Glen Evans on Recruiting Partners at Venture Capital Funds

Glen Evans of Greylock Partners - Podcast Transcript

Singer:	So, when your troubles are mounting in tax or accounting, you go to Kruze, founders and friends. It’s Kruze Consulting, Founders and Friends with your host Scotty Orn.
Scott:	Welcome to Founders and Friends podcast with Scott Orn at Kruze Consulting. And before we get to a great interview with Glen Evans of Greylock, first, a shout out to our sponsor, Rippling. Rippling is the best, most advanced payroll system on the market. It’s great for payroll. It’s great for benefits. It’s also great because it integrates into your IT infrastructure and lets you spin up all the web services that new employees need. So, I always talk about this on the podcasts, but every time we hire someone at Kruze, we have to spend three hours getting all their web services live. Our IT services firm charges us $140 an hour. That means we spend $400. Can you believe this, Glen? $400 every time we hire someone just to get their internet working and all their services. Rippling does that for you automatically. It’s awesome. It’s all bundled in. So, check out Rippling. We really like it. It’s a great payroll service deal. And with that, Glen was nodding vigorously on the Rippling.
Glen:	Yep.
Scott:	With that, I’d like to introduce Glen Evans. Welcome, Glen from Greylock.
Glen:	Yeah. Thanks for having me, Scott. Glad to be here.
Scott:	So, two-time podcast guest here. This is big.
Glen:	Yeah. This is part deux. Excited.
Scott:	There’s very few. You’re in a very select company. So, when we last talked, you were at Slack. Maybe you could kind of retrace your career a little bit for people who are just listening for the first time and then tell everyone where you are now.
Glen:	Yeah, for sure. Let’s see. I’ve been in recruiting since 2003, like many of us fell into it. I was in agency for four years, learned the ropes there. Learned kind of customer service.
Scott:	That’s the school of hard knocks, right?
Glen:	Oh yeah. $40K base, grinding for everything else-
Scott:	People hanging up on you.
Glen:	In the Bay area. It was tough. But I learned a ton. I learned a lot about matching opportunities, trying to help people, help companies. So, it was just kind of ingrained in me early to do that and do that well. And that will lead to good outcomes and supporting people in the companies. So that led me to an opportunity to contract at Google. That led me to an opportunity to contract at Yahoo. The economy tanked to ‘09. And I wasn’t sure what to do next. Thought maybe in house wasn’t for me, and a little company called Facebook was hiring contractors. So, I got in touch with a friend of mine who I worked with at Google just said, “Hey, would they be interested?” And sure enough, they were. Got the job, was there for seven years. And that was a great experience. I learned a ton about scaling a company, learned a lot about leadership and hiring at scale and building process to, accommodate that. So, that was really fun.
Scott:	You ended up running a pretty big group there, right?
Glen:	Yeah. I started as a contractor, working on systems software engineering. And by the time I left, I was running all of infrastructure, IT and security recruiting for the company. We were hiring 1,000 people a year. My org was over a hundred people.
Scott:	That’s incredible. What a success story. That’s amazing.
Glen:	I never would have thought. It was really interesting, but it was hard. I learned a ton, it wasn’t easy at all, but I’m grateful for that. And because of that, I had an opportunity to go to Slack, to run global recruiting, which seemed like a no brainer based on their trajectory and an opportunity to really stretch myself to do things beyond just technical and also outside of just the Bay area. So, a great experience there.
Scott:	Slack was probably, is it the fastest growing SaaS company of all time?
Glen:	Yep.
Scott:	So, the hiring requirements must’ve been insane.
Glen:	Yeah. It was a lot of change. A lot of stop starts, sales became a big focus. So, that was fun because I got to learn about scaling up sales and marketing and some of the non-technical things that I hadn’t really done before. So that was really interesting. Opening new offices globally. We opened offices in Melbourne, Japan, Toronto, New York, and Denver. It was really fun. I had a good time.
Scott:	So basically, the lesson is any time you go work at a company, I should try to invest in that.
Glen:	Oh, I don’t know.
Scott:	You’re hitting four for four there.
Glen:	Yeah, no Slack was great, great people. I had a great time there. And as these things go, I wasn’t looking, it was really a hard decision, but Greylock came calling and asked if I’d be open to replacing somebody who was moving on to start their own fund, who had been in the role I’m in now for about seven years. And so, I explored that, learned more about what the role entails and it seemed like a no brainer just to kind of continue growing and learning. So, I was really excited to jump into that.
