A Deep Dive on Hiring

In The Trenches

This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Symphony⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. On September 8th, 2023, Symphony will be live-streaming a webinar on searchfunder.com all about the technical due diligence process when acquiring a software company. Use this link to sign up: ⁠https://www.searchfunder.com/event/view/1200⁠. Symphony not only performs technical due diligence engagements for search funds, Private Equity firms, and strategic acquirers, but they also partner with those buyers on an ongoing basis on all things product (outsourced development, team augmentation, new product prototyping, UI refreshes, QA professionalization, and so on). Symphony is offering a full 15% off of any of their services for listeners of In the Trenches. ⁠Just go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the ⁠⁠⁠⁠Contact form on their website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and tell them that you’re a listener of the podcast to receive this discount! * This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Oberle Risk Strategies⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, the leading insurance brokerage and insurance diligence provider for the search fund community. The company is led by ⁠⁠August Felker⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (himself a 2-time successful searcher), and has been trusted by search investors, lenders, searchers and CEOs for over a decade now. Their due diligence offering (which is 100% free of charge) will assess the pros and cons of your target company’s insurance program, including any potential coverage gaps, the pro-forma insurance pricing, and the program structure changes needed for closing. At or shortly after closing, they then execute on all of those findings on your behalf. Oberle has serviced over 900 customers across a decade of operation, including countless searchers and CEOs within the ETA community * I have spent the past several weeks going through almost 3 years of In The Trenches archives to tease out all of the best insights that we’ve been able to collect from each of our guests specific to Hiring. I won’t need to convince any CEO of how important the hiring process is, and how fraught with peril it can be when it isn’t done right. Below is a list of our guests and topics, which include timestamps, so you can skip between the segments that are most interesting to you: (3:30) Randy Street: Co-author of Who: The A Method for Hiring, which introduced the Topgrading hiring method to the world (22:39) Verne Harnish: Founder of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (“EO”), & author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up (37:43) AJ Wasserstein: Professor at the Yale School of Management. Prior 2x CEO and active SMB investor (43:40) Mike Zani: CEO of The Predictive Index, and author of The Science of Dream Teams (52:27) Steve Divitkos: Hiring Your Senior Management Team: Founder of Mineola Search Partners (1:12:50) Anthemos Georgiades: Hiring in High Growth Environments: Founder and CEO of Zumper, an apartment rental platform that boasts 250 employees, 75 million active users, and 17 million app visits per month (1:27:09) Nicholas Andrews: Hiring for the Finance & Accounting Function: Founder of The Aspen Consulting Group (1:42:40) Rich Mironov: Hiring in Product Management: One of North America’s preeminent Product Management thought leaders, having spent 40 years in the software industry in numerous capacities (1:55:20) Dave Prusinski: Hiring in Sales: Former EVP of FleetComplete. Grew annual revenue by ~25x, achieving a ~50% revenue CAGR for 9 of his 10 years