Strategic Hiring Fireside Chat with Bolster

Keith Laska: Hey, guys, Keith Laska here. I started out my career as an instructor of French and Italian over at Phillips Exeter Academy up in New Hampshire in the United States, then became a four- time tech CEO working in the UK across Europe, Asia, and in the US. I currently am an operating partner at High Alpha where we focus on building and launching Web3 blockchain and B2B businesses, and I'm also a professor at Fordham Law and Fordham Business School focused on educating the masses on Bitcoin and blockchain. Finally, I've just launched a brand new company called Learn Bitcoin. We're in the market research phase and the mission there is to upgrade the world by educating the next 1 billion Bitcoiners, so happy to be here.

Pete Townsend: Great. Keith, we got 1 billion in common. I'll tell you what that is in a second. I'm Pete Townsend. I lead the Techstars Web3 accelerator program. I'm based in Dublin, Ireland. I've been here for 17 years and after a long career in traditional finance that I kicked to the curb in 2015 after I went down the blockchain rabbit hole. I've been in the startup space in crypto, blockchain and FinTech since 2016 as a investor, advisor, non- executive director, podcaster and leading the Techstars Web3 accelerator for the last two years. We are building with entrepreneurs who are working on the decentralized internet and tokenized economies and enabling the onboarding of the first 1 billion users of Web3, so there we go.

Gene: Excellent, excellent, excellent. It's great to meet everyone. We've had a few more people pop in since we've started our introduction. Today, as I've said previously, really excited at Bolster to be here with Techstars cohort around Web3 all about hiring strategies. Without further ado, Pete, it's over to you. Our attendees are here mostly in program from pre- seed companies. In your opinion, when should they start thinking about a hiring roadmap?

Pete Townsend: Well, we talk about this a bit in the cohort and I think people might be tired of me talking about it in this light, but we look at it from the perspective of your product roadmap and saying, what is it that you need to build? What is it that you're building and how long are you going to take to build that? Ideally when you're at the pre- seed stage, you figured out that you get one shot to build, and sorry, one shot to raise based upon a vision when you've got nothing, you've got nothing but a team. You've got people, you've got great people that have a wonderful vision, but you don't yet have a product, you don't yet have revenue. Say you think that might cost you a million dollars and that's what you want to raise with your pre- seed round, maybe a bit less than that, but let's just call it a million between fronts that you figured out that, " Okay, this is what we're going to build, this is how much it's going to cost, and we can do that within 12 months." And then you work backwards from there and say, " Okay, what are the milestones that we need to hit in order to achieve that build and what are the resources that we're going to need in order to hit those milestones?" Those resources are going to cost something. Ideally, you do this top down and bottom up and say, " Well, I think a million is right for the pre- seed." But there really needs to be some credibility behind that and say, " Well, in order to hit these milestones with these resources, these resources are going to cost x." Adding all that up over a 12- month period should get you to a million and you're going to, that hiring roadmap should be something that goes hand in hand with your product roadmap, because it's so critical in the earliest stages to start showing signs of product market fit and that you've got real customers who want to pay you to solve a real problem. And so for me, that's where it always starts is that real synergy or symmetry between the product roadmap and the hiring roadmap and how are you going to start identifying the key roles.

Gene: It's such an exciting time, Pete, at the early stage of the formation of a company and it's a huge task ahead of founders, not just product and investor roadmap or the funding roadmap and the strategic hiring roadmap. Taking all that into account, it's such a critical set of strategies to be putting into place. Kathy, I'd love to switch over to you. Building on what Pete said, what should founders consider when developing a strategic roadmap for their organization's leadership?

Cathy: I totally agree with everything Pete said, so just an additive to that. I'd say as you start to look at what are the different roles that are going to be needed, I think the first thing is looking at yourself of what your key skill sets are. I tend to start with a broad, here's all the roles in a, say it's all the roles you're going to need overall and then knowing you're not going to hire eight people to do those roles, figuring out who's going to do the tasks associated with those. If you decide you're really strong at the finance side and the fundraising side, then you can say that's going to be my area of expertise. Even though maybe you're a tech founder. Maybe you were going to hire people, you don't have to hire someone to do the finance because you're strong at that. You're strong on the HR side, you don't need to hire someone on that side. So figuring out early on who is responsible for all the different roles, even though they're not going to be specific, you're not going to hire them as separate people who's doing that work. When you look for, maybe look for another co- founder, you're looking for someone who compliments you and can do some of the tasks or roles that you're not as capable of doing or as interested in doing. Does that answer what you're asking, Gene?

Gene: Excellent. Yeah, I think so and I think this is what we're going to build on today as looking at all these segments as they build up. To add some depth and breadth there. Keith, I'd love to drill into, you built SDL to 70 million annual revenue. At Lilt you built the team from the ground up, so you've had all this firsthand experience and again, with all your work advisor at different blockchain companies. What are some of the strategies you'd recommend for thinking about key hires, especially as an early stage company in the blockchain and Web3 space?

