Steven Lurie is the founder of Team Builder Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that helps founders build world-class teams. Drawing from decades of experience scaling teams at tech start-ups, Steven shares proven ideas for successful recruiting and building high-quality teams. Listen to the episode to avoid common hiring mistakes founders make during early startup stages.
Steven Lurie is the founder of Team Builder Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that helps founders build world-class teams. Drawing from decades of experience scaling teams at tech start-ups, Steven shares proven ideas for successful recruiting and building high-quality teams. Listen to the episode to avoid common hiring mistakes founders make during early startup stages.
Steven Lurie: [00:00:00] If you're a 10, 20% company. No, one's heard of you for the most part. The problem was higher for it. There's three problems. The first is it leaves out the most important thing, which is sourcing. So I used the Microsoft example because sourcing was less important because you had a huge inbound, but you're some startup.
No one's heard of people. You don't know, I'm not going to come interview them because they don't even know about your company.
Gopi Rangan: You are listening to the Sure shot entrepreneur podcast, ask for founders with ambitious ideas, venture capital investors and other early believers tell you relatable, insightful, and authentic stories to help you realize your vision. Welcome to the shore shot entrepreneur. In this episode, my guest is Steven Lurie. Stephen is the founder of team builder ventures, a Silicon Valley based venture capital firm to help founders build [00:01:00] world-class teams.
Steven was a member of Zynga's executive staff from the early days of the company through IPO. He also helped build zingers team in Bangalore. Stephen, welcome to the show shot entrepreneur.
Steven Lurie: Good. Thank you. Pleasure to be here.
Gopi Rangan: Tell us about yourself. What brought you to venture capital?
Steven Lurie: Sure. The way I got into venture sort of operating background in the early nineties, I was a product manager, product management at Microsoft in Seattle was a real heyday of the company run by bill Gates and it was an exciting time to be there.
Was there for six years and moved in 99 to San Francisco for a.com or startup. School keen.com at the time exited seven years later is Ingenia. It's one of the few successful startups from that year. And I had variety of roles in product and ended up managing a whole bunch of different teams. And then I tried to start a few things.
I was [00:02:00] entrepreneur residence at the venture fund, and then I went to SINGA as an early executive as the first head of mobile. When the iPhone was new. We're figuring it out later, I ran several game groups and actually went to Bengal and did a scale, a team, and also a lady came back to head of international.
So that's kind of what I did as a job. What I was kind of known for was to team person. I really enjoyed helping people. It's kind of a hobby for me. That is something that I ended up doing at the, all these companies around team building and hiring.
Gopi Rangan: Team building is one of the highest priorities.
And that's also where CEOs and founders spend enormous amount of time and mostly unsuccessfully, or at least inefficiently. How is TeamBuilder ventures different from other VC firms?
Steven Lurie: So it's a, it's a venture capital fund that aims to be a service venture fund that helps founders build world-class teams.
So it's structured as a [00:03:00] regular venture fund. It's a $10 million fund. Yeah, I have limited partners and then make investments, but it's different in other ways is that it's really focused on providing the service. I don't serve on the board. There's no board, there's no leading rounds and really work to help the founders and actually commit to a number of hires that I'll actually find for them.
Because what I find for a lot of founders is that. You don't have more experience in building teams at startups than they do. And I have networks that they may know I have and other ways to reach people, especially engineers and some able to help them. That's one of the key value add of the fund.
I would say that because of that, the fund can invest very horizontally. So we're very broad in domains, but we tend to focus when there's not an HR team. Yeah, that the company, so it couldn't be pre-seed seed or series a company could be two, five, 10, 20, 30, 40 even gets up to 50 or 60 people before they get an HR team.
And the [00:04:00] founders at that point, although on point for finding the team people members, they're basically doing the recruiting and they have to go to the board meetings and say, why are they missing their hiring plans and more companies miss their hiring plan? And most product or revenue plans because it's very unpredictable, it's a war for talent.
That's when I like to help them.
Gopi Rangan: Yeah. Every single investment I've made in a startup, all of those startups have struggled with recruiting. Why is it so challenging and what are some classic mistakes that CEOs and founding teams make?
