportunity to play a part from a different lens so got into exact search was really focused early on on consumer mobile build outs was doing a lot of work with Twitter and Reddit and taskrabbit next door Postmates you name it and that was probably 85 of the work I was doing and then as on the agency side 15 was obscure yeah autonomous helicopter selling into the Department of Defense and then retail and Robotics and it was

6:46 all very fascinating but for me who has wicked bad add it was amazing to be able to be so stimulated by so many different Industries and feel like I couldn't really Master this you know so long story short had an awesome career at diverse Partners which is a boutique executive Search firm and thought I was going to be there potentially forever was tapped by a awesome individual Abe Shafi who was founding a company I had been doing a

7:15 lot of work for them they were a client of mine at the time placed a couple great hires and they said we're either going to kick off I had a talent search with you or you can come over and and join us so I was the first recruiting hire over there built out the talent function in its entirety I definitely think there was a part of me that you know I loved the operating experience learned a ton worked side by side some

7:34 amazing people but was really missing working with Founders and lots of them and keeping a pulse on the market so General Catalyst tapped me most recently and been working here for the past couple months and it's been great thus far and I'm specializing in our consumer on crypto Investments awesome the fact that you're at GC now makes me think about another recruiter that I know who's awesome awesome resendine and it's interesting that a lot of the best

8:01 recruiters seem to be heading to VC funds and I'm curious why that is happening is it like a comp thing is that other things that are pulling everyone away into funds it's a great question it's definitely not a comp thing I'll say that I think it could be a stability of Life thing search is incredibly volatile and you have to hustle so hard and as soon as you have three wins you've got four more things to execute on and so there's

8:26 aspects of it that can be tough especially in a market like right now where you really do have to Chase business and you can't be selective about what you take on so you could be pitching things that maybe you don't necessarily believe in in its entirety or what have you so I think that's one component in-house is obviously difficult right now as well for talent leaders it's really scary to take a bet on one single company right now and know

8:49 what it's going to look like six months from now and so I think those things combined might be the reason for an influx in folks leaning more towards Venture and I think it's just timeliness got it that makes sense the downside is it's hard for people to find awesome recruiters because they're once you're in a fun you're just going to help those startups and so we're going to talk later about just how do people find awesome recruiters what do you look for

9:12 but there's roughly three things I want to spend our time chatting through today one is for Founders and hiring managers just how to find the best talent and what they could do to be successful finding the best talent two is for product leaders and PMs how to give themselves the most opportunity from the flip side and then third is just for recruiters what do they often do wrong how do they miss out on the best product

9:35 Talent does that sound good yeah that sounds great Okay cool so on the hiring front just diving in say you're a Founder you're someone really early at a company and maybe you've got a couple PMs and you're starting to think about we need to hire a really senior product leader our first senior product leader sure what do you find is often the biggest mistake that Founders make when they're trying to hire their first senior product leader you know I

10:00 think especially for Founders that haven't hired for this caliber of talent in the past it's really easy to be distracted by shiny objects and look at huge names if you want to find the cpos of Google and YouTube or what have you because that seems like it would be such an incredible opportunity for brand recognition and to an extent it is but the fact of the matter is oftentimes those individuals are pretty far from the work and have a great team of

10:30 executors that they've put into place that are actually the ones that are in the weeds and so I think that's the biggest mistake I see people make especially on you know the hiring front where they have limited resources and maybe they're an early stage company and trying so hard to bring in big names is not always the best way to go about it because the fact of the matter is they need to go then hire a team so I think

10:53 looking for someone that's a little closer to the work maybe someone that can step up into that type of role and do so in a way where some days they might actually be operating like a PM and then other days they might be able to build from a leadership perspective like that's more of the DNA that people should be targeting do you think the source of the issue with that going wrong that they no longer can do that

11:16 work as well because they've been shielded away from the Tactical day-to-day or is it that they're not as hungry as they used to be and they're just like I already I'm a YouTube 10-year super success I don't need to prove myself anymore and they're just not as hungry or something else I mean I'm not going to sit here and say that all senior leaders aren't hungry I think that there's some folks that I really lean into the work in a

11:38 different way and miss that and often go to startups because they crave building so it's not necessarily that but I do tend to lean towards folks that have a chip on their shoulder or have something to prove and want to build a name for themselves all of that to say there's a reason that a lot of those people got to where they are and some of the best talent are some of the senior folks but just maybe not necessarily the best

12:01 talent for where this company is today right it could be great for 10 years down the road but the past five years of that individual's career could have been far more focused on camaraderie team building operational components performance reviews and then aspects of product Vision which just might not be the Innovative a b testing type of profile that you you know you typically look for in these pre-ipo companies got it I imagine there are stories that you

12:30 can share but people you've placed like that that have not worked out if you can share one that'd be awesome but but maybe a side question is the general advice just don't assume someone that's been successful at a big company with a fancy background is going to be great sometimes they work out but not always not going to take yeah I would say the general advice is who is going to be best for this specific role at this

12:53 specific time not necessarily who is the best talent in the world or in the market those are two very very different questions to ask and I think you know early on in my recruiting career I was often just trying to recruit these whales of Executives to try and prove myself and say like I got this person to entertain this opportunity how sick is that but naturally that's not necessarily the person that actually can move the needle

13:18 and so you need to think very specifically just because this is the best talent that doesn't necessarily mean they're the best talent for this role today so to double down on that say you are hiring and you know you're going to start hiring a senior product leader what is it that you suggest Founders nail down and iron out when they're kicking off the hiring process either on their own or with a recruiter like in the job description what else do they