Keith Laska: I would probably separate out a traditional B2B or B2C business from a blockchain business because this is a highly emergent asset class, and what I've noticed is we have a lot of inflow from people who are in what we call traditional or legacy markets coming into the blockchain space. It's very, very difficult with employment population of 0. 001 compared to 99. 99% who haven't had an experience in blockchain to find the exact sales skill sets that you need. I always tell founders, particularly in the Web3 blockchain space to hire passion over precise and exact skills. You have to be able to do the job, right? There's no question about that. You have to be able to code, you have to be able to market and sell, but this market is so young and embryonic that the passion is going to carry your team forward during the more difficult time than we know. It's cyclical. There are bear markets and bull markets, and I think there's a pay it forward mentality here with Web3 companies. Your job as a founder who became passionate about Web3 in the first place is to educate future employees so that we actually build the ecosystem up and don't just leave it with the same amount of employees who started. That's what I would say there.

Cathy: Hey Keith, can I ask you a question about, can I ask you a follow- up question on that? Sorry, Gene. When you think about industries that people might come from that would be adjacent or people that maybe are, like if you're looking at a sales and marketing person that doesn't have blockchain experience, Web3 experience, what other industries would you look at that the skills translate pretty easily?

Keith Laska: I would say technology, anybody in tech or FinTech would always be a decent hire, but I've got to be honest with you, the number of my students in school have gone on to be a part of blockchain companies and they have backgrounds that you wouldn't expect normally for a blockchain company. I do think anybody who's good with inbound marketing is quality, because in Web3 marketing is more about community management and engagement in the early stages than it is about outbound, but eventually it does become an outbound role as you start to mature the product set and product category. I also think people who are super innovative, no matter what their background is key because if you look at the Web3 space, a lot of the wedges and segments we're building right now are new. They're new categories that haven't actually been defined yet, so you need to be super creative and you need to be able to position and reposition as much as possible as you're going out to market. It's changing 10 times faster than the run of 2000 to 2000... 1999, 2001. Took ages for that tech to mature and integrate with other technologies. This is happening in the space of five to 10% of that speed.

Gene: Excellent. Now fingers on buzzers time. Only kidding, there's no buzzers, but this is open to the panel. Again, each of you such specific amazing domain knowledge around this. What are some strategies early stage companies can consider to be cost- effective when hiring in those early stages when it's especially now in the current market of just being conscious of budgets and fundraising and so on? So open to the floor in that respect, Keith, Kathy, Pete would love your insights into that and a few follow up questions after that first one.

Cathy: I was just wanting to build on what Keith just said and maybe Part of the cost-effective strategies is being open to people without the exact experience you're looking for. If you can think of any other industries that maybe are going a little downhill and that you can pull out people from those who are interested in innovative and have the qualities you're looking for, even if they don't have the exact resume that you might've expected or hoped for, that could be a really interesting one. You could look at different parts of the country that maybe aren't as expensive as some others, and especially if you're willing to train and you're willing to do something for, if you're willing to help someone come along with the skills, you could be really creative about that. I hadn't thought about that before, but it's something I thought of when Keith was just talking about bringing people over from other industries.

Gene: Great point. We may touch on what the three of you have seen as good ways of working with remote teams and so on forth a little later on. Again, just as a quick little public service announcement, by all means, please, if you do have questions, opt them in the chat and we're going to get to those. Coming back onto that, Keith, Pete, building on what Kathy said there, what are some of the strategies for getting the right person at the right price?

Keith Laska: Go Pete.

Pete Townsend: Goldilock Zone comes to mind in that it really does depend upon the stage that you're at. Have you raised yet? And if you have raised, you're going to have a pot of money earmark for someone in a specific role and in any, especially in the Web3 space, you have a little bit more in terms of incentivization mechanisms here and that what you're able to pay someone in cash, whether that be fiat or that stable coins is one thing, but then if you have and are planning to raise via a token or that a token is something that is absolutely necessary at the core of your ecosystem. If you're building a protocol or you're building a DAO, then you have some ability to then pay bonuses based upon tokens. You also have the ability to, again, if you're building a DAO and that where you have people that are just contributors and you're paying them via a bounty or you're paying them via a grant if they apply for a grant to do a bit of work for the DAO. So there's some different ways that you can do this in Web3, but when it come... If you take a step back and look at this holistically across a tech startup overall that I look at this in terms of two categories. You've got people that are available that are perhaps taking a short- term career break that may just want to come into a startup for say six months at a time, and that they are extremely well qualified to do something. You don't have to pay them too much because looking at this more from an experience standpoint. As a founder, you have to make the decision on am I willing to just take this, soak up this person's knowledge and experience for a good six months at a clip, or do I need someone that I think I can count on as a key employee for the next couple of years? I know founders that have been through tons of co- founders because they kept bringing in people that were on career breaks, and then those folks realized that the startup grind wasn't for them and moved back into the career world, the professional, in the corporate world. The other side of this is where you've got people who genuinely want to be part of a startup and that where I think Keith, like you said, hiring on passion and that you've got people who are willing to just live, not necessarily check to check, but when I first did this, when I jumped into the startup space, it was figure out your ins and inflows and outflows, what is it you need? And you always want to be careful about when you are work... When you're making decision on who to hire, there are tax implications all over the place. You want to be careful on minimizing that outflow in terms of salary so that tax take isn't unnecessarily high as well. A couple of different things to consider there.

