Hooked on What AI Talent Wants from Startups (Part 2) - Issue 44
“Articulate to candidates the specific, detailed, technical challenges they’ll be directly working to solve or build. The number one negative feedback we get from AI talent is that companies are unable or unwilling to articulate exactly what they’ll be working on”. Kyle Langworthy, AI Practice Leader at Riviera Partners
What’s going on?
In the previous edition of Hooked, we discussed how the FAANGs are luring AI talent from startups with their financial prowess and streamlined hiring processes. Now, let's delve into what AI talent truly desires and how your startup can offer a unique, mutually beneficial career path distinct from the big tech giants.
While NVIDIA, Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft are making waves with their partnerships, LLMs, and AI tech stacks, the nimble startup teams are making a real impact. They're shipping products at an unprecedented pace (see IA40), rolling out new features in bulk, and collectively putting their innovations into the hands of millions (perhaps billions!) of users daily.
Why it matters
AI talent wants five things that are readily available in founder-led startups:
1. They want to know precisely what they will build; they want scope and agency.
2. They want to invest in their careers by learning from and working closely with world-class leaders who would otherwise be several hierarchical layers and physical buildings away in big companies.
3. They want to build high-impact solutions without constraints on top of any available LLMs in the wild.
4. They want to be agile and experimental and to get sh*t done without silos, politics, and hierarchy.
5. They want to release to users at warp speed.
These five conditions are the very definition of startup culture. Sure, we see the headlines and freakouts about Mark Zuckerberg throwing money at startup engineers tied to performance (stay tuned for our next Hooked with the dirty details of these packages that we’ve gotten straight from the trenches). Even Elon Musk is pumping compensation at his companies to curtail losing people to Meta (because it seems that money is their best, perhaps only real, differentiator). But you can’t fight FAANG fire with fire. Throwing money and titles are short-game tactics in the talent war, and they are better left to the big guys. Let them do that while you deliver products and nurture the careers of people working with you for the five reasons above.
What do others think?
“In the rapidly evolving AI landscape, startups can offer technologists a distinct path to impact and innovation. We use these advancements to keep our team engaged, highlighting in our recruitment messaging how we're uniquely positioned to accelerate careers unlike anywhere else”. Co-founder and VP ML at an AI startup.
“Most people think about risk the wrong way – for example, staying in college seems like a non-risky path. However, getting nothing done for four of your most productive years is risky”. Sam Altman (this also applies to staying in FAANG silos or plodding along in stale startups).
What do we think?
Retaining and competing for AI talent requires a new recruiting playbook that speaks to people who want to do innovative work under startup conditions as part of their career journey.
Coach candidates to think of their career as a portfolio of experiences. Help them find the 2–5-year tour of duty at your startup that can fill in some gaps along their journey. If their gap matches your gap, you’ve discovered a magical “two-way fit,” complementary opportunities to realize a great ROI on their time investment while helping you build before they move on to the next thing.
What do YOU think?
Please share your thoughts in the comments.
TAKE ACTION
Flip the script on the FAANGs. Consider what has changed because of AI that can be leveraged as an advantage for your recruiting messaging. We discussed in Issue 43 that building on LLMs is a startup hook. What else is your startup solving or pioneering different from big tech? Maybe this is an industry-wide Change (with a big “C”) or a change specific to your customers or your tech/solution. Highlight your why and tease out stories demonstrating how the careers of people on your team are capitalizing on these trends.
Position your startup as a career supercharger. Amplify your team members’ stories. Talk about what led each person to your start-up and what they’ve accomplished since then. How has investing at this stage of their career with your company created mutual ROI? They’ve all come from different backgrounds - these stories will resonate with someone on the outside looking in. These stories can often be the deciding factor for someone to engage with your talent brand or decide to explore. Stories are often the first point of engagement and can plant the seed when someone is otherwise “happy” or just starting to “listen”.
Pull back the curtain. Your job descriptions and interview process have got to give candidates full disclosure and lots of details about what they will be building. Put away the pitch deck and the marketing speak. Get out the code and show them the grungy work. We have 5k subscribers to this newsletter, and 90% of the JDs on your websites are generic Frankenstein-esque lists of tasks, including a large swath cut and pasted from FAANG job boards (a cardinal sin). Do better. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression.
Resources, Tools, Events
Hooked on Happy, Listening, Looking
Startup Series: Optimize Your Talent Funnel with Truth – Audra Aulabaugh
Hooked on Leadership Role Specs
I despise Job Descriptions – Audra Aulabaugh
The Importance of Talent Brand – Audra Aulabaugh
A letter to our future CTO (brilliant start-up job description that can work for any role, any level) – Sarah Haggard, CEO of Tribute
Hooked on Leadership Storytelling
Why I left Meta – Erik Meijer
Why I joined Temporal – Sergey Bykov
How It’s Going – Sergey Bykov
About Madrona
Madrona is a venture capital firm that helps entrepreneurs build companies of consequence.
Hooked, by Madrona is a series about startup talent, careers, and founder stories, interpreted by a curious and skeptical VC + playbooks, tools and templates…and other stuff company builders need to know about how to hire.
Who creates Hooked?
The Talent Team @ Madrona Venture Group
Shannon Anderson, Executive Talent Networks and Talent Director
Audra Aulabaugh, Company Builder and Talent Manager
Matt Witt, Company Builder and Talent Manager