Scott:	That’s incredible. So, you joined Greylock, for those who don’t know, hopefully if you’re listening to the podcast you do know, it’s one of the top VC firms in the world, what incubated Workday, LinkedIn. I still remember LinkedIn from 15 years ago when I was trying to get into LinkedIn at Lighthouse, but what are the hits? The Greylock hits?
Glen:	Facebook, Instagram, Workday, LinkedIn, ServiceNow.
Scott:	Yeah.
Glen:	The list goes on.
Scott:	It’s incredible.
Glen:	Some really amazing companies. Yeah.
Scott:	And I feel like the founders that come out of there, especially the Reid Hoffman’s and the LinkedIn founders, they really give back. It’s pretty cool to watch their legacy in the startup ecosystem. It’s pretty neat. So, that I’m sure helps at Greylock.
Glen:	We have some great people. It’s been fantastic. We look for great people to invest in and great ideas. I’ve really enjoyed it so far.
Scott:	That’s awesome. It’s a pretty big shift going from a corporate environment to working at a VC fund. Can you share some of the positives and negatives and what’s it like? That’s a big jump.
Glen:	Yeah. It’s different. It kind of reminds me of my agency days a little bit trying to support dozens and dozens of companies at a time.
Scott:	I can relate to that.
Glen:	Yeah, exactly. Without the commission necessarily. That’s also good because you get a lot of exposure. I’m excited to build a network again, because when you’re in house, you’re just kind of focused on that company and it becomes a little more transactional and less about kind of the long-term relationship. So, I’ve enjoyed that aspect of it.
Scott:	That’s cool.
Glen:	That’s a big change.
Scott:	Yeah. Slack had an incredible brand, so you probably could talk to everyone you wanted to. Greylock’s brand and the companies you’re investing in some of the coolest companies in the world, do you notice that air of excitement when you’re calling or someone on your team is calling and people are engineers or people are picking up the phone? It’s got to be palpable.
Glen:	Yeah. No, response rates are great. And I think we approach people with a proactive mindset. We want to just get to know them, how can we help if it’s not helping them now it could be helpful down the road. We try to make it as less transactional as possible.
Scott:	Yeah.
Glen:	Yeah. But people are really responsive, which is great.
Scott:	And some people might be saying, “Oh, why does a VC fund have a recruiting arm or recruiting partner?” Maybe you can talk about that a little bit.
Glen:	Yeah. I’ve noticed every venture company or venture capital firm, they set this up very differently. So, I don’t know if there’s one perfect way to do it. The way we’ve set it up is we have a pretty small team. We have a lean team that focuses mostly on product design and engineering hires, and we tend to focus more on the earlier stage companies that haven’t hired before or they don’t have a recruiter in house. So, we tend to help them with those early founding engineering hires, early product hires that can really move the needle for that company’s trajectory. And then you hear the term, I’ve heard the term from founders, Like, “Hey, Glen. You guys are really value-add investors. This is really great.” So, it is a differentiator. Occasionally, we’ll get pulled in to talk to companies about their challenges while they’re going through their due diligence, so that we can kind of pitch on how we could help them if they ended up choosing Greylock.
Scott:	I always visualize a football coach recruiting the star quarterback out of high school. And then all of a sudden, the coach is like, “Glen, get in here and tell them about our recruiting capabilities.” There’s a little bit of that, where you’re actually helping win the deal for Greylock.
Glen:	In some cases. I’d say-
Scott:	It’s a team effort. It’s not just you, but the fact that they have this capability and given how good you are at this kind of stuff, I’m sure it helps.
Glen:	Yeah. I think it does help. And I think it helps a lot of VC firms, too. It’s not exclusive to Greylock, but I’d take a lot of pride in being a part of that quality and trying to help our companies grow and our investors be successful as well.
Scott:	When you’re hiring those first couple of engineers or first couple of employees at any company, it’s really setting the tone and the culture. When you’re looking at those kinds of folks, how do you map those first couple of hires in the culture they’re going to create to the startup? Do you think about that or are there checks and balances to make sure you get the right kind of person?