Keith Laska: I would agree with everything that was just said and lean into it a little bit more as well. Look, I'm going to be transparent with everybody here. We need to demystify the fact that a Web3 company or a crypto company or blockchain companies, anything dramatically more different than a traditional company. If you're seeking product market fit, it's the same mechanisms with a bit of overlay with new markets. If you're looking for investment, investors they're looking for ARR, they're looking for run rates, they're looking for track records, they're looking for customers to speak to. The days, and we all know this, the days of actually raising 20 million posts on a deck and a couple of interesting logos is over, at least for the foreseeable future in this particular space. It's now gone to post 2000, 2003 world where it doesn't matter that you have an idea, you actually need to prove that there's utility value in your idea. From that perspective, you can apply the same mechanisms as you apply in a traditional B2B or B2C startup, which is would you like equity? We're not going to give you a big paycheck, but we're going to give you a bigger piece of what could be an enormous pie. I think that's a great filter, because if you have people that come in and say, " I love blockchain and I think this is the most exciting thing in the world, I'm super passionate about it. By the way, can you pay me three times market rate and I only really want a quarter point." That's an immediate no for me. It's like, " No, would you actually like to ratchet with equity and I'm going to pay you next to nothing to make you feel the pain that I feel on a daily basis?" And they say, yes. You have somebody almost for life. Just demystify these blockchain companies a little bit and make them act like a traditional company, and I think you'll find more luck.

Gene: Kathy, I'll drill into that point and what I'd love to look at with you on this, from what Pete said, from what Keith's given it as a frontline view on what happens there. What role does fractional play for early stage startups with executive talent or other people like that? From your experience, how is that a great way to get started with people or what are some of the benefits to fractional?

Cathy: Sure, so I'll define what I think of as fractional is really a part- time executive, but a different than a consultant to say because they're actually part of your leadership team. They're all in, you're giving them, hopefully you're giving them, like you say, Keith said some balance of cash and equity and they're considering you to be part of your startup for the foreseeable future. I'd hire someone fractional in roles that A, you can't find someone full- time, so maybe that you have someone's fractional who has two gigs at a time, one of them pays really well and the other one they're willing to do for equity. There might be some creative ways to do that. But any role can be fractional, and I'd look at it as what is the co- founder or founders? What are their weakest areas? Things that you can't just take on, so if you're like, " We know we're going to build really quickly. I don't really know how to manage people, I don't really know how to lead people, I don't really know how to build a culture." Then you may want to get a fractional head of people and someone who can work just a couple hours a week to start with and then ramp up a little bit as you're hiring quickly. Can help you with hiring, can help you with the employee value proposition. Same with say finance like, " Yeah, finance is an area I'm not really good at, but I know I need to go fundraise. I know I need someone who can tell the story and help me keep good books, but do that work." You might hire a fractional CFO to work again a couple hours a week to start with, but then they can ramp up with you. Sometimes fractionals can ramp up with you for a really long time, and so it gets to the point where they're like, " Yeah, I actually love this company I want to come on full- time or hey, you actually need someone full- time, I'm going to help you hire someone full- time and step out." So I think it can be a really creative option of doing something where you can't afford a really high level person full- time, but maybe you don't need them full- time.

Gene: I think it's great just seeing the distinction between a consultant and someone that's fractional. That's a big eye- opener there, but then equally there's some very good points around maybe they've got a fraction role that pays well and that gives them enough leeway to be able to bet on really great startup and that's their way of investing through their time. Let's go to the good, bad and the ugly of hiring, and again, open to the panel on this one. What are the costly hiring mistakes you've seen founders make either at the companies you've been a part of, the companies in your portfolio? I'm sure you've seen some things and we would love to hear about them.