13:42 have to get right to find the right person it's a number of things like product leaders can come in a lot of different flavors and so I think it's trying to determine where this person should major and minor where they should spike is this someone that's going to really lean into the design efforts is it someone that you know actually kind of needs to just operate like a very senior pm and continue to build out a team is this

14:04 someone that really should be focused on product vision for the Long Haul and then thinking more holistically about how to build the rest of the team there's so many different ways in which you could hire for a product leader so I think it's trying to work a little bit backwards and think about what is the actual outcome that we're trying to solve for with this hire or are we just hiring ahead of product because we feel

14:26 like we need to hire a head of product like that's so often what I see is you know the board's telling me we need to hire out of product and you know I don't necessarily think that we do or I'm not exactly sure what we need in this role and so whenever you're starting a search in that regard it's kind of doomed from inception so you need to get incredibly granular on the front end around what is

14:46 this person going to be coming in to do what's their mandate and you know if we think about someone that's just absolutely heading it out of the park and crushing it what does that look like so I think just trying to be really specific on the front end I love that last piece just what does success really look like for this person on the first piece that's exactly the same advice I give Founders when they're looking for

15:06 PM is like what do you concretely need them to do day to day not like we need someone to help us with product and that often helps illuminate okay I see we need someone to help us ship more consistently we need someone to help us hire Engineers like yeah just make a list like what are they going to do for the first month or two or three yeah yeah absolutely I think those are the most important things like the 90-day

15:29 plan is something that's overused but so necessary and that's just the tip of the iceberg so that component and then okay a year from now what should this person be doing two years from now do we want them to grow up into a CPO role do we think about that in a different way how are we thinking about the product Direction today 12 months from now 18 months from now through IPO like I think it's really

15:54 difficult to think about things that way and so often you're thinking about the task in front of you and just trying to to iterate quickly but like that is the type of thought process that needs to be happening from the CEOs and founders are there archetypes of PMS if you just like bucket like here's the three maybe most common types of product leaders that Founders hire because there's like an infinite list of skills and things they

16:19 could do but just to make it even simpler like here's probably one of these three you're looking for do you have something like that in your head yeah there's platform product leaders or folks that are kind of more indexed on the infrastructure components there's folks that are typically focused on like core product or consumer product if it's on the consumer side of things and then you'll have folks that are really indexed and that can include like ux

16:43 individuals design folks and then there's also typically Specialists so individuals that are really hyper focused on growth or monetization or what have you those are the three buckets that I would say I see most often do you feel like Founders sometimes pick one of the wrong buckets and that's a common mistake or is it generally it's the wrong bucket but then maybe it's not the right spite of skills within that bucket well it's it's kind of twofold I think sometimes people just

17:12 bring in ahead of product to do everything so that's probably not the best way to go about things like I think that ends up being a unicorn which you hear often in the search world and it becomes really difficult to hone in on what good looks like and so you know I think again it just comes back to like having a clear org chart on the front end and determining are we hiring someone specifically to build out our

17:35 Walled Garden ads approach or are we hiring someone to run product marketing or are we hiring someone to help from a product perspective to build a better core user experience like those are all very very very different roles and if you bring in one person to try and do in all the fact matters they're going to have to bring in some key lieutenants to help them so is that something you want to do or are you more focused on

17:58 bringing in someone imminently to help on the ad side of things and then we can find that head of product to help them out down the road like that's kind of the way in which I I would architect it and think about it is what's most imminent and what do you actually need to hire for today as opposed to just hiring for the sake of hiring and bringing in that leader and part of the discussion there is maybe they grow up

18:20 into this head of product long term Maybe not maybe we just need someone to ship to ads platform all right that's exactly right yeah you mentioned this title of header product there's also vpf product CPO there's all these titles and I feel like people sometimes use them interchangeably don't know which one to use when they're putting out a job description do you have any kind of heuristic rule of thumb of just here's how to think about when to use

18:43 each of these titles or is it not even a big deal for say a Founder hiring the first senior product leader it's a great question and it definitely leads to confusion across the board because all have candidates come to me and they'll say I'm only looking for a CPO role when I'm working with a startup where maybe on the Venture side of things we've actually advised that startup to not hire c-level Executives at this point and so that naturally could eliminate a

19:11 candidate that could be amazing for the role similarly people could feel that way if you know it's a VP of product role but that in their mind is the most senior product leader within the organization running everything from end to end who they intend to be the CPO down the road but are not in a position where they're ready to hire sea level execs so it's tough and it really depends on the organization and the way

19:36 in which they're thinking about chord charts and leveling a lot of startups at this point are almost allergic to Sea titles or VP titles or are just more title agnostic than I've seen in the past so you see a lot more of these head ofs and that is sector leaders up until probably C plus or d stage and then you get to D and E and you'll see more of the VP director CPO type and I think that is like the

20:08 way that people should be thinking about it is if I'm joining a company very very early days and it's called head of engineering that that is intended to be the most senior engineering leader within the organization the fact of the matter though is there's good reason sometimes why they're not throwing out that seed title and could this person be layered down the road potentially because maybe the talent they need right now is different than just as we had

20:31 spoken to earlier is different than the talent that they might need from a massive CPO in two and a half years and so I think that rubs people the wrong way because they want a bit of a promise that things are going to if they join at this stage that they'll be in it for the long haul and be that Chief product officer that takes a company through an IPO but companies are so Dynamic and things change so quickly so you know I

20:55 guess a long-winded way of me saying like there's there's different breadth and depth to each role but I think for the most part unless it's a very siled company with multiple different VPS if you're coming into a company and they say this is the head of product the VP of product or the CPO that all means the same thing dependent on the stage for the most part and the other takeaway there which is awesome is if your early stage startup