Glen:	Yeah. I think there’s kind of a line. You have to get to know the founding team, get to understand what’s important to them, understand how they operate, what makes them tick. You want to get them quality candidates that have seen scale before, or have domain expertise to really help that company get off the ground. I don’t know if it’s my job necessarily to inform or teach them what kind of culture they need to have as much, but we try and help them match the skill sets, the type of experience that they’ve come from, so that it aligns well with the challenges that the company’s facing.
Scott:	You’re probably matching the culture of the CEO with the people you’re finding for them.
Glen:	Yeah. Of course. To some degree, yeah. “Hey, this founder is really great and he’s really outgoing or she’s really outgoing. This candidate would probably really mesh well with that.” So, there’s some of that too.
Scott:	That’s cool. So, one of the things we were kind of brainstorming on topics, which I found fascinating is a lot of the recruiting you do is pulling people out of big companies. Not pulling, but giving them an opportunity. How do you think about that? How do you think about how to find those folks, how to know that they’re looking and then what are the tradeoffs for them? How do you think about that?
Glen:	Yeah, I think it’s easy to find them. LinkedIn does a good job of that. Greylock company-
Scott:	LinkedIn is pretty helpful. I like LinkedIn.
Glen:	I think that the key is… There’s a couple of things. One, founders need to really understand how to pitch their company and the market opportunity, what they’re addressing, how to talk through pitfalls, competitors, whatever it might be, but be able to speak about that cleanly, concisely and with confidence, because that matters when they’re talking to candidates. So that’s kind of a table stakes kind of thing. When you get into the candidates, we’ll talk about this in a minute I’m sure, but founders need to spend 50% or so of their time recruiting.
Scott:	Isn’t that crazy?
Glen:	I’ve run into some companies that do this really well and run into some that they don’t know, or they just don’t find it as valuable, and I think that hurts them. So, spending time on it, right? Especially in the absence of a recruiting team and resources, you’re small, you’re scrappy. So, you’ve got to carve out time for this. And you’ve got to instill a recruiting culture within everybody, with the entire company.
Scott:	We’ll come back to that. I want to talk about recruiting.
Glen:	Yeah, sure. So anyway, once you can, you send out messages, you have your pitch and your approach, you tailor it to people, you make it personalized. You don’t make it canned and spammy. People will oftentimes follow up after the second or third attempt. So, keep tabs on-
Scott:	That’s a really good point. Isn’t there some sales thing where the fifth time is when people start…? You found in recruiting, it’s the third time?
Glen:	Yeah. You don’t want to be pushy or spammy. Follow up a week after the first message, message and say, “Hey, just checking in, make sure this didn’t get lost in your inbox. We’d love to chat. You have a great background.” And then maybe 30 days later, “Hey, one last attempt,” you don’t just give up after the first draft.
Scott:	Right.
Glen:	But anyway, so you set up your target list, you figure out, “Okay, what teams, what departments, what companies?” You dive in, you research, you create kind of a list of leads that you want to attract. So let’s say it’s one of the big FENG companies. You can’t assume they’re not going to want to talk to you. So, it might take a lot of cycles. It might take more reach-outs, but eventually once you get them on the phone, it’s super important to understand what matters to them. I always actually ask candidates before I even dive in, “Hey, I’ve got this opportunity.” I try and find out, “What’s important to you? If you were going to make a move, forget what I’m calling you about, forget my job or this or that. What’s important to you? What’s compelling to you about your next job? What’s your dream job?” Whatever. It sounds kind of cheesy, but I’ve found that that drops people’s guard of, “Hey, I’m getting recruited,” into a little more, “This person cares about me and what’s important to me,” and then they just start rattling off stuff.
Scott:	Ultimately, you do care because you want them to be a fit.
Glen:	Sure.
Scott:	You’re helping. This is like a really premium matchmaking service. You want them to find the right person, the right company.
Glen:	Exactly. And-
Scott:	So, they start rattling off the subconscious or the deeper things.
Glen:	Yeah. And then you can ask open ended questions to learn more. They might want work-life balance. They might want to work on hard challenges. They might want to grow to start a company someday. They might want financial stability, whatever it might be. And so you kind of take note of those things as you go, “Okay. These things are important to this person,” and then you tailor the process and or your pitch to that person based on what they’re saying.
Scott:	Yeah.