Steven Lurie: There's three stages.
First is the, when there's, let's say there's two founders and they get to 10 people. So that's hiring eight people. Product is probably not developed. It's a five person company hiring two more people, , whatever to get to 10 people. And it's, it's hard, but not that hard. I, as a founder, , each of you should be able to bring in four people that you've known or worked with, or somehow.
Kind of scrambled to pull together at [00:05:00] that point, though, what happens is you're into the second phase and that's a really brutal phase. And that is when you're about 10 people. A lot of the founders run out of people. They know. And also they get busy because maybe the product launches or they raise a series a and now they have a board or a more formal board or a larger board than they had before.
, when they get to maybe 50, 60 people, they hire some HR, people, maybe even a head of HR and they can hand it off. That's the third phase. But that second phase it's like, The most brutal kind of Valley of death though with founders of finding that they have less time of run out of the network generally.
They're hiring mid-level engineers, , it's not like they're hiring executives. Generally the hiring individual contusion very hard. To find and to convince, to join some company that no one's heard of.
So it was that period that I liked to have found it. So one part is that it's, it's hard because of those factors. When you run out your network, you told me you didn't have an HR team helping you [00:06:00] you're on your own. And it's hard to get third party recruiters. At that point because , they get paid on the percentage of the salary of the person.
So if it's a mid-level engineer, the salary is going to be decent, but probably not as high as an executive, also, it's much harder for them to find and convince people to join us. So that's why it's hard. Second reason. It's hard. Is that the mindset is that the product is often the main focus of a company as it should be.
What you realize is that very quickly product and the company building. So the company as a product really have to be on equal footing because if you're going to start scaling beyond just a couple of people, You have to build a company and it's not just product, but you always have to be recruiting. I tell founders, don't always hire very careful hiring, but always be recruiting.
And I think a lot of founders think of it, like finding office space. It's something that they have to do at one [00:07:00] time. Like, let's do it, let's move and then move on. They'll often approach it like that. , I've got to find this engineer, let's put a focus on, let's try to get it done so I can get back to the real work is how they see it, like building the product of seven customers or you realize is that it's constant.
So they got to treat it like they have to product manage team building. You need onus and the processes you need, and it has to be something you do everyday. I tell founders, you should be spending one hour a day per open rack. At least, and that could be updating job descriptions reaching out to your network.
It's something that you do every day. You should put on it at your weekly meetings. , how many referrals you got, how many people did you interview? How many did you follow up with? It's not something you just sort of do on the side. It has to be sort of that equal. So I think it's both the challenge of the market and mistakes they're in, but also the mindset for them.
They don't have the processes they do around the product that have the rigor, the owners and the metrics. And this is still thinking about it like a [00:08:00] product that often helps a lot.
Gopi Rangan: The earliest stages when it's just the founders and a few employees, when they recruit at that time, they usually tap into that network and they each can bring in two to four people into the company.
But when they reached the point of 10 to 15 employees, that's when recruitment becomes a necessary skill that the CEOs. Have to learn and have noticed that the successful companies have good CEOs who really focus on that. I think that's what you're referring to and how to do that is a trick that you can help them with.
Steven Lurie: Yeah. When I give a talk and I like to give advice on it too, to everybody, they, Timbo ventures essentially runs a free recruiting firm, but that's only for the portfolio companies. The reason it's actually from B venture, other recruiting firms is that a lot of engineers don't want to talk to recruiters, even founders.
Because they're always getting inbound like on LinkedIn, but they're very rarely hear from a venture capitalist. So that's part of what office teams, you will have ventures, both advice [00:09:00] and recruiting, but on the advice part. But I tell them is you've got to do it. Like I said, product manager, and it really should be every part of it.
You can break it down into three basic parts. One is source. You have to source, you gotta get people you don't know to come into view your company. Number two is you got to interview them. And three is you got to onboard them well so that they become productive and retain. So the sourcing is where again, a lot of founders at first it might be, even seem easier.
I just went and told a couple of friends and a few people joined, but again, when they run out of their network, it becomes very hard. So in the sourcing. The one I really recommend is referrals, internal referrals, getting all the team members to refer. So when you have 10 people, your company and you're bound to double, let's say you're doubling to 20 in a year.