21:18 probably just start with head of product keep it yeah don't ever promise everyone understands yeah because the last thing you want to do is have to demote someone but you know once you get to a place of having c-level Executives like that's not going to do any good but maybe you start as a head of product and then as the company continues to grow you lean into the growth side of things more and so you you become that head of growth or

21:41 an SVP of growth like things iterate and change but you just never know and you can't predict the outcome of the company on the front end so a lot of people listening to this probably aren't hiring senior product leaders right now but plan to and will in the future and so I wanted to ask what should Founders do when they know they will hire a head of product say in the next year that could set them up for Success down the road

22:06 what should they be doing ahead of time regardless of whether or not you're hiring you should always be keeping a pulse on the market that is the most important thing and I think that should be the case for both candidates and you know folks that are hiring like you never want to put yourself in a position where you have no idea what good looks like whether that's from a company standpoint or from a candidate standpoint so both parties

22:30 should always be having a good understanding of which companies are thriving which individuals are building great things and are well-known Commodities in their organizations and get great references oftentimes I you know encourage Founders to simply chat with what good looks like and get a really good sense of kind of what Benchmark candidate profiles could be and who knows where that person will be in a year or what have you but staying really really close to really

23:00 great people and using them from advising capacity or getting them ingrained in some type of involvement in the product prior to actually having that specific need I think is really important that sounds awesome and it makes sense how do you as a Founder do some of that do you just kind of ask folks like hey who are some of the best product leaders you know I just want to chat with I'm not hiring just want to

23:22 kind of meet people who are awesome is that the behavior you suggest or is there something else you can do that's a great way to go about it and by simply saying No Agenda I'm not trying to hire you tomorrow I just want to know great people and to be totally honest people feel flattered by that typically most of the time if you've been referred to someone and heard nothing but great things about them and you really don't

23:46 have an agenda other than wanting to to pick their brain people are like huh well this is different from the day to day this is like fulfilling and people want to pour their knowledge especially into companies that they believe in so I think more often than not you'll find that not just product leaders but Executives across the board are actually really inclined to do so and want to help out because it's a little bit different from the

24:10 day-to-day monotony of their work life so the advice is keep track of companies who are killing it who you might be able to kind of poach from in the future and keep a list and keep warm contact with folks that are awesome it reminds me of a Founder that or basically all founders who are really good at hiring and how far ahead they plan seeds and how they just kind of play the long game with the

24:33 best people they meet and they just kind of keep the conversation going until they finally convince them to join like a year or two later is that you find out the same thing one million percent yeah when I was on the executive recruiting side of things at diversa the VP of engineering candidate that we ultimately landed it was a seven month game of course ship and let's bring him in to help out from an advising capacity let's

24:57 ask him how he would think about structuring this org let's talk to him about the best talent that he would recommend that we're spending time with no question that's invasive but more so just collaborative and exciting and you'll find that the founder and that leader will build a different level of Rapport and Trust by not going through a formal interview process and having it feel transactional and then with that magic can happen and you can you can

25:23 land incredible people this all sounds like a lot of work and a lot of time do you have guidance on how long it should take to find like first early stage startup say series there would be to like find someone awesome and or how much time founder should spend a week just best practice on hiring for someone like this I mean I think if you're going to search so if you're looking for this individual it's really so case to case

25:48 like there's searches that I've been in that I call three people I know they're amazing for this I tell the founder and CEO these are the three people you should chat with hire one of them and it's that easy there's others where it's a lot of trying to figure out what the person's actually looking for if there's you know some some they hit it off from an emotional standpoint there's so many different things that come with it

26:13 I would say from a timing perspective like it's not a hard number it's more of just put yourself in the room with great people if you have a tremendous amount of respect for someone continue to harvest that relationship and ask what good looks like find excuses to continue to touch base with people that are important in your network if you remembered that they mentioned that they were going to some event and you think that you might want to hire them down

26:37 the road in a non-creepy way show up to that event like these are these are things that I'm constantly doing and I think that Founders can do a better job of but just make yourself known and relevant and then when you reach out and timing is right it won't feel so so obscure or so so transactional that reminds me it was time at Airbnb where we had these meetups for engineers every month or so or is like a tech oh it's a

27:02 tech talk and then all the engineers get a Target engineer that is coming to vent like they get their profile in their picture and their job is to make sure they have a great time and try to convince them to join someday oh my God but it's so real it's similar to college trips where you're trying to get recruited for a sport and they you have to ensure that you're yeah just continuing to give people the best

27:26 experience possible and staying top of mind for people yeah creepy they have no idea but it works it worked great it was a great tactic that's awesome I want to come back to a question that I asked but I feel like you'll have an actual more concrete answer to the specific piece of just what's your guidance per week how much time you should be spending on hiring broadly and specifically like heads of product if that's any different do you

27:50 have any just like advice because I imagine it's always spend more time than you think it's going to take a lot of time yeah it's definitely spend more time than you think if you are in an actual search then you should devote all of your time to it I know that sucks to hear but like you should be really carving out concrete time the thing that's tough though is you could spend I guess what I was trying to say is you

28:10 could spend one hour on something or you could spend 10 hours on it but it's more so around are you doing things to be impactful during that period of time like are you actually doing things that are going to move the needle are you just blindly reaching out to people on LinkedIn because that's not going to be the way in which you're going to find the best of the best some of the greatest Talent they're not even on LinkedIn and so I

