Recruit Rockstars Podcast

Few early-stage companies combine as many distinct components as Tovala. Based in Chicago, the company pairs a smart oven with a meal subscription service. It truly makes foolproof food. Weekly meals are delivered fresh to the your door. Scan the barcode & you’re done. Home-cooked meals that cook themselves. And clearly Tovala is onto something big.  They’re venture investors include: Comcast Ventures, Finistere Ventures, Left Lane Capital, New Stack Ventures, Origin Ventures, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, RiverPark Ventures, Service Provider Capital, Y Combinator Mike Mason is Tovala’s Talent Acquisition Manager, which puts him in the crucial role of scaling this hypergrowth organization. I just had the change to speak with Mike about how he puts a Rockstar in every seat. (And how you can do the same.) Yum.  

Few things wag my tail like meeting with a CEO who puts talent at the top of their agenda. Here’s one. Matt Hulett is CEO of publicly-held PetMeds, America’s most trusted pet pharmacy with 11 million customers. Matt has driven more than $2 billion in value creation as a four-time public company CEO/President and a two-time private company CEO.  He’s led multiple turnaround successes at companies you know, including Rosetta Stone, RealNetworks, and Expedia. And this week, he released his new book “Unlock: 5 Questions to Unleash Your Company’s Hidden Power” - It’s fantastic, regardless of your company’s stage. I just had the chance to speak with Matt about what role Recruiting has played in his personal success & that of his companies. Arf! Arf!

In business, few missions are more vital than protecting & improving the health of Americans.  Sadly, 89M of us are pre-diabetic. Dan Zavorotny & his team are out to change that.  He’s Chief Operating Officer & Co Founder of NutriSense, the fast-scaling VC-backed company that helps people prevent diabetes & heart disease. NutriSense’s innovative model pairs glucose monitors, predictive software, and a team of live dietitians. They combine to form a cohesive program to improve health.  Clearly, Dan’s onto something big. The business has scaled from 2 employees to 80 in just 2 years. And revenues, while confidential, are mighty substantial. Investors have noticed, too. Backers include Milkbox Partners, LAUNCH (Jason Calacanis), Sutton Capital, Standing Oaks Venture Partners, and Techstars. In this 20-minute conversation, Dan shares how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat. And mistakes to avoid along the way.  

So few entrepreneurs “go the distance” from startup to IPO. Most are “promoted to Chairman” at some point by their board of directors, because they fail to scale their personal skills as rapidly as their business. But I found one. Martin Babinec is Founder & Former CEO of TriNet, the legendary hypergrowth Professional Employer Organization (PEO) that got its start in Silicon Valley before becoming a global phenomena. Serving more than 15,000 clients and their 325,000 employees, TriNet is the largest independent cloud-based HR provider leveraging the Professional Employer Organization model. Martin founded TriNet in 1988, served as CEO until 2008 and Chairman until 2010. Along the way, he raised $130M in 5 rounds of equity financing, completed 6 acquisitions, and grew the PEO industry over two decades. Today, TriNet is a public company with 3,500 employees, doing $4.5 Billion revenues annually. I was a TriNet customer, and I simply couldn’t have started my companies without it. Because they handled all of the people part - payroll, benefits, administration, legal - which let me focus on what we did best. Now, Martin is a leading venture investor in Upstate New York. As Managing Director of UpVentures Capital, he funds early stage technology companies. Portfolio companies include people.ai, Bungee, Carta, BrandYourself, Outmatch, and Drafted. I asked Martin what made it all possible. His answer was instantaneous and authentic: core values. Martin was inspired by Jim Collins and EO & understood the importance of building TriNet based on distinct & authentic core values. They became filters for deciding would you join the company. He didn’t just write down some core values a the beginning, but he operationalized them thru the interviews, reference checks, Test Drives, and assessments to ensure that poor hires couldn’t slip in. In this 20-minute conversation, Martin walks you through how to do the same at your company.

The bigger a company becomes, the bigger its organizational challenges become. Liz Steblay saw it over & over at the large companies she joined. Now, she’s Founder & President of ProKo Agency, the consulting matchmaker that connects Fortune 500 leaders with pre-vetted consultants who specialize in organizational effectiveness. ProKo represents high-calibre organizational health consultants, who are deployed to help companies clean up their talent-related messes. Business is booming. Liz is also Co-Founder of PICA - Professional Independent Consultants of America, which teaches consultants how to build their career & client base. She’s well-suited to do it. Liz began her career in Organization Development at Intuit, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Levi Strauss & Co, and Medtronic. In this 20-min conversation, Liz reveals the talent problems she sees most often, and how to tackle them.

