Stephen Maxwell

Notion Capital portfolio co TestGorilla release their annual skills based hiring report today. It's well worth a read for anyone trying to understand how best to attract & retain talent. Perhaps the most interesting data point is that 81% of companies are now using skills based hiring, up from 56% just 2 years ago. When you think about it this makes so much sense because skills based hiring: - Opens up new talent pools - Reduces bias & levels the playing field - Is a much better predictor of job success - And ultimately saves a ton of time & money It's no wonder that according to the research 93% of companies see skills based hiring as the No.1 trend in recruitment. Check out the report below - it's a really eye-opening read.

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Expanding BetterSeat's serviceable market is pretty straightforward — add more airlines! Starting today you can use BetterSeat with Alaska Airlines 🎉 Can you guess how Alaska stacks up in terms of domestic air travel market share? Here are the top five airlines by passenger departure counts for May 2024, per OAG: 1️⃣ American Airlines (22 million passengers) 2️⃣ Southwest Airlines (19.6 million passengers) 3️⃣ Delta Air Lines (19.3 million passengers) 4️⃣ United Airlines (15.9 million passengers) 5️⃣ Alaska Airlines (4.8 million passengers) Southwest famously does not assign seats, but because BetterSeat now supports the other four airlines in this list, odds are better than not you'll be able to use BetterSeat on your next trip! Your first trip is free, no credit card required: https://www.betterseat.app ✨

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I'm stoked to finally be able to talk about this today! Earlier this morning, Lyft and May Mobility announced a joint multi-year partnership. Together, we will deploy our May Mobility x Toyota Motor Corporation Sienna Autono-MaaS vehicles on Lyft's #rideshare platform, beginning in #atlanta in 2025. We are so excited to offer a seamless new way for riders to experience our #autonomousvehicle #technology in a meaningful (and useful) way. To date, May continues to be just one of only three companies to operate Level-4 #driverout vehicles in North America. We have a massive market opportunity in front of us, and we are just getting started! #maymobility Read more about this #news in TechCrunch: https://lnkd.in/ec_A7Vxh

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Happy Monday! Lightci is proud to partner with some of the most innovative VC-backed startups, helping them hire strong talent and select their founding teams. Click the link below (see comments) to apply directly. If your startup requires expert help in sourcing additional talent or carefully selecting your founding team, feel free to send me a DM let’s chat! #foundingteam #founder #lightci

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One of the things I've learned over the last six years across building Forager and Cargado is that there are a handful of things that software engineers care about when it comes to joining a startup: (I know these aren't the only things engineers care about, I'm not an engineer) 1️⃣ They want to know they're joining a company with a plan and hints of product-market fit: 🗺 We have quite the exciting roadmap ahead of us and have a lot of (paying) customers asking us to add more features and build what's on our roadmap faster! 2️⃣ They want to know the company is well-funded: 💰 We've raised nearly $10M from top tier investors like Primary Venture Partners, Ironspring Ventures, Zenda Capital, Wischoff Ventures, Proeza Ventures, and Sahil Bloom. We still have most of that funding left in the bank. 3️⃣ They want to know they're building products that have an impact: 🏆 We've got hundreds of users already leveraging our product who use it daily to grow their business. They love the product and share feedback regularly, something our engineers get to hear directly from the end users. Apply to join our engineering team here: https://lnkd.in/gt-XSWn3 P.S.: If you want to learn more about my co-founder and our CTO Rylan Hawkins, you can read a conversation we had that I covered in my newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gJMUqk6Z

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What happens when the start-up honeymoon is over and the realities of scaling in a maturing market hit home? 🤔🌱 Marian Krueger, Co-Founder of remove, is here to help you make sense of it all. In his Session Deep Dive, he breaks down survival math that every CDR start-up needs to stay competitive in the face of our ever-growing market. Marian’s insights will help you make smarter decisions that lead to measurable impact 📈 Tune in to explore how to scale without losing your momentum—or your mission. Listen now 🎙️ https://lnkd.in/epNkK2K8 #MarketMaturity #ScalingChallenges #CDRLeadership #ClimateAction #CarbonUnbound #CarbonRemoval #Climate