28:34 think it's building a really strong Network in advance and then once you actually get to a place where you need to hire that person like calling all of those amazing people that you've built relationships with and saying now tell me who your favorite person is and who the best person you've ever worked with is and could you put me on a thread with them like how are you going to differentiate yourself from the rest of the market so it's less in my mind like

28:55 a quantitative number of hours and more of how are you doing things differently than the rest of the market I want to pull in this thread okay so you're spending one hour versus 10 hours and your point about how you could spend one hour and get as much done maybe in those 10 hours what sorts of behaviors and actions should folks take to make use of say that one hour in hiring like how do you not waste your time I mean I would

29:20 say I've got probably five of my all-time favorite product leaders in the world that I tap whenever I'm kicking off a search and they know that whenever life brings them to an opportunity where they are going to start looking or want to lean into board opportunities that I'm going to set them up and shout their name from the rooftop so oftentimes they're willing to point me in the right direction if great people make those introductions what have you and I'm

29:48 going to know simply because of how great they are that they would never put me in touch with someone that wasn't equally as qualified so that I think because the quality is there so I'm not just blindly guessing on quantity spending a ton of time on LinkedIn and then having to call unknown entities and ask for back Channel references when they also might not even feel comfortable sharing the dirt you know so it comes back to Rapport and people that

30:14 you have around you that you know you can trust and tap into and ensuring that you're spending the time in the right areas got it yeah so tapping your network makes a lot of sense if you don't have that yet I guess is it worth spending time on LinkedIn just cold messaging people as a founder and any tips there for just cold Outreach that you think work for a Founder doing it versus you who or a

30:37 professional at it I do think it is worth that time if you see someone that looks amazing hell yeah reach out to them spend time with them why not and oftentimes again people are excited to see oh the CEO and founder wants to pick my brain it doesn't look like they're coming at me to try and recruit me but rather just to have an open-ended conversation for sure and they can sense you can definitely sense that type of

31:01 interaction and feel comfortable with it whereas sometimes the walls immediately go up when someone senses that they're trying to get poached and so you know it's it's I think something that's worth them doing for sure it's just if you are going to look for a key executive and are on a time crunch I don't necessarily think the best use of your time is blindly reaching out to Executives when you don't necessarily have the expertise in knowing which companies were thriving

31:30 during that period of time which organizations were great and which were a little bit weaker within companies like all of those things are just the inner workings of the recruiting atmosphere and technology and I think like tapping people if you don't have the network talk to a great recruiter or or just spend some time kind of doing some research on who's great you can ask investors or board members in your companies as to who you should be

31:52 targeting so there's always got to be one or two people that can at least point you to another three or four that reminds me of a tactic gokule shared on this podcast about one of his best tricks as you think of if you're hiring sales people instead of looking for who just the best sales people you look for the company that is known for being really good at sales and then you go find people there and try to poach their

32:12 Lieutenant types not like maybe necessarily their head of sales do you think that's a good move yes and no oh yes and no because I think if the organization is incredibly good at sales then the majority of the folks are probably amazing but you always have weak links and just because someone has a brand on their resume at the right time I think oftentimes CEOs and Founders will do this thing where they kind of over generalize well

32:39 you know Amazon's Prime team at this time was amazing or something like that it's like they definitely could have been but just as any other company there's going to be people that are breakout top one percent type individuals and then other individuals that get to ride the wave and reach the benefits of being at the right place at the right time and I think that's a good starting place but then also spending time getting a little bit deeper on who

33:04 the best people are within that organization but yeah we always start with Market mapping so determining who the best companies are within a specific area and then I just encourage everyone to take that a layer deeper got it it just comes back to your previous piece of advice don't assume someone that has an awesome logo is going to be great but sometimes there there's a question I should have asked you at the beginning that I'm going to ask now how many folks

33:28 have you placed how many companies have you worked with and then also is is there a story of just like your favorite person that you've placed slash company you've helped hire that comes to mind yeah so both great questions I've placed probably 85 Executives over the course of my career and lots of entry-level employees when I was in-house and also some great key leaders yeah probably 85 searches that I've opened and closed so that's been incredibly fulfilling work

33:57 it's also fun too on the exact side of things because you hire the VP of engineering at Postmates and you see firsthand the product change you know you you watch those types of things happen before your eyes which is it's fulfilling stuff it's really cool delivery yes they're faster too yeah yeah exactly so that's really fun favorite placement of all time has got to be the VP of engineering that I placed at IRL which is to be completely

34:21 honest a big reason that I joined to that company Alex strand is his name and he is just the most incredible atypical High emotional intelligent engineering leader still super technical but has managed teams in the hundreds built out Amazon Prime day then went on to to build the core messaging platform at Snapchat called him and he was like why would I ever leave there's a ton of financial incentive and a team that I've

34:53 built that all loves me and we got him to ultimately make a move in two weeks which is just kind of unheard of although it ended up being like a seven month push for a start date but that was a big reason why I went and joined IRL was to work side by side him and help build out his team and learn to get more deep on the technical side of things because oftentimes on the executive

35:16 level as mentioned before it can be sometimes more of that people management type role and so he just felt like this unique hybrid of individual and yeah you know you close searches and you you cross your fingers and hope for the best and feel very good about it but he was one where I just I had all the confidence in the world that I could not have done better you know I just felt so so great about that so that was I don't

35:39 know how much more confidence you could instill in a Canada joining company than the recruiter also then joining the company I did say that to him I you know I kept saying and if I were to go in-house I swear this is probably the company I would do it for and then about four weeks after he signed I texted him and I said well you'll never guess yeah amazing what a stamp of confidence yeah and a full circle life moment I sent him

