NOTION INSIGHTS
Build. Scale. Succeed.
GAME
CHANGERS
THE IMPACT
OF HIRING
AMAZING
PEOPLE
AND HOW TO
HIRE THEM
No4
_

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_
Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is
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Game Changers is
proudly brought to you by:
58
Interview guidelines for Game
Changers
Maddy Cross, Notion
88
Industry viewpoint: The
Theatre of Hiring
Chris Tottman, Notion
94
Industry Perspective: Hiring
and developing the best
Jonno Southam, Amazon
Web Services
100
The cost of hiring Game
Changers and what you should
offer them
Maddy Cross, Notion
102
Top 5 cost considerations when
putting together an offer
Maddy Cross, Notion
114
Industry Perspective
Finding Game Changers at
every stage of the business
Tien Tzuo, Zuora
120
The Game Changer Point of
View
Mns Hultman, QlikTech
8
Game Changers: The impact of
hiring amazing people - and
how to hire them
Maddy Cross, Notion
12
How do we define a
'Game Changer'?
Maddy Cross, Notion
22
Industry viewpoint: 5 things
that changed at Marketo
after hiring Game Changers
Phil Fernandez, Marketo
26
Why is it hard to hire a
Game Changer?
Maddy Cross, Notion
38
Industry viewpoint: Building
relationships between Founders
and Game Changers
Maureen Taylor & Renn Vara,
SNP
42
How to hire a Game Changer
Maddy Cross, Notion
50
Industry viewpoint: The Search
Perspective
Andrew Banks, True Search
GAME
CHANGERS
THE IMPACT
OF HIRING
AMAZING
PEOPLE
- AND HOW
TO HIRE THEM
Maddy Cross
Head of Talent, Notion
At Notion we invest in early stage B2B technology businesses in Europe.
Fundamentally, our focus is on putting our money with Founders who have a technical
edge, or who are pushing the boundaries of nascent technologies. But we also look at
other factors, including the leadership abilities of the Founders and many other 'soft skills'
factors that can be tricky to quantify.
9
8
Notion Insights
Game Changers
CONSISTENTLY THOUGH, WE KNOW TWO THINGS ABOUT
OUR FOUNDERS:

1. We only invest in them if we think they have what it takes
to go on the ten-year journey from $1m$100m ARR.
2. We know that they will rarely, if ever, be able to do
this alone.
Notion has made more than 55 investments in software
businesses, and today has more than 45 companies in the portfolio. In
each case, we invested very early and we have made some exceptional
investment decisions.
But we also pride ourselves in investing far more than just money.
From day one, a key area of focus is how we can support our Founders
in hiring highly experienced and knowledgeable people to go on their
extraordinary journey with them.
When Founders make a C-Level hire, they're not just looking for
employees but for business partners who'll drop everything to help,
travel frequently and when it's inconvenient, who'll relocate from San
Francisco to Spain and who'll - more often than not - have made the
same journey with other Founders on a number of occasions before.
Founders are not looking for an employee, they are looking for a
"Game Changer"; someone who will give them the headspace to be CEO
without distraction, someone who will not be phased by significant
setbacks, someone who will drive 10x the revenue in their first year on
the job and someone who, ultimately, will be a huge contributing factor
to the success of the business.
"You're not looking for someone to work for you You're looking for
someone you'll be sitting on a beach with in 20 years' time, laughing about
some of the ludicrous things you did to get a deal done" - Chris Tottman
In our experience, it's a consistent factor that every Founder needs
great people at the helm with them, and every Founder experiences
struggles in hiring those people.
THIS ISN'T A PLAYBOOK ON 'HOW TO FIND A GAME
CHANGER' - IT'S MORE A COLLECTION OF LEARNT
WISDOM FROM THE EXPERIENCES OF THE FOUNDERS
WE'RE INVESTED IN AND THE PEOPLE IN OUR NETWORK.
It's an overview of the things we've learnt that will, with luck, help
Founders learn what to look for and what to expect from their first big
hire; it should provide reassurance that pretty much everyone finds it
hard to hire a Game Changer. Hiring a Game Changer is an endeavour
that, while challenging, can ultimately prove invaluable.
'YOU'RE NOT LOOKING FOR SOMEONE
TO WORK FOR YOU YOU'RE
LOOKING FOR SOMEONE YOU'LL
BE SITTING ON A BEACH WITH IN
20 YEARS' TIME, LAUGHING ABOUT
SOME OF THE LUDICROUS THINGS
YOU DID TO GET A DEAL DONE'
- CHRIS TOTTMAN, NOTION
11
Game Changers
10
Notion Insights
HOW DO
WE DEFINE
A 'GAME
CHANGER'?
Google tells us that the definition of a 'Game Changer' is "an event,
idea, or procedure that affects a significant shift in the current way of
doing or thinking about something".
We're inclined to agree, except we think it should read "an event,
idea, procedure or person that effects a significant shift in the current
way of doing or thinking about something".
Game Changers are people who have an overwhelmingly positive
impact on your business.
They're people with years of functional and sector expertise who
help you through tough situations without panic and who play an
imperative role in the journey. You cannot get from $0-$100m without
them.
They are people who - when you look back on the business in ten
years' time - will make you think "I could not have achieved what I
achieved if they had not been there".
an event, idea, or procedure that effects a significant shift
in the current way of doing or thinking about something.
"a potential Game Changer that could revitalize the entire
US aerospace industry"
noun
Dictionary
About 2,530,000 results (0.44 seconds)
game changer
GAME CHANGERS ARE PEOPLE
WHO HAVE AN OVERWHELMINGLY
POSITIVE IMPACT ON YOUR BUSINESS
define: game changer
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Images
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13
Game Changers
12
Notion Insights
WHY YOU
SHOULD
HIRE A GAME
CHANGER
There's a natural inclination from most Founders to think "we
don't need external help". You might not need it, but it can certainly be
very positive to bring Game Changers on-board for both tangible and
intangible reasons.
THE TANGIBLE BENEFITS OF HIRING A GAME CHANGER

When Game Changers join businesses there is invariably an
almost immediate step change in one or more of the key metrics of
performance.
Whether it's revenues increasing dramatically, staff churn
decreasing suddenly, measures of staff contentment and productivity
hitting the ceiling, customer satisfaction going green, or product delivery
speeding up dramatically, there will be a noticeable improvement in a
significant proportion of the business.
Across the Notion portfolio, there are a number of instances of this
that confirmed the 'game changing' status of new exec hires
THERE IS INVARIABLY AN
ALMOST IMMEDIATE STEP CHANGE
IN ONE OR MORE OF THE KEY
METRICS OF PERFORMANCE
15
Game Changers
14
Notion Insights
THE
TANGIBLE
BENEFITS
OF HIRING
A GAME
CHANGER
WHAT ARE THE MEASURABLE
INDICATIONS THAT A GAME CHANGER
HAS JOINED YOUR BUSINESS?
OCT
Q3 2016
Q1 2017
Q2 2017
Q3 2017
Q4 2017
JUNE
NOV
JULY
FEB
AUG
MAR
SEPT
APR
OCT
MAY
NOV DEC
US$0
US$0
US$750,000
US$7,500
US$1,500,000
US$15,000
US$2,250,000
US$22,500
US$3,000,000
US$30,000
1,000% GROWTH
Annual Recurring Revenue vs Time
Average Contract Value
700% GROWTH
GAME
CHANGER
JOINED
GAME
CHANGER
JOINED
DEC
JAN
Q4 2016
All of the following graphs show real data that has been anonymised.
17
Game Changers
16
Notion Insights
-87
-40
-52
2016
2017
96
97
96
I'm happy on my team
I work well with my manager
*All data is real, anonymised data from Notion-backed businesses
2017
2016
0%
25%
50%
75%
100%
Staff churn reducing profoundly following two
senior hires:
Culture Amp statistics that measure different
dimensions of staff contentment
STAFF CHURN ON TEAM 'A'
STAFF CONTENTMENT SURVEY
I would recommend this company as a great place to work
GAME
CHANGER
JOINED
GAME CHANGERS DON'T ONLY IMPROVE THE
FINANCIAL METRICS...
THEY ALSO HAVE A MEASURABLE, POSITIVE
AFFECT ON THE TEAM DYNAMICS...
19
Game Changers
18
Notion Insights
The intangible benefits are, naturally, harder to define. They include
a sense of confidence in the ability to exit for a huge valuation, a greater
sense of enjoyment in the day-to-day and a learning experience like no
other.
Thoughts from the Founders who've made Game Changing hires
summarise most accurately the intangible benefits
"I feel really lucky to have found such great people to work with."
- Nino d'Adhemar, Apperio
"Game Changers are helpful in early-stage businesses when
they're collaborators rather than leaders. And to collaborate, the
ability to discuss the most pressing issues is absolutely key."
- Renn Vara and Maureen Taylor, SNP Communications
"Until Series A we were a band of pirates. Then a Game
Changer came aboard and we started to become a Navy."
- Vasco Pedro, Unbabel
"A real Game Changer is someone who can
change the attitude of the Founder."
- Mike Laven, Currencycloud
"Was there a step change in my ambition, when I brought
in a Game Changer? No. But there was a definite step
change in my confidence that we'd succeed."
- Phil Fernandez, Marketo
THE
INTANGIBLE
BENEFITS
OF HIRING
A GAME
CHANGER
GAME CHANGERS ARE PEOPLE
WHO HAVE AN OVERWHELMINGLY
POSITIVE IMPACT ON YOUR BUSINESS
21
Game Changers
20
Notion Insights
_
1
I WASN'T ALWAYS ON CALL ANYMORE
Hiring the first Game Changing CXO was a big
change for me, and for Marketo.
For the first time at Marketo, I wasn't always on
call. Within about a week I'd let go of every part of
the function that the Game Changer was running;
he just had this amazing ability to say 'I've got this'
and then immediately talk about his strategy and
start the execution part of it.
Suddenly I wasn't the 'go to' guy for everything,
because the Game Changer knew far more about his
area of expertise than I did, and he had the general
management skills to help me out across the whole
company. If something major came up, there was
someone else who could handle it.
Phil founded Marketo in 2006 with Jon Miller and David Morandi. They set out with
the aim of building a new kind of application to let marketing professionals contribute to
revenue and measure their success.
Marketo went public in May 2013 at a valuation in excess of $700m before being
acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $1.8 billion in 2016.
INDUSTRY
VIEWPOINT
5 THINGS
THAT
CHANGED
AT MARKETO
AFTER
HIRING GAME
CHANGERS
Phil Fernandez
- Founder Marketo
23
Game Changers
22
Notion Insights
_
3
I HAD TO LEARN HOW TO BE A CEO
A founding tech CEO has the opportunity to
engage in every area in the business, and in the
early stages of Marketo, I did just that. But in reality,
that just means that you're spread like peanut butter
which isn't ideal for the company or the culture as
the business grows.
We were growing at a significant rate, so there
was always plenty to do and I enjoyed being in the
detail of it all. I'm naturally curious so I wanted to
understand all elements of the business. But once
the company reaches any meaningful size, the CEO
needs to be setting strategy and not wading into
every detail.
Bringing a Game Changer into the business
meant that I could let go of a large proportion of the
detail and really be the CEO. But it wasn't easy - it
took me months to learn how to step back and start
to be a strategic CEO.
I had to learn how to delegate more and more,
and how to get the information I needed without
going into every detail. When I hired a Game
Changer, they took care of much of this detail so I
had to learn how to make strategic decisions from
a higher level.
There was a very natural tension between
needing to know everything and really not needing
to know everything. The Game Changer certainly
helped me reach the right balance of detailed
knowledge, which allowed me to step up into being
a 'true' CEO.
_
4
THE CULTURE HAD TO BE REWIRED
_
5
OUR AMBITION DIDN'T CHANGE, BUT OUR
BELIEF IN GETTING THERE DID
Until we hired a Game Changer, there was an
idea that all roads led to me. A kind of culture that
'if there's something big happening, then you go to
Phil'. When we hired a Game Changer, not all roads
led to me anymore and as a result, the culture had
to relearn itself.
We had to be really explicit about the change
- we had to make sure everyone knew that there
were more leaders in the business than just me.
One of the really positive things to come from it
was that there was a drastic rethink for everyone in
terms of how independent they could be.
I've always thought it was incredibly important
to devolve power as a way of empowering people
and making them feel confident that they can
make their own decisions. Before we hired a Game
Changer there was an over reliance on getting my
opinion; the notion of 'how do you really devolve
power as the business goes from 10 to 100 people' is
really very hard and also very important.
When we hired a Game Changer and all
roads stopped leading to me, it opened up a way of
thinking independently; it was reassurance that my
opinion wasn't the only one and that people could
make decisions and get advice from many other
people in the business.
We'd always set out to build a huge business,
even in spite of the massive challenge and the
frequency with which early stage businesses don't
succeed. You have to think like this, or you won't
survive.
So, when we started hiring Game Changers this
ambition didn't really change. We'd set out to build
a multi-billion dollar company and that idea never
wavered, because we'd set our sights very high.
There was, however, a huge step change in the
belief that we would have a chance of getting there.
We hired a CXO from a major international
public company. He'd had startup experience and
a drive to build something from the beginning, but
he was leaving behind a global team and millions
of dollars of budget to join us. So when he arrived
at Marketo there was a rippling effect around the
business of 'This guy wants to leave all of that
behind and join us? He must really think we're on
to something'.
Seeing an executive of that profile choose to
come to Marketo when it was still at a very early
stage gave inspiration to the whole company that
the vision was real, and that what we wanted to
achieve was entirely possible.
_
2
I HAD COMPLETE TRUST IN SOMEONE ELSE
The first time I knew I could completely trust
a Game Changer was when I was interviewing a
candidate for a senior role at Marketo. Everyone at
the company knew that when I was interviewing
someone I didn't want to be interrupted; the
interview process should be seamless and it's not
fair to the candidate to be de-prioritised, even for a
short period.
The Game Changer interrupted an interview
I was conducting, but his judgment was good and
I knew the reason for the interruption would be
warranted. In short, he wanted to let me know that
there was a possibility of a major security breach but
that he was handling it, and I should go back to the
interview. In that moment I realised that I trusted
him completely (NB it later transpired that there
had been no breach).
His ability to interrupt me without undue
disturbance, get my attention onto something else
for a brief moment, and then let me get back to the
interview knowing that the issue was being handled
was amazing. It was incredible to see how he was
able to exercise perfect judgement of the situation.
For me, it was a whole new level of relationship.
I trusted him completely to be calm under fire and
make the right kind of judgement calls, even in
moments of company-defining crisis.
25
24
Notion Insights
Game Changers