All you have to do is each person has to get one person from the network it's totally doable. Well, and even, , the most introverted engineers or whatever. And do they have people they [00:10:00] went to school with, grew up with and they should be passionate about the company. They should be able to tell the story in a convincing way, but they don't, but a lot of times is that okay? Especially engineers see networking and all that kind of stuff, or referring people as both networking, kind of an evil word and , a waste of time or just they're giving something to the company. And what I try to coach founders always get them to understand is that you got to teach each other people that it's a skill that they're learning.
They're not giving you a time. You're actually giving them an opportunity to practice. Tingling because later there'll be leading teams or leading companies, or if they're not, it's very good to be able to attract talent. They can practice. Once people started seeing it as a skill development, not a favor they're doing to you.
Then it's very important. That's a key thing to do because people get job satisfaction from having a purpose and work with the best purpose that they have is to advance their own career and to grow. And if you can show that they can grow this way. So that's something I've worked with people. The other [00:11:00] one is interview.
You'd be shocked at how lack lacks a day as a call. The interview processes are startups. I mean, I've had instances with people show up and then. No, it's for an interview on the person that's not there. , it's happened to me at the start of first. I went to ski in Tahoe and then tell me, and I drove down there for the interview.
So I tell people, probably manage it, design it too. You can do it in 30 minutes in a, in a whiteboard, a meeting with an interview team, , how are you going to interview people? What's the first five minutes of the interview experience. How about having a greeter there? How about giving them material about your company?
How about giving them a schedule, telling them when you're going to follow up with them also training the people who are going to interview it. Doesn't take a lot of training, but just practice some questions you're going to have. What are you looking for in the get alignment? , and just have an interview process that is a branding experience for your company that makes your company look good and makes you look like you have your act together.
And it's, we can come in and get tired. The first five people, they interview for a role, but sometimes they end up ending 30, 40 people and they just get [00:12:00] tired and it becomes, , both start dropping and then there's onboarding where you just, , you want to make people feel successful in the first week or two by giving them projects, they can succeed on and show that publicly.
So anyway, those are the three areas where I coach founders that they can do one or two key things different. Then they'll be a way ahead of the rest of the crowd.
Gopi Rangan: I have more questions on this. But I want to talk about investing and then come back to recruiting and sourcing and onboarding parts.
What do you look for in an entrepreneur when you first meet them? What kind of companies do you invest in? What stages do you want to meet these founders?
Steven Lurie: So there's several questions, as far as what I'm looking for. It's very broad because everybody has team-building challenges. I used to think it might be the younger founders.
They would want it. But actually I found that its founders do have been founders before on the ones that are like, how do we get you in this tale? Because they've realized how painful it is. I look for a wide range. I mean, I've invested in all ages. [00:13:00] I have a 70 year old founder in the portfolio of, , people like out of.
PhD program 25 or whatever it is. So very open on age, very open on, , I'm an immigrant myself. So a lot of immigrant investors, a lot of women, founders and executives, higher percentage of minority than common, , just given being an immigrant myself and just that kind of stuff. So it looked very broadly.
I will say that. It's very broad consumer enterprise hardware, software, deep tech, , not detailed or anything that can give, , the kind of return of a biotech in there, but mostly software and hardware.
I will say this though. I feel that I did angel deals. Before the fund vested in coming to those both by unity, when probably like Zorro Angeles and magazine, it was hard to fundraise. There weren't that many companies in this space, and now it's the opposite. And there's a lot of support and encouragement, whether it's classes at [00:14:00] Stanford and Berkeley and things like that on how to do startups or to accelerators and to a bunch of seed funds and active angels and rolling funds on angel list and all that.
So, if there's an idea, there's tends to be lots of companies in that space. And if you're investing before they have an HR team, is when they need the help. The most is it's early stage. It's very hard that, so I tend to look for, , less crowded spaces, which tends to be more technical founders.
I can give a few examples if you want. But the last two deals that I've done have come out of labs and professors on it. University of California, San Francisco, it's a biotech one. And the other out of university of Washington, MIT PhD professor there came out of the labs. So that is, those are deals. I like a lot.