Cathy: I'll start. Generally what I see most often for a little bit, maybe it's a little bit larger company that this group, and I'll just say this, is that people moving too slowly. Like Pete says, you have, you fundraise, you have some money, but you don't really, and you're thoughtful about how to spend it, but then you wait three or four months before you actually hire your head of marketing or someone who you now need for go- to- market, your first go- to- market hire. You're taking all that time and not making any traction because you're either so worried about hiring someone and you're just not moving quickly enough. I think of it as if you decide that it's a priority to hire a certain role, then spend all your discretionary time on that hiring for that role, whether that's networking or finding the right candidates or starting to interview candidates, but just really be laser focused on focused the role. Once you've decided that's the role, then go for it and spend your time looking for it. That's one thing I see people do pretty regularly.

Gene: And Keith, in your time in SDL or Lilt or the other companies, what are some of the, again, hiring the wrong person, not cutting too early, taking too long in a decision, what are some of those things that we can really help our audience of founders here today learn from?

Keith Laska: I think gut instinct is underrated. When I was younger, I used to take walks with my grandfather in his backyard, and as he pointed things out to me, one point in time he turned to me and there were no ducks around, so I don't know why he said this, but he said, " Keith, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck." And I didn't really understand it then, but it becomes increasingly apparent as you get older if something portends to be a certain way, it probably is. During the interview process, if you're like, " I didn't get the warm and fuzzies about something or there's something bothering me." It's your gut instinct probably telling you that it's a huge red flag that you should look out for. And conversely, I'm okay with rapid hiring and making mistakes. That's part of the learning process. What is the biggest problem in the world, particularly for a startup that is on a runway, a very, very tight runway, is realizing you made a mistake and then thinking time will fix that mistake. In 99 out of a hundred occasions that is not the case. As soon as you get that feeling that the hire was wrong, you need to look into that specific detail extremely quickly, talk with others to try to get their insights and then make a decision immediately. The biggest mistakes I've seen is that people just delay and delay and delay those difficult conversations while the money is running out. And the only other thing I'd say is be careful hiring your friends. I've seen a lot of those situations as well. They work out well. I actually have a business that I work with my best friend from childhood on and it's fantastic, but we created very, very clear rules upfront and we abide by those rules like a bible basically, but as much as possible try to not dip into similar circles of where you're hanging out.

Pete Townsend: Yeah, I've seen, to build on all that, I've just seen some nightmare stories where there was a founder that I knew well who was looking for someone in a specific role, but they weren't, as it turned out, my perception of the role as someone that was helping this founder find somebody and the role that he had in mind were a little bit different. What could have solved that? Write the damn thing down. Make sure that you've got a good job description that isn't just robbed from somebody else from another company and said, " Oh, I want one of them." You need to actually do some work on this and do some work with your co- founders or other folks that are part of the business, your mentors, your advisors, whomever to help you put together good job description. In this one specific instance, I think the relationship lasted three months and then the person that I recommended for this job was gone just because they were just at odds and it didn't work out, and I wished that as the person that was referring this individual that I met with them after the first week to make sure that things were going okay because I kind of felt responsible for the car crash that it became, because it just wasn't clear on what the job was and I'm like, " Listen..." And this may happen to you as a founder with your advisors, where if you're not clear that founder and/ or, sorry, that mentor or advisor may get an idea in their head on what they think is the right job to have in your business at that point in time. You need to be in the driver's seat on that. Don't ever feel pressured by investors to say, " Oh, listen, hire this person." You need to be able to make your own decisions on that. There's lots and lots of things that you can do in terms of your own due diligence on individuals. LinkedIn profiles are the dead giveaway. If you see 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 active roles on somebody's LinkedIn profiles, you know you're not going to get their focus and you know they're going to have some other activities that will be distracting for them. Also, when you're hiring people, just try to get to know them as individuals and figure out what their own cost of living restrictions are. If they're taking a job with an income that is far below what they actually need to live, they're not going to last. And so it's better not to hire them at all than to in six months from now realize that, wait, this person can't actually stick it in the startup ecosystem because their mortgage is too high, for example. Little things like that,

Cathy: I just add that to the-

Gene: Oh, yes.

Cathy: I'll just add to on the job description piece of even saying what you think that the role a person will achieve in the first 30, 60, 90 days can be really helpful of really identifying what you're looking for. Then the common theme with all three of ours is communication, just really deep communication and getting to know someone along the interview process. In communication, if the first week they come in and they're doing things that are like, " That's not what I was expecting, this isn't how I expected to work together." That you have those really honest open conversations really, really quickly.

Gene: Excellent. I think, Kathy, one thing you mentioned earlier, and Keith and Pete touched on this, is that laser focus. What is the role for the person? What's the duties? How are we working together? Is this going to be a fit financially for both parties? That's the introduction or the way in, but when things go wrong, and again, coming from the point of view of as the founders sitting around here today, some maybe second or third time founders. I remember when I was an accelerator straight in so many new terms, so many new things. What's a, why is there a cliff? Am I going to walk off it? What's this all about? What's investing? I've never heard about this before in traditional businesses that I came from. We've talked about the way in, how to find the people, what are the different roles are, how to really assess that person. What are some of the protections that our founders here should be thinking of or at least have in their mind of if it doesn't work out, what should they have put in place to mitigate that? And that is open to the panel, so Kathy, Keith, or Pete as you will. First one off mute is the first one to answer. Pete, it's over to you.