IF IT'S POSSIBLE TO HIRE SOMEONE WHO'LL MAKE THE
JOURNEY FROM $0-$100M SIGNIFICANTLY EASIER, WHY
ISN'T EVERYONE DOING IT ALL OF THE TIME?
A big part of what we do at Notion is working with Founders to
guide them through the process of making their first external Game
Changing hire. Usually this is a Chief Revenue Officer, but sometimes
it's a CTO, COO or CFO.
We're not experts in psychology or academics who've extensively
studied the difficulties in hiring but, from a number of conversations
with Founders who're on the brink of adding the first non-Founder
to the senior team, we've accumulated some knowledge around the
theme "why making the first big hire is so hard".
There are the usual concerns including "what will this person
actually be doing?" and "can we afford such a senior person?". But
alongside those difficulties, there are a number of common themes
that crop up that aren't widely spoken about, so Founders often think
they're alone in their quandaries.

The common concerns are:

What if I hire a Game Changer and they figure out that I don't
know what I'm doing?
What if I relocate a Game Changer from San Francisco to London,
they bring their spouse and kids and pets and thenI can't provide
a great work environment for them?

How much will I need to pay this person, and why do Search Firms
cost so much?
What if I straight-up just make a bad decision and hire someone
who can't do the job?
What if I hire this person and they change everything for the
worse?

To be concise, these concerns are:


Imposter Syndrome

Pre-emptive guilt

Cost versus investment

Hiring the wrong person

Culture and values
WHY IS IT
HARD TO
HIRE A GAME
CHANGER?
Maddy Cross
Head of Talent, Notion
27
26
Notion Insights
Game Changers

IM
PO
ST
E
R

S
Y
N
D
RO
M
E IMPOSTER
SYNDROME
There's a worry, before even starting the hiring process, that a
new C-Level hire will join the business and very quickly notice that
the Founder is mashing their way through the scaling process without
being totally sure of what they're doing.
Every Founder feels like this at some point - even the ones who
had never felt it in their lives before. It's called Imposter Syndrome.

"I thought Imposter Syndrome was a made-up thing - I'd never felt it
before and I didn't think it was real. And then we hired someone amazing
and I spent a few weeks thinking 'this guy is doing in one day what would've
taken me months... why am I so rubbish?' After a few weeks though, I
realised that that was exactly why we'd hired him." - CEO/Founder of a
Notion-backed business
IMPOSTER SYNDROME IN THIS CONTEXT
IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

On the one hand, Founders don't want to experience Imposter
Syndrome because it feels uncomfortable on a number of levels. "What
if I get found out?", "What if they notice a terrible mistake I've made that
they might expose before I can fix it?", "What if my direct reports see the
new person do an amazing job and think I'm just a con artist?" and so on.
Founders often haven't experienced this so they don't really know
what to 'do' with it, or how to get past it, and it doesn't feel nice to be in
the midst of it.
On the other hand, experiencing Imposter Syndrome is the one of
the key indicators of hiring a Game Changer.
Game Changers are people with deep sector expertise and - more
often than not - a significant number of years of experience under their
belts. They actively should know more than the Founder who's hiring
them in at least one area of the business. That's why they're expensive,
it's how they'll shift the dial on your business, and it absolutely does not
mean that they'll pick holes in the prior mistakes of the Founder (if they
find holes, they'll help to fix them).
If a Founder isn't worried about being "found out" by a Game
Changer that they're going to hire, then it's likely that they aren't
setting their sights high enough, and experiencing it shows an active
interest in the ability to learn and grow as a Founder.
EXPERIENCING IMPOSTER SYNDROME IS THE ONE OF
THE KEY INDICATORS OF HIRING A GAME CHANGER.
"THE WHOLE PROBLEM WITH
THE WORLD IS THAT FOOLS AND
FANATICS ARE ALWAYS SO CERTAIN
OF THEMSELVES, AND WISER
PEOPLE SO FULL OF DOUBTS."
- BERTRAND RUSSELL
29
Game Changers
28
Notion Insights

The real Game Changers don't take career decisions lightly:
making considered decisions is usually what got them where they
are in the first place. They'll want to carry out due diligence, consider
their options (of which there will likely be many) and, often, they will
have moved internationally in the past for their careers so they'll
be 100% aware of the pros and cons before they even start thinking
about it.

"Pay a lot of attention to the questions that candidates ask at
interview. If they're asking strategic, probing questions like 'What is
the number one challenge facing the business right now' or 'What
does the Founder struggle with the most' then they'll be carefully
considering the negative and positives aspects of the role' - Andrew
Banks, True Search

In the interview process it's absolutely OK to be upfront about
the negative aspects of the job and the company. Letting the candidate
know that the runway is only six months, or that they're likely to be
superseded by someone in a year or two (and that they'll be involved
in the hiring process) is really the only way to navigate around this.
And if they decide the job isn't for them, then they weren't the right
person in the first place.
FOR ANY GAME CHANGER WHO'S GOING TO
TAKE A ROLE IN YOUR BUSINESS IT ISN'T A
RISK FOR THEM, IT'S A LEAP OF FAITH BECAUSE
THEY'LL BACK THEMSELVES TO BE PIVOTAL IN
MAKING THE WHOLE BUSINESS SUCCEED.
SOME OF THE THINGS THAT WE'VE
HEARD FROM FOUNDERS...

"Relocating this guy from San Francisco is going to be a pretty big
dealHe's got kids and a wife who has a career that she doesn't want
to give up"

"We're a super early-stage business and the candidates we're looking
at have run massive corporates Will there be enough for them to do?"

"I'm not sure why this guy would want to come and work for a
business like ours, with limited Product-Market Fit and really not
much revenue"

"I'm worried about hiring this person because - in a year or two - I'll
need to supersede them with someone who has a US network and
they might feel like they don't have a place in the business any more"

Broadly, this kind of sentiment can be summarised as guilt. It's
pre-emptive guilt, rather than current guilt. Founders are worried that
they'll oversell the opportunity or that, once the hire has been made
and the person has relocated, they'll run out of money and won't be able
to fulfil the role, or the remit won't be big enough or any number of
other things.
The main thing to note here is that it's the responsibility of the
Game Changer to address these concerns, it's not the responsibility of
the Founder. The responsibility of the Founder is to be entirely honest
about all of the immediate concerns and challenges in the business.
PREEMPTIVE
GUILT
FOR ANY GAME CHANGER WHO'S
GOING TO TAKE A ROLE IN YOUR
BUSINESS... IT ISN'T A RISK FOR
THEM, IT'S A LEAP OF FAITH
31
Game Changers
30
Notion Insights

We invest money with the expectation and hope of achieving a
massive multiple. We are minority investors, so the responsibility of
building and growing the business sits with the Founder; we have
regular engagement, typically a board seat and a strong relationship,
and we trust that they will spend the money we invest wisely; after all,
Founders are often the largest shareholders so our goals are aligned.
Because the businesses we invest in spend the majority of their
money on people (in terms of salaries), the 'ROI' decisions are - in the
majority - focused on hiring.
The decision to spend money on a Game Changer and an
accompanying search firm is an ROI decision, not a liability as per
standard accounting process and balance sheets.

IT SHOULD THEREFORE BE ASSESSED
AS ANY INVESTMENT:

If you spend 50k+ with a search firm, precisely what services
will they provide, how much of your time will it save (i.e. what's the
opportunity cost), who will they find that you are unlikely to find, and
will they do a better job of persuading amazing candidates to speak to
you than you can do yourself?
If you spend 150k+ on the basic salary of a CXO, what is your
expectation for their performance based on their previous roles and
how can they provide evidence that they will achieve better results in
your business?
Cost is the most obvious of all of the concerns, largely because it's
very unemotional, entirely measurable and something that's usually at
the front of the mind of the Founder at all times because of a general
business need to be mindful of expenditure.
Founders need to consider the compensation package for the Game
Changer as well as the cost of the search firm involved in finding them.
The mechanics of the costs are covered later, so for the moment
we're going to focus on the higher level concerns about the cost.
Notion is in the rare position as a VC that we do not invest in any
businesses with value tied up in physical goods, stock or real estate. The
businesses we invest in are software businesses, so the most significant
cost is people.
CO$T
NOTION IS IN THE RARE POSITION
AS A VC THAT WE DO NOT INVEST
IN ANY BUSINESSES WITH VALUE
TIED UP IN PHYSICAL GOODS,
STOCK OR REAL ESTATE
22.6%
Other costs
INVESTORS IN NOTION
Decides which VC funds to invest in
NOTION
Decides which startups to invest in
FOUNDERS
Decides which people to hire
Returns to Investors in Notion
77.4%
Staff costs
AVERAGE % OF STAFF COSTS VS OTHER COSTS
IN NOTION PORTFOLIO COMPANIES
THE MOVEMENT OF ROI RESPONSIBILITY
WITHIN VC
33
Game Changers
32
Notion Insights

Broadly, this concern can be split into two parts: poor interview
techniques and bad luck.