36:05 a box of cookies he sent it back and said your turn and is he still there at IRL awesome yes he's great this episode is brought to you by vanta helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate growth if your business stores any data in the cloud then you've likely been asked or you're going to be asked about your sock 2 compliance sock 2 is a way to prove your company's taking proper security measures to protect customer data and

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37:30 I want to shift a little bit to kind of flip to the product person's perspective and talk about how do you be successful as a product leader in finding new opportunities and giving yourself opportunities in the space and so maybe a first question is just generally what should product leaders npms focus on to give themselves the most opportunity in their career I think Brett's is incredibly important it's so critical especially if someone has an end goal of

37:57 wanting to step into a product leadership role to have been able to have touched lots of different components as opposed to specializing in one specific thing so I would say that's very important to be able to to make sure that you're maximizing opportunities for yourself down the road and then as mentioned before just always keeping a pulse on the market regardless of how happy you are in your current company regardless of what the project is that you're so incredibly excited

38:22 about that isn't going to conclude until q1 of next year it's just so important that you always know the companies that are doing great things and keep those windows open for people because you know you never you never know what the next 12 months hold and you want to be in a position where you're never running out the door looking for what's next but rather you know being able to be super selective about the things that you have

38:48 in front of you and that comes with time and network building and relationship building over years honestly and when you say breath are you saying things like work on the platform team for a bit work on the user-facing team maybe the internal tools team like different types of product or or something else exactly that yeah I think there's people that probably want to just be a specialist in in growth or want to get super deep on

39:14 ads and if that's the case then by all means do so and I think there's something to be said about that as well because those types of skill sets will be needed but if you're looking to diversify your skill set continue to grow from a career trajectory perspective and think about potentially being in a head of product type role I think it's really important that you touch all aspects of that I'm really happy to hear that

39:39 because that's exactly the advice I give upms that a variety of experiences one of the most powerful things you can do because you'll also just become a better PM because you can see how different types of products are built and how different types of teams operate and just makes you better yes variety of experience I think taking a bet on doing something more entrepreneurial starting something and then also joining things that are a little bit later and more established to

40:04 get best practices like there's I think diversifying your skill set within an organization but also diversifying the work in which you're doing and the companies that you're spending time with is awesome yeah so on that something I'm always weary of is folks jumping around between all the fancy companies to get a bunch of logos on the resume oh it worked at snap and Facebook and Netflix and I feel like you're just like building a resume and then your life

40:30 flies by and you forget that you should enjoy the things you're doing and work on things that are fulfilling and optimize for not a great resume and curious your thoughts on just how often you think you should move from company to company one to optimize for opportunities in the future or just like generally do you recommend people try to move around or go deeper at their company like there's a bunch of questions there but take your word yeah

40:59 yeah okay sounds good I think it's an interesting one because logo collecting is never something that you you know want to be known for and the first thing you're taught like entry level recruiting 101 is recognize patterns of candidates that jump from place to place and don't give opportunities a full chance so you're spot on like that is definitely not something you want to be known for if you're a prospect there's also something to be said about staying somewhere too

41:31 long though and I will say that I think sometimes you find people that are almost loyal to a fault and companies have tanked and all Executives have left and the writings on the wall and they're holding on to the fact that they were hired by a really good guy or gal and they want to make it work because they they care about the human being and I think sometimes in your career you do have to be a little

41:57 bit more selfish and think about what's going to be best for you in the Long Haul and so maybe that is still keeping your head down and working hard while also being thoughtful about other things that are that are out there and not saying hard-nosed to to opportunities that knock on your door so it's kind of it's It's one where I would say it's an art and a science because you have to be thoughtful about taking on new things

42:21 and knowing when it's worth taking it a bet on yourself but also you can't run as soon as things get hard because that that is recognized and if there's a riff or an internal dispute or a new leader brought in and that is so quick is to make you run for the fences that's not something that people look for because startup world is hard tech is hard look at the crypto world right now like things are incredibly

42:49 volatile and difficult and you want to be able to bring people in that are gonna hang with you through the highs and lows we're always looking to see where people move to the needle especially on the product side where their fingerprints were what they can actually point to that they did and you know are proud of during their time there and so if all that they can say that they did was onboarded who moved on then doesn't

43:15 matter where you are but it's not going to be something that I can at least stand on to to cheer you on I really like that a lot of this comes down to what impact have you made and I was going to touch on that and your point is one kind of heuristic for how long to stay to place at the minimum is like have some meaningful impact you can point to that you led that sound right

43:36 yeah exactly and have that meaningful impact be something that others can speak to you know I think that's huge if you built something within the organization that you're proud of but no one knows about it then that's more difficult to have as your stamp of approval for what you are able to accomplish there but if you did something that cross-functional leaders were speaking to that your team all sings the Praises of then that is something that you can

44:08 put a feather in the cap and say okay I I left this place better than I found it and that's the reason that I have decided to move forward and imagine part of that is for reference checks people are going to check to see if you actually were successful all the time yeah yep whether you are exploratory opportunistic not looking at all people are constantly calling each other and the world of tech is so so so small and

44:34 no matter how fired up you were leaving a company or what went sideways it is so critical that you try to leave the place better than you found it and do so as seamlessly as possible because you want people to have nothing but positive to say and oftentimes that the thing that I always find too is if I call 10 people that were a part of the same organization as someone during a given period of time and they can't speak to

45:04 anything they did in that case it's no news is not necessarily good news you want to have an impact you want you want to be able to say you know I did X Y and Z I'm super proud of this and the reason I moved on is because you know I I did what I came in to accomplish it's a little bit innately tricky for product leaders I imagine you run into this that sometimes you have to upset people as a