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For Founders and CEOs choosing a 3PL, Marques Brownlee has the perfect analogy to explore for “finding what speed on the treadmill works for you” at min 9:40. Does the 3PL understand, and can partner to execute, at the speed we want to grow our business. Are they currently doing it for their clients? If yes, great - price, fit, capabilities, etc can be tackled next. If no, then keeping looking or know your likely to change 3PLs once the mismatch starts to slow your growth. Its not a treadmill when working key vendors, it’s a row boat. Everyone rowing in the same direction at the same speed to win. #founders #logistics #growth #3PL https://lnkd.in/e5AivkNS

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Should ZipRecruiter reassess leadership? -->> https://lnkd.in/eHf6wemw In this episode, we dive deep into: - Paradox Innovation Day - VONQ's US Departure - CV Wallet / Resume Wallet's Triumph - Vangst, acquisition and its implications for the #cannabis #job market - Veritone Hire's Road Ahead - A critical view on ZipRecruiter, Nike, and Bayer's leadership mishaps. - Who'd You Rather? with Take2 AI and Paraform Expect a snarky blend of analysis, insight, and entertainment as we dissect brand consolidation, #AI's growing role in #recruitment, and the nuances of navigating the cannabis market. -->> https://lnkd.in/eHf6wemw #ChadCheese #RecruitmentPodcast #FutureOfWork #InnovationInRecruitment #Leadership #AIRecruitment

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Check out the first episode of Balderton Capital's new video series, "What's Next," where deep tech entrepreneurs share their experiences developing innovative technologies that have the potential to impact millions of lives. In the debut episode, James Wise interviews Alex Kendall, founder of Wayve, who recently announced their impressive $1bn Series C fundraise. Don't miss this insightful conversation on the future of tech! #BaldertonCapital #WhatsNext #DeepTech #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #TechLeadership

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LinkedIn Friends – Stephanie Murra Nader and I need your help! Our startup, Ponte, relies very heavily on Meta ads, and on Saturday, ALL of our ads stopped delivering. After trying absolutely everything, we haven’t been able to get support from or get our traffic from Meta nearly close to where it was! If you know anyone at Meta, please tag them or DM me! If you don’t, please help us by liking, commenting, or resharing! Thank you! 💙 Here's the longer version of the story: Ponte helps Hispanic Immigrants in the US find jobs. We find candidates that need our help mainly using Meta. On Saturday, ALL of our ads stopped delivering, and we didn't even receive any message or email regarding this from Meta. We only noticed because we saw a drop in traffic and realized every single ad had stopped delivering. The error message we got says that the type of campaign we have, with the conversations optimization goal, is not allowed in Europe. Our business is not in Europe, we are not in Europe (nor anyone on the team) and our ads only deliver to the US. We’ve been unsuccessful in getting any response from Meta on why this happened or when we’ll be able to turn our ads back on. The only suggestion we got was to try another type of ad, but these are performing terribly, and now we’re getting 20% of the traffic we used to get while spending three times as much money. Alejandra Taboada Paula Acero Botero

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How I Make Trade-Offs With Limited Resources This week, I sat down with my co-founders at PolarGrip. We had a tough conversation about the limitations of choice in a startup. It’s easy to dream big and want to max out every aspect of the product. But when you’re working with a restricted budget, tough decisions have to be made. Some of the key questions we asked ourselves were simple but crucial. -> How do we balance cost with making our product environmentally friendly? -> How do we delegate our finite resources—whether it’s money, time, or manpower? And most importantly, what trade-offs are we willing to make right now? In an ideal world, we’d choose the most sustainable materials, create the perfect product, and hire the best talent. But in a startup, you have to make strategic compromises. -> We realized trying to max out everything simply isn’t realistic in the early stages. -> We face limitations that force us to prioritize what’s most critical. It doesn’t mean we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture. It’s about being smart with the resources we have to get the product to market. Right now, we’re making conscious choices—balancing quality and sustainability within our budget. As we grow, we’ll continue to address the areas where we’ve had to compromise. Question: Have you ever had to make difficult trade-offs in a project? How did you decide what to prioritize?