Pete Townsend: You say over to Pete or over to Keith? I get that all the time. I live in Ireland-

Gene: Go ahead, Pete.

Pete Townsend: I introduce myself as Pete and they're like, " Oh, hello Keith." I'm like, " I didn't say Keith." They thought I said Keith, which is the Irish pronunciation of-

Gene: At least you don't get Kevin. At least you don't get Kevin. That's-

Pete Townsend: Yeah, Kevin. Yeah, that's a good one.

Gene: It's that Pete, it's that Pete with the son in K, isn't that correct? No, I'm only kidding. Pete, over to you.

Pete Townsend: Thanks. No, you're right. When you're new into this space, it's really hard to figure out what that cliff really actually means and investing and all of that. One of the most important things that you need to do as a founder is that when the conversation of equity for anybody comes up, whether that is a co- founder, whether that is an advisor, whether that obviously an investor, whether that's an employee stock option pool that you're putting together. There's so many different considerations with all that. You need to know the game and you need to know the jargon. And that when you are perhaps entertaining, bringing on another co- founder, either if you're a solo founder right now, or if there's two of you and you're bringing on a third, that putting in place these mechanisms to make sure that you don't end up with someone holding 20% of your equity that in a year or two could become what we call a passive investor or a passive founder and that they're just holding onto that, and that you've got investors coming in and saying, looking at the cap table and saying, " Who is this individual? They have 20% of the equity." And like, " Well, they were one of the co- founders from two years ago. They're not involved anymore." Well, 20% is a huge stake, they could do a lot with that. So as you're making your way through this process of allocating equity, and just a warning, if anybody comes along and says, so I've seen founders that have, I don't know, 30% of their equity tied up with advisors and where they're giving out eight, nine, 10% to advisors, we're helping them on a short term basis, or not short term, they're in it for the long term, but that's a lot. Advisors generally are between half a percent and 1% in terms of what they may end up with and if you end up with too many of them, you've got a messy cap table, so lots of things to consider there. How do you mitigate it? To answer your question Gene, you've got to leverage your network, you've got to build relationships with other founders. Obviously the Techstars network is a great way to do that because we have founders who've gone through several rounds and have dealt with all this, and there's so much material within the Techstars network to be able to leverage all that, to be able to learn about this stuff. That's my 2 cents.

Gene: Appreciate it, and Keith, would you like to add to that?

Keith Laska: I think that was so well said. I don't have much to add to that apart from the fact that humility as a founder is super important. You remember in school they said to you, there are no dumb questions. There are really, really no dumb questions when it comes to being a founder. There's a lot more at stake, I would argue, but no dumb questions, so have a sense of humility. I think if you're a founder, you have a level of confidence, I think that surpasses a lot of other people otherwise you wouldn't have started a business, but you need to balance that confidence and dare I say, a bit of ego with humility. If you don't understand something that the most successful entrepreneurs I've ever seen stop and go in board meetings, in regular meetings, " I'm sorry, I don't understand that. Could you explain it to me?" A good set of investors will not only support you, but actually set up a separate meeting to walk through it or connect you with the right people to talk through it. Techstars has an enormous amount of material that they can support you with and a huge network. At High Alpha we've got almost 50 companies that we've started from scratch and a whole bunch of other companies we've invested in, so we regularly have CEOs meeting up with each other and sharing insights. I think just ask the questions, don't be afraid to ask.

Gene: Excellent. Kathy, would you like to round that out with any advice on what are some of those protections or some of those things people should put in place when they're building out their team?

Cathy: Yeah, I think part of it goes again to communication. I don't want to be a broken record about that, but really talking about, well, what happens if this doesn't go, if it just doesn't go well, how are we going to communicate with each other? How are we going to talk about it? And to Pete's point, you have vesting. The vesting schedule is help is one of the protections. You're not going to be, all the equity is invested day one, it's after, it's over time, so making sure that you have the right... In the US, it's the right new hire paperwork, making sure people are at- will employees and that they are, they're someone you could part ways with. If things aren't working out, they can part ways with you. Internationally there's different laws around it, but making sure you have the right contracts in place is really important as well.

Gene: Excellent, excellent. Now I'm going to do one last PSA. We've got some great questions in so far from Tatiana and Jesse, so really appreciate that and we've got some that were sent in advance, so please do get those questions from here to here into the keyboard and into the chat channel because we're coming up on those quite quickly. Before that, Pete said this was a critical talking point, so we're going to talk about it, and this is open to the panel. How do you find the right balance between co- founders? What are some of the examples you've seen around that? Because again, we're building a relationship that hopefully could last decades in that respect. From your experience of working with teams, being in teams, finding companies, how do you find and balance the right co- founder? I am going to start with Keith.