45:26 product leader to get stuff done that needs to get done and maybe they disagree and then later it's like okay I see what you did is that true do you deal with that or is it generally like oh yeah do the great people everyone knows like 100 of people will say they're awesome it's a really good question I think there's a way to navigate conflict without rubbing people the wrong way so that they'll you know say negative things

45:52 there's a way to be an impactful product leader and disagree and make change and maybe your engineering leader and design leader and marketing leader completely disagree with the direction in which you're going but because you have all of the data to support it and because you've gone about things in a way that feels very fact first and less emotional it's really difficult for them to then point to why they just dislike this person this is a person this is

46:21 interesting so say you make those 10 calls in your experience the leaders you want to hire are you finding 10 of 10 out of 10 are generally like yes this person's amazing you should hire them there's ones that are slam dunks and no one has any negative to say that's incredibly rare more often you find some people like to just have something negative to say just to have something negative to say I also take all of my

46:45 back Channels with a grain of salt maybe the person I'm calling to back Channel this person with I also have you back channeled right so every single thing that here you just take make note of and then move on and think more holistically about but I think typically what I would say is the glaring nose are very obvious people that are polarizing individuals or have done wrong within an organization are made bad calls across the board are you can get that

47:11 information typically pretty quick it's the mixed ones where it's I think that person was decent those are pretty tough and you need to really find people that worked super closely with them because otherwise it's pretty difficult to say whether or not they were able to make an impact which again comes back to like why right off the bat it's so nice to just have people that you can tap within every organization that's like an academy company or a great company and

47:38 say point me in the direction of the three best people I don't I don't want to have to go through the the burden of having to try and back Channel all of the maybe middle 50 or what have you yeah most people don't have that which is a reason to work with a recruiter you come I'm built in with all without network totally there yeah there's a couple things I want to touch on that I wasn't

47:59 planning to touch on but a reference calls you do a lot of them I imagine and I'm curious do you have any tips for how to ask questions on a reference call we actually get useful advice where it's not just yes I like them they're great hire them especially on references provided references I've only had two candidates where provided references have come back negative which is that stuff outside of that typically references are a standard it is

48:24 important to to dig pretty deep and ask the hard questions it's a hard questions yeah why would I not hire this person what are their biggest weaknesses and then if they give you like the typical oh they work too hard it's like no tell me more what are their actual weaknesses what are things that we should be really cognizant of you know would you hire this person again would you report to this person would you endorse this person if you knew that

48:53 your name was attached to it things like that I think get people thinking and even if you just sense the slightest pause that in itself will be enough to to kind of make you think twice right so it's a lot of reading the room and probing Harder Than You Think necessary which is tough but back Channel references I think will always provide a greater source of Truth than provided it's similar to like an Instagram reel as opposed to the photos

49:21 you're tagged in that's the way I think of it it's like this is what you want the world to see or think of you as and then these are what your peers and your direct reports and the people around you actually say about the work that you did during this time awesome coming back to a point you made about recruiter Training 101 you learn how to find patterns and red flags in people's resume what else is a red

49:43 flag in your resume that you want to avoid slash there's a rule of thumb of like if you're at a place for less than a year it's bad is that true how do you feel about that how do hiring managers generally feel about that it definitely depends with regards to being at a place less than a year if that's a recurring theme of course that's a that's a big red flag even if it's happened two or three times three

50:06 definitely if it's happened twice it's like huh that feels off you gotta let people tell their story though and their side of things and and again it comes back to like reaching out to different people and understanding if what they're saying is true was actually the truth and so when you have a really good pulse on what's happening in Tech and whether there was a riff and the reason that person was let go was actually for in it

50:27 because they weren't prioritizing a certain part of the product or whatever like those things it happens that's life especially right now right if we were to X every single person that has a short stint that joined a new company over the course of the past year like that wouldn't do anyone any good you know another thing I've found that's pretty interesting is that people will often because they're so afraid of that narrative they'll often not include on their

50:54 resume companies that they didn't stay for a year and in my personal opinion that's actually almost more of a red flag because that that did happen and you don't want to just pretend like that wasn't a decision you made in your life and usually you know is handled with Grace you can speak to the reason that you decided to make a bet the reason that you went there and the reason that you moved on in a way that people can

51:21 typically resonate with but I've seen Executives just put that they've simply been advising for two years or something like that when in reality they had to companies that failed and the fact of the matter is I have some CFO candidates I'm talking to right now in their past three years have been short stints because they were brought in to take a company through an IPO and then that changed or they were brought into to enter into a SPAC and

51:48 then that became less of the buzz right so like these things happen and roles change and I think it's just allowing people to tell their story is the most important thing so I would say red flag is for me you should always be honest about like when you started when you left a company you know if I see that someone still has present on their LinkedIn but they've been gone for two years and they kind of are acting like

52:11 they're still there that doesn't feel good I just want people to give you the truth the straight facts so that you can support them and tell their story and represent them in a way that makes you feel like you have all the details got it so basically don't lie that makes sense that reminds me a little bit of people kind of upgrade their titles a little bit because maybe they don't have an official title or they just want to

52:33 sound a little important how do you feel about when people do that on their resumes yeah I don't love that I also don't love on the resume when people and some people do this and it's okay but when people say like silly vague names like they'll say something along the lines of whatever at Reddit like as their title or master of blank at this and it's like okay what were you actually doing but I think I

52:59 think they do that to avoid recruiters reaching out to them exactly as their direct Target I'm pissed so I feel directly attacked in that regard so that's something that throws me off but that could definitely be a personal thing and I think overall like for the most part people don't have any other things that really just throw me for a loop and the fact of the matter is resumes we look at less and less especially at the executive level and

