Maryann Kongovi

We’ve been brainstorming with a group of former Miro peers and friends on ways to help those impacted with lay-offs. Together, we created a spreadsheet for everyone affected to fill out, which we’ll share with companies interested in hiring these talented and exceptional people. Here’s the link to fill in your details: https://lnkd.in/e8DjKJsg. You’ll need to create a Coda account to upload your information. Please add your details there and spread the word within the group. Let’s help this incredible group of people find new opportunities to thrive and make an impact. (Any comments on how to make this spreadsheet more representative of your talents are more than welcome!)

469

43 Comments

📖 A short story on why we built peoplemetrics.fyi for startup people teams... When Adam and I started Open Org, we: 1️⃣ Ran cohorts working with People and Talent Leaders who wanted to use transparency as a lever for positive change 2️⃣ Spoke to 20+ People Leaders every week about the challenges they were facing in role ...One thing kept coming up time and time again as a top-tier problem: Influencing Execs Specifically... 👉 “how to get buy-in from the rest of the leadership team to change how we work” So we started doing some ad hoc 1:1 coaching sessions to help 🆘. We’d work on things like: 📈 Business case 📚 Story-telling 🏗️ Foundations they’d need to help bring others on the journey. ✅ Some exec teams would respond to the stories built upon internal data: Example: “Our {metric} is too high, and our exit interviews and engagement survey themes show opportunities 'abc', therefore we should pull lever 'y' and in doing so expect business outcome 'z' over time period 'x'” 😩 But the majority wanted more before they redistributed budget. They’d say things like: “OK, but your business case is based off the premise that our {metric} results are poor. I want to know how poor. I don’t know what good looks like here. Also we’re in {insert industry} and we have this {headcount} and we’re also {startup stage}. Show me market context so I can understand how far behind we are.” At first, this was kind of weird to me. 🤔 Comparison is the thief of all joy etc.... But I get it, there’s a lot of pressure when you’re making big decisions and so even a little bit of extra signal, like market context, is helpful to support a change. Anyway, we looked for this external data to try and help... 🔍 All we found were... - Outdated benchmark reports - Big company/enterprise size reports - Deloitte/McKinsey style stuff - Specific vertical benchmarks (some amazing tools out there for comp and bens) BUT... Not a lot out there for startups and scale-ups that was: - Relevant - Contextual - Recent - Broad (e.g., full spectrum of org health metrics ref: people and talent) So we decided to build a prototype, Adam on QA, me on Dev. 350 People & Talent Leaders joined the private beta and we’ve been improving the product & building the user base ever since 🚀 Here's what Startup People Leaders can NOW do that they couldn't do in 2023... 🚀 Track & Benchmark 18+ metrics vs other companies, comparable by size, headcount, funding stage (Seed > Series D) 🚀 See trends in that data across different quarters 🚀 Tell more powerful stories with your data 🚀 Build your team's data muscles Just the beginning. Excited to see where this continues to go! Startup People Leaders, hit me up if you’d like a peek at the platform 🙂

15

5 Comments

Aon published a study this week showing that a Fortune 500 Lyra Health customer saved more than $3 in health care costs for every $1 they spent on Lyra. This is a staggering return on investment. Lyra can deliver the highest value in mental health care because it delivers the best outcomes in the field, having tirelessly invested time and expertise in creating the best care available. This blog is a follow-up from the one I wrote a couple months ago showing that Lyra can also prove sustained savings over four years. Proud of our team for all that they do to help those in need and proving that what’s best for people can also be best for business’ bottom lines. https://bit.ly/4fopHoX 

182

2 Comments

Great trick from Stripe! Q4 is not only considered shortest quarter of the year but also budget season. In William Gaybrick's interview on the The Logan Bartlett Show, he shares a great budgeting trick: - Spending needs to be highly scrutinized - Because often great leaders self-solve problems with existing resources - Hence, the first step in Stripe’s budgeting is to determine what they’d cut with a 10% budget reduction - This budget is then re-allocated to teams with high-impact priorities Great to see how bootstrapping principles matter at large companies. This and a ton of other insights below: https://lnkd.in/drDsVuQz

6

Inspired by what we’re building at Build Momentum. We realized tech recruiting is broken—non-technical recruiters struggle to find and attract the best talent. That’s why we’ve flipped the script and developed a community-based recruiting approach: a trusted network of elite engineers, embedded within Latam’s top tech communities. The best engineers know the best engineers, and we tap into these deep, authentic connections to deliver top talent faster and with better fit. Want to see how we’re doing it differently? Check out our post

13

The #1 question I get asked is: “How do I hire a CEO?” (How to hire, incentivize, and manage a CEO) I created a guide with all my learnings from hiring ~40+ CEOs and leaders across Tiny (and many epic fuck ups along the way). Topics I cover include: Is hiring a CEO the right choice for you? When to hire a CEO? How to find the right CEO? Should you invest in a recruiter? What to look for in your CEO? How to diligence candidates? How to ensure a culture fit? How to negotiate & structure compensation? How to transition from founder to owner? How to relinquish control? How to determine CEO success? When to replace the CEO? Book Recommendations * A cheatsheet is included with key points from all sections. Get my guide for free → https://bit.ly/4bSTeUY Enjoy!