Keith Laska: Is that a Peith or Keith? I didn't get that. I think it's Keith.

Gene: It was Kathy. No, I'm only kidding. It was Keith.

Keith Laska: I think Kathy mentioned this before and I think Pete touched on it as well. Finding the right balance, complimentary skill sets between what you have and what you're trying to bring on is super important. If you bring two people on that specialize in a certain skillset, you are guaranteed to have issues in my opinion. The second would be to find individuals that you can easily communicate with who can take feedback, even though you establish a relationship with them and are open to that feedback, they're constantly inquisitive, they seek that feedback as opposed to hiding from it. Those are two things that I've seen have been super successful with finding co- founders.

Gene: Excellent. Kathy, you've worked with some teams that you match co- founders with at Bolster. What are some of the ways you've found that people can be co- founders or what are some of the pitfalls or areas to take into account as well?

Cathy: I think the most successful ones are what Keith said is you're looking for, you figure out what you're looking for and you're balancing that, and then once you have the skillset, then it's a fit matter of how will we work together and how do we get to know each other? You will know your co- founders like family. They're going to be people you know deeply about their personal life, about your personal life, and you need to really figure out if you can work together and have really good communication. You're going to be clear about roles and responsibilities initially, but things can change over time, so making sure that you're having those conversations about, " Hey, what if things go really well? Where are we going to go? What do you want to do?" Or along the way, having those conversations. I think those set up the most successful relationships.

Gene: Perfect. Pete?

Pete Townsend: Yeah-

Gene: It's over to you.

Pete Townsend: Just think about the amount of time. When you think about co- founder, think about the amount of time that an investor puts into deciding whether or not they're going to write you a check, say for a hundred K, at the earliest stages maybe 200K, and that comes with tons of due diligence that they're doing. You may end up having five, six hours worth of conversations with them. You may meet them in person, hopefully you do get a chance to do that and spending even more time with them, because bringing an investor on is well, that's for the long term. An investor will look at you and say, " Is this someone that I want to work with for five to 10 years?" And even though it's not full- time for them, it is a partner in a VC firm may make seven, eight investments themselves and they're going to spread that out to an hour a day roughly. When you're thinking about a co- founder, you got to look at that times 10, because this is full- time, this is a marriage and you are doing this with intentionality, you're doing it with over communication, you're doing it with clarity, and you want to be able to get to the point where you know that, " Hey, we can go out away from working together and sit down for a beer or cup of tea or whatever the hell it is, and not talk about anything having to do with the business for three or four hours." And be able to do that with somebody. Finding that person isn't easy, co- founders don't just magically appear. You need to be able to get yourself in situations where there are people that are willing to have to take those risks and to take those risks personally and professionally. It's good to be able to be in networks like this where you're going to be able to meet some of those people. You got to try this on for size that co- founders don't just materialize out of thin air.

Gene: Just wrapping up on that point before move into our audience questions. What are some of the ways, and we've talked about this before, what are some of the ways that you can meet other co- founders? Again, I'm coming at this in a very simple fashion, but what are the communities people can join or what are not specific names, but how do I go about that? How do I find these people I or L or online?

Pete Townsend: Do we still have those startup wakes, Gene?

Gene: No we don't. They were great. We should bring those back.

Pete Townsend: We should, and this is to answer Tatiana's question and your question all in one go is that absolutely look for failed startup founders. They're the ones you want because they've been through the battle, they've been down the front lines and they've made the mistakes and they paid the price and they probably will not make those same mistakes twice. There are gatherings in startup ecosystems that celebrate the failure of a startup and have a proper wake/ funeral, whatever you want to call it, and that's a great place to meet potential co- founders. The easiest bog- standard answer is there are tons of meetups everywhere around the world in these communities that you can go to and you can meet people, and sometimes it's serendipity and you meet in the strangest places, sometimes you meet at a startup wake, which can be a good time.

Gene: And just to add a little bit of reference that Pete and I used to attend these events, which would literally have a coffin at the front and it was done like an altar. It was disused church, I think at one time, the Peacock Alley Theater and it was actual startup wake and we would get some huge stories. I think it like Pete, I'm sure you've been at one or two of them, but the story about how, I'm sure you've all come across Ryanair, the famous airline in Europe for low cost how that failed the first time. We've got some really interesting insights, so I do think when you find a founder who has failed, I think you need to dissect that a little bit. But once bit and twice shy. You build up your scar tissue, you have all these different phrases you can have, so I do think that there can be something that can really be uncovered and be quite valuable within that. Again, Keith, what are some of the ways you can go out into the community and meet people? And Kathy, what are some of the ways you've seen it? We have our own community on Bolster, people can meet and chat with, and there is one element, but Kathy first, or Keith, whoever is first off mute I would love your answer.

