This is a short transcript excerpt of a YouTube discussion (hosted by Jason M. Lemkin) about hiring top talent for an early-stage company (Codeium). Key points: hire sales leaders who bring a small ready-to-hire network (a heuristic of ~4–6 people who can be onboarded within ~4–6 weeks); most hires (>90% of recent 7–73 hires) were sourced internally rather than external recruiters; selling the opportunity directly by founders/leadership is critical; and a clear, attractive compensation plan ("show me your comp plan") is emphasized to close candidates. The speakers note the importance of making early sellers successful and that only a small number of sellers have been with the company >6 months so far.
Questions this video answers
About 4–6 people who can be onboarded quickly (around 4–6 weeks).
Over 90%.
10 sellers.
Chapters
Yeah, and I mean like for any, I'd say for any founder listening to this, like, you hire a sales leader that doesn't have four to six people that can basically text and get into the seat in like four to six weeks, probably even sooner. Let's say four weeks, then like, maybe not ready to be a sales leader. And if you want to be a sales leader and you don't know who those four people are, I'd say think about it. So, I mean, a lot, a huge amount. I mean so much, so much respect and admiration for my leadership team because, well, they are doing a lot of their direct recruiting, like me, them. We have contracts with a bunch of outside recruiters and like, this has been the case at everywhere I've ever been. I think no one can sell the opportunity as well as you can if you're living it. And so like we have gotten a handful of folks from outside recruiters, like hunters and unicorns. In particular is one who we've worked with who I think are like really high quality when they send candidates along. But 90% plus of that 7 to 73 people that we brought in since I got here have been sourced by, recruited by us. Where are those folks coming from? A lot of folks that we've worked with before. So like the initial cohort of people that joined had really heavy Grafana and Mango DNA. And one of the things that I just say as a heuristic is like sellers and go to market, people in general want to go work at places and for people who they trust, who they believe care about them, who are going to make them better and who are going to make them money.
Sheila was crushing it here. If she went somewhere, it must be like somewhat interesting. And then you said something, you know, you get, you hire 72 people. They weren't all people that you personally knew that you texted because you come with four to six. You don't come with 72 people that like, you know, immediately follow you. So there are certain things that you have to do or not immediate network, but sort of like, you know, second network type candidates that make Codeium the most attractive place that they can possibly join something worth leaving Snowflake or somewhere else for. You mentioned one, you want to pay people well, any sort of like stories about things that you really emphasize to potential candidates that make joining Codeium the most attractive option for them.
Yeah, I mean, I think like that, you know, the PG version of it is like, who cares about your ote? Show me your comp plan. And so like we have a very good comp plan that I'm, like, very happy to pull up and talk people through in an interview. And then the other thing like this takes time, right? Early stage. It's hard. Like, you really, really have to make sure that your early people are successful because we only have 10 sellers who've been here for more than six months.
