The playbook for building high talent density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor

You have built and are known as someone that can build the most elite, high talent density teams. Let's start with how people do it wrong. Something you call the funnel of doom.

Companies think about recruiting like a funnel. I am going to reach out to 100 people. 20% of those are all pie. By definition, that is not the top 20%. That is just the 20 people who you caught on a bad day. The way we all recruit is we kind of weed people out at each stage and we hire the remainder. In your mind, like, hey, there are 50 people in the world who can do this. Let's go find those 50 people. And you relentlessly pursue and you focus your energy on activating those people, not trying to find them out of the funnel of doom. The mistake that most companies make is they'll say, hey, Lenny, who's the best product engineer you know? That is the worst question you can ask. The better question to ask is, hey, Lenny, of all the product engineers you've worked with, who stands out to you as the person who's most collaborative, with designers or who can translate a framework into a product better than anyone you've ever seen.

When you're looking for that first recruiting hire, is there anything you think is important to look for?

Recruiters are excellent at 90 to 110% capacity and are terrible outside of that. If they only have half a rec load, they kind of like are useless, but they're kind of great at this like edge of adrenaline rush busy. You want to find those people.

What are some things you've learned about building incredible teams, keeping people working for you over the long term?

When you look at candidate satisfaction scores, the number one thing that's always there is—

Today, my guest is Adam Ward. Adam is known in the Valley as the most effective recruiting leader at building elite high talent density teams. He co-founded an independent recruiting firm called Growth by Design, which Cursor acquired fully last year. Which is not something that you often hear and is a testament to how good he and his team are and how important talent is right now in today's market. Adam is now head of talent at Cursor, helping them scale and build one of the most talent-dense teams in the world. Prior to starting his own firm, Adam led global recruiting at Pinterest, growing the company from 200 to over 2,000 employees. And before that, he led a global team of 65 recruiters across 10 offices at Facebook, helping them scale Facebook's tech org from 1,000 to over 10,000 employees. If hiring the best people is your number one priority, as it should be, this conversation will open your mind up to what it takes to do that. Adam gets super tactical and extremely specific, and you are going to thank me for inviting Adam on this podcast to share all of this incredible advice. A huge thank you to Bree Wolfson, Janet Frischberg, Jill Macri, Mike Joyner, and Tim Kendall for suggesting topics and questions for this conversation. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out Lenny's Product Pass for a free year of the hottest and most beautifully crafted AI products in the world, available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Adam Ward. Adam, thank you so much for for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

You've been doing this for 20 years now, hiring, recruiting, building teams. How different is the market we're in today? How, how, how crazy is the market and the hiring market we're in today?

If there's a scale, it's an 11. Um, but yeah, I do think there's like, there are similarities to these, some other markets we've been in over time. You mentioned the years, there was a moment in time where a lot of companies were moving to mobile and there was like, there literally was not a mobile engineer, like an iOS engineer was not a thing, but there was the scramble for talent to build your mobile app and things like that. There was this moment that was a thing and it has some similarities to that, market and moment, I think that really the difference here is everything here is just so compressed. So that mobile moment was 2 years maybe, where there was no mobile engineers and then there were mobile bootcamps, mobile engineer bootcamps and all these things. And now we're in days, we're in weeks, there are no months or year measures right now. And so that what makes this feel very different.

The other thing that feels very different about this market is there's many people doing extremely well. It's the most competitive, as you said, 11 out of 10 for specific roles. A lot of other people are just really struggling, having a really hard time finding jobs.

Yeah, it's a tale of two cities, really. You can read back-to-back headlines of, you know, NBA salary offers to a new grad PhD, and the next line being a blue-chip company laying off 10% of workforce. You know, like, how can both of these things be true? And you see this shift of how companies are doing work and getting work done. And I really believe we're in this, like, moment where there's this, like, resettlement of talent and labor and how work gets done. And I really believe that there, this, like, there will be a resettlement and there'll be a shift and this will, this will come back. But I feel like we're in like the, one of the largest gaps of those worlds right now that I believe will, and I want to believe will come back closer together.

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Yeah, I think one thing that's really in demand is this, and there's lots of different names for it, but this forward deployed engineer, this technical person who can partner with a sales team and partner with a customer to deploy what is a, can be for some audiences in a company, a very technical and maybe overwhelming product, or helping companies think about moving from token maxing to optimizing, maxing to optimizing. And so that's, I think, a new, skill as CFOs start to get the bill coming in. Companies are able to help partner with them to think about what's the best solution for them. So that's a really unique skill, 'cause you're deeply technical yourself, you understand the product, but you can also walk into a room with executives and leaders and help conjugate some of that, and then even deploy that, help them deploy that into their workforce. I think that's like a real supply-demand issue right now. I think maybe the thing that is waning I would say is the specialized technical person, the person who is, I, you know, it's 'cause I think you almost see this squeezing together of engineer product design in some ways where we would love a designer who could actually do, be more of like a design engineer, right? And we want that super deep technical engineer that has a little bit more stronger product sense. And so you kind of see the, so I think the people who are, maybe like very narrow, very deep, and like overly specialized in a way, are waning. Like in the same way, along that vein might also be like the new grad who just hasn't had enough like experience to be able to do that, where a product like Cursor or others can do some of that work right now.

This is extremely interesting. I haven't heard it put this way before. Interestingly, with the FDE role, It feels similar to the mobile example you shared where not very few people have actually been forward deployed engineers. So what's kind of the, I don't know, the look of a person that can become an FDE?

Yeah, I actually think it is that engineer, it is that person who maybe was like a full stack engineer in like a 3 to 5 years ago is now maybe actually that forward deployed engineer, right? And so, and you like, you kind of, you talk to some of these folks and they actually like, it like kind of unlocks something. In them. They're kind of like moving out of the terminal and moving in into like the company, you know, and into the customers and clients. And for the right person, that's like, that's super energizing, kind of unlocks another chapter or like maybe an unexpected chapter in their career.

That is interesting. I was expecting you to say AI researchers. So this is interesting. And imagine because there's not as many of those roles.

I think so. I think, I think it's just a, that's a very defined set. And so I feel like it's a very clear, Bracket of what that is and how many there are and where they are. And I think this, like, I, I think that sometimes the bigger challenges are the nebulous things or the new, the very new things, uh, that I think are sometimes just as challenging as the scarcity ones of an AI or ML engineer.

Just as a final question along these lines, what about just, uh, the core product design engineering roles? Are those kind of steady as they've been? Is one increasing, decreasing? How's that looking?

I think they're high, I think they're, but I think there's, you probably see a lot of conversation out there around this, you know, where I think we're getting a little bit back in a good way to the craft of things. And so if you think about what AI can do in the design world, it can also create a lot of slop in its own way. And so I'm an optimist, just, you'll probably hear that throughout.

Same.

And I think it's just a better way to live, but, I think what will hopefully help us get back is to the craft of what we do, you know, and maybe an appreciation for it. And I see that in the design world too.

And is that in saying ICs are more in demand and especially ICs that have good taste, good judgment?

Is that kind of the point?

I think so.

Yeah, I think like, you know, we've seen this for maybe the last 12 or the rise of the power IC and the recognition and appreciation for that work. I think has like come like almost in a full circle moment for them. But like, I think taste, decision-making, problem-solving, these, these characteristics, curiosity, um, in all the good ways, I think are coming back up to the surface.

Awesome. Okay. So let me, let me kind of zoom out and frame the conversation that, uh, I'm hoping we have, uh, broadly. You have built and are known as someone that can build the most elite, high talent density teams. So many people kept telling me you are the person that does this better than anyone else. Uh, this is every company's and founder's dream, build the highest talent density team. So I'm going to go through this in a sequence. Uh, let's start with something you call the funnel of doom hiring. Talk about the funnel of doom. What is the funnel of doom?