INTERVIEW TECHNIQUES

There's a good reason that Amazon, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs
and Google (the list goes on) have had great performance - they really,
really test their interview candidates to make sure they're the right fit.
They don't substitute a series of informal meetings and coffees for a
structured interview process, and neither should startups.
This isn't to say that you should find the time and the resource to
run a ten-round interview process with a full-day assessment centre,
but you should think about how you can structure the process so that
it's measurable and aligned with interests of the business you're hiring
for.
There's a chapter in this Notion Insight piece - Guide to Interviewing
Game Changers - that's a step-by-step guide to interviewing C-Level
candidates, which will take a lot of the thought process out of how to
approach it.

BAD LUCK

Pretty much all Executive Search firms will rerun searches if the
person who took the job leaves within a year.
This is largely because bad luck can play a part in hiring a
candidate. The candidate's spouse may decide to take a job elsewhere
that requires them to relocate and leave the role at your business, they
may be offered an opportunity elsewhere that you can't match, or they
might just decide they want something different out of their career.
Some of the best search firms that are known to Notion have -
anecdotally - put a number of about 20% of searches being redone
after the candidate has started the job. In other words, even if you do
everything right, the candidate has a 20% chance of leaving the role in
the first year because of circumstances that are likely to be outside of
your control.
Plenty of - if not all - very successful businesses have fallen into
that 20% at some point. There's often nothing you can do about it if you
fall into that category except to be aware that it happens to everyone,
you should restart the search as soon as possible and there are far
worse things that can happen in business (and in life, too).
HIRING THE
WRONG
PERSON
"A CHAT OVER TEA AND BISCUITS
IS NOT AN INTERVIEW PROCESS"
- JONNO SOUTHAM

SENIOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT,
VENTURE CAPITAL AT
AMAZON WEB SERVICES
35
Game Changers
34
Notion Insights

First of all What is the culture of your business? What are your
values? It should be reasonably easy to come to general consensus
among the Founders on the overall culture and values, but the act of
writing it down and getting everyone to agree on it can be a lot more
arduous, both in a time-consuming and emotional way.
It can also be tricky to align the culture and values with the
outputs, and what you want the company to be rather than what it
actually is at present.
BUT IT'S VITAL TO DO THIS WORK BEFORE YOU
START LOOKING FOR THE FIRST BIG HIRE. HOW CAN
YOU MEASURE THEM AGAINST AN UNKNOWN?
The founding team should be clear on three to five values that are
agreed and implemented, and the interviewing of C-Level candidates
should use these values to align everyone in the process.
Exactly how to land on what your values are is another topic for
another time because it's lengthy, nuanced and tricky to get right but
once you've decided what the values are, finding a Game Changer
who has a very similar outlook should form part of the interview
process as outlined in the Guide to Interviewing Game Changers in
this Insight piece.
CULTURAL FIT
HOW DO WE
KNOW IF
THEY'LL FIT
WITH OUR
CULTURE?
WHAT IS THE CULTURE OF YOUR
BUSINESS? WHAT ARE YOUR VALUES?
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INDUSTRY
VIEWPOINT:
BUILDING RE-
LATIONSHIPS
BETWEEN
FOUNDERS
AND GAME
CHANGERS
Maureen Taylor & Renn Vara
Founders, SNP Communications
Renn and Maureen are the co-founders of SNP Communications. The company
provides content, coaching and creative services to the leaders of some of the world's most
successful businesses including Airbnb, Spotify and Transferwise.
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_
They started SNP in 1992, so they've seen multiple incarnations
of the global tech industry, positive and negative, and apply this
knowledge to new Founders and early stage ventures as well as more
established tech companies.
One of the areas they've had a load of experience with, and
exposure to, is keeping the positive dynamic of founding teams together
when new execs are hired.
AN EARLY-STAGE BUSINESS ISN'T JUST A
BUSINESS, IT'S A PERSONAL CHALLENGE

As a result, an early-stage business is usually an all-encompassing
affair for the Founders and often comes with great sacrifice.
So it's understandable that when a Founder brings a Game
Changer into the fold, it can be tricky to adjust and make the most of
the upside: someone with raw enthusiasm and exceptional levels of
intrinsic motivation, alongside someone with extensive experience,
sector knowledge and drive to succeed.
The first thing that Renn and Maureen noted is that, as a Founder,
you have a responsibility towards self-care. No one else is going to take
care of you, and you can't take care of your team if you're not taking
care of yourself first. This is the most fundamental of all Founder/Game
Changer relationships: each person needs to be kind to themselves first
and make decisions that serve them.
In practical terms this translates to a number of things, including
being honest with yourself and the people around you about what you
want, understanding your intrinsic motivations and drivers and trying
to service them wherever possible and, perhaps most importantly,
being kind to yourself when you can't figure out what to do - no one
can know everything, and no one can see clearly over the horizon.
Once this part is taken care of, it's about finding the balance
between the Founder and Game Changer that allows the qualities of
each to flourish.

BEING A FOUNDER OF A COMPANY IS A FACT. BEING
AN EMPLOYEE OF A COMPANY IS A POSITION

The Game Changer needs to respect the commitment that has
been made by the Founder, and navigate around that.
One of the clearest examples of this is the ability to give choices
rather than saying no. If a Founder wants to take a direction or build
a product that the Game Changer thinks is high-risk, it's the Game
Changer's responsibility to use their experience and knowledge to
guide the Founder through the potential outcomes rather than saying
'no' and risking damaging the enthusiasm, drive and vision of the
Founder.
For example, a Founder wants to include "Deliver product feature
A" that the Game Changer doesn't agree with. The Game Changers
responds with "OK, sure, but I think it's worth considering the risks
of taking that decision".

DISCUSSION RATHER THAN DIRECTION IS KEY

Game Changers and Founders work best together when they're
great at communicating with one another. It can be a tendency of
very experienced business leaders to be directive - they've spent the
majority of their careers in corporates, learning how to direct other
people, so it makes sense.
But the relationship between Founders and Game Changers isn't
directive. Game Changers are helpful in early-stage businesses when
they're collaborators rather than leaders. And to collaborate, the ability
to discuss the most pressing issues is absolutely key.
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Now that we're at the point of understanding the huge impact that a
Game Changer can have on your business and how to get around the
barriers to hiring one, we need to look at how to hire one.
_
1
WHERE ARE THE GAPS IN YOUR EXISTING
LEADERSHIP TEAM?
_
2
BRING IN A SEARCH FIRM TO FIND CANDIDATES WHO
CAN FILL IN THOSE GAPS
_
3
INTERVIEW CANDIDATES TO DECIDE ON WHO YOUR
GAME CHANGER IS...
HOW TO
HIRE A GAME
CHANGER
THE FIRST STEP IN THE PROCESS IS TO
UNDERSTAND WHERE THE DEBTS AND THE GAPS
ARE IN YOUR EXISTING LEADERSHIP TEAM
Maddy Cross
Head of Talent, Notion
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HOW DO YOU, AS A FOUNDER, KNOW WHERE
TO START WITH YOUR FIRST SIGNIFICANT
GAME CHANGING HIRE?

START WITH LOOKING AT THE LEADERSHIP
DEBT AND GAP, TO SEE WHERE
THE WEAK SPOTS ARE
1
LEADERSHIP
THE DEBT
AND THE GAP
LEADERSHIP DEBT
Leadership Debt is a measure of the ability to execute. It's the debt
between getting things done competently and getting things done at
a speed and quality that'll take you from $10 to $100m ARR in six to
ten years.
The Leadership Debt is largely about the stretch of the individual:
is your CMO able to amp up their activity to capture a billion-dollar
category while keeping the plates of sales leads and digital marketing
campaigns (and everything else) spinning? When the Founder tells
you she's hiring a CRO and pushing the Go-To-Market, does she do
it? Debt can be measured in the style of NPS: "What do you score this
person from 0 to 10?", within the context of the challenges facing the
firm for the next two years. How well do you rate each of your team
in terms of their ability to deliver on the current plan? What about the
following 2-3 years?
Debt: Ability to execute
Founder
CPO
CEO COO
CFO
Chair
Gap: Spaces in the skill set
Debt
CRO
CTO
CMO
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"THE INCREASINGLY FAST-MOVING AND
COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT WE [FACE] IN THE
21ST CENTURY DEMANDS MORE LEADERSHIP
FROM MORE PEOPLE TO MAKE ENTERPRISES
PROSPER"