53:23 it's a lot more of allowing people to tell their story meeting in person talking with their different people that support them and getting kind of more of the big picture around who they are I want to talk about what recruiters often do wrong and what you've learned there but before we get there one last question do you have any tips for a product manager in the interviewing process how to be more successful interviewing I've had this come up a few

53:47 times when I've interviewed product folks that they'll speak down on their counterparts or say that you know the reason they weren't able to to meet deadlines or push product in the right way was because of the engineering team or because of other components of the business and it wasn't them and so I think that's never a good way to go about it so you know it seems obvious but it you would be surprised how not obvious it is so you know

54:12 thinking about things more holistically speaking honestly about your strengths and things that you want to continue to grow and improve upon and then being able to tell your story like practice telling your story so often people don't do that especially when they're not looking for jobs and then it's not until their 10th interview that they know how to tell their story and what they did and what they impacted and why they were someone to be missed when they moved on

54:36 those are things that you want to know how to speak to and unless it's something you've been doing or practicing it's less natural that's some advice I think just off the top awesome that's really good advice one thing that makes me think about I know I want to get to this last section but do you think the best product leaders have their kind of story figured out in the future and work backwards from that and have sense of where they want to end up

55:00 or just kind of take it as a ghost because I'm the latter I just I had no plan I just went to see follow the path that was presented do you think that is generally true for folks that end up being successful or do you recommend people think about there's aren't going to be in five years here's what I need to do to get there you have any guidance there I mean for what it's worth I'm

55:21 definitely more with you I don't know where I want to be in five years so it's tough for me to say I but I do think that typically someone that has the end goal of being a CEO will put the pieces into place to try and get there and so it's not a bad idea if you do have an end goal of wanting to run your own saying to inch towards that so maybe you go from being a product specific leader

55:42 to then operating in some type of GM of a business unit capacity and owning a p l and then although it's more of a product oriented role you're still getting closer and closer to that end goal of coo or CEO so if it's something like that then I think that naturally makes sense do you think people can be enticed by shiny objects so excited because it's a step up from a title perspective and things like that and I

56:09 think that's just so not important in the grand scheme of things it could be the VP of product or CPO of what you know it's so that's so vague like if someone just says I want to be a chief product officer that's the end goal I always say of what like you could be the chief product officer of your household is it of a multi-billion dollar consumer brand or so I guess what I'm trying to say is

56:36 work backwards from a goal for sure but don't allow titles or valuation bubbles or other things to derail something that feels good if you're in a role and you feel like you're making an impact and you're learning and you're growing and are excited about the work you're doing do not allow a title of some other company to make you feel like what you're doing isn't worthwhile I love that advice so many people just chase some fancy new role new title a

57:06 new logo and end up getting there like man this sucks exactly yeah this reminds me I did a Meditation Retreat once and one of the teachings there was you don't want to be fixated with achieving a specific thing but you want to push your cart in that direction just like head that direction and have a general sense but not I need to be that thing and that's what'll make me happy exactly I think that's exactly right awesome okay

57:28 final topic is from the recruiter perspective what do you find recruiters do wrong most often or miss when they're trying to attract great product talent to a company yeah so this is one I feel especially passionate about because I do think recruiters have a bit of a reputation and I think that it's for some good reason there's naturally people that forget that these are human beings that we're dealing with every single day that have lives have

57:58 families have careers or Ambitions outside of their career so I think it's essential that you remember that this is another human being on the other end of things and that you should treat them with the same level of respect that you would expect to be treated this has become even more apparent now that I have gone through some of my own recruiting Cycles where I was looking for different jobs and transactional recruiting call just will rub you so the wrong way and will make

58:29 you want to put things on your resume like I just alluded to that say things like whatever at Reddit or what have you because you just don't want to deal with it and so I think you have to be a human you have to start with a relationship find Common Ground build rapport listen to people like actually listen and remember what they say so if someone says I never want to do a crypto company and I just am only shoving crypto

58:56 companies down their throat that's just insanely tone deaf or if they say I have this vest that I really want to be around for in May of next year and I just keep hitting them up prior to to that that's just so not receptive to what they just said things like that make notes if easier because we speak to so many people all day long so it's definitely not easy to do but I'll have a note on my calendar that John Kim's

59:22 vest just happened in March and then I'll be like oh okay might be a good time for me to to catch up I won't say congrats on the recent vest I'll say you want to grab a coffee or do you want to catch up about this or hey I saw that you were speaking at this conference love what you spoke about with regards to this you got to find ways to connect with people outside of just shoving them into a job and so I

59:48 would say something that I've learned and become very good at is starting with the foundation of relationship building gaining trust from people because once you have that then people will hear you out on jobs and people will listen to you and actually trust your advice from a career Direction and perspective but that takes time to build that and it's definitely not going to be built by just chucking things at the wall and seeing what six with people and seeing where you can

60:14 shove them temporarily in fact that will make them lose trust and once you lose trust in a candidate it's impossible to get it back it's interesting how one of the recurring themes of our chat so far is just play the long game in every way which takes more time kind of sucks they have to put all this time ahead of time before you really need to get something done but what you keep coming back is just that's how you end up being

60:37 successful as a recruiter as a product leader as a hiring manager as a Founder a million percent yeah yeah and it's really easy when you've got a quota to hit and you've got you know people to provide for and a mortgage to just think about the numbers but you have to play the long game because people aren't just a commodity it's it's so much more and one of the perks of working with the recruiters they have done that already