Cathy: That's not fair. I was already off mute, but I'll go ahead and go.

Gene: You see what I did there? You see what I did there?

Cathy: I agree with Pete. I think the startup ecosystem is pretty robust and it's good to be connected, but if you're in a community that you don't have a lot of startups in to be thinking about other ways, maybe there's some online ones now, but companies like Bolster, we help people find founders or CXOs. Sure, there's others on the founder side, I'm not sure what other companies there are, but there are other places that help with that as well. Putting out the ask to your community, letting people know what you're doing and the elevator pitch of what you're looking for is, you maybe even go to as far as LinkedIn, that might be too broad for you, but thinking about what's your elevator pitch of why someone should come join a company and what they're looking for or what you're looking for and putting it out there more succinctly on a regular basis, the more people you tell that to, the more likely you are to find somebody who's going to be the right fit for you or know someone who knows somebody.

Gene: And Keith?

Keith Laska: I would say, my wife would say I am more talkative than she's comfortable with, but at the same time I have to bring somebody with me when I go to an IRL event. It's very difficult to break into an event and just introduce yourself to 20 people, and I'm sure I'm seeing some nods on the call, so I'm sure that is similar with others. Find somebody locally who has a passion for what you're doing, even if it's tangential, and then agree that you're going to have a roadmap to hit as many local events as possible. I would also say there is asymmetric upside post COVID to meeting people face to face. We went through a crazy period as a global society and candidly a lot of people got lazy and they're opting for online activities or hiding and shrouding themselves online. Your upside, and this will close eventually as human society figures this out and everybody zips back together, but right now your upside is actually to go to these events, believe it or not, even if there are a whole bunch of people there, you're probably in the minority.

Pete Townsend: I totally agree. I always to say, look for the person in the room who seems to be having the most fun and introduce yourself to them. If you're going to introduce yourself to one person and just to get over that hump, look for the person in the room having the most fun, they're going to be the connector and they'll be able to introduce you to others as well.

Gene: Excellent. Now I'm just going to warn you Pete and Keith and Kathy, that was the easy stuff. Now we're going into the audience questions. This is the tough stuff, so let's get to it. First question is up from Jesse Phillips for the panel, " Given money constraints, a lot of the hiring options seem to be more junior who need to be trained up in a particular role. It's a challenge as we're busy ourselves, the question is, what should we be prioritizing more at a pre- product stage? People that can hit the ground running and add bandwidth or prioritizing building deeper processes to train people up? I would love your views on that." And Kathy, again, you're first off mute, so I may hand this over to you or Keith or Pete, if you'd like to pop on please do.

Cathy: I'm going to-

Gene: Very brief on mute by Keith. Okay.

Cathy: I will definitely start putting myself on mute so I'm not first off mute. I'd say that definitely is a challenge and I think when someone says, besides just having the mission, I think it is really important for people to understand the mission of the company they're coming to. I don't think there's a exact right answer for this, and I think the answer may be a little bit, it depends, so you can think about there are sometimes mid- level people or a little less senior than the founder or C- level who may be willing to come on and work a little bit more for equity as well. Thinking creatively about how to find people who may have had been part of a big company that went public or something where they might've had some kind of event where they're not looking for, they don't need as much of a salary as they might. They maybe not, they're okay with a lower than market salary. And I think when you're big enough, it is useful to train people up and have a good process to train them up, but it also is very time- consuming to do that. I don't know, I'd start with my first one or two people that have to be really well- trained because I think that's, sorry that have to be trained because it does take a lot of time to do that, but if you can start pairing people and being like, " Well, I could hire a more senior person and then I can allow me to hire a junior person and then I can pair them and then they can go off and do great things together." That might be a strategy there too that goes halfway between the two. Once you're big enough, having a big good process for training people up and really having a cohort of people that you can train at one time or things can be really useful strategy, but it may be a little bit too early to do that at pre- seed stage.

Gene: I think... No, super. Absolutely super points. Kathy, just drilling into that a little bit more, do you think it's probably, again, when we're starting from zero to one, is this also one of just the steps we need to go through in terms of this is a great way to layer in these processes? I have to train new people, I'll try and turn this into a playbook, get that person involved in that as well, and does that help compound the speed at which we can train future people? So is this just a natural step in the process of a training regime in the company?

Cathy: It can be, for sure. Also, the other thing you could think about doing is hiring someone like you say as an advisor or someone who you could say, " Okay, I need someone to work." I'll just say people, I know this isn't going to be the example, but I need to hire someone in people. I can't afford a strong person, but the junior person doesn't know enough. I'm going to hire Kathy to do one hour every two weeks with this junior person coming in. Kathy, you're going to train them to do the things that need to be done from the people perspective. There might be a way to do that that's not leveraging your time as much because you have to figure out where's the best time for every hour of your day that you're spending? Where's the best, where's the most effective time to use, place to use that time? I would hesitate to bring in someone too junior that the founder has to do all the training for. I'd say you'd have to do someone, you don't want to bring someone straight out of college who hasn't ever worked in a business before and let them loose on it. You probably need a little more time with them, so figuring out where can you spend that time or where can you invest it, I think is really important.