- JOHN P KOTTER, EMERITUS PROFESSOR,
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL
LEADERSHIP GAP
Leadership Gap is a measure of competency blind spots. Which
elements of the org chart have world-class talent, and which don't?
Does your CPO have amazing abilities to understand customer needs
but struggles with prioritisation? Even more obviously, are you simply
missing a CPO and your CTO/CEO/COO can't cover the product needs?
Should we bring in a chairperson?
The gap is a question of the individual and the team combined,
which makes it harder to measure than debt, but if you can spend some
time reviewing both dimensions of the debt vs gap structure you'll end
up with a highly functioning C-Level team that - ultimately - allows you
to get on and do the job of the CEO without the distraction of specific
functional issues.
CRO
Gap
Founder
CTO
CEO COO
CMO
CFO
Chair
Debt: Ability to execute
Gap: Spaces in the skill set
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THREE REASONS THAT IT'S WORTH WORKING WITH AN
EXECUTIVE SEARCH FIRM
_
1
OPPORTUNITY COST
It's easy to lose hours in LinkedIn looking for candidates, if you haven't
done it before and you don't know the process for mapping the market.
Search firms spend hundreds of hours looking for, vetting and short-
listing candidates, not to mention negotiating the offer and dealing
with a potential candidate relocation. Spend that time doing your job as
Founder/CEO, rather than trying your hand at Executive Search.
_
2
FULL MARKET
SEARCH
Really great search firms have a global view of the talent market; they
don't tend to miss great candidates who are hidden out of view, so you
can ensure that the short-list includes everyone who's in the market
for a new role and who - more importantly - will add great value to
your business. You'll be sure that the candidate you hire was the best in
market, rather than "someone we found on LinkedIn who looked OK".
_
3
CANDIDATE ATTRACTION
If you approach a candidate directly, they'll have the conversation on
the basis that they'll only be looking at one role at one company. If a
search firm approaches them, it can be a more interesting proposition;
the search firm can sell your business from an unbiased point of view
as well as giving the candidate a full overview of the suitability of the
role in comparison to other open roles.
2
BRING IN AN
EXECUTIVE
SEARCH
FIRM TO
HELP YOU
FIND GAME
CHANGING
CANDIDATES
WE'VE WORKED WITH SOME WORLD-CLASS
EXECUTIVE SEARCH FIRMS AND KNOW THAT
FINDING THE RIGHT ONE WILL NOT ONLY TAKE
THE PAIN OUT OF THE SEARCH PROCESS, BUT
WILL GIVE YOU A NEW OUTLOOK ON THE
CALIBRE OF CANDIDATES THAT ARE IN-MARKET
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THE
SEARCH
PERSPECTIVE
Andrew is the Managing Director of True Search for their International business,
outside of the US.
Having worked with clients from early stage to pre-IPO appointments, his knowledge
with private companies of what it takes to hire a Game Changer is detailed and nuanced.
His 15 years of search experience have given him not only a clear idea of what Game
Changers should bring to the table but, more so, an understanding of what it takes for
Founders to get the most out of the search process, resulting in a hire than can truly meet
the growth expectations set by the business at hand.
Interview with Andrew Banks
Managing Director, True Search
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GAME CHANGERS ALWAYS DELIVER
They have a responsibility to the Board, to the internal stakeholders,
to their direct reports and to their investors, and the common theme
amongst Game Changing people is that their ability to deliver is second
to none.
If you think about the behaviour of Founders as being akin to the
leader of a family unit, or the leader of a tribe, they need support and
reliability. Game Changers can reinforce this and, in doing so, reinforce
the confidence of the founder.
...BUT THERE CAN BE INITIAL DIFFICULTIES
On the negative side, Founders often experience concerns with
making their first very senior, CXO hire: 'How will I handle this
person?', 'Can I manage someone of that gravitas?'
To the founder, it can feel like they're going to pay for a resource
that they aren't yet ready for. CXO hires come with a cost that is usually
significant to the early stage business, so Founders want to optimise
that investment which can be tricky when work flows are uncertain
and when they feel that they don't have enough functional expertise to
get the most out of the new hire.
They may have a vision for where they want to go, but it's difficult
to know what to expect with a new hire, what is realistic to achieve
and within what period, without having that functional background
themselves.
ALIGNING CONTEXTS IS ESSENTIAL TO AVOID FRICTION
Before you make a decision on a Game Changing hire, you need
to be clear on where your business is in the growth cycle. If you meet
an impressive candidate with years of experience at a corporate, their
skills won't necessarily align with an early stage, high growth business,
no matter how talented they are at running global teams or solving
complex, high value problems.
You have to be clear about aligning contexts - if someone is a 'big
budget' person, don't put them in a startup, and vice versa. People
who're in the '$0-10m ARR' category are as impressive - if not more so -
than people who've come from a big name corporate, but in a different
way. Try to avoid vanity hires - people who've got impressive brand
names on their CV, but who don't necessarily have the skill sets &
attributes for getting from $0 to $10m.
HIRING A GAME CHANGER IS A COMPLEX BUSINESS
DECISION THAT SHOULD BE QUANTIFIABLE AND
MEASURABLE
There's a school of thought around hiring that it's an art rather
than a science, and that it should be led by a gut feeling rather than data.
We advise strongly against this because it leaves a lot to chance;
hiring a Game Changer inevitably means deploying a large amount of
cash so it should be viewed as an ROI decision in the same way that
tech, marketing or product decisions are.
With Founders who haven't made significant CXO hires in the
past, we try to work through the outcomes with them before we do
anything else. We'll quantify the opportunity cost of not hiring a Game
Changer and look at the necessity and urgency of making a CXO hire
before we go any further in the search process.
SIMILAR
PRINCIPLES APPLY WHEN ASSESSING
CANDIDATES. IT SHOULD BE EVIDENCE BASED, RATHER
THAN BASED SOLELY IN CONVERSATION
Ideally the interview process will include the task of getting them
to solve a problem within their functional expertise that you can't
solve. You shouldn't expect a final outcome from this exercise, but
understanding how the candidate thinks and approaches problems and
data sets, and how they interact with you and the team is vital to the
hiring decision; Founders need to know if the candidate can meet their
expectations on how to approach problems before they go any further
in the hiring process. Stakeholder confidence will increase with more
validation.
You also need to assess the quantifiable track record of the
candidates - have they been through the same phase or transformation
that your business is going through, what's the evidence that they
actively contributed to a successful outcome, and how does that
translate to the specifics of your company? This requires not only
getting clear about the metrics of their past performance, but also
getting clear about the metrics of your future performance and the
roadblocks that you'll need to overcome.
You really have to look at candidates and think 'is this the person
who'll take us from $10-20m, or wherever your business is currently
at. Then you need to look for evidence that they've done this, and
understand the context of how it translates to your immediate
requirements. And then test it.
Does the candidate have a logical career story? It doesn't have to be
perfect - pretty much everyone at CXO level has made a few missteps
along the way - but it needs to be coherent and, ultimately, show a clear
path to where you need them to be to execute on the job at hand.
WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CONTRIBUTIONS THAT SEARCH
FIRMS CAN MAKE TO THE PROCESS OF HIRING A GAME
CHANGER?
1. Defining the sequence of success for your business and turning it
into a compelling story to attract top talent
2. Creating a consistent measurement framework for assessing
candidates and aligning stakeholders
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3. Providing a collaborative tool to integrate the whole process &
make it transparent. Product teams use Atlassian, Marketers use
Mixpanel, and we use Thrive TRM. We're not running global
search processes with a pen and paper - it's a product-based
approach.
4. Having a truly global network of experts and relationships so that
geography is not a barrier to success.
ON A PERSONAL NOTE, FROM ANDREW
I've been working in executive search for almost 15 years, and have
been fortunate to work with some exceptional people in strategically
challenging situations. For me, there are three that stand out as being
not only interesting to work on, but a real pleasure to get to know the
people involved and see a tangible outcome that wouldn't have been
possible without the addition of a Game Changer.
THE FIRST WAS THE CTO OF BETFAIR, TONY MCALISTER
We'd been appointed by David Yu, the CEO at the time, who had
a very clear understanding of the business and where he wanted it
to go. He was looking for people who'd worked in exceptionally high
volume environments because of the nature of the betting industry,
and who could transition Betfair.
I spent some time with him at Betfair to understand the nuances
of the requirement, as well as the culture, and it started to become
apparent that not only did they need someone who had a brilliant
technical mind, but also that they needed someone who could structure
the organisation for high growth and, ultimately an IPO.
We found Tony McAlister, who'd been CIO at Vodafone Live, the
first mobile internet portal launched in the 3G revolution. He was a US
national who'd previously worked with ecommerce pioneer Buy.com.
He had the balance of deep technical understanding, as well as a clear
view of the importance of great management and team mobilisation.
He gave David the headspace to stop thinking about technical
issues, and started shifting the dial on the mobile aspects of the
business, ultimately launching the mobile platform so successfully that
it accounted for 35% of total bets taken, within 3 months of launching.
One board member remarked that the impact of the mobile product
had added several hundred million pounds to the valuation at the IPO.
THE SECOND WAS THE CPO OF PREZI, JIM BANISTER
The brief from the CEO, Peter, was exceptionally culture-led.
Peter had a clear vision of wanting to help people tell their story in
a more compelling way; for him it's a personal mission as well as a
commercial one.
Being based in Budapest, and requiring the candidate to be 100%
aligned with the mission as well as having the technical skill set to fulfil
the deliverables was never going to be easy. So we started by asking
the question 'who uses Prezi more than anyone else?'... Who are the
types of people that love the product and what it stands for? After
a bit of searching through the user base we found Jim who, at the
time, had created more Prezi presentations in business than any other
end consumer. He'd also been one of the Founders of Warner Brothers
online and was transitioning the loyalty products for Tesco. He also
had a background in product gamification which was a critical issue
for users adopting Prezi.
We approached Jim about the Prezi role and he couldn't believe it.
He thought we were joking. For him, it was the dream role - working
on a product that he was a prolific user of, with an altruistic mission
and a commercial backbone. Overall it was exceptionally successful,
both for Jim personally and for Prezi.
LASTLY GM, EMEA OF DATABRICKS
This was a business that was booming in North America with
a new proposition from an established group of Founders. They had
no employees in the EMEA region then, but had business emerging
through inbound demand. The aim wasn't to start small, the aim was
to make an impact from day one in the region. At the time we did the
hire, Databricks was somewhat unknown particularly in Europe and
there was a lot of noise around the business but no real results.
Most companies fail in their first attempt at expanding into
Europe, but for Databricks this was not an option - they needed a
Game Changer with a proven track record.
We hired Dave Wyatt who had done the same thing for
Mulesoft from an early stage, where he had grown into being the
Head of EMEA. Dave was already in a good position so helping him
understand that this was a great opportunity was key. His impact has
been transformative to Databricks Europe; they have significantly
expanded and gained revenue in the region way ahead of expectations.
We've thought about every aspect of hiring CXOs, obsessively,
and we really want to help Founders through the search process
because it's really hard. We take the view that if something is hard
then you have to do it properly.
ANDREW'S FOUR COMMON DIFFICULTIES WHEN HIRING
A GAME CHANGER
1. Accepting that you can't do everything
More often than not, Founders will have pushed through the
seed stages of their businesses by being exceptional generalists
supported by specialists in tech, product and marketing amongst other
functional specialities.
There will always be a pivotal point in a rapidly growing business
when - in the interest of scalability and high growth - the founder
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can't have a strong view on every topic and be involved in every task.
This can get in the way of hiring a Game Changer; the incoming CXO
will inevitably take a significant proportion of the leadership remit,
which requires the founder to let go of at least some of their day-to-day
involvement in the business.
It's a tricky process to let go and it largely involves building trust
with people who're already in the business, and really focussing on
delegating to get a feel for what it's like to not do everything.
Ultimately, though, picking a candidate to be the first highly
influential, Game Changing hire is the litmus test. Meeting an
outstanding candidate with exceptional knowledge will - more often
than not - give the founder the reassurance that they need to not only
accept that they can't do everything but also that they really would
rather not do everything because they know the Game Changer will do
a better job given their functional expertise.
2. Sharing the vision
To be a successful founder, you have to start out with a very clear
vision and be able to tweak and amend that vision as the business
develops and the sector environment changes. It's virtually impossible
to be a successful founder without a comprehensive and progressive
vision.
When it comes to sharing that vision, however, it can be tricky
for the founder to articulate how they see the business in the present
and in the future, from the perspective of the journey to date. The
vision is usually multifaceted, sector specific, and shared amongst all
stakeholders, so it's a complicated thing to deliver to outsiders.
Without being able to articulate the vision, however, the founder
can't create the narrative required to attract the right talent at a senior
level, and retain talent at all levels, so it's critical to get it right.
Founders should try to use their Board members as much as
possible for this, and it's also where a great search firm will step in to
help. The external viewpoint without the day-to-day detail can be vital
to help the founder articulate the journey that they want to go on with
a Game Changer on board, and it can also help to craft a narrative and
frame it in a compelling manner to potential candidates.
3. Understanding the specifics of the role
Knowing exactly what you need the Game Changer to do - and
being able to make the requirement quantifiable - is a critical aspect
of hiring a CXO. Yet around 60% of Founders really struggle to do
this. They'll try to delay writing the job description or will struggle to
write down the exact tasks or responsibilities that they'd like the Game
Changer to take on.
It's entirely understandable that articulating the requirements
of the role is a difficult task. Ultimately, the reason that you want to
bring in an expert at a very senior level is because you don't have the
functional knowledge it requires to really pin down the exact strategy
and associated tasks that need to be executed, and the priority in which
they should be tackled.
But it's an essential part of the hiring process. You - as the founder
- need to be able to articulate the job description so that the team is
aligned and so that you can benchmark each candidate, otherwise you
run the very costly risk of bringing in someone who doesn't share your
expectation of the role. When it comes to the job description, getting it
down in whatever format is progress.
It's incredible how many Founders I have heard say 'I don't know
what to write in the job description' and then gone on to explain,
conversationally, in detail the exact requirements of the role. To
get around this, try saying the requirements outloud, into the voice
recorder on your phone.
4. Assessing candidates without consistency
Founders need to be as clear as possible on how to assess people or
compare candidates. You have to build a measurement framework - it
doesn't need to be a complicated methodology, but it does need to:

-
Put down all of the qualities and experiences required of the
candidate

-
Be in alignment in advance with all of the stakeholders, including
the Board members