Yeah. Uh, and this is a concept I got of, um, recognized my very first, as an intern actually, in 1998 at a company called Trilogy, which is somewhat of an infamous company around recruiting, and it's kind of where I learned the trade. My very first manager, Jeff Daniel, we did this campus tour around the country talking to CS students, and that's where I first heard the term, and he coined that term. I have to acknowledge that. But I think what the funnel did forever, almost forever, as you think about the recruiting history, companies think about recruiting like a funnel, maybe akin to a sales funnel, right? Where they think about different stages, pass-through rates, and things like that. And when you think about how most companies have recruited over these last several decades, it's really been, candidates come from kind of 3 buckets. They apply, they are activated or sourced or they're referred. But if you kind of think about like, for a lot of companies who think about talent density, typically referrals and sourcing or activation of passive talent is really the focus. And when you kind of even narrow further on this like source talent, this is how most companies think about it. I am going to reach out to 100 people, 20 people, will reply just for round numbers. So 20% of those will reply. By definition, that is not the top 20%. That is just the 20 people who you caught on a bad day for them. Good day for you, bad day for them. And so you're starting with a suboptimal set. You're not starting with the top 20%, even if this— and then the way we all recruit is we kind of weed people out at each stage and we hire the remainder. So this remainder hiring is the output of the funnel of doom. And when you say that out loud, you're like, that's kind of messed up. If I think about building a talent-dense company over time, is that really the best approach? Or does that kind of get me like just above average over time, assuming I have really good interview process and hygiene and all these things? You kind of regress to the mean over time as you get to volume. And so we just think about this in a different way. It's like, what if you had confidence up front of who the top 20% was, and then you use your assessment process to validate that thesis of who those are? That seems like a better, you know, so there's this funnel doom, but there's like, within a funnel doom, there's this pillar of excellence. What if you started with the pillar of excellence and went from there versus having this wide? Funnel, because imagine how expensive that is to do remainder-based hiring and you kind of hire the person who drops to the bottom.

Uh, I love this, especially hearing this, like this is how hiring has been forever and just hear you describe it. It's clear this is not optimal. Why hasn't this changed, uh, ever?

There is a, um, something detrimental about comparing it to a sales funnel. Because in a sales funnel, you know, as a salesperson, you're typically selling a widget, a piece of software, an item. Those things are relatively static and rational. In recruiting, you have an irrational unit of a hiring manager and recruiter, and then another irrational unit of a candidate. And so to believe that things are transactional and linear and, pass through in the same ways, I think is a bit of a fallacy. But sales has been around for hundreds of years, a long time. Recruiting as a craft or in like kind of this is like 50 years, 40 years, you know? So we're behind on it, but like as humans, we often try to relate a problem to another problem that we know. And so I think this connectedness to sales has been somewhat detrimental to companies as they think about doing this in a more strategic way.

So let's follow this thread and help make it very clear what you're describing here. The way I've heard you describe this is you treat every hire as an executive recruiting sort of hire, uh, and the goal is to go for the top 1% of people out in the world versus kind of who kind of drops in the funnel. Talk more about just that kind of way of thinking about it.

So if you've ever worked on like a senior specialized hire or leadership role done well, here's there's roughly like 3 main steps. One is scoping. And so if you think about going after the 1%, the most important step is getting really clear on what 1% means to you. And so if you've ever heard that phrase, like, I will, I'll know it, I'll know it when I see it, I'll know what great looks like, you actually, you won't, you won't see, you won't know, 'cause you haven't spent like the time objectively identifying what that, what great looks like. And so when you think about scoping, if we can just dive into that cornerstone piece, really good scoping is thinking about what are the skills and experiences you're looking for. You stack rank these things, you get really clear objectively before you talk to any candidate, but it sets up your entire process. It sets up your sourcing strategy, it sets up your pitch for them, 'cause you're asking questions like, Why is this role important? What would success look like? It really helps you craft those things. It also helps you set up your assessment process of what you're gonna be assessing against. And it helps you think about that close of why this person and why this role is gonna have big impact here. So it really, that I think piece of the hiring process is underinvested in, but in a leadership search, that is often known to be a really strong cornerstone. So let's say you take this really good scoping And then you kind of, you pair it with really good market mapping intelligence and signals to give you confidence of who the very best people are. So when you're doing a leadership search, for example, you're like, okay, there's really in your mind, like, hey, there are 50 people in the world who can do this. Let's go find those 50 people, right? And so that kind of, that approach, I think you can do at scale if you do that really good scoping and you get really clear on what that looks like. And then you take, that list of 50 people, those targets, and you relentlessly pursue and you focus your energy on activating those people, not trying to find them out of the funnel of doom, you know, large population.

Amazing. I imagine everyone listening to this is gonna be like, we need Adam on our team ASAP. Unfortunately, you're locked in. Locked in. At a company. And so we're gonna do our best to try to extract as much wisdom as we can in this conversation because you're, Uh, you have a job, so this is great. So kind of the 3 steps here that you walk through of how to approach hiring from this perspective, the way that executives are hired, this idea of going after top 1%. So step 1 was be very clear on what top 1% looks like. So just to kind of mirror back what you just shared, be clear on the skills you need and kind of stack rank. Here's the skills we need from this person, what experiences we're looking for, and stack rank that. Talk about why this role is impactful and just why this is so important. Is there anything else there just to flesh that out?

I mean, those are the general buckets. Like, every company will have other specific things that really matter, but yeah, those would be, yeah, those would be the things. And remember, those are all, these are things you're not asking are what companies are they from. These are the kind of, these are objective, somewhat transferable things versus trying to piggyback off of someone else's process or definition of great. Because we just said almost every company is doing this wrong or has kind of been doing funnel of doom. So why would we mirror or map someone else's process that we feel like maybe wasn't perfect? Um, and your company is different, your product is different. And so you owe it to yourself to kind of identify what does great look like for you and who's going to be successful in this role, in this product versus what was successful for someone else. In a process that maybe you don't have full confidence in anyway.

So you're saying specifically don't focus on, and it's a trap to focus on the logos on the resume.

I think so. Yeah, there are clearly vintages of companies when you're like, hey, you know, this team at this company at this time did fantastic things. And possibly because that person was on that team at that company at that time, they are great, possibly. That can be like shorthand, but that— but most companies jump to that almost immediately.

Awesome. Okay. Step 2 is mapping out and finding basically the top 50. What are tools that help you do that? Is it like LinkedIn? Is it something else?

I think it's a combination of things, but I think where I— where we typically start is a set of people who we trust in terms of having high taste in talent. And so, but I think the mistake though, and that's an obvious point, but the mistake that most companies make is they'll say, hey Lenny, who's the best product engineer you know? That is the worst question you can ask. The better question to ask is, hey Lenny, of all the product engineers you worked with, who stands out to you as the person who's most collaborative with designers? Or who can translate a framework into a product better than anyone you've ever seen. You kind of have to put these very specific characteristics or skills or needs for your team, and then that's way easier for you to conjure up people that way than like this broad question of who's the best person.

And I imagine that maps to step 1, which is where you map the skills, experience, and goals.

Correct. So the questions you're asking are mapping back to those, that cornerstone work that you did in step 1. So when you ask very targeted questions to a set of people, you actually start to triangulate around the same names. Mm-hmm. Like, ah, um, Lenny mentioned them, but so did Sally. Let's, let's put this person on the list, on the target list.

Okay. So, so part of the strategy here is you talk to people you trust who are awesome, whose tastes you trust, ask them these questions. Uh, what else helps you find these people in the world?

So if you think about, um, let's, let's pull out like the set of characteristics. Like, oh, okay, the characteristics of someone we want is like really curious, systems thinker, whatever they might be, maybe 2 or 3 things. Then you're like, think about what companies also share that approach to how they hire. And you could literally probably do a quick Boolean or AI string and be like, hey, look at all the job, openings in the world among these 100 companies, which ones also say these characteristics matter, right? So you kind of think about, oh, where could they have maybe picked up some of these skills for a company who also said that, that matters as well? And so then you start to kind of build like company lists that aren't the normal list you have, but you— but in the— those, they might show up there too, but let's validate it through the things that we objectively said we wanted for us.

It's so interesting, systems thinking has come up on the 4 last 4 podcasts I've done. Such a trending up attribute people are looking for these days.

Yeah, I think it's like always been there in a little bit, but I think it's just become really accentuated now in this era.

When you, when you hear the term systems thinking, what's, what's kind of a way you describe what that actually means when people hear that term?