50

4 Comments

A standard approach to new hire equity for public tech companies is a new hire grant ~2x the refresh grant, followed by annual refreshes, all with 4-year standard vest. The problem with this approach is the big drop off in vesting in Year 5 — in effect, you’re signaling to employees that’s the time to leave. How can we avoid this cliff? A simple way to accomplish this goal is with the combination of a front-loaded new hire grant and ratable refreshes. The key drivers to make this program work are: Front-loading the NH grant — this helps eliminate the cliff in year 5 Reducing the NH grant multiple — this also reduces the cliff, and lowers total spend Moving to 3-year vests — this pulls more vesting value forward Notice this actually saves the company money too. When we lower our new hire multiple from 2.0x to 1.5x, should we be worried it’s less attractive to the candidate? I think no, for a very specific reason: people rationally discount future value. Check out my full post below. 👇 And this isn't the only solution - how else can you adapt your stock comp design to minimize cliffs? #compensation #totalrewards

137

23 Comments

Great hiring advice on a recent 20VC episode with CEO of Brex, Pedro Franceschi: "Look for individual contributor skills in every leader." We often talk about the necessity of being hands-on in start-ups and scale-ups. Looking for specific IC skills a leader has (vs looking for indications of being hands-on appearing implicitly in other answers in an interview) is a nice way of making this assessment one level more precise.

16

Struggling with your executive search? You’re not alone. We’ve pinpointed common pitfalls in executive search: 1. Team misalignment 2. Uncommitted hiring managers 3. Undefined roles 4. Inefficient processes 5. Fixation on past candidates Working with an executive search partner can help you maintain urgency and alignment, identify candidates you wouldn't have otherwise considered, and ultimately hire the right person for your organization faster. Bolster’s unique approach blends experienced recruiters with cutting-edge technology to ensure your success. Interested in learning more? Let’s chat! 🔗 https://bit.ly/46KJqLu #ExecutiveSearch #Leadership #Hiring #Bolster

5

The future success of every org comes down 1 thing = the team. Teams are built through a series of hiring decisions. ⚖ Yet the tools 🛠 to make great hiring decisions haven't evolved. 🤔 That's why I'm * very * excited about what we've been building... We released 2 powerful capabilities as part of our skills-based hiring launch that systematically ⚙ improve the * quality of decision * Check them out👇 On each candidate profile in BrightHire you can now access: ✅ Topics Coverage - Instantly see if all of the most important skills, competencies, and topics were covered across the interview process. This allows you to be confident that nothing slipped through the cracks — because one gap can become a painful mishire. 🔍 Candidate Summaries - A clear, objective overview of all of a candidate’s shared qualifications mapped to the key skills that matter. This summary is automatically built as a candidate goes through the interview process, giving Hiring Managers a clearer picture to make better decisions in one place. Less open questions and gut instincts, and more confident hiring decisions. Check our Abhishek Sarihan giving a walk-through below! 📺 And let me know what you think! 🙏

40

8 Comments

Ashby Released their annual offer acceptance rates report which has some interesting statistics. What stuck out to me was that 2023 had the highest average Offer Acceptance Rate for the years they've analyzed to date at 81% Here at EQ, we had less offers in 2023 than we had in 2022, but also saw an acceptance rate of around 80%. I think 2023 showed that more candidates were on the market as tech companies saw layoffs and less companies were hiring, which led to more accepted offers for the offers we had out. You can read all the insights from the report here. https://lnkd.in/gQCJNvwu

7

1 Comment

Today marks a significant milestone as we launch Zendesk Ventures, a project I've been passionately working on since joining Zendesk almost three years ago. Over this period, we've made remarkable investments in companies like Zuper, Observe.AI, and most recently, PolyAI and unitQ. While there's much more to share about these investments in future posts, I want to focus on appreciation today. This launch wouldn't have been possible without the collective efforts of numerous individuals and teams. Preparing for a successful launch truly takes a village, and I'm deeply grateful for everyone's contributions. A heartfelt thank you to: The Marketing Team – for their exceptional work in communications and planning the London showcase event. Andrea Lencina Garcia, Catherine Hardy, Courtney Blake, Danielle Wilson, Jenna Ochoa, Laura Murray, Lauren J., Sophie Ambridge, Kayla Schmidt The Tech Alliances Team – for preparing detailed information on each company, educating our employees, and providing specialized attention to our investments. Tim Marsden, Megan Francis, Michelle Torres, Mike Monteiro, Micah D. The Creative Team – for their brilliant work building an impressive new website, zendeskventures.com., and other creative assets. Jordyn Fields, Kristina Alford, Raven Wright, Betsy (Filson) Field, Adam Chung The Startups Team—for collaborating on events and for introducing me to their network of VCs and startups. Kristen Durham, Jeremy Ambrose The Corp Dev Team – for their unwavering support in bringing this vision to life. Ben Barclay, Henry Hedinger, Dana (Robinson) Sofer, Mandy Xiao A special thanks to Ben and Pascal Pettinicchio for their continuous support and for driving this venture forward. Thank you all immensely. Apologies if I missed anyone – please know that I deeply appreciate every single contribution to this endeavor. #Appreciation #ZendeskVentures #TeamWork #Gratitude