I'm very, the bottom line is very open. The major kind of filter is that it's generally when they, before they have an HR team.
Gopi Rangan: So you're kind of a generalist when it comes to investments, but you're looking [00:15:00] for certain types of founding teams. Technical founders are great for you.
Steven Lurie:
Well, yeah. Again, I don't want to close off anything. I've got some great performing companies that have no technical founders. I'm just saying in this market, when there tends to be 10, 20 companies in a space, if it's, if it's, if the product's not that hard to develop and maybe a lot of competitors. So I tend to do that, but I'm open. I'm very open.
Gopi Rangan: When you meet founders, what happens in the first few meetings? And when do you say, well, yeah, I want to make an investment.
Steven Lurie: Well, one of the mantras of the fund is to, I want to be high value, add no wind back. So even on the first meetings, I like to give more value than I get. I like what I'm about.
I told you one of my hobbies was helping friends. I've set of 10 marriages. I've been helping friends career coaching. Them giving them free coaching advice and finding them jobs for a long time. That's. So then that led to this fund because I was doing this anyway, as a hobby, [00:16:00] I'm very active with Stanford, alumni mentoring and called them the, and Starbucks and all that call ventures.
I now meet the founder. I tried to give them value by often going through the presentation that I gave on team building so that they can learn some lessons and walk away. With some value, but, , I learned about the business. Then I have a due diligence process that I really try to balance speed with efficiency because you want to respect the time, but also have to do the real due diligence.
So I get the same materials that the lead gets. That's the first stage and, cap table presentation, financials. And if they have a term sheet. And I can often, a lot of times we'll make a decision on that. If it goes to the next stage it's expert review, I bring in experts, I've experts in many areas because we invest so horizontally.
And a lot of times the founders want to connect with the expo. So I'll need done with the founder consent. I never send materials around and I would talk to people without them knowing I've sent them a list of the people. And [00:17:00] more times than not, they want to talk to the people because in several cases they'd be people that wanted to talk to.
And have you been able to reach in and Sarah they've invited them to invest as well, but they met through my due diligence process and the third is always then sync with the lead and make sure that the lead, , how they're thinking about it, how committed they are to it. It's less about the brand name funds and, somebody funds nowadays many great people in venture.
It's a really, how, how much has that lead going to go to bat for them? Because there's many things, a lead investor does like provide big checks, civil authority think, and, , do bridges and things that, , I'm less able to do given this fund size. So that's how I like to interact with founders.
Gopi Rangan: So what can founders do to make the first few meetings effective?
Steven Lurie: I have the deals that the fund has done. 30 deals we do about 30 in the fund. I'm about this one or two more left in the fund, and then I'll do the next fund. And I did 18 angel deals. Before that, I would say that most of the deals in the fund were [00:18:00] referred by leading investors. Which is actually pretty rare because it used to be in the nineties.
When I was at keen Engenia, we were fundraising. They would, what's called syndicate. They called it another set of eyes. The lead would come in and say, let's get a coli because they want that many venture funds. They seemed like they were about a hundred, but technically they're probably like 300 now.
And now there's 3000. . That's what would happen? That doesn't happen really anymore. So V venture capital, not used to sending deals that they're doing, I'm not talking about the next round, that love to refer you to invest in the later rounds. But I'm talking about the very same deal that they're doing for the first time.
They don't bring another funds, but I'm a $10 million fund on purpose. And I want to remain that size so that I'm not seen as a threat, right. The check size is, , come under K it's kind of the angel level. So that I'm, I'm viewed as like an angel to them. So most of the deals come that way, but then there's some that I made on my own.
I'm pretty active at Stanford. So let me give you an example of each tonal I was [00:19:00] referred and I have a grateful for Rob Cody bear Shasta, by the way, plug for him. He's amazing. Tim Chang for Mayfield live. The CJ is also amazing. So anyway, Rob referred to the deal we met and, , a few months later, he just said, I'm looking at this deal. If you want to look at it, I introduced me to the founder.
The founder in that case, very technical , master's in electrical engineering hardware engineer who in this case actually came from an enterprise background, but. This is a consumer app, it's say a weight training device. That's kind of for the home gym. It's amazing. Very high net promoter score.