- Have a quantifiable outcome and scoring mechanism
IF YOU DON'T HAVE A WAY OF MEASURING CANDIDATES,
YOU CAN'T GET TO A CONCLUSIVE ANSWER WHEN IT
COMES TO PICKING THE MOST SUITABLE PERSON FOR THE
JOB; BY IMPLEMENTING AN ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK
YOU'RE ABLE TO MAKE BETTER DECISIONS AND AVOID
SUBJECTIVE PERSPECTIVES.
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THIS IS A GUIDE RATHER THAN A
COMPREHENSIVE SET OF INSTRUCTIONS;
THERE ARE A NUMBER OF WAYS TO INTERVIEW
CANDIDATES BUT THIS GUIDE IS A WAY OF
APPROACHING IT THAT WE'VE SEEN WORK
VERY WELL IN COVERING THE MAJORITY
OF STEPS REQUIRED FOR YOU TO COME
TO A DECISION ABOUT HIRING A C-LEVEL
CANDIDATE.
INTERVIEW
GUIDELINES
FOR GAME
CHANGERS
Maddy Cross
Head of Talent, Notion
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THERE'S A
NUMBER OF
WAYS TO
INTERVIEW
CANDIDATES
- THIS WAY
WORKS
(1) CAN THEY DO THE JOB? (2) WILL THEY DO THE JOB? (3) DO
YOU WANT THEM TO DO THE JOB? (4) MAKING A DECISION.
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IDEALLY, YOU'LL BE ABLE TO ANSWER THE
QUESTION "CAN THEY DO THE JOB?" BY THE END
OF THE FIRST INTERVIEW.
It should be pretty binary as an output: either you think that they
can do the job or you think that they cannot.
If they can, there will be varying degrees of upside depending
on the candidate but it should be approached as a high-water mark,
where the high-water mark is the minimum requirement of the role.
The candidate has either hit the water mark and gone over it to some
degree in the past, or they have not.
The extent to which they can go over the high-water mark will be
tested later in the process so, for now, it's just a "can they/can't they"
question.
THEORY BEHIND THIS INTERVIEW STAGE
Have they done things in the past that are very similar - or ideally
the same - as what you'll need them to do? Are you convinced by
the detail of their answers and their ability to address difficulties in
achieving the required outcomes? Do they have what we call "repeat
pedigree" of having been there, done that?
To answer these questions, go through every required deliverable
of the role and ask them to explain when they've executed the same
thing before.
HOW DO YOU, AS A FOUNDER, KNOW WHERE
TO START WITH YOUR FIRST SIGNIFICANT
GAME CHANGING HIRE?

START WITH LOOKING AT THE LEADERSHIP
DEBT AND GAP, TO SEE WHERE
THE WEAK SPOTS ARE
(1) CAN
THEY DO
THE JOB?
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_
1
SET UP
Set up the interview, ideally with you - the
Founder - and one or two people from your senior
team. Make sure the same people are on the inter-
view panel for each candidate.
_
3
CAN THEY?
Move to the "Can they do the job?" questions
Have the job description to hand and go
through each "Key Responsibility" one by one. Ask
the candidate to:
Describe a time that they have tackled
something similar
Describe how they would tackle the same
thing at your company
Score them on each answer based on:
Their ability to describe a previous experience,
in detail
Relevance of the description of their past
experience to the current requirement
Quality of their answer to how they would
tackle each responsibility in your business
Acknowledgement of risks and unknowns
_
2
ASK
Ask them some "standard" questions to get
started - there's no need to score the candidate's
answers at this point:
Talk us through your career to date?
What's the been the most challenging part of
your current role?
Broadly speaking, what are you looking to get
out of your next role?
_
4
SCORE
Score all of the candidates and rank them
accordingly - only take those through to the
next round that have high enough scores you're
comfortable with - as a suggestion - an average of
80% as a minimum.
PRACTI-
CALITIES
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_
VANITY
HIRES
Candidates who have worked for big brands or
managed functions in businesses with revenues of
$100m+ may be very compelling but if they have
not done in the past what you require now, they
have no proven track record of being able to do the
job. Managing $100m+ is a very different skill set to
managing $1m.
_
COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE JOB
RESPONSIBILITIES
Make sure to include everything in the "Job
responsibilities" section of the Job Description
that you'll need the candidate to have previous
experience of. For example, if you need them to
help with the next round of venture financing,
make sure it's included as a responsibility, and if you
need them to set up an office in San Francisco, make
sure it's included as a responsibility.
_
STRETCH
HIRES
Taking a punt on a candidate who's high
potential and likely to be able to step up is a great
way to build your team and also a great way to
encourage a culture of growth mindsets, but it is not
a winning strategy for C-Level hires.
You will be placing C-Level candidates in
pivotal positions that can totally change the way
your business goes - it is not the time for giving
someone the opportunity to prove themselves
when you have not previously worked with them;
it is the time to hire someone who has already
proven themselves in a C-Level position in a
different business.
_
GET EXTERNAL
HELP
You're employing a Game Changer specifically
because they are more of an expert in a particular
field than you are so you may struggle to gauge the
accuracy of answers they give you.
Ask the CTO/CRO/COOs in your network to sit
in on an interview for an hour, and then repay the
favour in future. If you don't know anyone who can
help, ask Notion and we'll make some introductions
for you.
THINGS
TO LOOK
OUT FOR
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MOTIVATIONS FOR TAKING A NEW ROLE FALL
INTO ONE OF THREE CATEGORIES: DIRECTION
MISALIGNMENT, AMBITION MISALIGNMENT, ALIGNED.
By this point you have established that they can do the job, so
you will ideally move to the second round with each candidate to
understand their motivations for working for you and in your business.
THEORY BEHIND THIS INTERVIEW STAGE

Motivations for taking a new role fall into one of three categories:
direction misalignment, ambition misalignment, aligned.
Direction misalignment: the candidate wants a role that will
move in a different direction to how you want your business to
go. For example, they may mention that they want to build product
functionality that does not align with your roadmap, or they may
indicate taking the business into a new territory that would not work
for your expansion plans.
Ambition misalignment: the candidate has a misaligned level of
expectation of where they see their career going versus the requirement
of the role. For example, they want to run a business when you have
no intention of stepping aside or they do not want any decision-making
power but you need them to be your Second In Command.
Aligned: the candidate has motivations that, on the whole, are
aligned with the level of seniority and the functional direction that the
role offers.
NATURALLY, YOU WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT
CANDIDATES ARE AS CLOSE TO THE 'ALIGNED'
CATEGORY AS POSSIBLE.
(2) WILL
THEY DO
THE JOB?
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Your product roadmap,
sales pipeline and plans for
international expansion
are inline with those of the
candidate
_
Suggested questions to test for motivation, along
with an indication of their alignment and some
broad information on what answers to look for.
WHY ARE YOU LOOKING TO LEAVE YOUR CURRENT ROLE?
Direction
& Ambition
Direction
& Ambition
Direction
Opportunities for challenge and/
or learning have been exhausted
in current role
Reference to the company
going in a direction that aligns
with the candidate's personal
motivation
The size of business is no longer
a fit i.e. post IPO or raise
The size of your business aligns
with the candidate expectations
ANSWERS TO LOOK FOR
ALIGNMENT WITH
YOUR ORGANISATION
Challenges and learning
opportunities exist that follow
on from the candidate's
experience
PRACTI-
CALITIES
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WHAT IS IT ABOUT OUR COMPANY THAT YOU'RE
INTERESTED IN?
WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE SECTOR THAT WE'RE IN THAT
INTERESTS YOU?
Direction
& Ambition
Direction
Direction
Specific challenges that your
company is facing
An understanding of challenges
in the sector
Specific product or market
features that are unique to your
business
Accurate knowledge and
realistic expectation of the
challenges you're facing
Accurate knowledge and
realistic expectation of the
challenges you're facing
A reasonable knowledge of the
expected product roadmap and
market opportunity
Direction
Reference to opportunities in
the sector
A reasonable knowledge of the
expected product roadmap and
market opportunity
Ambition
Reference to aspirations around
promotion and size of remit
Can your organisation
accommodate these aspirations?
Direction
Product, geographic or other
strategic aspirations
Can your organisation
accommodate these aspirations?
WHAT DEMOTIVATES YOU AT WORK?
WHAT OTHER JOB OPTIONS ARE THERE ON THE TABLE FOR
YOU, AND WHY MIGHT YOU CONSIDER THOSE OPTIONS IN
FAVOUR OF US?
Direction
& Ambition
Direction
& Ambition
Mention of money, status,
challenges, management,
success
If they are looking for other
roles, do they align with the
opportunity in your business in
terms of:

Company size?
Functional experience?
Sector?

If there are significant
differences, question the
motivation for them
Are your incentives and
expected outcomes such that
demotivation will be avoided?
Can the role that you're offering
match or exceed the other
options on the table?
WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING TO ACHIEVE WITH YOUR
NEXT ROLE?
ANSWERS TO LOOK FOR
ANSWERS TO LOOK FOR
ALIGNMENT WITH
YOUR ORGANISATION
ALIGNMENT WITH
YOUR ORGANISATION
AS WITH THE PREVIOUS STAGE, SCORE ALL OF THE
CANDIDATES AND RANK THEM ACCORDINGLY. ONLY
TAKE THOSE THROUGH THAT HAVE HIGH ENOUGH
SCORES YOU'RE COMFORTABLE WITH AS BEFORE,
WE SUGGEST AN AVERAGE OF 80% AS A MINIMUM.
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_
MONEY AS A MOTIVATOR
There's a misconception that citing money as a motivating factor is
a negative trait in candidates, but this isn't necessarily the case and can
be positive in some contexts. For example, if the candidate is clear about
money as a motivator in the long-term via equity rather than cash and
they give solid reasoning around the levels of commitment it will take
to achieve a pay-out, it could be viewed as positive. Money is always a
motivator to some degree, otherwise we'd likely all be working in the
charity sector; sussing out whether it's for immediate personal gain
versus long-term contribution to company value is what you need to
distinguish.
_
GIVE THE CANDIDATES THE OPPORTUNITY TO TAKE
THEMSELVES OUT OF THE EQUATION
There is no C-Level role in SaaS that is easy. There will be many
unknowns and uncertainties, there'll be a lot of changing direction and
challenges. Be brutally honest about the struggles within your business
during the interview process and let candidates opt out if it's not right
for them.
THINGS
TO LOOK
OUT FOR
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START WITH LOOKING AT THE LEADERSHIP DEBT
AND GAP, TO SEE WHERE THE WEAK SPOTS ARE
This should be the last stage in the interview process and should be
largely subjective and answer the question "Can I see myself sitting on
a beach in 20 years with this person, and laughing about the mistakes
we made when we first started working together?"
THEORY BEHIND THIS INTERVIEW STAGE
This interview stage needs to be last because if it's done first there's
a risk that you'll "like" a candidate, which will influence your judgment
on their skills and motivation tests; you might be more forgiving of a
candidate who gives a poor answer to a skills question if you like them.
The first part of this stage is to understand whether the candidate's
values align with yours. It requires you to be brutally honest with
yourself about what's important to you in your business, and it requires
you to question the candidate thoroughly until everyone interviewing
them is in agreement about where the candidate's values lie in relation
to yours.
This stage also includes an element of skills-testing but is done in
conjunction with whether or not you can fully utilise the candidate's
skills; it assesses whether or not you work well together.
This is the white-boarding exercise in which you will tackle a real-
world problem that is currently facing your business. It also comes back
to the "high-water mark" element of the skills test; the "do we want
them to do the job?" stage will test how far above the high-water mark
the candidate is in terms of the skills required to do the job.
"CAN I SEE MYSELF SITTING ON
A BEACH IN 20 YEARS WITH THIS
PERSON, AND LAUGHING ABOUT THE
MISTAKES WE MADE WHEN WE FIRST
STARTED WORKING TOGETHER?"
(3) DO YOU
WANT
THEM TO
DO THE
JOB?
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_
WHAT ARE YOUR
VALUES?
If you don't have a set of values then you'll
need to sit down with your co-Founders and write
them down before you start this part of the inter-
view process.
They don't need to be a fully refined set of
values that's shared with the wider company at this
point, but among the senior team you need to be
aligned on what's important to you so that you can
score candidates against how well their values align
with yours.
_
ASK THE CANDIDATE WHAT THEIR
VALUES ARE
Assessing the candidate's values is very much
open to interpretation; there are a large number
of values that can be perceived as being aligned
but not exactly the same - for example, honesty
and integrity. You'll need to gauge the candidate's
answers as you go, and look out for any red flags -
for example, you have a value of "honesty" and the
candidates cites "doing whatever is required to win
a deal".