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"A Tale of Transformation: Boeing and Starbucks’ Turnaround Stories" Boeing and Starbucks each is embarking on journeys of remarkable turnaround, redefining resilience and adaptability in their industries. For Boeing, it was a mission to restore trust and innovation, navigating setbacks to emerge stronger. Meanwhile, Starbucks revitalized its brand and business by reconnecting with its core values and prioritizing customer experience. Both companies faced formidable challenges, yet their stories show how commitment of their CEO to change and strategic vision shall lead to powerful transformations. Their journeys shall remind us that, with the right mindset, even the most daunting obstacles can pave the way for enduring success.

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What happens to your RSU's when you retire? The devil's in the details 👇 Short answer = it depends upon the nature of your retirement. • If going on to a different job or career, you may simply lose your unvested RSUs. • But if you're about to hit "standard retirement age", whether it's 62 or 65, at your company, then you might be able to retain the unvested RSUs and have those as a form of compensation into your retirement. So, get clear what the retirement options are at your company. It will make a big difference if you were to: 1) Retire at 63, and the company says, "Okay, you lose your unvested RSUs". vs. 2) Work an extra year or 2 years to reach retirement age, and then you get to retain those extra RSUs into retirement. Depending upon the level of RSUs that you've been receiving, that could be a quite substantial amount of money that can pay for your lifestyle in the first few years of retirement and postpone pulling against your assets. #retirementplanning #financialadvice #financialadvisor #financialplanning

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One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is to align my career and life decisions with my core values and long-term vision. I made the decision to leave the Air Force to pursue a path that aligns more with my passion for helping and inspiring the next generation. This wasn’t an easy choice, but it was necessary for me to live a life that feels meaningful and rewarding. It’s all about introspection and having a forward-looking perspective. Ask yourself, “Will I be proud of my life’s work when I look back in the future?” Making sure your actions today align with your core values ensures that you’re not just living, but thriving.  Take the time to reflect on what truly matters to you. Align your decisions with your passions and values, and you’ll find that your life becomes richer and more fulfilling. #careeradvice #airforce #pilot #fighterpilot #careertips #podcastclips #viral

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SHRM estimates a bad hire can cost as much as $240,000 - but it’s even higher in PE backed companies. Why? ❌ A bad hire sets a company behind the growth trajectory by 1-2 YEARS ❌ They earn less multiples ❌ The PE sponsor and company suffers reputational damage People come to me when they can’t afford to miss on hire. The senior leader they need is critical to the value creation plan. They’re typically Operations, Finance and Commercial leaders. Everything comes down to PEOPLE + PROCESS. The right WHO who knows the HOW. At ECA each search is carefully staffed with a dedicated team who: ✅ Is led by a PhD researcher ✅ Are experts at game-changing search strategies ✅ Follow a disciplined process We are so confident in our success rate, we guarantee it. Stay tuned for a sneak peek at how we share full-funnel transparency and give you an 80%+ chance of meeting your dream hire in the first 3 weeks of a search.

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One realization we've made at Convoi is if we hear something 50+ times we need to build it for the Utah Startup Community. We've built three things so far, and just about to launch number 4 in a couple of weeks. First, we started Convoi Ventures to bring more capital to the earliest stage of startups. ~2.5 years in, we've backed 40 companies, 2/3 that are pre-revenue and 50% are first-time founders. Second, we started Utah Tech Week to create a grassroots event that will be forever focused on Utah and it's early stage startup community. The first year there was 114 events, and this past January, there were 197 events and 15k attendees. Third, we started a program for early stage founders that we think is going to be the flagship program for early stage founders in Utah. Our alpha program was a big success, and beta this summer will be even better. We'll announce after we're out of beta. :) Fourth, we constantly hear of folks at the largest companies we have in Utah that want to support our early stage startups. We're going to be pretty quiet about this one #IYKYK, but if you're a VP or above at a tech company (public, or Utah based series A/B) company, please DM if you'd like more details. Thank you for letting me interrupt my social media fast for this post. Back in my cave for a couple of months.