We have one of the first early ones and we love it. Use it. My wife had never did weight training now is very active. He had. I was more of a personal experience. He started going to the gym. It was losing weight by weight training and said, Hey, well, I'd have to go to the gym on an ad for gym and a box, essentially with instruction and all that kind of stuff.
It's a little bit like Peloton for cycling. It's like for weight training, very different, much harder product. And it's an amazing product. . So when I met him, [00:20:00] he was a very compelling story. Allie, Erardi just a great person. I could tell, could be a leader because I want the founders to be the CEOs at exit IPO, , thousand person companies, and Mark Pincus, the dad Zynga.
, if you look at Jeff Bezos and bill Gates and all these kinds of great companies, Those are the kinds of people who mostly prefer, , they're the founders, I'm very much a founder going all the way. In fact, that's one of the questions I have. Do you want to continue being CEO? And I want them to do it, and I want to help them be successful in tingle to get there.
So anyway, he was a technical founder. I thought that he could scale it's a large market, but also it was, I thought the product would be really hard to develop. The competition would be limited. And that's been the case. They don't really have no one. Do they, electromagnetic, is it obviously many substitute products?
Arch was one where I just met them at a Stanford event, , alumni that were PhDs graduates of the PhD program in material science and engineering. And we actually met at a [00:21:00] 150 or whatever anniversary, event for we weren't doing a mentoring program, actually helping current students in that way.
And again, a great lead, , Jeff Colombia from now it's called uncork time stuff day with technical founders, but also they really had a compelling vision. Again, I felt they could scale and you Sherman. And Tim Berg, Andrew's a real leader and being a leader in start acts. That part, I really like, , people who open a team building hell but electric market great leads.
, again, what's in seeing like a very crowded market. They have manufacturing. So let's go to the next level. So they have IOT devices and manufacturing flaws, and then use the data. So it's a heavy software play there's hardware in there. What I thought on both those cases, those competencies, but it was all of them, , they were very good partners.
I've got a number of people hired. I had a product at arch. I got a front, a manager, many engineers, a Caltech engineer, and a Stanford engineer. [00:22:00] Tonal got a bunch of engineers and QA and product people, poor people hired there. Cause they were just very responsive and also compelling. So I send people there.
Then they become interested in because at the time nobody had heard of the tunnel, they hadn't launched and arch, , stick manufacturing stuff. And it was also very early. So I also look for, can these people attract if I send them people , I spend hours and hours a day recruiting for these companies.
It's like tip of the iceberg. They didn't even see all this work. It's a ton of work. , , if I sit in and do this, get somebody only signed about a company and send them there, , what can the company carry the ball or will they drop the ball? And I felt with these founders that they would be great at team building and they both have.
Gopi Rangan: Oh, this is very interesting. You're giving real life examples here. I am tempted to ask you a controversial question about recruiting. The popular advice that many VCs give to entrepreneurs is that they need to hire slow and fire fast. Do [00:23:00] you agree with that?
Steven Lurie: No, I don't. That is one of the platitudes. There's a bunch of these platitudes and people say like, A's hire A's B's higher. What does that mean? I'm like, Hey, everybody thinks they're an a, like, it's not actionable. The hire slow fire fast. It's not an area that it's not actually, people will actually take action on it, but it's the wrong action.
Or, or let's put it this way. It's more nuanced. It's not totally wrong, but there's more nuance to it. So that's one where I'm really on a. That's the one that I really emphasize, even though there's many other platitudes, but most of them are kind of just innocuous. Like I use higher ASP size C whatever, , that doesn't mean anything and it's sounds good, but it's not actionable, but the hire slow fire fast actually does damage with people actually act on it in the wrong way.
So here's why I think it's wrong. And for early stage, remember I was at Microsoft at the heyday in the nineties and we had, I mean, I had people like who would find me every, which way is before LinkedIn to try to [00:24:00] come and interview them. Right. I mean, they would just have people just begging to come interview, , at this company at the peak of their power and the top of the.