Glen:	Right. So anyway, I’ll stop there. But I do think, can’t assume people from larger companies aren’t going to want to go small. If somebody is very early at a successful company, they probably have the ability to take a risk. But the question is, are they still hungry, because they’ve made it, if you will.
Scott:	Do you feel like there’s any negative signals, where they’re so focused on the security of the brand or the job or whatever? Can you pick up on that kind of stuff, and know it’s not the right opportunity for them?
Glen:	Yeah. If there’s signals. There’re all kinds of signals. Somebody we talked to recently out of one of the FENG companies had noted that they recently had a baby, they have great parental leave benefits. Their cash comp is amazing. And yet they were still talking to this series A stealth company. If that was me, I would have said, “Whoa, hold on. No way you’re going to walk away from all of these things to join a stealth company for half the cash, without the parental leave benefits. You’ve got a lot at stake. Maybe this isn’t the right fit for you.”
Scott:	Yeah.
Glen:	And almost talk them out of it first and then let them opt back in or sell you on why they’re actually really excited.
Scott:	Or, that’s someone you’re going to recruit next year once they have a year to digest. We both have kids, so we know exactly what you’re talking about.
Glen:	Exactly. You want to be just thoughtful of what they’re saying. What’s important to them, and then not waste time. If they’re not the right fit, don’t try and keep things going. I think a lot of people get to the final stage with an offer and then the person declines because they didn’t pick up on things that they could have-
Scott:	That’s a great observation. You could have saved yourself many cycles if you just maybe listened a little better to what they were saying. I’m just kind of curious, I don’t know if there’s a scientific answer to this, but what draws people out of the FENG companies or big companies? Is it the challenge? Is it the sexiness? Is it the options? You’ve been doing this for so long. There has to be a couple of high-level observations, or is it just people are different?
Glen:	I’ve seen both sides. I still have a lot of friends at previous employers that are very happy and I also have some that are there, but not that happy. And it’s case by case. Everyone has their own personal situation and their own reasons. I’d say some of the things that I’ve seen why people leave is they get tired of the size of the company. There’s more red tape. Things move slower. They miss building, or they don’t feel like their careers growing as fast, which is kind of tied to not being able to build.
Scott:	That’s true, yeah.
Glen:	So, it’s a variety of reasons. And then, it’s hard to leave sometimes because of the cash and the comp, which is also why some of these larger companies have deployed that strategy to really make it difficult to leave.
Scott:	Yeah.
Glen:	It’s a smart move.
Scott:	It’s super smart. There’s something you touched on a few minutes ago, which is instilling a recruiting culture in the company earlier. You want to talk about that a little bit?
Glen:	It’s critical. I’ve worked at companies… So, Facebook, for example, when I got there, it was 600 and something people, and that’s a big company, considering. And the CTO, the VPs of engineering, they were all still very involved. They would go to the weekly recruiting meetings, review packets, do sell calls. They would do whatever it took to get high quality in the door. That it has to start with the founders, right? So, if I had advice for an early stage company or somebody who’s thinking about starting a company, and there’s this fear of recruiting, recruiting is not rocket science, you just have to make time for it. Carving out time every week, making sure the rest of the team carves out time for it, making sure you have a process in place, high standards, don’t settle for talent because that can kill you. If you bring in a B player, they’ll bring in a C player and the C player will bring in a D player. It’s such a cliché, but it’s true.
Scott:	I’ve seen it, too.
Glen:	And you cannot settle. So, I would just say that it’s super important. I’ve seen very successful companies. In my first year at Greylock, I think the team and I was just four people at the time, we had almost 100 offers across the portfolio, roughly 700 introductions. So one in seven roughly got an offer, which was really great. The team and I were so proud of that. And the part that we really enjoyed was roughly half of those offers came at series A or seed companies, which is really hard to do. There’s no brand, there’s no product market fit.
Scott:	That’s a great point. And those are the companies that need it the most. They need the help in recruiting the most.
Glen:	And we were so proud of that, but it’s funny, the ones that had done the best are the ones who are most involved in recruiting and take it the most seriously. The ones that struggle are the ones that are kind of like, “Oh, it’ll just happen. We’ll hire somebody. It’ll just be a service,” versus, “Let’s all be involved in it. It’s everyone’s job.”