I learned this pretty early, maybe in the second company I worked for, and it comes around to a fundamental question of what problem are we trying to solve? Right, and so when I think about systems thinking or when I'm sitting in a room, like, what is like the fundamental root problem that we're trying to solve? And then how do we take this like larger problem and break into really small pieces? And I fortunately have been working with like engineers most of my life and I just really have learned and I admired how they can take something that's really big and break it in, kind of start to tackle that problem, that problem, as long as you're anchored into like what is the overall thing that we're trying to solve here.

Awesome. Very helpful. People always hear these terms, they're like, yeah, yeah, I'm a great systems thinker. And so it's always helpful to just hear from different people what that actually means.

You know, I think systems thinking sounds very strategic, but actually I think it's extremely tactical. The very best systems thinkers take these things and put 'em into like very small tactics and start to remove each, you know, tactic by tactic kind of remove the problem, remove the blocker.

So to close the thread on this step of finding these incredible people. It's what I'm hearing is mostly it's kind of sit around, talk to people and just jam in a doc probably of here's people that people recommend, here's companies to look at.

Yeah. And there are tools and there's, there's LinkedIn, there's all these things too. Um, but I think the most valuable one is the most time-intensive one, which is spending time and digging into people's networks. I, I, I, you know, we've shared this before, but I have people on my team whose entire job is to dig into our current employees' networks. You could automate that. You could use an AI tool and walk them through a facilitation of it, but nothing beats you and I sitting down every other week for 6 weeks and diving into people. You're like, hey, last session you gave me these 3 names. I checked out like, And then, but what about this person? You're like, oh yeah, they were great too. I'm like, oh, what was good? And so you kind of go back to back. And by the way, I'm also holding you accountable for you sending out notes. And what did they say? Oh, they didn't reply. You're going to send another note. And so kind of this like one-to-one, hand-to-hand cultivating of signal, I think is really important. Of course, those signals go into like a system and a database, but the extraction I think is a hugely personal. Ineffective approach.

This all sounds very time intensive and slow and lots of work. How do you, you know, there's a reason companies don't hire this way, treat everyone as an exec, cuz they're not execs. They're, you know, IC engineers, PMs. How do you talk about that trade-off of taking this approach knowing that it's gonna take a lot more time and effort?

Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, I usually like will ask a question. So founder, like, you know, in the all the things that are important to you, where does talent fall into that list? And like, ah, it's number one. Like, talent is the most important thing. Okay, so if talent is the number one thing, like, it is not about time or cost. Like, this is the most, this is where the focus should be. And so if talent is number one, then there should be no obstacles to in terms of effort or resourcing or time put in to get there, 'cause that is paramount to your success. You just said that objectively. And so, you know, so if both can't be true, you know, you can't say, hey, it's the most important thing and I'm going to outsource it or I'm going to hand it over to a recruiting organization to do, if it's the number one thing that's like, that is your focus.

Like hearing that, obviously correct. Why would you not do that? And then there's like, holy shit, everything's on fire all the time. I have to make time for all this stuff, all these meetings. And it's just like, is there anything you do to help keep a founder and a team on track and just sticking to this plan, knowing it's so much work and time?

Yeah, I mean, typically the founder's keeping the company on track around that, the very best companies. And so, and part of it keeping on track means like keeping top of mind, you know, uh, there's also the adage of like what gets measured gets done. So if it's an important thing, we measure it just like we might measure uptime, or we might measure customer satisfaction, or we might measure revenue, and we hold those teams accountable. We also hold hiring managers and leaders and organizations accountable to hiring. And so keeping it top of mind, but putting in the right systems around rewards and recognition and all those things around it will help companies people keep it as a priority. But if you aren't measuring it, aren't, they will hand that over. They will shirk that responsibility to somewhere else. Yeah.

One of your big pet peeves is, uh, having the recruiters, not basically empowering the recruiters and hiring managers not being deeply involved in the process.

Yeah. I think a lot of companies, um, recruiting owns the hiring goal, and I've yet to be in a company where recruiters are making hiring decisions. So these things are in conflict. Hiring managers or leaders or committees are making hiring decisions. And I feel like the recruiter's goal is really about helping provide confidence to that hiring manager to make the right decision. They're a confidence engine. They're not a decision-making engine. And so I see a lot of companies where they, they lose the thread is when they essentially hand over the function of recruiting, the act of recruiting, to a function of recruiting, right? And so no one should care more about a hire, no one gets the joy or the pain of a good and bad hire than that hiring manager and that team. So why then is a recruiter or recruiting organization holding that accountability when they actually don't, they don't have the decision-making, let alone the benefits or, or pain or cost of a good or bad hire.

I want to come back to this. Uh, it's like a different funnel, but I'll call it a funnel. Would you still describe it as a funnel, but the funnel of non-doom? Is there another term? Because it's still kind of a funnel.

Yeah. Yeah. There could be— not all funnels are bad.

So yeah, funnel of talent density.

Yeah.

So coming back to the how to discover the best people, uh, luckily there's this incredible post out there about how Cursor approaches Hiring by Brie Wolfson that, uh, was very helpful in helping me prep for this talk. And another tactic that she shared of how Cursor finds the best people is there's a Slack channel called Hiring Ideas and people on the team just share, here's someone we might want to hire.

It's super active. Uh, you know, we could pull it up right now. Um, there's someone, let's see who people are. Yeah, maybe we can get some audience input on it. Um, so, so the, the general gist is. Someone will come across something impressive, a product, a post, overheard at a barbecue, and they'll drop that person's profile or that X post in the, in Heim Channel, and it becomes a rallying effect around, ooh, I've heard of them, I know, here's how we get together, here's what I think is compelling to them. You almost like create, you see this quick like strategy of how we might engage this person. And imagine working at a place where the company just is wired that way, where people are excited and enthusiastic and love the thrill of the hunt and to go wanna work with great people. And so we're just very fortunate to have that as an ongoing tailwind. But that was an early expectation, if you will, an early, almost like, how do I say, it's almost like social credibility in the company to be able to surface someone who is great and then people come in and help out and try to get them into the process. So as recruiting, that's such a gift. We are not initiating that. We're not dropping in a profile, does anyone know this person? This is non-recruiting folks in the company dropping in ideas and then the company rallying behind it.

Amazing. So this is just a really good way to just— we zoom out again. The way most companies hire, there's this funnel. People apply, people refer, and they kind of work through, and you try to reach out and kind of work through and pick a few people at the bottom. And your point there is this is like not the top people because they're not going to apply to you. They're not going to make it through the funnel. You don't even know what you're hiring for a lot of times, right?

Correct. Correct. And but, you know, by the way, like, you know, all the hiring ideas aren't always great ideas. They aren't always right for us, but it is, becomes this almost like tangential injection into the hiring process that, um, is often, um, a great outcome.

And so just to, uh, maybe make very clear how different this approach is, is basically it's the opposite. It's figure out who are the best top 50 people for this role in the world and then, uh, relentlessly pursue them.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So let's talk about that part of it, how to actually relentlessly pursue people. What are some tactics and stories there of just how you convince these top people to actually talk to you and then join?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think one of the things you said a few minutes ago is around, hey, this can be a very slow process, right? Um, and if you're at like a zero point, you're, you're at day zero, that can feel like a slow, it can feel like a slow burn. But imagine over multiple days, you're actually planting all of these seeds with potential top 50 people. They're gonna come to harvest at different rates, but you gotta plant the seeds. You gotta start. And because it will take weeks for some, months for others. I have stories of years that we've worked on candidates, but you have to start the clock on that. And so, How we think about this relentless pursuit is you'll often reach, one step is just getting them into a conversation, getting a response, getting some kind of engagement. But most people will tell you, if you get them, it's like, not good timing, here's all the reasons I can't do it. And you're like, hey, I'm not asking you to interview, I'm not asking you to consider a role, I'm asking for a next conversation. And so when you say, hey, you know, it's not really good timing for me right now, maybe in the late fall. You're like, hey, totally, that's great. But also, can you come by for, you wanna come by for a coffee and see the office, right? Can I introduce you to this other person on the team who's really fascinated by your work? Can you go chat? And so you know it's not, let's say it is true, they can't join till late fall. That doesn't mean you're not, connecting them and having conversations on a weekly basis and working that piece. And it can only move it forward. By doing nothing and actually talking to them in the late fall, at best you get them, even if they're still interested then or someone else hasn't grabbed them. So we think about this continual touchpoint approach to them, to getting them into process. But that could, again, we're willing to do that over, days, weeks, months, and sometimes years.