The heap, but if you're a 10, 20% company, no, one's heard of you for the most part. The problem with high fryers is there's three problems. The first is it leaves out the most important, which is sourcing. So I used the Microsoft example because sourcing was less important because you had a huge inbound.
But your, some startup, no, one's heard of. People just don't know I'm not going to come interview them because they don't even know about it, but for the most part. It leaves out the most important part, which is sourcing. You've got to put a lot of time and focus and figuring out how you get people to come interview.
So let me give you a couple examples. One is internal referrals. You've got to work with everybody, your company. She goes through the very best people that and get those people to at least have a conversation with you about the company. Number two is you're going to get creative. I used to work called non recruiting events when I was at, for instance, in Bangalore in India was [00:25:00] India.
We had a huge, nice office space with an auditorium and Stanford did this recruiting for the business school. But they, in August, we go around the world and they wanted to host it somewhere for Bangalore, which was the biggest city for them to do that in India. So I hosted it there and I got up for two minutes before and said, Hey, we're hiring.
Here's a little rolls if you want to. So, , that's an example. You could do alumni events at your office. You could teach every Friday, do demos a once a month, happy hours where people could come over. Cause it was a lot lower bar. For someone to come over just to a happy hour versus come into view.
So you've got to think of ways that you get your message out to just source the candidates. It could be doing PR it could be doing PR and focused on engineers, because maybe that's not tech crunch. Maybe it's some other magazine or whatever sources that they read, but you've got to put a lot of focus as our slow firefighter leaves out all that.
And that should be a huge part of what you're doing. Number two . Why would you hire slow in a super competitive market? I think what they advice is trying to say is don't [00:26:00] rush. It don't feel pressure. Don't compromise. And I totally agree with that, but , you mustn't dilly dally and here's an example of why, because I do this all the time.
I may help him companies and they'll literally go slow though. Radio silence, always the same excuse, sorry. We're busy. We'll launch this or that. And the candidate will either lose interest or most probably get other offers. And take offers. So I'll give you an example. I was helping a company, computer vision engineer, and they had tried a year and they'd gone on LinkedIn and found that close to 100 people that they thought fit what they were looking for.
And then we decided, Hey, this easily, it was a hundred people, but it turns out those people were not waiting for this company, which is about 12 people at the time to contact them. So they ended up only talking to them, maybe a fifth of those, so 20 people or so, and then of course, , Not everybody worked out.
I ended up getting two offers and they were all excited, , after this process and both those offers got turned down. One of the people went to Waymo and went somewhere else. They were nowhere. Right. So anyway, I, I invested, started working with them [00:27:00] on this hire and it took me a while.
I took several months, not a year, less time, but I found someone that I thought I found a number of people, but somebody I thought was particularly good. I happened to be at the company for lunch. I was nearby and we stopped in for lunch. And I asked the guy, the founder, , how's it going with this person?
And the founder was like, Oh yeah, , next week I'm going to do a screen, a phone screen. I'm like, look, this person is, I think they're getting some interest from other companies. Why don't you just remind him until lunch tomorrow? Just like you had me here, you have lunch provided at your office. And I found, I was like, Oh yeah, that's a good idea.
I was like, you don't need it. First of all, ice cream them, but also just act on it. And they had the person there and Oh my God, they found out the next day. Cause I was there on a Thursday. The Friday, first one was great. And they gave him an offer by Monday that person had four other office. So now they had five office and they ended up actually going into the stomach and they turned them Waymo.
They turned down crews and they turned that neuro. But by the time this founder would have done that phone screen, we'd played with this [00:28:00] person would have had four other offices and would have not been on them. So that's what I'm talking about. When you say hi, slow, that founder was probably thinking, Hey, I'm slow.
I'm not rushing it. But what I say is act as if the person is the greatest person in the world. Get him through the interview process, get back to them. You can always then go slow on the back end. Once they get excited, they can, it can get really excited and you can go slow on that part, but the other upfront.
All right. And then the third part is the fire. Look, if somebody is a bad attitude to do something illegal, the harassment of cost, right? And even some people it's not a fit. And sometimes it's obvious, like maybe it's just, there shouldn't even be at a startup or whatever, but many times. And I knew this because I've been there, I've been a manager and I've helped us.