196

37 Comments

🌏 📊 Erica Kangas is an engineering leader, voracious learner, and feminist builder who seeks out the biggest levers to move the world. 📊🌏 It's W6 / Q2 / 2024 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Annie Erica, part of a small but mighty team as the Head of Engineering at hyper curated investment connection & fundraising guidance platform Scroobious. Erica joined Scroobious as their Head of Engineering to help lead the technical efforts of this very early stage team shaping up capital markets culture for underrepresented founders. Erica is responsible for the entirety of their technical infrastructure. She is working every day to build out their marketplace product, making sure Scroobious Founders are having a smooth experience so they can effectively onboard their pitches onto the marketplace and connect with investors. Erica continues to spend time answering tough questions about the business and communicating effectively to equip founders with the resources they need to be successful. Scroobious’ founder community grew 75% in 2023 and is made up of 63% female founders. ✍ Cataloging Skills & Connecting the Dots 🔄 From nonprofits to startups, Erica has always cataloged her experiences. She keeps references & resources on hand from prior experiences to keep memorable frameworks from the earliest days of her career. Every time she embarks on a meaty project, the first question she asks is “what are our goals”? Then, what are we looking to accomplish? By having something to ground herself in, she can begin to move forward. That work has paid off in building a portfolio of experiences and an archive of resources. At Scroobious, she wants to understand the different attributes of founders and successful pitches to effectively connect founders with angels. For example, investors look for coachability as an attribute & trait, so she has thought back to her nonprofit days when they measured grit and growth in students and volunteers. It’s obviously a bit different but there are always overlapping threads to pull on. Problems Not Yet Solved Erica offered up three unsolved problems that drive her work as an invitation to think about and join in tackling these issues. Because learning never ends and we have a lot more to do in these areas! 🤖 How do we build AI that won’t just repeat the mistakes and mirror the worst facets of our past? 🤝 How do we continue to develop the field of software engineering such that it is sustainable, equitable, and accessible? 🤲 How do we effectively combat exclusionary systems when many of our institutions no longer have the appetite or have their hands tied from doing so? If you’d like to learn more about Erica’s career, the full post is linked in the comments. Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter to see the operator learnings we bring you in the weeks ahead too, will ya? #bostontech #operators #engineering

29

2 Comments

10 Things we've done for our Open Org Members over the last few weeks... 📖 Employee Handbook Build ⭐ Career Site Messaging & Positioning 📄 Compensation Philosophy Review 🌱 How to define the role of a Manager 🔮 Creation of a Transparency Philosophy ❤️ Annual Health-Check via our Open Culture Framework ⚙ Internal Workshop Design 📊 People Metric Benchmarking via peoplemetrics.fyi 💰 Becoming Pay Transparent 🎁 EVP Discovery & Activation Getting to work with companies & people leaders on things like this, all with the goal of building healthier, more open, transparent places of work is AWESOME 🖤 #Transparency #OpenOrg #PeopleOps

28

8 Comments

I have this discussion with people leaders. There is no 1 right answer to pay transparency and to truly solve it, you need to empower managers. Excited to put my thoughts to paper

13

This is a vital lesson for any entrepreneur: never underestimate the power of your network 💪 . While money is crucial, it cannot purchase the intangible values that truly enrich a workplace—respect, care, and support. These are not just gifts; they are superpowers we bestow upon our colleagues. And when someone departs from a well-nurtured team, these superpowers don't vanish; they proliferate, enhancing every new environment they reach 📈. Always remember, every former team member is a lifelong connection, offering endless inspiration, mentorship, and trusted business opportunities. A network does not terminate with employment. Continually engage with your former colleagues and witness how it exponentially elevates your professional journey🚀.

3

Hiring the right sales, marketing, and CX leaders is incredibly challenging, especially for early-stage startups. Check out our ElevenX Talent's Janine O'Neill (she/her) and Dan Hurwitz discuss all things GtM hiring in this awesome podcast. Some great wisdom nuggets in this one. Watch the full episode, now live at howtounfuckyourstartup.com

60

3 Comments

To my fellow founders and entrepreneurs: I want to share a cautionary tale about working with Deel (a SaaS company managing HR and payroll). While it may be tempting to have them manage your payroll in markets where you don't have a presence for a fixed monthly fee, you could be paying a heavy price for it in the long run. 1. Unhelpful Staff: When you need support, you'll encounter many different representatives who change frequently and cannot resolve your issues. 2. Unexpected Fees: They impose new fees with short notice and without your consent. These fees could relate to their other clients, and you'll be bundled into them regardless of whether it makes sense for your company. 3. Lack of Insurance: They don't have adequate insurance for cases of leave and other employment risks, leading to poor management of your processes. The irony is that we use these services to simplify operations and save costs... #SaaS #Outsourcing #Deel

24

2 Comments