When you reach out to someone, imagine working at Cursor, now part of SpaceX. It's like, oh, this is interesting and cool. And you know, it's like, well, you never know, maybe it'll work out someday. A lot of companies, and you've worked with other companies that are not as interesting of a brand and as successful. Is there any advice for folks to get someone over the line to even talk that works? You know, I imagine it's all very particular and nuanced, but just any advice there.

Yeah, I think it's really spending a lot of time upfront to get a sense of what could be engaging for them. So who might that be and what might that topic be? And so there are a number of excellent people in the world who aren't on any platform. There's no information about them, but most you can get a couple nuggets. We spend a lot of time here thinking about who can create a warm intro to that person. Almost as much effort goes into that than it does the actual messaging and the, right? Because if you get the right person, that accelerates it, right? And once someone's ignored one thing, it's much easier for them to ignore the second and third. But if you get the first one right, you like condense that, that, that activation timeline and effort.

I've heard that you often say caring is free.

Yeah.

Talk about that. Cause it feels like that connects throughout this entire process.

Yeah, I think there's like all kind of tactics out there that are of varying degrees of cost, but out-caring other companies that like, when I've built recruiting teams, that's something that we've always talked about. Like, we can care more about that candidate than anyone else. That's in us, that's within us, we can do that. And I think like, over the history of time, when you look at candidate satisfaction scores, the number one thing that's always there is the company generally wanted me. They generally, like, they made it feel like I belong there. And so the more that we can care for our candidates and demonstrate that, I think is an unfair advantage, and it's in all of us. And so that is like an effort, and that is an extra step type of thing. It's the extra intentionality that you take that I think, in a very somewhat feeling like transactional business like recruiting, if you're doing this like step-by-step funnel of doom, you kind of get caught up in the steps. You get caught up in the numbers game. I need to reach out to 100 to get to 20. I need to have 10 hiring manager screens to get 4 onsite. You know, you get caught up in the numbers and you lose the human element. You're looking for the one, you know? It's like I try to remind my team, like, we're trying to hire one person for this role here, not 10. So don't get caught up in the 10, focus on the one.

That is such a big reframe in this way of thinking. As you said, instead of this funnel of we need 200 people at the top to get one at the bottom, you're just like, here's the 50 people that would be the wor— the best 50 in the world for this. We just need one of these 50. It feels a lot more comp— a lot more doable.

And we're building, hopefully we're building relationships with dozens of other those that could be. So when you talk about this being slow, we're planting seeds, planting seeds, we're planting seeds. And I think the other thing that often happens when you kind of get into this funnel of doom mentality is I think you become overly consistent in your hiring approach. And we are very comfortable with bespoke and ad hoc hiring. That doesn't mean we don't have similar stages for consistent, but who that next conversation is, what they might focus on, I think we get a little robotic sometimes in recruiting with that. And we have, so a lot of companies as they get into higher volume hiring, they might like, hey, we have a pool of, these interviewers who can do this type of interview, and they just like let fate decide. They let availability decide who has that next conversation. But you know, the savvy recruiter or the savvy hiring manager is like, ooh, they mentioned this thing. Who on our team has that shared interest in that pool, right? Can we like be a little bit more prescriptive and can we orchestrate a much better candidate experience by taking the extra thoughtful step of who might have a better conversation together.

It's so interesting hearing just how important that initial contact is for the rest of the process and how much of this is for future seed planting versus even immediately.

Yeah, I feel like we put so much energy to the onsite interview, which I totally get, but honestly the most important one is that hiring manager first conversation. And so it kind of feels like this, like 50/50, like, hey, half the people you talk to, hiring manager should come on. And like, we kind of like, I think we under, estimate the importance of it. 'Cause this is like who you're gonna work with. This is the person who should care about, this person's gonna make the hiring decision. And so they should be asking the most important questions. They should be getting, pulling out the most important motivators from that candidate. And I feel like we sometimes maybe, we put it into a 30-minute thing often. It's like 30 minutes and it feels like so important to the rest of that process.

Especially if instead of we just need this funnel and work through a bunch of people, it's this is one of the 50 in the world that could be the best for this.

You might meet 3 times. You might meet 4 times as a hiring manager person before that person actually is like, you know, fully in process.

The way Brie described this in her piece is that you treat hiring as the atomic unit of hiring is the person, not the job spec and not the role.

Correct. And I think that makes it incredibly frustrating. Imagine for my team, because you're like, oh, what's the process? You know, and you're like, well, like, you know, it's like almost like a decision tree. It could go many different ways based off of this conversation. And so, but when you are not caught into the numbers game, it feels a little bit less scary when you're really focused on how do we get that person here versus how do we, are they the right person for that job?

And because they're on this list, they're innately very popular and in demand. Is there anything else that works for getting them excited to talk and interested other than, you know, soft, the warm intro things you've shared?

Yeah. I mean, we've done lots of like tactics, I think, to, get them involved. I mean, one thing I just love is breaking bread. Having a meal with someone is one of the most human and leveling things that you can do. Sharing a meal across the table is just a disarming act and a joining act that I think is just so important. So that could be a coffee, it could be a lunch, it could be, it doesn't have to be super formal, But I just think it is this humanizing activity that I think is really important. So we try to center around food and drink as much as possible. I think we've done other things I think are very useful, which is if they are one of these 50 people, they might be somewhat famous or well-respected. They probably have an expertise. Having them come in and give a talk to the team, having them come in and do a fun side project. Like some of these people, they love to kind of like share and like learn and they're curious. And so, but also it's like, it demonstrates increased interactivity between the two teams around quality and kind of gives them this like realistic preview of being there. We try to play home games as much as we can, bringing them into the office, but we also understand some of the folks like early on might want to go to a neutral site of a coffee shop or something too. But we try to play home games when we can, 'cause you have the power of the team, right? You have the power. And so, you know, one analogy I think about is like when you, sometimes when you walk on, when some people are considering university early in their lives, you kind of walk onto a campus and you get that feel in your gut, you know? And you can't really describe it, just like, ooh, this feels like home. We want people to feel that when they kind of walk into the offices of Cursor. And like, that was like a priceless moment. And by the way, it's also like a, it can be like a, um, a defining moment. It also could not hit. And that's, it's good to like suss that out early too. But for a lot of people, it does hit. And we like that moment.

This resonates so deeply with early days Airbnb. I remember Joe Gebbia had this saying, just get them in the elevator. And this is because the office was on the second floor of this building. You had to like go in this elevator to get in and That was the whole strategy, just get them in the elevator.

Yeah, yeah. That was like more than half the battle.

Along these lines of breaking bread in home court, I know this might be one of the reasons you guys have a Café Cursor right there near the office, which was— and now it's like happening all over the world. I think Ben leads this work, but there's all these cafes popping up all over the world.

Yeah, I think it's been interesting. Obviously it's very much focused on the product and the user, but He and that team have done a really good job of taking that vibe and putting into a moment. And if you've been in the Cursor offices, it almost feels like you're in a Hogwarts library. It's very warm and soft and like, but cafes bring that energy as well. And so we've tried to kind of lift, like lift that and drop that in really around the world.

There's also a lot of chalkboards at the office.

A lot of chalkboards. It has this, like, it's like, again, like this disarming warm feel that I think really kind of exudes our Midwest vibes. That is sometimes how I describe Cursor. Very hardworking, very ambitious, but at the same time, the work speaks for itself and understated as well. And so I think a lot of our office helps invoke those vibes too.