Scott:	I think that’s an amazing observation. It’s everyone’s job is a really good way of saying that, because I think of it as an investment. We’re hiring constantly, and you’re right about not settling, either. When I think back on times we might’ve settled, usually it doesn’t work out very well. Occasionally, people surprise you and they do an amazing job, but there’s times where you just got to have a strong enough stomach, no matter how bad you need someone to not take that emergency hire.
Glen:	Yeah.
Scott:	And the cool thing is once you convert over to thinking about it as an investment of your time and energy and money, then you can build a pipeline that can continually produce new candidates, because you’re taking it so seriously. All those seeds you planted a year ago start bearing fruit. It’s pretty exciting. We’ve had the benefit of seeing that happen now where we go to hire someone and we got 400 resumes, and that’s awesome, just sitting there. But that wouldn’t have happened without the hard work over the last six months to get all those things in there.
Glen:	Yeah. It’s tough too, because founders and early stage companies, they’re under a lot of pressure to grow, to meet deadlines, there’s investors. And there’s people involved that might create a little more pressure in the system, so it’s hard to not settle. So anything they can do to get ahead of that, build a pipeline earlier, figure out how to hone in on that perfect profile. What is good? If they don’t know what a good engineer looks like, go meet a couple and ask them.
Scott:	That’s a great observation.
Glen:	if you don’t know what a good product marketing person looks like, network. Find somebody. “Hey, tell me about the role. What should I ask?” Get to know what you’re doing and what your recruiting and hiring for so that you don’t have to settle.
Scott:	Yep. I love it. Every time I do an interview, I’m like, “Is this person going to make our lives easier?” And if the answer is yes and they’re probably a good hire, it’s kind of that simple sometimes.
Glen:	Yeah. Are they coachable? Do they want to learn?
Scott:	You said something else that’s interesting around you’re so proud to get 50 of those 100 offers were for seed or series A, because there there’s no brand. But Greylock will often put money into a company and they’re not really public. They’re kind of a stealth company. What are some of those challenges? Is that like recruiting on a high wire? It’s just that much harder?
Glen:	Yeah. You try not to put a lot of stuff in writing. You don’t want to give away too much. It kind of ties back to aligning with the founders and or the investors on what you can or can’t say, just so we feel safe about what we’re doing, because you don’t want to be the leak.
Scott:	I’m talking more about the degree of difficulty.
Glen:	Oh, degree of difficulty. I’ve had the good fortune, I’m very grateful to have been aligned with some really great brands and I’ve worked in places that haven’t had that luxury, so it’s hard. But I would say really honing the pitch, like I was talking about earlier with the founders. We need to be able to pitch that just as well. Talk about the founders, the trajectory, talk about Greylock’s track record, suggested exploratory conversation. “No pressure, but it might be useful. This is a chance to grow.” But also knowing who to target. If somebody has a track record of going early or they’ve founded a company before, there’s some signal in their profile that shows that they’re entrepreneurial, that’s probably a good candidate for a stealth or early stage company-
Scott:	Yeah, that’s a really good point. I hadn’t thought of that.
Glen:	Versus somebody who’s only been at FENGs of the world through their entire career.
Scott:	They kind of know what they’re getting into. Good and bad.
Glen:	Yeah.
Scott:	And the brand maybe isn’t as important to them, the stealth brand. Are there companies that are now public that you have some good memories of recruiting when they were stealth and people didn’t… It’s the classic people didn’t want to pay attention to them because they weren’t famous at that point. But all of a sudden now three or four years later, they’re humongous.
Glen:	I haven’t been at Greylock long enough to have a story like that. I hope to down the road, that would be exciting.
Scott:	It’s probably developing right now.
Glen:	Yeah. I think so. We do have a recent company that came out of stealth, Abnormal Security, that was incubated at Greylock’s offices. Founders are amazing, Evan and Sanjay, and we’ve been partnering with them for the last 18 months plus with early hires, engineers, product, machine learning, some sales. It’s been pretty exciting to help them get the company off the ground and land some great people. And then to see them come out of stealth and there’s a lot of good traction with the product and what they’re building. It’s really exciting. So anyway, that’s a small example of that.
Scott:	Well, probably six months from now or a year from now, they’ll be like, “Oh, my gosh, that was a good one.”
Glen:	Yeah.