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Alex Dichter provided a great overview at the Thayer Ventures Annual Meeting recently about how the industry has evolved over the past 24 years. See below. In 1999, $1B- was made by Delta Air Lines 4% - was the net profit margin in the airline industry 14 - was the average yield per mile for a paid ticket $20M - was the amount one client paid Digitas North America for a CRM 20% - of travelers were willing to spend extra for add-ons 59% - of Americans worried about Y2K $80 - was the average lodging daily rate 184 - was the number of Hyatt hotels in the world In 2023, $5B - was made by Delta Air Lines 3% - was the net profit margin in the airline industry 20 - was the average yield per passenger $0 - is the amount Delta Air Lines paid for personalization directly 53% - of travelers willing to splurge for better experiences 54% - concerned about climate change $155 - is the average daily rate 1376 - was the number of Hyatt hotels in the world Highlighting that: The #airline business is tough and always will be, and the #hotel business is better. Travelers are voting with their feet - they want to transact online and serve themselves and the companies need to get out of their own way to make it easier to do so. Most of the technology to solve the problems in these industries already exist and have been here for years. It's always about people in this industry. #LegendsTravel #ZeroPartyData #TravelDNA #LegendsTravelDNA Legends

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Hot take on a lot of early-stage digital health companies out there: You're not a tech company. Most tech-enabled care companies I've seen over the past two years are only tech-enabled in the sense that they use telehealth as their delivery mechanism for care. There are exceptions to this, of course - companies who build computer vision and applied AI tools to better the doctor-patient experience, companies who build tooling around risk scoring and stratification to enable more personalized medicine, companies who build truly novel intakes to better route patients to the appropriate care, etc. These companies have real technology chops and, if they sell it right to the market, can get credit for this from investors. But if you're truly a telehealth provider, you need to realize now that the goal post has shifted dramatically from 2021 and you're going to be valued at maturity at something like 3x EBITDA. That's profit. Not revenue. Throw a revenue multiple out the window. That's not the world we live in if you're a virtual doctor's office. Think of how that impacts venture math. If you're raising a seed round at $15M post-money (or $12M pre-money), it means you'll have to generate something like $150-200M in annual EBITDA to be a fund returner for your seed investors. Maybe even more with dilution, since telehealth businesses are not traditionally capital efficient and will likely need to raise material additional capital to reach that scale. You need to be ridiculously profitable (probably on $800M-$1B in annual revenue since you're likely going to be a 40% gross margin business). Here's the good news: you can set yourself up well (and probably be a contrarian founder relative to your peers), by talking about EBITDA growth and how you can grow into a fund-returning outcome based on realistic mature market comps. This will stand out for the investors you're pitching, even at the early stage. This is how you can beat the malaise of the tech-enabled care market. Focus on the right metrics and the right type of growth. You don't have to have all the answers (no founder does), but you need to make sure the ship is headed in the right direction. A focus on profitability for "tech-enabled care" (*ahem* telehealth) businesses is a good first step.

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This was me getting schooled by one of the most respected TA leaders on the planet - from a $50B+ company - a few weeks back. 📚 But in the best possible way. 😁 I'd finished walking through BrightHire at a high level and they offered some friendly feedback: "I'm sure you've given this a lot of thought, but..." Uh oh, where was this going? "... when you hear Interview Intelligence platform, I don't know, it doesn't do justice to the whole thing... this is equity, consistency, structure, quality, speed." She nailed it. We're known for "interview intelligence" and AI interview notes, but the most common reaction I get from demos is: "Wow, this is SO much broader." Last Friday it happened again. I was again speaking with one of the sharpest TA leaders around from a >$20B company - he hadn't seen the platform in 6 months. His reaction was similar: "Wow, I’m not usually at a loss for words - this is really impressive. I can’t believe how much you’ve built - this isn’t a product, it’s a platform. This solves a range of problems and use cases." My takeaways: 1) Hugely proud of the amazing BrightHire team and what we've built! 2) We need to 2x down on how we convey our value to the market Being a buyer is hard - you have limited time to understand solutions - and often everything in a category can seem the same from the outside. That means it's on us to step up our game. 👊 Also, we are not the same as everyone else. 🚀

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