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Yeah, some of it's a little fundamental, which is, um, research has shown that work samples are the highest predictor of success at a company, but yet most companies are still spending a lot of time doing one-to-one across the table, uh, assessments. And so, I think we are famously known for doing long on-sites experiences for some of our roles where they do a project and they get work to side by side. So that gives us a very strong signal. It also gives them, the candidate, tremendous signal. And so I think this is where most companies get it wrong on the on-site. They're almost always buying. This is like, we are assessing, we're extracting information, we're not giving much. Back to the candidate. And I'm a big fan of the power of self-selection. And self-selection, really good self-selection starts with really good inputs and data. And so we want that experience with the candidate to feel more two-way than most. So we really think about crafting that onsite experience through who they might meet. I mean, we talked about that, like really clear, like handpicking who they might meet for those interviews. We do a lot of work sample. And project type of work to give us good signal. But we also really curate who's greeting them, who's sitting beside them for lunch. Like we always try to put it around a meal, a dinner or lunch or breakfast. And everything is really curated to make that as high quality experience for them and get them the data. But we, you know, but also us getting data from people that we feel like are most going to connect with that person.

Huren's point on this sort of experience, is it a recruiter or is it the hiring manager?

I would say, I think it's the recruiter primarily as the quarterback, but they're pulling lots of levers. And so the hiring manager is probably going to have the most insight into some of those people. Our recruiting coordinators are tremendous, and I think we probably, and they do a lot of this hosting with us as well. And so our recruiting coordinators, of course, do some scheduling, but they're probably doing more of this candidate shepherding. So imagine a candidate who's with us for a day or two. There's lots of moving pieces and helping them move from a workstation where they might be doing a project into lunch, back to that, helping them get their environment set up. So there's a lot of people in play. We ask our quarterback to be, our recruiter to be the quarterback, but a lot of the insights coming from hiring managers, execution with the coordinator too.

It's interesting just how much of the experience and process changes with this worldview of the— every person we are talking to is very special and is— they're very rare. And these are the best for this role. And so it's clear how much of it trickles down into thinking deeply about every touchpoint along the journey versus the typical journey.

And imagine that you have teams and employee base to like understand that while they went through it. So you get over this like tipping point moment with a company where they had that experience, so they recognize, acknowledge it, now they're part of, how fun is that, right? They had a great experience, now they get to help deliver that for this next batch of people. So you kind of create this like flywheel opportunity once you get kind of over that initial hump.

I just remembered actually, I had a friend applying for a job at Cursor and he said it was the best candidate experience he's ever had.

That's amazing.

Just remember that.

And so, so by definition, we thought about like doing a lot of scoping of really great people. Not all of them are gonna be a fit for us by their choice or ours, but every one of them can walk away as a net promoter. And by, again, by definition, they're some of the best. Those promoters weigh more and count more than others because they're influential, they're great, they're known to be good. And so they may never come back to us, but they might tell you, who now tells this audience, or they might tell you who then you, you mentioned something at a barbecue and like now it becomes this like groundswell and you start to build a little stronger magnet and that activation becomes a little bit less hard if you do that well. Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. Uh, the work trial piece, I saw an interview with Michael Terrell talking about this and he said how they tried to get rid of it because it's obviously adds a lot of load and And some people don't want to be doing these things. And he said that it just totally tanked their signal and they had to bring it back.

Yeah, it's a huge commitment, you can imagine, of time. But if talent is your number one thing, then, you know, that is a good investment of time to do it. You know, we all have a role to play in recruiting at the company. Not everyone is like carved out or, you know, best to do work trial work, but like some are, you know, some, but some can do the lunch, some could do the greet, some, you know, so there's like lots of different ways that people can play a role. But yeah, when we ran that experiment, you know, because it is quite expensive, it is also a big ask of candidates, we really struggled to have confidence in our decision. Again, this is a confidence-building function. And so we are excited to bring it back.

So a good learning there is it's like, if you are not doing this, you're lacking significant signal.

Possibly. Yeah, I think so. You know, and I think there, I don't think there's a lot of maxims or absolutes. In this business. But I think for a lot of companies, it's hard to think of a better way than doing side-by-side real work to get those signals. Obviously some of it in this case is a technical signal, but imagine the amount of core values and collaboration and other things you get, other signals you get over a stretch of time that can be arguably more important than the specific technical skill.

What do you do for like PMs or like, I don't know, go-to-market or ops people? Is there something like that?

We have a version of this across. And so the go-to-market team does like a challenge where there's like a pro— they work through like a challenge together, like a challenging customer and things like that. And that's like often like one-to-one with a hiring manager. Product does a similar like project type together as well. So we have like versions of that that I feel like are titrated. To the function, but also the role and things like that as well. So we try not to be uniform across this because these functions are very different.

One of the classic criticisms with the work trial is you're doing work for the company and it's like, we're just solving problems for you for free. What's the philosophy on the problem they tackle, say engineering or PM?

Yeah, there's a set of problems they can choose from. So they feel like they have some direction and discretion. We also are very open to right-sizing it for them based on where they are and their availability and time too, up to a certain extent. So we try to be flexible and understanding around that. We also, you know, will sometimes use Saturdays too, you know, so like, we understand it can be hard to take time away on a work week or a traditional work week. And so we totally get it. It's a big ask, a big commitment. We think it's worth it, but we're also willing to schedule that when that works for them. So there's this like conflict around a lot of time and effort that could feel slow, but when they're ready to go, we are fast, right? We make up that time. So if you and I were having an initial screen, you're like, yeah, okay, I'll be open talking to Lenny Rachitsky. Open up your calendar. I have their calendar. Great. You're going to talk to them in an hour, right? So like you, like move, once they're ready to go, you got to capitalize on that. You can't create openings for them to have second guessing. So when we go, we go, but we, it might take a lot of time to get up to that moment.

Moving ourselves further down the funnel, what's kind of the moment when you decide we're going to make this person an offer? Is there something that you look for specifically or, and, or just what's the process like a hiring committee meeting or something else?

Yeah, we, uh, we debrief as, uh, as immediately as possible. Um, as a team, each, um, each function has a little bit of a different hiring process of what that looks like. But we don't have hiring committees, it is hiring manager-led. They get lots of input from the team. And remember, the role of the hiring manager is, you know, it's not a democracy. Hiring manager is holding that group accountable for helping them get the right inputs to make the right decision, to make the best decision, hire or no hire. And so we try to frame it in that way, making sure we get really good signal. On it. Um, and we try, so we try to move really quickly. So debriefing's typically same day, if not next day. Um, and you know, kind of like they make that decision, then that decision goes to the founders for, for stamping. Awesome.

Okay. Then you get to the offer stage. There's a bunch of stuff here, but one is just, uh, there are many massive offers happening these days. Say, like, okay, so say you made an offer to one of these top 50 people and they're like, okay, but I also got this offer from Anthropic for a bazillion dollars. How do you handle that? And also just, is that like super frustrating or is it like, oh wow, more signal this person is incredible?

Yeah, I think it can, it can be both. There's room for both. I think that the goal is to not be selling at the close. We're trying to sell throughout. And so if you think about the craft of recruiting, the craft of recruiting is upfront, getting really clear on this person's motivations. And what might be why they might make a move and for what, and then making sure that that entire experience hits to those pieces. So the at the end is a culmination, not a start, right? It feels almost like a natural outcome of it, where it's just like, oh, this is almost like this, just like assumptive next step of, yeah. And here's the offer that we talked about all along. And so, versus like kind of starting the clock or starting the conversation on a close. I think we try to get back to those motivations. So we might think about how we would differentiate against Anthropic size-wise or the role or the team or the people you work with. We try to think about, we really try to focus on the intrinsic things, not the extrinsic things, which is very hard to do when you're getting, NBA players, like offers and salaries, and sometimes bigger than that. But we really try to focus on people who wanna be here. And often when people are thinking about their job search and what might be next, they maybe start with a set of things and we maybe help them discover other things along the way. And we might discover at the end that it actually, this is not the right fit. And that's okay, and we feel good about walking away from that. But often it's around helping them discover that actually maybe this is the right place through that journey.

How often do people take a job that doesn't have the highest comp? Like, is that common or is that rare?

Yeah, I think you're trying to mitigate comp as a reason people come or don't come, and often that means you're not at the, it's not the highest number. And I think, you know, we've all probably talked with people who maybe, at some point in their career chased just the largest number. And I think what you realize 6 months in is that just becomes your new level of comp life, but you're not excited by the people you work with or the work you're doing. And so we try to kind of mitigate that as a piece, but I think it happens a lot. And also rightfully so, we've probably lost people where maybe we were the highest one and they went somewhere else too. And If that's the right fit for them, this is gonna sound a little polyamic, but I fundamentally believe there are right people for right companies at the right time. And if they discover at the end of that that we're not, that's the right call for them. And as a recruiter, if they're not the right fit, I literally have to redo that work in 6 months. I don't wanna redo that work. I'd rather let's figure that out right now and have that more open conversation.