Scott:	I kind of feel like on the outside, the companies just really don’t come labeled. It’s really hard to tell, but when you start talking to usually the founders, the living, breathing kind of essence of the company and the brand and what you’re trying to do, I feel like if you’re someone interviewing at these companies, that’s what you need to really buy into. If you don’t really buy into the founder… And sometimes people ask me how I ended up at Kruze, and I always tell people Vanessa, my wife, she’s actually a phenomenal entrepreneur. So, sometimes in life you have this decision of like, “Should I start something myself? Or should I get behind someone who’s really amazing?”
Glen:	Yep.
Scott:	And my decision was getting behind someone who’s really amazing, because I could see where she was going-
Glen:	And then married her.
Scott:	Yeah. I married her, too. I really got behind her and even had a kid. When people are interviewing at these startups, that’s how they should be thinking like, “Am I really going to be behind this person? And can I support this person and help all of us be successful?”
Glen:	Yeah. 100%. People ask me sometimes like, “Well, how do I know? What do I look for?” And I talk to a lot of people that do want to go really. They just don’t know where to start.
Scott:	It’s hard.
Glen:	And so, I always tell them, to your point, “Look at the founders, look at the founding team, look at their backgrounds, read about them.” There’s probably blogs. You can look at LinkedIn, there’s maybe some interviews or videos that they’ve done where you can kind of get a sense of their character and who they are. And then when you meet them, that’s another great way to really understand-
Scott:	And have the chemistry.
Glen:	Right. And then, dig into the product, the industry, the competitors, the investors, and all of that will kind of form an opinion on whether this is an exciting opportunity. And I’ve seen that too. As I’ve been helping some of the companies and I was like, “Wow, I really like these founders. I could go work with them.” [crosstalk 00:25:04]. I think it’s not the right time in my life for that right now, because I’m really enjoying what I’m doing, but it’s really easy to-
Scott:	It’s seductive.
Glen:	When somebody or some group of founders is really special.
Scott:	We have the same thing. We work with over 550+ companies now. It’s pretty fun when you get on the rocket ship, and then all of a sudden there’s such a rocket ship that you get less time with them. You’re like, “Oh man, we used to talk, we were buddies two years ago.”
Glen:	Exactly. That’s fun. That’s what you hope for, though.
Scott:	Totally.
Glen:	You want to be there.
Scott:	Especially your Facebook and Slack experience, you built a real recruiting organization?
Glen:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Scott:	I’ve never been associated with it. We have our little recruiting operation side of Kruze and I’m pretty proud of it, but what’s it like to build something at scale? What are you looking for in your lieutenants? How do you partition out the work? How do people do this? How do you think about that?
Glen:	Yeah. Usually it comes to a head when the company cannot hire fast enough. And usually it’s related to resources or a lack of capacity planning. Here’s the output of the team today. Here’s what it could be if we added X. So, I think that’s something that usually will help get the support to scale out the team. And there’s other things as well. Do you have the right team? Do you have the right tools, the right resources? All of that. So that’s one piece. When you’re hiring, I think you could argue this could be for any type of function, but when you’re hiring somebody, you want them, especially if they’re one of your leaders or your lieutenants, you want them to be obviously a good people leader, supportive, coachable. I’m a believer in kind of putting the team first and not having an agenda for myself. I’ve always viewed that if the team is happy and thriving, I will do well.
Scott:	Totally. I agree.
Glen:	I put myself second. And so, just looking for that humility and that somebody who wants to learn and grow, but has a track record of success and they’re hard working and that sort of thing.
Scott:	When you’re recruiting operation or organization, do you look for a mix of people who’ve recruited at big companies and small companies? Or how do you think about that mix?
Glen:	That’s a good question. I’d say if it was a big company and you knew big hiring was coming, you’d probably want somebody who’s been there done that.
Scott:	Done the scale.
Glen:	So, it was less daunting, but I think more important than where they’ve come from, are they hungry? Do they want to work hard? And that’s hard to assess for, but walking them through some kind of open-ended questions in the interview and scenario type things and seeing how they respond, is certainly a good signal that I’ve found helpful as I’ve scaled up teams. And then, making sure you have processes in place that are repeatable. Companies also as they scale and grow, you become a lot more specialized. You’re very general, “Hey, we just need a lot of…” Athletes or whatever that can run around and do different things. And then, as the company becomes more specialized, you’ve got to specialize your recruiting team.