Address each of your values, one at a time, and
ask the candidate to:
1. Describe their own interpretation of the value
2. Recount a time when they behaved in line with
the value
3. Give an overview of why the value may
interfere with general business objectives

Score the candidate's answers based on
alignment with how you perceive the values and
associated behaviours.
_
WORKING TOGETHER

To fully understand how each candidate operates, you'll need to
run a white board session with them. To do this:
What is the most pressing issue affecting the business at present
within the function for which you are hiring the C-Level
candidate?
Gather data sources related to this issue

Block out two or three hours for you and your senior team to
have a whiteboard session to tackle the issue, with the candidate
leading the session.
During the session make notes on the following topics and score
the candidates based on their:
- Understanding of the scale of the problem
- Assessment of the levers available to solve the problem
-
Chemistry with the team - this is a hard one to score but, in
brief, do you enjoy working with this person and is the session
productive?
- Ability to add a perspective or knowledge that you do not
already have on the team
-
Ease with which they approach finding a solution
-
Connection between strategy and execution
(i.e. it's not useful if they have great ideas but no indication of
how to implement them)
PRACTI-
CALITIES
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CONSISTENCY ACROSS THE EXISTING TEAM
If, at the end of the Culture and Values interview, you have
radically different scores for the candidate on each value then you've
likely come unstuck in one of two ways:
_
1
You aren't aligned on what your values mean. To resolve this,
independently write a definition of each value and then compare notes.
_
2
You didn't question the candidate thoroughly enough; ask them
to come back and re-do the interview on the basis that you'd like more
information.
THINGS
TO LOOK
OUT FOR
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(4)MAKING
A
DECISION
DISCUSS THE RANKING TO MAKE SURE - AMONG
YOUR SENIOR TEAM - THAT YOU ARE ALL ALIGNED
At the end of the interviews and whiteboarding session, you'll
need to make a decision on who to offer the job to.
THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO DO THIS
_
1
Sum up the total scores and rank the candidates, and then discuss
the ranking to make sure - among your senior team - that you are all
aligned that the candidate with the highest score is the one you want
to offer the role to.
_
2
Weighted average: decide on which aspect of the hiring process
was most valuable and give the scores from that aspect a great
weighting than others. For example:
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SCORING
Round 1
ScoreWeightingTotalRound 2
Round 3
Candidate 1
Candidate 2
Candidate 3
Candidate 1
Candidate 2
Candidate 3
Candidate 1
Candidate 2
Candidate 3
= 16
= 18
= 20
x2
x2
x2
8/10
9/10
10/10
= 10
= 10
= 10
x1
x1
x1
10/10
10/10
10/10
= 30
= 24
= 24
x3
x3
x3
10/10
8/10
8/10
28/30

27/30

28/30
Candidate 1
Candidate 2
Candidate 3
Final
= 56 (Total weighted score)
= 52 (Total weighted score)
= 54 (Total weighted score)
Total ScoreTotal Weighted ScoreCandidate 1 is the highest performing of all candidates.
BEFORE YOU MAKE THE OFFER DO SOME SOFT
REFERENCING
Who's in your network that knows the candidate well and has
worked with them before? Ask them for an NPS style review - very
quick, very simple and will give you an indication of whether it's a
green light or if you need to do more digging.
Ask your mutual connection to give the candidate a score from
1-10, off the top of their head, based on overall performance. If it's a
9 or a 10, consider that good enough. Query a 7 or an 8, and consider
pulling the plug on a 6 or below.
Your investors can - and should - play a big part in this soft
referencing.
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BEFORE YOU START, YOU'LL NEED:
The Job Description, including "Key Responsibilities" that outline
the expected deliverables for the role
A consensus on who will be interviewing
Coordinated diaries for everyone who will be interviewing to ensure
that all candidates meet the same people from your team for the same
duration
_
INTERVIEW 1
CAN THEY DO THE JOB?
What are the actual things that you want them to deliver according
to the "Key Responsibilities" in the job description and can the candidate
explain in detail that they have done them before and suggest how they
would do them in your company?
_
INTERVIEW 2
WILL THEY DO THE JOB?
What's driving them to want to take on a new challenge and does
it align with the challenges that you can offer?
_
INTERVIEW 3
(AND WHITE BOARD SESSION) DO WE
WANT THEM TO DO THE JOB?
When loads of things have gone wrong and we've all been working
for 18 hours, can we imagine that we'll still be happy to be in a room
with them?
_
PART 4
MAKING A DECISION
What are the scores for the candidates that completed Interview 3
and the white board session? Were some rounds more important to you
than others, and if so, weight them accordingly.

MAKE SURE YOU REFERENCE THE CANDIDATES BEFORE
MAKING AN OFFER.
SUMMARY
OF THE
INTERVIEW
GUIDELINES
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Chris Tottman
Partner, Notion
INDUSTRY
VIEWPOINT
THE THEATRE
OF HIRING
Chris Tottman is a General Partner at Notion, having co-founded MessageLabs,
which was sold to Symantec in 2008 for $700m.
As an investor, Chris focusses on market need as a start point: "I am attracted to
painful market problems and counter intuitive solutions and with this approach we find
extremely rare Founders dedicated to solving some of the greatest challenges this and
the next generation of businesses face".
With this approach to investing Chris also puts an emphasis on creating the
conditions for success via the formulation of the leadership team of each of the businesses
he invests in.
He's one of the trailblazers of supporting venture backed businesses with
introductions to Game Changing people.
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...everyone who's worked with me knows I struggle to use them as
a standalone guide for the hiring process. I find the Game Changing hire
is particularly nuanced - in comparison to a mid or junior level early
stage hire - because the founder is trying to get the candidate to make
a big bet on their career, with high risk decisions. Neither party will be
entirely comfortable in the process, and rightly so!
Frameworks for hiring - like the Guide for Interviewing Game
Changers - are useful, but there are other elements to the process that
must be considered.
WHEN IT
COMES TO
'FRAME
WORKS'
FOR
HIRING...

Chemistry - as a founder you need to ask yourself 'Can I see
myself sitting on a beach with this person in 20 years, laughing at the
mistakes we made, the battle scars we share and the successes we had
in the early days of the business?'

Repeat Pedigree- you want someone on the team who's done the
journey from startup to exit before; someone who isn't phased by
bumps in the road which will inevitably crop up. They still have
the hunger and can look their partner in the eye and say "I've got
this" even though joining your startup is fundamentally illogical.
VC Raising & Clock Speed - if you don't have anyone on the team
who has this experience, then you're out there raising on your
own, naked. Utterly alone. It's not impossible, but it gets harder
and harder to raise bigger rounds, with different expectations
at each stage whilst managing a bigger business with increased
complexity.
The Pyramid isn't a fixed measure: it'll need to move as the
business moves. You'll need to assess each Game Changer's fit with
the Pyramid, depending on:

The revenue stage you're at. Do you need this person to take you
from $0 to $10m, or $50m to $100m? Have they taken previous
businesses on the same ARR journey?

The globalisation strategy you have. Are you going into the US,
or is your present focus on your domestic market? What's the
THE OTHER ELEMENTS FOR HIRING A GAME
CHANGER FORM A PYRAMID:
Repeat Pedigree
Chemistry
VC
raises
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Game Changer's background, have they focussed on geographies
that you'll need them to focus on?
How much money they have raised. If you need them to help you
raise $20m, have they done this much before? How involved were
they in the process the last time that they did it?
Who the target customer is. Is your business moving up into
Enterprise deals or down into SME, and has the Game Changer
made that shift in the past?
Put simply there are normally 2 or 3 highly critical points
of execution that need to go well for the business in the life of the
current capital & it all rests on the Founders shoulders. The people you
hire will be the shoulders you ride on. No pedigree, no shoulders.
The last part of the Game Changer hiring process is one that often
gets fumbled by Founders and is - in my opinion - essential to get right.
IT IS THE THEATRE OF THE HIRING PROCESS
Alongside raising money and selling the company, persuading a
Game Changing hire to join your business is the single biggest sales job
you'll ever have to do as Founders. This is not to say that you need to
cover up the negative aspects of what's going on in your company - far
from it - it's to say that there's a lot of non-business process, EQ and
cultural step change to consider.
You have to think about all aspects of it to really give the
candidates a feel for what they're getting involved with; you have
to think about what to tease them with and how to give an honest
reflection of what you're about, both as a person and as a business
leader. As a visionary and as someone who will be demanding (this
is the VC backed startup landscape after all!), it's the game of the top
1% of companies for the top 5% of people. It's neither a normal nor
rational place to work.
You have to put on a show, and the show has to portray the day
to day life of the business. If the chemistry is right and the theatre is
right then maybe on their way home, as the dust of the day settles,
they'll quite comfortably conclude that they never want to go to work
in a corporate again or that tomorrow feels like a commute to prison.
It's about being truly authentic as a founder and as a culture
without a 'business' or 'corporate' veneer.
Put simply the objective of the Founders and anyone involved
in the hiring process is to be highly distinct and deliberate about the
mission, the people and the buzz of expectations.
Do this well and you will have many Game Changers to choose
from; do it wrong and you'll fumble incredible candidates until you
start getting it right.
CHRIS'S CHECKLIST FOR THE INTERVIEW PROCESS
Things to consider when interviewing Game Changing
candidates:
What you wear
Where & how you meet initially - Everyone I hired at
MessageLabs came to the kitchen with me and I made them a
cup of tea or coffee.
Who else they meet?

The role of each person in the interview process?
Dinner or no dinner?
Do you communicate via Text, Whatsapp, Email or Slack?
What's the biggest challenge to tease them with? Situational stuff
is critical with Game Changers they love puzzles because of the
contextual richness
How much selling and how much interviewing? Too many people
interview too much too early. Would you interview a date with
deep level questions on the first date? I don't think so that's the
job of the headhunter.
How formal and how informal (I'm always informal as everywhere
else is formal)
Here's a trick to make this easy: If you had to fly them to your city
(that you love) HQ to understand the business and be interviewed, on
the understanding that they would be expected to relocate their family
if they got the job - how would you plan and execute the day, the night
and the morning of their visit before they flew out again?
And if they live down the road, how do you make the experience
memorable enough that their visit to your office feel like they were
'flown out', despite it only being a 5 minute drive away?
That's how I advise people plan and execute the hiring Game
Changers.
THE TOP MISTAKES WHEN HIRING A GAME CHANGER

Selecting the wrong vs the right search firm - doomed to failure
from the get go, if you get the wrong one

Negotiations and compensation - when the big picture become
a small picture - 50k extra is nothing if the Game Changer
increases your ARR bookings by 10x in the first year on the job

Poor management of internal stakeholders - who's leading the
sellers and the decision making support

Declaring too early - the premature articulation - take time to
make the right decision, but not too much time (or the candidate
will go elsewhere)
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Jonno Southam
Senior Business Development
Venture Capital at Amazon Web Services
INDUSTRY
VIEWPOINT
HIRING AND
DEVELOPING
THE BEST
Jonno Southam leads Venture Capital (VC) business development for Amazon Web
Services (AWS) in Europe and is part of a global startup team, focused on helping VC backed
customers achieve their long-term growth plans. Jonno is also an Amazon 'Bar Raiser', a role
dedicated to maintaining the high hiring bar, and which supports the Amazon leadership
principle of 'hire and develop the best.'
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WHAT IS A 'BAR RAISER?'
Bar Raisers are dedicated Amazonian's who receive extra training
in the interviewing process to facilitate debriefs and determine if the
candidate would raise the bar in terms of talent at Amazon. They
are part of the hiring process for a candidate's interview 'loop' but
are not the hiring manager and are not on the hiring team. They are
motivated to hire well rather than hire fast and facilitate the decision-
making process to ensure only candidates passing an interview loop
demonstrate that their past achievements will build upon the quality
of the existing team and have a long-term impact at AWS. Bar Raisers
ensure the process of hiring remains at an exceptional standard both
for AWS and for candidates.
BECOMING A BAR RAISER REQUIRES DEDICATION?
Dedication to the bar raiser program is critical as it involves
a rigorous selection process and can take up to a year of training to
qualify. You have to be driven and have a fundamental understanding
of Amazon's 14 Leadership Principles, which our entire hiring process is
based upon. When I applied for the Bar Raiser program, I'd been at AWS
for two years and had completed hundreds of candidate interviews. I
am particularly passionate about getting bar raising people into the
business, but equally, I believe in ensuring the right outcome for the
candidate. This Bar Raiser program is a mechanism within AWS to
ensure this.
BUT IT'S BEEN ENTIRELY WORTH THE COMMITMENT?
Absolutely. Learning to become a Bar Raiser allows those involved
to develop a broad range of hiring skills, such as competency-based
interviewing, teaching others to interview better with the goal of
getting the right hire each time.
AMAZON IS KNOWN AS CUSTOMER
OBSESSED, SO IS THIS HOW YOU APPROACH
THE HIRING PROCESS AS WELL?