You should build an agent that helps you decide and figure that out, which company is the right fit for me right now in this time. Yeah. Because that sounds really valuable.

That would be, that would be, that would be super interesting.

Uh, something that I've heard Anthropic does that I've never heard anyone do, uh, similar to Tesla, they don't have a, they don't let you negotiate. They're just like, here's the offer. Do you feel like that's like an only Anthropic thing that they could do because they're just Anthropic and Or is that something you think about?

I may have thought about it. I see over time different companies have done that. And I think what I respect about it is you make that call and you stick with it and there's a commitment to it. But every company's different and I think the approach is, so I respect it and think about it, but it may not be right for us.

From the candidate's perspective, What are some mistakes that people make when they get an offer that kind of shoot themselves in the foot?

Generally the advice I give to candidates is when you think about your offer and if you're negotiating, it has to just fit a line of logic, right? And so if you are asking for a certain piece of compensation or a certain other piece of it, like what is it rooted? Walk me through the logic behind it. And I think that makes it easy for the person to understand, but also easy for them to communicate that forward to maybe a different decision maker as well. So I see candidates who may be a little bit all over the place on that, where early on it's this and now it's this, and it's kind of the add-on type of thing, versus a candidate who's coming in of like, here's the 4 things that are important to me, and being clear and consistent with it. As much from the outset as you can, not all things can be there at the outset, that makes it very logical and easy for the company to kind of engage with that.

Versus just finding random excuses for more economy.

Correct. And I think what a company generally knows is like, we're not their top, we're intrinsically not their top choice, right? And so we're trying to win head and hearts. Here and we're not trying to buy that out.

How just mind-blowing are these comps these days? I imagine you've seen so many.

Yeah, I think it's all true and worse or higher. I think the open question a lot of us AI companies are like, how does this, where does it go? How does it go from here? How does this end? Nobody knows, but it does feel like The unit of measure that matters the most is the most fixed and finite, which is time. It is a race against the clock to get the model, the talent, you know, and like, that is like the thing that matters the most, is the most precious. Clearly for some companies there's more money and there's more other things, but time is like, is the most fixed and important. Asset right here in this market.

Just coming back to the AI researcher trend, it's crazy how these people used to be just like off on the side building these AI models, ML models, not that exciting to anybody. And now they're like the most in demand.

And I remember I helped build out the research group at Facebook before they had— they just don't hire PhDs, even, you know, advanced degrees really much at all. And, um, you know, this is, uh, 2010 or something. And I remember meeting just like this set of academics really who were getting this like growing frustration of their work not ever making it outside of those, the halls of academia. And so I'm like very excited for that population to have like this moment. You know, they've been arguably the underpinning of technical innovation for decades, and they're having their moment and like, well, well, well deserved.

Kind of along those lines, to close out this, the funnel of, let's call it the funnel of joy instead of the funnel of doom.

Yeah, love it.

I heard from one of your candidates, here's the quote that I got, uh, that you and your team's ability to close and convert candidates with offers to accept is extraordinary. What are some things you do that help get someone over the line that are kind of on the fence?

Yeah, so I think there's like a couple things there. One, I'll just remention quickly, which is that the closing is happening throughout the process in terms of like who they're meeting and motivations and like removing objections along the way. So that's one. I think the second is closing is a team sport. And so when we have a candidate, particularly like a high-profile, high-caliber, there are often daily standups around that candidate about what we're doing to get them to yes. And that might be 10 minutes, but it's not the amount of time, it is like a focused energy every day around what we are collectively doing. And so that could be the hiring manager recruiter, but also could be full team. Former peers. There's lots of people who influence that, and we try to just be very intentional about making sure that person feels cared for and belong here and coming here and staying on top of things. The third thing I think is we just try to make it very personal. And so just this week, two days ago, I just saw, and we try to share these stories internally too, because this is how it builds the culture of recruiting. We share these stories back to the company, but someone was sharing, we were working on a candidate in New York, And we learned that through getting to know them that they went to a performing arts high school and were a classically trained violinist and was just kind of very into like stringed instruments. So this person found this like specialty store in New York City and bought this like kind of unique Turkish guitar, almost violin guitar, thing. And they're meeting for like a dinner where they got the offer and they presented that gift to them. And so it was a couple hundred dollars maybe, right? Not a lot of money, particularly relative to like the size of offer and the size of impact that we thought that, you know, that someone's going to have. Um, but it's like, it's the thoughtfulness and the touch and the uniqueness of it in the personal moment of that. That I think stands out. And I think when a candidate thinks about having the best candidate experience, often they feel like, wow, this felt tailored to me, this felt unique to me.

I heard there's also a Slack channel that gets created for each candidate.

Every candidate. Yeah, so I think when you talk about the standup, sometimes that's also strategy and updates and so there's the same rallying effect to activate is no different at that close and each candidate has their own channel.

Just so much of this just keeps coming back to intentionality around every specific candidate and not treating it like the funnel, but just this is the atomic unit, this person. What can we do throughout the entire process to make them get excited and see if it's a fit?

Which is hard to do when you're doing at scale at the funnel of doom. So when you are thinking about 100 candidates for every role, then this is not— that does not scale. But when you're narrowing that down to a small percentage of people, that you've been kind of laying groundwork with over time, because now people are moving faster through those steps and it's a smaller number of people. So the time that you're taking holistically for that funnel, you're just displacing, putting it in different places.

It's so interesting and it's such a different approach. I've never heard of anyone hiring this way.

Yeah, and we had this like thesis when I was at Growth by Design, you know, around like, we think there's this different way to do this. We'd seen all these companies over time and worked with labs and all these things, we're like, wow, like these companies are literally at the cutting edge of a technical revolution here. Probably the most exciting one we've seen in millennia. And they are recruiting in a web browser way. And we're like, if a company like had this willingness to commit this time and effort as this collective force, they could really have an unfair advantage when it comes to talent. And when you think about companies over time, whether they become this iconic logo or one that we no, no longer recognize, it often isn't the first company, the fastest to market, the first idea. It's actually execution. And execution comes down to having the right talent at the right time. And when companies figure that out, they're like, ooh, this is the most important thing and this is how we're gonna approach it. And so when we met Cursor, we're like, this could be fun.

Cursor is actually such a great example of exactly what you're describing because it feels like throughout the entire history of Cursor, it was always just like, how are they gonna survive? There's these model companies building these things, the IDEs shit, like, like people are moving away from IDEs and it's been incredible to watch Cursor execute and get ahead of each of these shifts whenever people doubt that there's an opportunity here and it just keeps growing and Killing it.

I mean, it's not too long ago it was like tab autocomplete, you know, on it. And like now we're in a fully cloud agents and it's just, um, but just remember the timespan is like months, you know, it's the condensed nature of this is just wild.

I came to the office at one point and, uh, I got a tab button and now it's just like no longer even a thing.

Yeah. Now it's just cute. Yeah. Now it's just on the shelf. Yeah.

Now just talk something that one of your colleagues wanted me to ask you is just what is it like to work with an exec team who truly believes recruiting is the most important thing?

It's a gift and at times incredibly frustrating. So the gift part of it is like, imagine that, how much they care, like trying to convince a founder to go have a conversation or to do anything recruiting, that is not a problem here. And like, we've, you know, all worked with companies who, you know, where you're like, You're trying to pull them into things. So it's a true gift. The challenge is they're in your shit, they're in it, they understand it. The Cursor team hired their first 80 people, roughly 80 people on their own. They know how hard, they know how to do it. They know how hard it is, which is great, but also they love it and they're in it and they want to do it. And so There can be zero ego about this of who owns, who has what piece and it's an all hands on deck. And so sometimes that can be confusing on who's doing things and things that you find out about things after the fact that happen. But it's like, I will take that every day. That is extremely net positive. But there's always a counterbalance to such an advantage like that.