61:01 for you and so I was going to ask when does it make sense for a Founder to engage with a recruiter like yourself and when should they not engaging with recruiters sooner rather than later in a proactive way is always a positive thing it's just sometimes companies aren't at the stage where they can necessarily hire a full-time recruiter because of resources and how expensive it is to bring in an exec recruiter so you know having someone that you can

61:29 bounce things off of in a more informal capacity bringing in someone like a talent advisor that can help in a in a consultative way those types of things a million percent leaning into the Venture firms that have backed you which is a lot of what I'm doing right now that is definitely areas in which early CEO Founders should be leaning into that and trying to get as knowledgeable as possible and then I would say typically series B feels you know series a

61:58 dependent on the check size and then series B feels like a good time to bring in a couple key big players if the company is well positioned meaning full-time in-house recruiters or a firm probably bring in a firm yeah that that would be my recommendation I think you can bring in one or two Recruiters in the early days like seed but if it makes sense for the company and they're growing quickly but it's all kind of

62:22 case to case the fact that you're you're kind of off the table for most Founders neither your GC which is a part and is that true like you basically at this point work for General Catalyst Founders is that correct I am supporting all of our GC Founders in the consumer and crypto portfolio that being said I spend all day every single day networking and chatting with amazing entrepreneurs people that could be founding a company down the road and need some advice great

62:53 people that want to help in advising capacity so it is I would say 50 networking 50 actual parachuting into portfolio got it okay that's cool I didn't know that part yeah outside of that but He suggests Founders look for when they're looking for recruiter in this second to last question what are signs that this is a good firm a good recruiter just what should you be looking for when you're looking to hire a recruiter either in-house or a firm I

63:16 think it's important to provide them with some direction and then see if they can recite it back to you you know tell them the types of things you're looking for and then say did that resonate because I'd love to hear from you what you took away from that and what you think we should be looking for and then kind of off the bat ask them for a couple candidate ideas you know don't give them time to just go call other people

63:40 in real time ask them for some candidate ideas where does their brain go who are people they would call tomorrow on this the more that you can get that Dynamic relationship formed before you even go to search the more you can determine whether this is someone you want to calibrate with so yeah I think just putting them on the spot a little bit and asking them to show their work rather than just sending over a deck of searches that could have

64:05 been done by other partners or could have just been done by other people on their team do you want to actually understand who this person is so that first question is testing their listening skills and their ability to actually hear what you're saying and what you're looking for and then the second is okay now how quickly can we get calibrated on what this profile should look like awesome that is great advice very tactical any final words of

64:24 wisdom before we get to our very exciting lightning round this has been awesome by the way I think more generally the advice is just treat people like human beings build rapport play the long game and gain trust and that takes time and so those are the most important things from a recruiting standpoint is being able to tap people and have them feel like you genuinely have their best interest at heart and that you care about their career and life outside

64:50 their career and so I think that's what makes for a really good recruiter simple advice but often forgotten and easy to overlook awesome all right we've reached our very exciting lightning round I'm gonna give you six questions whatever comes to mind we'll go through them real fast does that sound good okay yes let's do it what are two or three books that you recommend most to other people The Power of Now and you are here oh awesome what

65:19 are favorite other podcasts that you listen to other than this one I mean there's Tech ones but your own backyard because I went to Cal Poly so that one it's a little close to home I haven't heard of that cool what's a recent movie or TV show that you've watched that you've enjoyed Top Gun I've watched too many times and the new Top Gun and then TV show oh it's all trash reality so I can't I just can't I

65:46 understand my wife has that she can't tell anyone yeah that's my once all right yeah okay great we'll move on but that's great what's what's our favorite oh that's interesting what's a favorite interview question that you like to ask or maybe you've seen someone ask I love the good strengths and weaknesses question I think it's really good to see how people self-analyze themselves what do you look for in their answer that's the sign that it's well answered honesty

66:11 authenticity can read right through a work too hard answer or a perfectionist type answer what are your weaknesses let's talk about it for real so that one I think is always a really good tested character what are your what are some favorite apps right now I've been playing around on be real I mean I love Spotify straightforward and then I've been on Strava I've been running so those are that's a good combination of apps that's like a full life thank you

66:41 trying to final question who else in the industry would you say that you most respect as a leader and thought leader influence type person my first boss out of college Joe Suleiman is awesome he's always taught me to lead with that relationship-based approach and it's really so easy to say that you do that but then to actually do it and live it out for the people that work for you as well as the people that are in

67:07 industry and speak of you is something else and so he's always taught me to do that and I just learned a ton from him and he's just incredibly smart and in tune with what's happening in industry and makes great stances and opinions on how to navigate those types of things so he's someone that I have an immense amount of respect for sounds like an amazing person Lauren this was excellent I feel like this is going to be useful

67:30 to so many people product managers Founders other recruiters all kinds of other people thank you so much for doing this and making the time two final questions where can folks find you online if they want to reach out or maybe collaborate with you and learn more and how can listeners be useful to you yes absolutely and also thank you this has been so much fun they can reach out to me on LinkedIn I happen to be on

67:51 that one quite a bit so definitely can DM me there or can send me an email and I can shoot you that over as well and then the way they can be helpful is if there's people that they think the world of shoot them my way if they have questions around you know best ways to go through an interview process or how to navigate different things please by all means like a huge part of my job is

68:13 trying to help people that are going through this for the first time happy to just be a sounding board or help in any capacity so if you're an awesome product leader you want to see what's out there find Lauren on LinkedIn is that the best place to find you that's perfect awesome Yep thanks Lauren thanks so much appreciate it thank you so much for listening if you found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcast Spotify or

68:35 your favorite podcast app also please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast you can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com see you in the next episode