In the earliest stages of building a startup, it can be hard to justify focusing on anything other than creating a great product or service and meeting the needs of customers or users. However, there are still a number of surefire measures that any early-stage company can and should put in place to achieve “people ops” success as they begin scaling, according to venture capital firm Atomico‘s talent partners, Caro Chayot and Dan Hynes.
As members of the VC’s operational support team, both work closely with companies in the Atomico portfolio to “find, develop and retain” the best employees in their respective fields, at various stages of the business. They’re operators at heart, and they bring a wealth of experience from time spent prior to entering VC.
Before joining Atomico, Chayot led the EMEA HR team at Twitter, where she helped scale the business from two to six markets and grew the team from 80 based in London to 500 across the region. Prior to that, she worked at Google in people ops for nine years.
Hynes was responsible for talent and staffing at well-known technology companies including Google, Cisco and Skype. At Google, he grew the EMEA team from 60 based in London to 8,500 across Europe by 2010, and at Skype, he led a talent team that scaled from 600 to 2,300 in three years.
Caro Chayot’s top 3 tips
1. Think about your long-term org design (18 months down the line) and hire back from there
When most founders think about hiring, they think about what they need now and the gaps that exist in their team at that moment. Dan and I help founders see things a little differently. You need to recruit for what you need, but you also need to think about what is coming down the line. What will your company look like in a year or 18 months? Functions and team sizes will depend on the sector — whether you are building a marketplace, a SaaS business or a consumer company. Founders also need to think about how the employees they hire now can develop over the next 18 months. If you hire people who are at the top of their game now, they won’t be able to grow into the employees you need in the future.
2. Spend time defining what your culture is. Use that for hiring and everything else people-related
If org design is the “what,” then culture is the “how.” It’s about laying down values and principles. It may sound fluffy, but capturing what it means to work at your company is key to hiring and retaining the best talent. You can use clearly articulated values at every stage of talent-building to shape your employer brand. What do you want potential employees to feel when they see your website? What do you want to look for in the interview process to make sure you are hiring people who are additive to the culture? How do you develop people and compensate them? These are all expressions of culture.
The other important question is how you scale culture. Culture will inevitably change due to different things such as the people you hire or changes in your work setup, like switching toward more remote work. There may be some core values that you want to make sure always stay the same, like being user-first. Or you might want to take something away. Change is not bad; it’s a natural evolution. It’s just important to constantly review and take action when needed.
3. Don’t create diversity debt. Start thinking about diversity early on
Series A, when Atomico makes the majority of its investments, is a massive opportunity for founders to put measures in place to prevent their company from accruing diversity debt. We believe we have an important responsibility as an investor and a talent team to provide tools to make this possible early. Going with the numbering theme, there are three things that founders can do to build a diverse organization from the beginning:
Make sure your leadership team is diverse. Most early-stage companies don’t have a C-suite or executive team set up yet, which is a great opportunity to make sure that team is diverse from the start. If you start from the top, you will have an easier time hiring, attracting and retaining diverse talent at all levels.
Understand what inclusion means. Founders think about hiring, hiring, hiring when they think about diversity, but you also need to focus on inclusion, which is how you will retain the great, diverse talent you hire. Articulate what inclusion means to you and bake that into your culture.
Think tactically about how to get access to diverse talent and build a diverse pipeline. A lot of founders think, “Oh no! I need to hire an engineer now! I can’t wait for a diverse candidate!” In reality, you’ve got to be thinking long term. It’s OK to hire an engineer now, but if you know you need five more engineers soon, work on building a pipeline of diverse candidates for those upcoming roles. There are loads of tools to build a diverse pipeline of candidates, from different networks to internship programs. This is an area where we can add a lot of value through introductions to CTOs in our portfolio, who can talk about their experience in building diverse teams, or introductions to search firms for the most senior hires.
Dan Hynes’ top 3 tips
1. Think of people ops as a system
Treat the people function like sales, marketing or any other function you have. That means tracking what’s working and not working, iterating and being data-driven in the way you think about setting up that stack. This also means thinking about where the company is today and how the organization evolves over 12 to 18 months, just as Caro said.
By system, I mean vision and mission — why do you exist as a company? The type of culture you are aiming for; defining leadership and management competencies; compensation philosophy, especially equity allocation; hiring processes; onboarding; internal communications; performance development, etc. Each part impacts the others if done without a systems approach.
Some people think that it’s just HR that’s responsible for this, but it’s really the CEO and the founders who set the foundation for the system, which is a compelling mission and vision. HR is responsible for the delivery of those experiences. Companies at Series A and Series B in particular need to be able to inspire people because they need to get things done.
2. Appreciate the value that a world-class recruiter can have on an organization
A great recruiter is like a talent detective; they can be the eyes and ears of founding teams. A great recruiter can sell the company better than any sales leader in the company — they should know the mission, vision and product roadmap. When you come across one of these gems, invest in them!
Companies are bringing recruiters on earlier and earlier. In the U.S., it could be employee 15; in Europe, it might be employee 40 or 50. These people have a range of backgrounds. They could have worked in executive search, are former functional leaders or have a sales background. But they all have one thing in common: They love seeing the journey someone goes on when they place them in a company and the sense of accomplishment that this brings.
At Series A, it’s not about having a massive recruiting program to bring people in, but relying on hacks to success. Supercell, which did a lot of educating about what a great place Finland and Helsinki are to live, is a great example.
3. Don’t neglect onboarding
You’ve got great recruiters, a great culture and you’ve just made a great hire. Don’t forget the onboarding process! That means helping get a new employee to maximum productivity as soon as possible. It’s all about the little things to make the transition smooth. Make sure their equipment is set up before they join so they turn up and everything works when you switch it on. Share info before they join — decks, videos, pitches, product information, sales materials and so on. On their first day, don’t sit them down to do admin first thing. Set the goals for the first week, and the first month, and then check in before their probation period is up to ensure that they and their manager think it’s a good fit.
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