So interesting. That's like CPOs often are frustrated for that reason where the founders are always in there. Either shit.

Yeah, but they care. You know, like, I will, I'll take the effort and care with that tax any day.

And then one of your hot takes is that the recruiting team should be the highest paid team within the company.

And one of them, yeah, if not, I mean, if you think about this impact that they're having, that, and like the, you know, I feel like there's a supply and demand crisis around really strategic recruiters because of the somewhat transactional nature we've made recruiting over time. And so I just think there's a really small supply of recruiters who can function at this level and at this approach and style. And so like any other labor market, it's a, it's a cost of labor thing, and there's just very few of it. And so we think that They have tremendous impact, but it's like a really rare skill set.

Something I wanted to ask you that I forgot to ask is we talk a lot about talent density. How much of it is about the person specifically versus the team that you assemble around them?

Yeah, I feel like where companies like overly focus is like an individual, and unless they are a team of one, it's actually like the, you know, if you think about amazing leadership and amazing managers, they're actually quite great puzzle builders. And they think about building these teams that are complementary together and then help them excel. And so talent density is not a single piece unless like the numerator and denominator are both one. And so, but that's not the case. Often this is one over how many people. And so talent density is actually a collective nature of individuals and humans. But we often, because you are recruiting one human at a time, I think sometimes we get overly focused on that specific 10xer thing. And actually I like to think a little bit more around exponential, around 10x of a team versus an individual. I don't think you can have a 10x person on a bad team. It just doesn't exist. I think, I used to think when we were at my last company, we can't, we can't be a great, uh, service provider if we don't have a great client. We don't have a great client. We can get, there's like just a bar there. And similarly, a person that is, might be excellent is going to be throttled if they're not on a strong and supportive team.

That makes sense to me. Okay. I'm going to ask you a bunch of random questions. These are, uh, again, I think people are going to be hearing this and be like, I need Adam immediately. We need help., and they're not gonna be able to get that cuz you've got a job. So I'm gonna try to extract as much as I can while we're here. Um, what is, say you're an early stage company thinking about hiring, setting up your, for your hiring approach, what's kind of the most common ways that early stage companies and founders F up their early team in hiring?

Yeah, I think the thing they try to do is do this, um, silver bullet hire, um, which is a first like head of talent. And they kind of collapse two competing skill sets into one. Okay, so when you are generally as a founder, when you're ready to hire your first recruiter, you're probably behind on hiring. There's a problem to solve there. You're behind on hiring. So maybe there's like a debt of roles to fill, 5, 10, 15. But you also are hiring someone at this stage 'cause you want them to build like a system, like just like we're talking like, they might be like, wow, I want to build something like Adam's talking about. So you try to build this, hire someone who can also put in the right pieces to help scale out. And those are competing interests because person wants to come in and just any new hire, they want to prove out, they want to make hires, but they might not put in the system or they might put in the system but not make any hires. And now you're like, and so they try to collapse this into one role and generally that's a mistake. And so we recommend kind of decoupling those things. So that means you still might hire one person, but can you get some help with the other one? I'm gonna hire the person who's gonna put in the right system, but I'm gonna partner them with a contingent recruiter or something else to like make some short-term progress while they, and kind of like teach the company how to do this through these roles that they fill, that they're helping orchestrate work. Vice versa, I might bring in someone to help us put in the right foundation, which like we did at TBD, and then they could hire like a really high-powered IC recruiter who can execute.

Amazing. That makes all the sense in the world. When you're looking for that first recruiting hire, is there anything else you think is important to look for? I know it depends on maybe which of these two buckets they're going to be in, but any other advice?

Yeah, I think number one is that they are curious and business-focused. They're an early member of the team. They gotta be really curious, understanding of how the business works and how each of those hires is going to change the slope of the business. And so, you know, often that means that they have all these interests in, it shows up in lots of way, curious people. But I think that's the number one thing I think of. The number two one, which I think, and I think these sometimes get switched, is just like high motor. Someone who understands the grind that it will be and the pace that it works and is down for it. And that doesn't mean they have to be younger or older. It doesn't mean anything. It's just that they love working at this edge of overwhelmness. And so I often think about my team as we want the water level to be right here. And so you're like, you're breathing, but you know, and if you've met any kind of recruiters, recruiters are excellent at 90 to 110% capacity and are terrible outside of that, right? If they only have half a rec load, they kind of like are like useless. Or if they're like, you know, way overwhelmed, also just overwhelmed. But they're kind of great at this like middle ground of like edge of adrenaline rush, busy and you wanna, you wanna find those people. Oh man.

So along those lines, uh, I've heard from a bunch of people that you just have a huge fellowship on your team. There's a lot of heads of talent from other companies that decided to join your team to be ICs. What are some things you've learned about building incredible teams, keeping people working for you over the long term?

Yeah, I think one thing I learned is at each place my team has looked different because the company, how they think about recruiting or the product is different. And so the Coursera way demanded a different type of team, right? It demanded this level of recruiter and who has like understands a leadership recruiting motion, who's not gonna get caught up in the numbers game of the funnel deal. Like they have this confidence and they have, you know, they have a network that they can tap into. And so I think we talk a lot about, Hiring managers, other people networks, but seasoned great recruiters have their own networks too. Like you have a couple recruiters in your life that you trust that you probably would like seek advice on, you know? And so we try to collect those people too, 'cause they can be as influential in tapping their networks as a technical leader, for example. So then I kind of just kind of think about like 3 attributes of someone who I want on my team. So one, I want people who are excellent humans and excellent in what they do, and I'm not willing to trade that off. We are gonna spend most of our waking hours during the week together, and we should all be selfish enough to wanna work with great people, great humans. The second is people who, I look for people who have a chip on their shoulder, something to prove, love the craft. They have this internal drive and motivation to be excellent. And that can show up in lots of ways, and I try to get to that. And then the third thing is I look for people who put team over themselves. And so this is really important, clearly, for the team I built now. They could be running recruiting at lots of places, but what they've realized is that no one really aspires to get to middle management. We kind of end up there. But what they did realize is they love the craft of recruiting and they love to be challenged, they love to learn, they wanna work with great people. And so when I would go out to my network and I'm like, hey Lenny, who are 3 people you know that are excellent humans and excellent recruiters? They just have this natural drive or chip on their shoulder and they put team above themselves. You're like, ah, you should talk to Janet. You can conjure those things up.. And so we've really tried to build a team of those folks here, and I'm really excited about the people we've collected.

It's a good sign when I'm just like, wait, I want to work for Adam. This sounds really great.

I try to be this balance of, because recruiting is sometimes around inspiring your team, but it's a deeply operational function, you know? And so I've tried to find this balance of where I can be like, in the weeds, operational, understand it, be in it with them, but also sometimes lift out and help like paint the bigger picture too.

Amazing. Adam, we've covered so much ground. We've gone through the whole funnel and more. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you wanted to share? Anything else you want to leave listeners with? Any nugget you want to double down on?

I mean, one thing that we didn't talk about, which I think is happening, I'm seeing more of, is reneges on offers. And so I think a lot of companies get to the yes of the offer acceptance and there's often a gap of time. And the more senior they are, often it's beyond a couple weeks. We think about a second motion happening after offer accept, which is we are a button-seat business in recruiting. And there's a big window there where someone has like, ah, they accept the offer and we go on to the next one. But what are we doing between offer, accept, and join? And there's two parts of that. One is make sure they show up. The second is a bit of a pre-boarding and helping them have a fast ramp by staying connected with them. So we'll do dinners with other people who have accepted. We try to essentially create community around them. We'll send them a cursor laptop, you know, 'cause it feels like a presumptive you've joined kind of way. We do these dinners, we do these touchpoints. One is help to make sure that delivery happens., but also to feel like they, they start to get excited too. They start to kind of visually realize what it's gonna look like. Wow.

That is so brutal to have gone through that entire funnel, got the offer, made the offer, accepted the offer, and then just, you know, oh man. And you're saying this is a trend, I imagine, because just the market is so hot and they're getting better offers, offers that they didn't expect.

Correct.

Yeah. Uh, I love, I feel like there's this lake of things we didn't talk about. Is there anything else, any other trends, any other trends, things that you noticed of like, wow, this is changing? In the hiring landscape.