Gene: Excellent. Keith, I see you're off mute. Do you have something to add?

Keith Laska: Yeah, just briefly. I would say building a team is like building a sports team. You're not going to put a tight end in the position of a running back. It just doesn't work, so it becomes obvious over time that you need multiple roles when you're hiring and you should think ahead on that, but I would say, and just my final note on whether this is hiring related or not on decision making, ultimately, I've always abided by this particular saying, recognize the difference between opinions and decisions when you're the quarterback. You pay for opinions, whether that's paying employees, paying advisors, paying investors, and then you get paid to make decisions. Just when you're out building businesses like that, remember that you can have all the opinions in the world, but they're just opinions. You're the one that has to make decision on the hires or structure or strategy going forward.

Gene: Excellent, excellent. It's speed round time. We have 300 seconds left and not a second more. Pete, Terence Riley says, " What about spending on hires from the markets down? Is that opportunistic or not? Or do you keep your busy in house and hold your head above water?" So in down times, is it good or bad to hire or do we play it safe and keep our budgets in our banks or wherever we keep them nowadays?

Pete Townsend: Well, it depends. It depends on where your spending power is. If your spending power is in a crypto treasury that you've been maintaining in your business or perhaps your own personal wealth that you're going to make, you're to do it in the right way and this is not tax or legal advice, but director's loans to the company and all different sorts of things. That's one thing you got to think about. Am I going to give away this wealth I have at a depressed price? If you're referring to crypto markets. If you're thinking about what is the spending that I can afford now? Well, that really depends upon how much you're going to raise and what is your plan for that. As of right now, you're going to have needs that you need to meet and you're probably going to figure out the best strategic way to do that. A tactical, sorry, tactical way to do that by piecing a few things together before you can raise your first round, but I think again, it all comes back to what is it that you need to be doing based upon your plan in order to get this business funded If you're pre- product, pre- revenue, that's the decision you got to make.

Gene: Excellent. Well, we're going to put a pin there for today because we're about to wrap up and hit the hour. As always it's a great big thank you to Kathy, Keith and Pete, but before we go, Pete, you're first off mute, so Kathy you're spared this time. I'm going to go, Pete, Keith, Kathy, what is your lasting thought to leave with our wonderful founders today?

Pete Townsend: What do you want. If you're the founder, CEO, obviously with your co- founders, what is it that you want? And you always got to use that as your gunning goes. What do you want to get out of this? Do you want to build a massively huge company and that you've got a certain degree of oomph that will get you there for the long term? Or do you want to build something you could sell out for 250, 300 billion and buy a nicer house and then get ready next startup you're going to launch? And you always need to just remember what is it that you actually want out of this because that can be your guiding force in so many decisions you make. When I ask founders that when they're at a critical juncture, they're like, " Oh yeah, good point."

Gene: Makes sense. Excellent final thought. Keith, over to you.

Keith Laska: I would say a lot of people talk about equity as the most important thing in a business or ARR. I would actually say your most valuable IP is your conviction as a founder, and so you're going to go through up times and down times, and you have to remain convicted on your idea. A lot of people say this, I would reiterate it, concentration makes you rich and diversification keeps you rich. So you've decided to concentrate by launching a business. You can never, ever waver on your conviction, is what I'd say.

Gene: Excellent, excellent. Kathy, our final words for today before I wrap up, it's over to you.

Cathy: I'll round that out by saying that your team is critically important and you spend a lot of time at work. You need to have fun at work and be around people who bring you joy, share the same conviction as Keith said, share the same values as what Pete said too, of are you all wanting the same thing? But really build a great team, build great people around you, and communicate really effectively and know that you're going to make mistakes and be okay with that.

Gene: Excellent, excellent. Now my final prompt to our wonderful audience of founders is if you click on the reactions button, you can do the clap hands and let's do a digital clap hands for all of our panelists here today. Again, as Bolster is an official Techstars partner, please make sure to go to bolster. com/ techstars. We've got loads of goodies and prizes. We have no prizes, but we do have lots of things there for you, which we'd love to chat with you more about. Again, we'll be following up with this recording, a few more details. We have Haley Robinson from Bolster on the call as well, so always remember to have a chat with Haley as well, but if the audience has had wonderful a time as I have, I think today has been a very successful fireside chat about hiring strategies and Web3 and blockchain. Once again, Pete, Keith, Kathy, thank you very much for your time and we'll see you all soon.