Scott:	That’s a great point.
Glen:	So, as I’ve worked with folks to set up my team and made decisions on where people go and what they do, I’ve had to have some tough conversations. “Hey, I’ve got to take this away from you because I need you to go really deep in this department side by side, with this executive to really get to know their needs and their priorities and make sure that we’re nailing head count for this business.” And so rather than have somebody do 10 different skillsets and recruit across the board, they might recruit for one for the foreseeable future.
Scott:	That’s really good advice, and having that tough conversation, it’s challenging, but it’s also a compliment in a way. They’re good at what they do, and so you just need them to really focus on that.
Glen:	Yeah, exactly. And I’ve told this to people, too. They’re like, “When’s a good time to hire a recruiter?” I said, “Six months before you need it.”
Scott:	Same with an accountant.
Glen:	Of course. Everywhere I’ve been, we’re always reactively catching up the head count and this and that. So, we got into some cadence where you can get ahead of that pain if you just have some kind of sanity around the numbers and potential number scenarios in the capacity model, just to show what you’ll need to deliver on potential head counts plans.
Scott:	This will make you happy, but when we do financial models for startups, we put all that stuff in there.
Glen:	Good.
Scott:	So now we can just send it over to you and be like, “What do you think? Do you agree?” I’m sure you have these gut reactions, you know what the head count build is supposed to look like and what the engineering mix versus other people mix is supposed to be. So that would actually be pretty interesting, that could be our next podcast. The third podcast.
Glen:	Yeah. I’ll do some homework.
Scott:	So, we’re wrapping up here, but I have a very serious question for you.
Glen:	Oh gosh. Okay. What do you get?
Scott:	For those who don’t know, Glen and I play fantasy football together.
Glen:	Yes.
Scott:	And Glen, you work at one of the preeminent venture capital funds in the world, the most technology advanced, and yet why in our fantasy football league, do we play on an old website that has a 1992 interface? Tell me why. Why are we stuck on this old interface?
Glen:	Sometimes stuff that works, you stick with it. We’ve been using that website since college. It’s amazing.
Scott:	I don’t even know what the name of the website is. I don’t want to embarrass anybody.
Glen:	I know it, but I’m not going to say.
Scott:	I like to blame my poor performance in the fantasy league on the website.
Glen:	Yeah. Right, or your decisions.
Scott:	But, do you want to brag for a second?
Glen:	No. We’ve been doing the same league now, for what? 20 years?
Scott:	Something huge, yeah.
Glen:	Some really great friends have stayed close as a result. So, it’s been pretty fun. It’s a nice and fun hobby. And I did win it this year, so I’ll brag a little bit. And it’s really nice to have guys like Bob Redinger in the league who just kind of make it easy for us to just-
Scott:	He’s a pushover.
Glen:	Maul our way into the playoffs.
Scott:	Well, when you’re in his division, you’re practically getting into the playoffs no matter what.
Glen:	Yeah, exactly.
Scott:	Well, you’re very humble. Glen did win. And I think I came in fourth to last for those that are counting, keeping the score out there.
Glen:	That was probably your best year though.
Scott:	Yeah. I usually come in last place in this league. I’m not good, but again, I like to blame it on the website.
Glen:	Okay.
Scott:	So hopefully someday we can upgrade. All right, Glen. Awesome podcast. Thank you for all the tips. Do you want to tell everyone where they can find you and link up?
Glen:	Yeah. I’m happy to help or my team and I are always looking to network and connect with really great people, potential founders or companies that are getting off the ground and want some advice. My email is G-Evans, G-E-V-A-N-S@greylock.com.
Scott:	You are the man. You’re very humble. You’ve had a tremendous career and Greylock is lucky to have you. And thanks for coming on the podcast.
Glen:	Absolutely. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate it.
Scott:	All right. Let’s give a quick shout out to Rippling for sponsoring the podcast. Best payroll benefits in IT infrastructure integration. Thank you, Rippling. And thank you to Glen at Greylock. Really appreciate it.
Glen:	Thank you.
Scott:	Take care.
Singer:	So, when your troubles are mounting in tax or accounting, you go to Kruze, founders and friends. It’s Kruze Consulting, Founders and Friends with your host Scotty Orn.

Glen Evans of Greylock Partners talks about why VC funds have recruiting partners

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