The key component of our hiring process is Amazon's 14 Leadership
Principles. They are at the core of our culture, and we use them for
hiring, employee development programs and to help us maintain a
shared vocabulary so that we stay focused on what it means to be an
Amazonian. All 14 Leadership Principles are all equally important, and
candidates are first introduced to them during the interview process.
Customer obsession is one of the Amazon leadership principles, and
since we view all candidates as customers, the candidate experience is
of utmost importance to us, and we're laser-focused on ensuring that
their experience is a positive one, even if the candidate does not get
the job.
WHAT IMPORTANT LESSONS HAVE YOU LEARNED
ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE WORKING WITH STARTUPS
FROM YOUR 6-YEAR TENURE AT AMAZON?
Firstly, a lot of startups I work with face hiring challenges in
that they often struggle to get the skill set and right cultural fit for
their business. This is a challenge for organizations of all sizes, but
for startups, it is fundamental that their first employees are Game
Changers because they set a high bar for hiring and developing the
best people for all future hires.
Second, we see a real opportunity for startups to use cloud-
native applications to scale their businesses globally as Fanduel and
Deliveroo have done. Using cloud-native applications such as Amazon
DynamoDB for non- relational database workloads or Amazon
Kinesis for processing big data in real time, startups can focus on
building scalable, secure and cost-effective infrastructure from the
start, enabling them to focus on what matters most to their business,
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rather than on unseen infrastructure legwork that has historically
been a barrier to growth. Startups are then able to focus on building
innovative products and services that deliver value to their customers
but can also double down on hiring great people.
HOW DOES AWS HELP BUILD BETTER PRODUCTS
THAT WILL HELP CUSTOMERS SCALE?
At Amazon, we use a process called 'Working Backwards' where
you start with a customer problem and work back to get a minimum set
of requirements that make it very simple for customers to understand
and eventually adopt. We start by writing a press release, and an FAQ
document that combined provides both a simple way to describe what
the product does and the specific detail of the questions customers
would generally ask. We also define the customer experience by
telling a story of how the product will solve their problem and lastly,
write a user manual to define how customers will use it. Having
these documents to present to trusted customers and other internal
stakeholders help us clearly communicate what we are trying to build.
A good example of two services that we've launched as a direct result
of many customers' requests is Amazon Redshift and Amazon Aurora,
database solutions that make it simple and cost-effective to store and
then analyse data.
HOW CAN STARTUPS DEVELOP A STRATEGY THAT
ENABLES A 'GAME CHANGERS' HIRING PROCESS?
By moving to the cloud, you can refocus your capital on hiring
great people that really help differentiate your product and business.
At AWS, we are passionate about educating early-stage startups to
build secure, scalable and agile cost-efficient infrastructure from the
very beginning. We encourage all startup customers of all sizes to
engage with us to request an architecture review and consider adopting
the AWS Well Architected Framework which provides a consistent
approach for startups to evaluate architectures and provides guidance
to help implement designs that will scale with your application needs
over time.
FINALLY, WHAT ARE YOUR TIPS FOR GETTING
BAR RAISING 'GAME CHANGERS' ON BOARD?
Firstly, the interview process should be structured, measurable
and data-driven but also well understood by the hiring team. You
need to be able to benchmark candidates against current employees
in similar roles, not other candidates, to measure the hiring bar of the
candidate.
Second, understand your culture and values before you start
making great hires. This requires that Founders take the time to define
and clearly articulate their culture. The backbone of the hiring process
at Amazon is our 14 Leadership Principles. We interview candidates
by asking for examples that demonstrate impact in the context of these
principles.
Third, every candidate is a potential customer or future employee,
so you want them to be a great advocate for your business whether
they get the job, or not. If they don't get the job, you want them to be
clear on the reasons why so that they'll come back to you in the future
as a candidate for an alternative role or as a customer.
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Chief Financial
Officer
Salary
Bonus
Equity - Fully diluted
Source: VCECS Survey and Notion proprietary data
Chief Revenue
Officer
Chief Technical
Officer
Chief Marketing
Officer
Chief Operations
Officer
THERE ARE THREE KEY ELEMENTS OF THE CANDIDATE'S
COMPENSATION PACKAGE TO CONSIDER:
The amount of each element should be a reflection of three things:

- What the candidate's current total package is

- What you think the candidate will be worth to the business

- What you think (or know, if there's another offer on the table) the
candidate will get elsewhere
The candidate's current package and what they're worth to the
business are case-by-case, but the offers from elsewhere will usually be
guided by compensation benchmarks.
COMPENSATION BENCHMARKS FOR EUROPEAN
SOFTWARE BUSINESSES WITH <$25M REVENUE
Element
1
2
3
Salary
Bonus
Equity
Cash
Cash or Equity
Equity
Compensation Type
106,865
108,571
15,464
0
1.22%
0.88%
Mean
Median
Mean
Median
Mean
Median
127,657
128,500
100,031
90,000
0.89%
0.46%
96,562
87,500
20,674
0
1.65%
1.09%
96,288
89,250
8,714
0
0.66%
0.53%
119,981
120,000
29,222
0
1.53%
0.78%
THE COST OF
HIRING GAME
CHANGERS
AND WHAT
YOU SHOULD
OFFER THEM
As with most things in life, the good stuff doesn't come cheap.
Neither do Game Changers but, as we saw earlier in the section on
Why it's hard to hire Game Changers, the process should be considered
as an investment decision and measured as ROI rather than a
deduction from profit.
Maddy Cross
Head of Talent, Notion
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Game Changers
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five
TOP 5 COST
CONSIDERA-
TIONS WHEN
PUTTING
TOGETHER
AN OFFER
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Game Changers
BEFORE YOU START THE PROCESS OF
INTERVIEWING CANDIDATES, HAVE
AN ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM NUMBER IN
YOUR HEAD THAT YOU CAN AFFORD
TO PAY IN CASH AND IN EQUITY.
GOING TO
THE RACES
ONE
When going to the horse races there's a "classic" take on avoiding
the loss of a lot of cash, which is to decide a number that is the absolute
maximum you'll hand to the bookies irrespective of how much you
win. "I'll only give 100 in total to the bookies, even if I win 1000
on the first race." It's a preventative mechanism against escalation of
commitment and general excitement of the positivity of the moment.
Hiring a Game Changer is exactly the same.
BEFORE YOU START INTERVIEWING, FIGURE OUT WHAT
THE ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM YOU CAN AFFORD TO PAY
SOMEONE IS
This should include a total cash number and a maximum equity
percentage. You don't have to share these numbers with anyone, but
keep them in mind in case you meet an incredible candidate who's
asking for a lot more money than what you'd expected to be paying.
If this happens, you'll have to ask yourself how much you can
afford while being influenced by how much you like the candidate and
making a trade-off against other potentially less suitable candidates,
which can bias your decision.
If you already know what the maximum you can pay someone
is, it makes the negotiation more straightforward and also removes
bias from the decision-making. You can either afford your preferred
candidate or you cannot. If you cannot, it becomes a board decision
around finding extra capital versus taking the second candidate in
the running.
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Game Changers
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Compensation benchmarks usually cite the mean, which gives a
gauge for market average. When you're hiring a Game Changer you
are not looking for someone average: you are looking for someone who
is a Game Changer and therefore an outlier.
Outliers (aka Game Changers) will command compensation
packages that are not inline with the mean because their performance
is not in line with the mean. When using benchmarks, consider the
mean, the median and the range to ensure you're benchmarking the
compensation of a Game Changer against the correct metric.
This isn't to say that you should hire someone who demands a
huge cash salary - it's to say that the candidate's overall expectation
may be higher than a benchmark mean. This is OK if you think that
their career track record, alignment with your goals, and cultural fit
with your organisation are a proportionate amount "above average".
Where the 'mean'
compensation lies
on the scale
Where we want the
performance of the
Game Changer to be
BUT THEY ARE NOT THE BE-ALL-AND-END-ALL
TWO
COMPENSATION
BENCHMARKS
ARE
USEFUL
LOW
HIGH
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ARE A REFLECTION OF THEIR
POSITION IN THEIR PERSONAL LIFE AS
WELL AS THEIR WORK LIFE
COSTS
FOR GAME
CHANGERS
"BUSINESS IS BUSINESS"
But when you work long hours and have made huge sacrifices for
your career, business is life and life is personal.
Some Game Changers will have kids in school that they need to
pay fees for, others will have taken $20m from their last exit and don't
necessarily need cash but would rather the experience of another
early-stage business and the equity that comes with it.
When you make an offer to candidates, remember that the cash
they're asking for may be no reflection on your business and how they
see their place working with you, but more of a reflection on what they
need to take home to keep their kids in the same education system that
they're currently in.
For some people, taking equity in place of cash is simply not
possible and for others it's their key motivation for continuing to work.
Personal situations shouldn't affect the overall value of the
compensation package, but should affect the balance of equity vs cash.
THREE
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Game Changers
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Notion Insights
ANCHOR-
ING
VERSUS
THE
CHILLING
EFFECT
FOUR
ANCHORING

"A well-known cognitive bias in negotiation and in other
contexts, the anchoring bias describes the common tendency to give
too much weight to the first number put forth in a discussion and then
inadequately adjust from that starting point, or the 'anchor'. We even
fixate on anchors when we know they are irrelevant to the discussion
at hand.
Economists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman first
documented the anchoring bias in an experiment involving a roulette
wheel marked with integers ranging from 0 to 100. Each participant
witnessed a spin of the roulette wheel. They were then asked whether
they thought that the percentage of United Nations member countries
in Africa was greater or smaller than the number spun on the wheel.
Next, they were asked to make an estimation of the true percentage.
Participants who saw the wheel stop on the number 10 guessed,
on average, that the actual percentage of African countries belonging
to the United Nations was 25%. By contrast, those who saw the wheel
stop on the number 65 guessed, on average, that the percentage
from Africa was 45%. In the experiment, a clearly random number
nonetheless had a dramatic impact on people's judgments.
Even experts, such as real estate agents, can be powerfully
affected by anchors in negotiation, research shows" - Katie Shonk,
Harvard Law School.

In summary, low-balling candidates with an opening offer for a
compensation package will likely affect the outcome in your favour,
i.e. they will adjust their expectations to arrive at a lower compromise
than they otherwise would have come to.