I think maybe the other trend, I think we see like the rise of the talent engineer. I don't know if you've seen that out there, the kind of the function within a recruiting team who is a possibly former engineer who's like building tools and things like that. And my warm take, not a hot take, my warm take is like every recruiter should be a talent engineer. Like the things that recruiters now have at their fingertips that they could build in Cursor or other tools is really phenomenal. And in earlier companies I was in, we were often beholden to begging for engineering time to build us tools or functions or features. And now that's in us. We have that right now in our team. And so I want a future state of my recruiting team to feel like they are talent engineers versus,, you know, leaning on someone else on the team to help them like build a tool, if that makes sense.

Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. It's interesting. There's go-to-market engineers, like every function is going to have their version of engineer over time. Engineers, engineers. Uh, well, Adam, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got 5 questions for you. Are you ready?

Yeah. Yeah.

All right. What are 2 or 3 books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

Yeah, this is super nerdy. So there's two. There's one about, it's like that, like I read in undergrad that has stuck with me and it's "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman. And you know, it's kind of the rise of EQ as an important piece of it. And I just feel like emotional intelligence right now more than ever is so important in this like AI age. And so it was like, super transformative to me way back then and I think is really important now. And the other one I love for founders is just The High Growth Handbook by Eli Gill. I just think it's such, I'm a big fan of a book where you can just jump to a chapter and get an answer and it's not this linear piece you gotta work through. And so I think it's such a great reference guide on different problems. And for the most part, building companies, the components are the same. You know, the core principles, even when that came out several years ago, I think still think hold true. So I like the High Growth Handbook.

Uh, Stripe Press, uh, shout out, uh, High Growth Handbook. Uh, I imagine you've read Scaling People by Claire Hughes-Johnson.

Yeah.

Feels really up your alley.

Yeah. Love her.

Yeah. Another Stripe Press. Uh, amazing.

I love that.

Yeah. Elad's book is still useful. Like, I don't know how many years later. Amazing.

Yeah.

Uh, favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed?

Yeah, I have not seen a movie in years. I feel like my life is at like 20-minute chunks, but I have been watching a series, The Pit, and I'm from Western Pennsylvania, so from like the Pittsburgh area. And not only is that like, it's not only is it extremely well done, but two, it makes my life feel less frantic. Living hour, it's about the only thing that can make my life feel less frantic is living an hour in an ER and like all they go through. And I often try to tell my team around like the gravity of things. I was like, hey y'all, like we get to work for this amazing company and product things, but people are not living and dying every day by decisions that we make. In the pit they are, you know? So it's kind of just gives us like, leveling part. Um, and then third, I think they just like capture the ethos of that region, which is like my core, which is like Western Pennsylvania, blue collar grinder. Uh, and I just think they do a really good job of capturing that. So I've been, I've been watching that, uh, when I can on some airplanes.

I love that for most people that show is very stressful and for you it's calming because it's less stressful.

It's just the relative, relative nature of things is helpful.

Like if you've watched The Bear, 'cause I feel like that'd be another example.

Yeah. I think if I was probably Chicago guy, that would probably, that would probably resonate. Although I have seen it. Yeah. Oh man. Okay.

Uh, a couple, few more questions. Uh, your favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love other than Cursor?

Yeah, I think there's two. I think one is like semi-recent and one's, I'm a huge Granola fan. I think I was super early on Granola and I love that they continue to innovate. And really just, yeah, just great product decisions, easy to use. They're great on feedback too. If you've ever given them feedback, they're phenomenal. The second I've been using a lot is Whisper, Whisper Flow, and just trying to get out quick notes to my team. I am better this than this on terms of like my thoughts. And so Whisper's been amazing on the go to drop notes to my team.

Listen to this, Adam. You may not know this.

Uh, I don't.

Subscribers to my newsletter get a year free of not only Cursor, but also Granola and Whisperflow.

I did not know that.

And 30 other incredible products, Replit and Google and Lovable, and it's outta control. So if you like any of these products, uh, Lenny'sProductPass.com.

That was not, uh, that was not a place at all. That was just, yeah, I did not know that.

It's just, we have all the best products for free for a freaking year. Including cursor. So there you go. Lenny's product pass.com.

Okay.

Two more questions. Uh, do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life?

Yeah. Um, I think there's like three things, um, that I come back to and I, you know, try to, um, instill in my kids too. So one is like work hard. I think the value of hard work, um, is hard to understate. And something like I grew up in. Second is like, do great work. So let's not confuse the two. And third is like, be helpful. And I think like one thing I've really tried to do, and maybe part of the reason I was able to help build this team is I've really just tried to be helpful. And if you talk to founders out there, anyone, I will answer their emails. I will jump on a 10-minute call with them., and I want to think that people come to me for help and advice and like it's the right ones. And so, and that just has now, like I, I now getting to reap some of that of people who like want to, you know, come to the work on the team. But so those 3 things I've really, um, tried to live by.

That is an awesome set of, uh, principles to live by. Uh, clearly it has contributed to your success. I'm gonna steal them all. Those are really good. That's like a good tripod of things to, to be focused on. You talked about being a dad. Final question. People said you're, you're an expert on the importance of a well-placed dad joke. I'm not going to ask you to do a joke unless you want to, but more so just like, what's something you've learned about raising kids? Because I'm a dad of a 3-year-old. What's just like a thing you've learned about raising great kids?

It's humbling, you know, they will challenge you in ways you don't expect. They are like mini mirrors of you sometimes. So it's like, it's a feedback mechanism and it's like such a joy, honestly. And I'm very lucky to have an amazing wife and partner who at times, most times takes the unfair load of it. But yeah, it's probably, it's definitely my greatest joy.

That's such a good summary. That's exactly how it feels. Very challenging at times, but the greatest joy.

But just think about your career though. The thing, when you look back on your career of your most enjoyable times, you were a little bit over your skis. You were thrown into something unexpected that you weren't ready for, and you like figured it out. And in the moment, it was a series of ups and downs. Stacking S-curves, but you'll look back and I'd be like, wow, that was like one of like my career highlights. But you were really over your skis.

Uh, Molly Graham, who's been on the podcast and done a couple newsletter, uh, guest posts. She has this concept she calls the J-curve, which is you, your best roles are just, you join and then you go way down and suck at it for a while and then you come back up and that's the best experience you've ever had.

Molly is, yeah, Molly has gold out there for sure.

She's so incredible. Working on a new guest post right now. Might have come out by the time this comes out. Love it. Uh, with that, two final questions, Adam. Uh, what do you want to plug? Anything you want to point people to? And how can listeners be useful to you?

I think they're one and the same. I mean, I, I, uh, I'll plug, I mean, I would love people to try, try Cursor. I think it's incredibly exciting things that we're coming out with. Um, and we're really proud of it. Um, some things in the pipeline too. I'm not super out there online. I think I'm on LinkedIn a little bit, but, um, I really honestly try to let my work and our team speak for what we do, but I'm always down to be helpful, back to the last point. So I really do get pure energy and joy from helping people. And so I know at some point that will come back in some kind of way or form. Don't expect it to, but that's just where I get that drive for me.

Just to plug Cursor a little bit, Uh, not only is just the design and experience of Cursor awesome, the best feature for a lot of people is you could just switch between models extremely easily. So instead of getting hooked on Codex or Claude Code, you use Cursor and then a new Opus comes out, a new GPT comes out and you could switch and just play around with it immediately versus switching the product.

Yeah, there was a world where models were coming out every 3 or 4 months. We're down to a number of days between models and People I know who love to build products want to be working with the best tools at any given time. And so, you know, our agent allows you to choose the right model. And I think for a lot of companies also, cost is a rightful consideration now. And so it really comes around optimization of using the right model for the right task. And so that's kind of just landing it to Cursor's sweet spot.

Yeah, and you guys are also now just building State-of-the-art models built sitting on SpaceX's data centers, like a whole world precursor.

Yeah, getting to, getting to train on the world's largest data center has just unlocked our models. So it's been, it's been amazing.

What a time to be alive. Adam, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or 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 Lenny's podcast.com. See you in the next episode.