Healthcare fashion used to be horrid. But Chat Razdan is rapidly changing that.  He’s Founder & CEO of Care+Wear. Based in New York, they combine fashion & function to take people from home to hospital and everywhere in between.  Their products include scrubs, port access shirts, post surgical bras & a ton more.  The goal is a more human healthcare experience for patients & clinicians everywhere. Between the aging population and a global pandemic, it’s no wonder business is booming. Investors include MedStartr Ventures and Grape Arbor Venture Capital. Chat began his career at Goldman Sachs and Kearney.  In this 20 minute conversation, Chat and I “chat” about how he’s put a Rockstar in every seat of his company.

Whew! I finally finished paying off all my Amazon holiday gifts. Guess I’m hooked on eCommerce. Turns out I’m not alone.  And I have proof… I just interviewed Dusty Holcomb. He’s CEO of fast-growing Red Stag Fulfillment.  Based in gorgeous Knoxville, Red Stag is the world-class order fulfillment company designed to unleash scalable growth for eCommerce companies. In short, they do the picking, packing, storage, shipping, and returns for a ton of eCommerce companies (including the ones you used this past holiday) And they’ve carved out a unique 3PL niche… Red Stag specializes in large, heavy, bulky products. Think expensive inventory, like those high-end office chairs. With 1.1 Million feet of warehouse space in Knoxville & Salt Lake City, clearly Red Stag is onto something ‘big.’  They’re backed by leading Private Equity firm Mollenhour Gross. Prior to his appointment, Dusty was with AAA for many years. He now leads over 500 full-time employees. I wanted to find out how he’s scaling the company that scales other eCommerce companies. In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how to put a Rockstar in every seat.

Sir Wellington? An amazing mustard, mushroom and shallot blend Smashing Salmon? The mystical miso, soy and Shiitake blend Vampire Killer? Garlic parmesan blend, of course. Yum. Chip Overstreet is CEO of Spiceology, the nation’s fastest growing direct-to-consumer and direct-to-chef provider of innovative spices. And apparently, investors are hungry for it. Spiceology has raised capital from the likes of Jackson Square Ventures and Cowles Company. Formerly, Chip was VP Business Development at Affirm, the fintech wonder. But he packed up from Silicon Valley and moved to Spokane Washington, where he now leads Spiceology’s 150 employees. In this 20-minute conversation, Chip reveals how he’s put a Rockstar in every seat. (And which yummy spices are coming next.)

Isaiah Bollinger is Co-Founder & CEO of Trellis, the fast-growing full service eCommerce digital agency. Based in Boston, Trellis creates eCommerce businesses on Magento, BigCommerce, and Shopify. And he’s onto something. Trellis recently was named to the Inc 5000 list, making it one of the nation’s fastest-growing companies. Isaiah invests the better part of his week on recruiting & leading a team of 80. This conversation reveals how he does it.

How’d you like to build a company with a 90% offer acceptance rate? With near-perfect employee retention? And with 50% of employees comprised of under-represented minorities? Sean Byrnes has done it (and the company doesn’t interview candidates… at all) Based in San Francisco, he’s Founder & CEO of Outlier, the VC-funded business intelligence company. His customers are large consumer-facing companies with an  immense amount of data. Outlier watches all of your business data & lets you know when unexpected things are happening, anywhere in the myriad metrics and dimensions of your data.  Outlier plugs into your business data where it lives (e.g. Google Analytics, Adobe Cloud, Salesforce, Stripe, SQL databases) and understands your business cycles, trends and patterns. Clearly, he’s onto something. Outlier’s investors include: SV Angel, Capital One Growth Ventures, Emergence, First Round Capital, Susa Ventures, Ridge Ventures, In-Q-Tel, and Homebrew Prior, he served as Founder/CEO of Flurry, the mobile analytics company, which was acquired by Yahoo. In this 20-minute conversation, Sean reveals how he puts a Rockstar in every seat (and how he keeps them)