It's a 10, 12 person company, and you've been going for two years, you're going a hundred miles an hour. Somebody comes in from some other company and they're stepping onto a train. That's going super fast. And what, in the first week or first month, they may not. I have the project name. It probably wouldn't even onboard at all [00:29:00] and they may not find their footing.
Right. They may even stumble on a Friday and the founders are five fast. Well, what happens then? Is it sets a sort of cultural thing because none of the other people were like, Hey, that person was really good. They were trying, they just didn't, , nobody explained anything to them. Like, it's like, am I going to be maxed?
They thinking, and , is something wrong with this company? Maybe, ? And then they start looking. So you want to make sure you onboard well doing projects and be successful. I have a plan clearly if it's not working out, but I tell you I've had many situations like that, and I've gotten people onto tracks where they've been stars and very productive.
So anyway, in summary, That's why that advice sourcing is critical. It's the most important part you want to act with deliberate speed, but don't be rushed for the hiring. And then with the, you want to make sure the onboarding. So when you do fire it's for the real reasons, not your fault, basically. All right.
Gopi Rangan:
Yeah. Silicon Valley and tech in general, they are super competitive [00:30:00] areas. So the power is shifting away from hiring managers towards the talent and talented people have choice. It is actually now very, very important for CEOs . This is very refreshing, very interesting to hear your perspectives. I'm curious to see how your experience was in India.
Steven Lurie: Well, India was an amazing, personal and professional experience and I'm grateful for the opportunity to be there. Zynga went from zero in revenue to a billion in four years. May still be actually. It went from a small company to something like 4,003 years.
So it was literally, you cannot, you can learn not interview kind of interview. That was many, many, you can't even hire those in San Francisco because you cannot even do the interviews over that time period. Just the time. So you've got to look for other. And there's very few places. You can really scale a tech company, especially back then, those 2009, 2010 today there , tech is Silicon Valley is everywhere.
It's a [00:31:00] state of mind and a way of doing business at domain. But even today, , there's a couple of centers where you can scale. You can start a company anywhere, but , places Televiv Beijing, New York, Seattle, , Austin place, Boston and Bangalore is one of those. Places. It made sense to go there and essentially do a replica of the San Francisco office.
And what made it deciding for us was that it wasn't just an Indian office supporting a us office because each game is its own business unit. Is its own PNL and run separately. We could own them. So we ended up running a number of the games out of India.
It wasn't cussing. It was about talent where can you get the sort of. Same level of talent that you can in San Francisco at scale. And there's not many places,
we went there to do that, to tap into, talent, .
Gopi Rangan: Okay. Well, I want to switch to the next segment where I ask you about community involvement.
Is there a nonprofit organization you are passionate about and which one? Yes.[00:32:00]
Steven Lurie: Well, I've always been passionate about nonprofits. I have three children and seven 41 years old, the seven year old when he was four, a couple of years ago, got cancer, childhood cancer and university of California, San Francisco, where he was treated and safety's live, which is amazing.
And there's a. Organization could swim across America that organizes seventies swims around the United States and it raises money for childhood cancer research. Those San Francisco event, which happens in timber benefits, the very same doctor that treated our site and the very same center and CSF.
And I had done triathlons and based when I was in that, all that stuff for years with team and training and other things like that. , when I found out about this, I did it and that's what I do every year and that's become my focus fundraising. We also support Campo Kaiser.
Childhood cancer survivors. Unfortunately, the camp burned down and the fires [00:33:00] last summer. So they're looking for donations for that make a wish foundation, which also supported him. So those are the kind of the three groups that we focus on childhood cancer.
Gopi Rangan: Steven, thank you for sharing your personal stories. And thanks a lot for coming to this podcast and shedding a lot of wisdom on recruiting, which is one of the most difficult things for founders.
And I look forward to sharing your nuggets of wisdom with the world.
Steven Lurie: Thanks very much.
Gopi Rangan: Thank you for listening to the shore shot entrepreneur. I hope you enjoyed listening to real life stories about early believers, supporting ambitious entrepreneurs. Please subscribe to the podcast and post a review. Your comments will help other entrepreneurs find this podcast. I look forward to catching you at the next time. .