THERE'S A HUGE CAVEAT TO THIS,
WHICH IS... THE CHILLING EFFECT
"Sometimes, negotiators think that they can establish dominance
by making an extreme offer. However, this backfires and creates a
chilling effect. A chilling effect occurs when offers are so outrageous
that the other party loses all motivation to continue negotiating." -
Prof. Leigh Thompson, The Kellogg School of Management.
When combining Anchoring with The Chilling Effect we end up
with: make a compensation offer that's lower than what you'd expect
the candidate is worth, but not offensively so.
There are no hard and fast rules for what this looks like in
practical terms because it depends on how you justify the package; if,
for example, you've just announced a Series C raise of $50m and you
offer someone 50% less than the compensation benchmark for their
role, it's quite a different scenario to offering them 50% less when
you're in the process of raising a Seed round.

As a general rule, consider the following before you make an offer:

What the candidate's current compensation package is

The situation of their current employer in terms of what they can
afford to pay
What the compensation benchmarks are for a business of your
size in your sector
What other offers the candidate has on the table
What the personal situation of the candidate is (this should impact
the balance of cash vs equity rather than the value of the whole
package)
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THE
COMPEN-
SATION
SCALE...
...OF THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE BUSINESS HAS NO EFFECT
ON THE OFFER YOU MAKE TO A GAME CHANGER
FIVE
THE COMPENSATION SCALE OF THE OTHER
PEOPLE IN THE BUSINESS HAS NO EFFECT
ON THE OFFER YOU MAKE TO A GAME CHANGER
Something that we hear often at Notion from our portfolio
companies is "We can't pay them what they're asking because it's more
than double what anyone else in the business is making".
WHY DOES THIS MATTER?
If they're going to contribute more than double the value than
anyone else is contributing, it doesn't matter. Pay them relative to
what they'll deliver, not a multiple of what other people in unrelated
functions are making.
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INDUSTRY
VIEWPOINT
FINDING
GAME
CHANGERS
AT EVERY
STAGE OF THE
BUSINESS
Tien Tzuo
Founder & CEO, Zuora
Tien Tzuo is the founder and CEO of Zuora (NYSE: ZUO). As early as 2007, Tzuo
began to evangelize the shift to subscription-based business models, coining the phrase
"Subscription Economy." Since then, Tzuo has spent 10 years building an award-winning
subscription management platform to support this new economy and power any
subscription business.
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Game Changers
Before Zuora, Tzuo was one of the "original forces" at Salesforce,
joining as employee number 11. In his 9 years at Salesforce, Tzuo built
its original billing system, later serving as chief marketing officer and
chief strategy officer.
Tzuo holds a BS in electrical engineering from Cornell and an
MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He is the author
of the book "SUBSCRIBED: Why the Subscription Model Will be Your
Company's Future - and What to Do About It."
YOU HAVE TO BE AWARE OF WHERE THE
BUSINESS IS, AT ANY GIVEN TIME
The first thing to consider before hiring a Game Changer is that
there are different types of people who need to contribute different
things at each stage of the journey.
In the very early stages of a new SaaS business, you're either a
Developer or you're not a Developer. The former do the development
work, and the latter do everything else. So in the very early stages of a
business, a Game Changer is a jack of all trades, rather than a specialist.
At the beginning of the startup journey, everyone in the company
needs to have a shared experience so that they're aligned.
Ultimately, we are an unfinished house. Any new employee is
going to have to go in and try to live in that unfinished house. They'll
walk into the bathroom and see that there's no shower; they either
complain about it, or they join in and start building.
Once the business grows, different skill sets come out in different
people. Functional experience has to be wound up with skill and
collaboration. When those three things come together, that's when
Game Changers start to emerge.
IT'S ABOUT CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT
FOR PEOPLE TO THRIVE
You have to create an environment where people can thrive.
In this way, you can nurture Game Changers rather than just hiring
people who are already Game Changers.
Sometimes you aren't sure who'll thrive - it's often 50/50 as to
whether they'll be a Game Changer, once they're into the job and
working. We try to interview with the idea that people are never good
enough and should always be learning. You have to always want to
grow.
When you really boil it down, though, startup companies must
create loyalty. Everyone is going to want a great job that gives them
personal satisfaction. Employees have to feel that the challenge is
worth it, so the organization has to be mission driven and provide
opportunity for personal growth and development for everyone.
There are a number of questions that every employee needs to
ask themselves: "Am I enjoying being with the people around me?",
"Do I have a voice here?", "I'm frustrated is it positive frustration
or negative?".
YOU HAVE TO CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT THAT ALLOWS
PEOPLE TO ANSWER THESE KINDS OF QUESTIONS FOR
THEMSELVES.
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LEAVE THE 'BIG IDEAS' TO EVERYONE ELSE
If you're a founder who believes you know everything - it won't
work. The leader plays a huge part in alignment, but at Zuora the best
ideas don't ever come from me. I create alignment and prioritisation but
leave the big ideas to everyone else.
I didn't even come up with the company culture, which we call
"ZEO" which means that everyone in the business is the "CEO" of their
own career at Zuora. The ZEO culture underlines everything we do at
Zuora. We're all aligned behind the mission and we want people to be
empowered to fulfil their career trajectories.. But I didn't come up with
this concept and vision; I just got everyone on board with it.
THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IN ALLOWING
GAME CHANGERS TO THRIVE IS TRUST
At Zuora - and in early stage businesses in general - we talk a lot
about innovation, striving for the next big thing, having a sense of
empowerment, and approaching things with entrepreneurial spirit.
We are always trying to do something new, that's never been done
before, and that's really, really hard.
Over the years I've spoken to a lot of entrepreneur-Founders, so I often
find myself in the situation of trying to reflect on my own experience
to help them out. The thing I've noticed is that everyone hits at least one
pivotal moment at which they need to evolve; at some point they will
come unstuck and be in a real struggle. There's the point at which your
business hits a point of scale where the culture starts to break.
I didn't have the right vocabulary for describing the culture in
the business at the beginning, so it's something I've had to work
hard at and think about a lot so that I could build a great culture at
Zuora. After giving it a lot of thought, I've realized that trust is at the
core of our company culture -- and it's this same trust that enables
Game Changers to have impact.
TRUST IS BUILT AT THE TIMES WHEN THINGS
GO WRONG. WHEN YOU HIT SIGNIFICANT
PROBLEMS AND HANDLE THEM WELL AS A
TEAM OR AN INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTOR,
THAT'S WHEN YOU BUILD TRUST.
Trust develops when people work through difficult situations.
You have to have a culture of not avoiding tough issues and of
mutual respect. You have to create, an environment in which people
feel like they can speak up.
IF YOU CAN TRUST GAME CHANGERS TO DO
THEIR JOB, IT'LL HAVE A HUGELY POSITIVE
IMPACT ON YOUR BUSINESS.
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Mns Hultman joined QlikTech in 2000 as CEO, taking over from the Founders who
started the business in Sweden in 1993.
Mns Hultman invested in Qlik in 2000 and stepped in as CEO, growing the business
and refining the model until it was investor-ready. From 2004 to 2009 he also served
as Chairman. In 2004, Qlik attracted a $12.5m round of funding led by Accel Partners
(Sweden's Industrifonden and Jerusalem Venture Partners also participated).
Mns Hultman
CEO, QlikTech
THE GAME
CHANGER
POINT OF
VIEW
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Not wanting to serve as CEO of a quoted company, Hultman stood
down at the end of 2007 (with his CFO taking the helm). At that time
Qlik was ready for an IPO, but due to the turbulence on the financial
markets in 2008 it didn't happen until 2010.
Since then, Mns has held a number of investor and board
positions, at Zobito and 83 North amongst others.
MNS' LEARNINGS FROM BEING A GAME
CHANGER AND AN INVESTOR - GAME
CHANGING SKILLS ARE HARD TO LEARN
It has to be a combination of skill and an intrinsic drive to work
hard and succeed.
Intrinsic drive is usually something that people are born with or
develop in early childhood, so it's very hard to learn it as an adult or
have an external motivating factor that prompts it. It spills into being
an element of commitment to the business, and very much impacts
the personal and professional lives of the Game Changer themselves.
To be a Game Changer you have to have the intrinsic motivation and
commitment to make big sacrifices; kiss your spouse goodbye and get
on a plane to the US for three months, or understand that you won't be
able to put your kids to bed during the week.
The skills can be learned, but it has to be a combination of both
experience and drive; one of the two is not enough to succeed.
COMMITMENT IS KEY
As an investor you have to work really hard to filter through the
conversations with the founder to really get to the core of what their
motivations are. Building a business is a huge commitment, both in
terms of intensity and longevity.
One of the most gratifying aspects of being an investor is when
you choose to back people who really do know how hard the journey
is. Many people say that they're willing to make the sacrifices but very
few can actually do it.
BE HUMBLE, HAVE FUN, AND DON'T GIVE UP
Three of the overwhelmingly consistent traits of Game Changers
are humility, the ability to have fun, and stubbornness.
When you talk to people who're average, they often describe
themselves as world class. Game Changing people seldom describe
themselves as such, they describe themselves as average. Game
Changing people are constantly trying to learn. They're curious by
nature, and they're incredibly humble about how much they actually
know versus how much there is to know in the arena of global
technology.
Game Changers are more likely to hire world class people and are
not afraid of hiring people who are better than they are, while average
leaders usually hire people who are on par with themselves, or below.
Game Changers also make things fun - not only for themselves
but also for people around them. Their management style, confidence
and ease of getting things done will make people feel wanted and like
they have a place that they can grow and learn and feel valued. People
in organizations that are run by Game Changers usually talk about it
like it's the best job they've ever had which, as a leader, is incredibly
rewarding.
There's also a stubbornness with Game Changers. When people
say something can't be done, Game Changers are the people who
simply don't accept it. They just keep working to find a solution or a
work around. The curiosity and unwillingness to give up are traits that
proliferate across the business.
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CONTRIBUTORS
NOTION
Maddy Cross - Head of Talent - mcross@notion.vc
Stephen Millard - Chief Platform Officer - smillard@notion.vc
Chris Tottman - General Partner - ctottman@notion.vc
NOTION FAMILY
Brynne Kennedy - CEO and Founder, Topia
Charlie Osmond - CEO and Founder, Triptease
Derek O'Carroll - CEO, Brightpearl
Hiroki Takeuchi - CEO and Founder, GoCardless
Mike Laven - CEO, Currencycloud
Nicholas d'Adhemar - CEO and Founder, Apperio
Vasco Pedro - CEO and Founder, Unbabel
PARTNERS

Andrew Banks - Managing Partner, International - True Search
Jonno Southam - Senior Business Development,
Venture Capital - Amazon Web Services
GREAT PEOPLE

In the process of researching this Insight report - both
via formal interviews and informal, ongoing chats
- Notion have been lucky enough to have input and
insight from a large number of exceptional people:
Abbie Pugh, Multiple
Alan Cairns, Octopus Ventures
Dan Hynes, Atomico
Dominic Jacquesson, Index Ventures
Jane Reddin, Balderton Capital
Kiana Sharifi, Balderton Capital
Mans Hultman, Zobito
Maureen Taylor, SNP Communications
Mike Snelling, The Table Group
Renn Vara, SNP Communications
Tien Tzuo, Zuora
Zoe Jervier, EQT Ventures
SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR PARTNERS
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Game Changers
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We are FOUNDATION. Seasoned recruitment teams focused on
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and strategic vision to scale effectively and transform their business.
Functional expertise in Technology, Go-to-Market and Operations roles.
For any Game Changer who's going to take a role in your business...
It isn't a risk for them, it's a leap of faith because they'll back
themselves to be pivotal in making the whole business succeed.
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