 Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining. My name is Thomas. I am the CEO and co-founder of Siona. My topic will be about which roles to hire first. It's going to be hopefully useful and insightful. And after the session, feel free to join my mentoring session as well, which will be probably over there. So let's start with a quick introduction about ourselves. We started our startup five years ago, and we were lucky enough to scale up from a two-people operation to 300 people now. And we are also labeled as the biggest startup in Hungary, where we have started our mission from. We were lucky also to raise a 94 million series around earlier this year before the huge downturn. And I can tell you the main key to success is to build a world-class team and then in order to achieve that, you have to get your hiring right. When I was 16 years old, I started my first business, which was basically ordering smartphones from China. I realized that in the market in Hungary, they weren't selling them with Hungarian language. So I have acquired a tool to download and upload their firmware. And also, I have written a software to change the language of the software to Hungarian. And then I was buying these phones, selling them in local marketplaces online. So I always wanted to be kind of an entrepreneur and running my own business. And that's how I ended up also starting soon. And when I was at university, I've met Bensa, my co-founder. And we were both very interested in cryptocurrencies. 10 years ago, we have heard about it the first time. And I was always fascinated by different online payment methods, how people are receiving, sending money, and what are the risks of it. So I got also very interested in crypto. And we had an idea together to actually start a crypto exchange. So we have realized that, actually, all the crypto exchanges have a very friction-full process to onboard and accept customers and payments. They were forcing customers to do QYC, know your customer, which is actually uploading your ID, getting verified. And then also, they were only accepting bank transfers as the main payment method. So we thought that it's so cumbersome why don't they accept credit card payments? And also, why do you have to upload your ID? And why take an upward, such a high churn? And we have also decided about that credit card payment method should be the way how we would run this crypto exchange. And we have quickly been attacked by fraudsters. So what we have seen during the first week after starting to accept card payments is actually a bunch of reverse payments, so chargebacks. And we were the victim of payment fraud. This means that, actually, the customers have called their bank and said that it was not them who have paid for the crypto. So we have lost all this money. And then we got very interested in how this has happened. We have started to research the different dark web forums to understand how fraudsters are operating, what kind of tools they are using, how they are paying to each other, obviously in cryptocurrencies. And then we ended up actually to look into different solutions in the market to solve this problem for ourselves. We haven't find an efficient tool because all of them were very enterprise-focused. They were very high-dose about their pricing and product features. Also, they didn't offer a free trial. So as an early-stage business, we really couldn't afford to work with them. And also, they didn't want to work with us because we were a small revenue source for them. So we decided to build an in-house tool to solve this problem. And then we have realized that, actually, your digital footprint can be a great source of data points, which are collectible from the internet. So that means that your email address, your phone number, your IP and device are all captured during an onboarding process. And then you can enrich these data points and then detect fraudsters. So we have devoted to CION five years ago and started the business with my co-founder, Bensa. And we were just out of university. So I became the CEO and the so-called visionary. And then Bensa became the integrator. And these are two very important roles which I must have for every business. You need someone as the CEO who is setting the company vision, who is hiding the executive team, who is coaching the executive team, and setting the goals, and as well as who makes sure that there is always money in the bank. And then you have the integrator who sets up everything to make it happen. So helping you to execute on these goals, to make sure you hire right. And you have an office to work from and so on. I will talk a lot about balances and tightrope because they are a way of balancing out your stability. So when you hire, there's always a trade-off. No one is perfect, right? And as you grow your organization, you have to think about two high people who might eventually become managers. So they have to be good at people management, running one-on-ones, providing feedback. And you also have to hire individual contributors. And then I think it's super important to also set up a career path for every of your functions and departments. So people know what will happen next, what can be their next level of advancement. And I think some of the good examples of hiring someone who is talented enough to do the job might not mean that they could be a good manager because they might struggle to make decisions, they might be slow. And as well as when you try to build a team, now remote culture is quite embedded in most of the startups. But to be honest, in order to spend as much face time as possible with your early hires, sometimes it makes sense to actually hire locally. And if you hire internationally, then you can have different ways to actually improve your team spirit. If everything happens on Zoom, it's hard to always keep in touch with your teammates. And obviously, I think everyone is trying to hire people who are a bit like themselves. So if you would like to have a great pool of new and innovative ideas, you have to also focus on diversity. And if you build a diverse team, then you will have an amazing pool of new ideas, which you might have never thought of. So I think that's super important. And as well as some people doesn't have the growth mindset. So make sure that during your interviews and probation, if you are an early stage business, you ensure that someone has the growth mindset, can get their hands dirty, can roll up the sleeves, and then focus on just getting things done. On the other hand, there are people who are just being too compliant, which is helpful when you are a regulated business. And of course, if you would like to do things by the book, but as well as we have learned that some people are trying to make things more difficult by following the book too much. And as well as people who are more like a generalist can be a good part of a startup, as the next balance says. But some people might work much better in a big company when they have an isolated responsibility, and as well as they don't want to get involved in numerous projects. So it's really different. Some people like this, some people like that. So you have to be sure that the people you hire have the mindset to actually be part of a high growth startup. And then this also means that when you are hiring your first roles, they must be generalists. They have to know how to run high level different projects, but also they have to execute on them. And then as you grow and as you build different functions and departments, you have to focus on getting actually specialists under these newly become managers who are generalists before. And I think what's really important is actually with your early hires to spend as much time as possible. Later, it might not get as important, but if you can always have some personal chat, some beers, et cetera, after work, then it can really lift up your team spirit. And then for us, actually one of the ways how to build our team was to spend a few minutes and maybe a beer at the rooftop of our first office, which was actually this place in Budapest. And then that's how I could very close to my CPO, CTO, and COO. So our first 10 hires, we always try to find an occasion to be together. And then I think also what's very important, if you are a visionary and you have an integrator or vice versa, then you have to actually decide what's your area of expertise. And then you have to hire someone for the other thing. So speaking of myself, I'm a very product tech person. And I'm not a great sales guy, to be honest. So Bensa, my co-founder, was doing all the business development. And I was the one who was close to our customers learning about their product feedback and then helping our CPO to define the roadmap based on the feedback, prioritizing things, and so on. And as well as we have realized quickly that Bensa also wasn't maybe the best salesperson on the earth, but he was doing quite OK. So we had to come to the conclusion that actually we have to hire a chief commercial officer who helped us to scale from the level of about $1 million ARR to the stage where we are now. And I would say that also one of your first priorities obviously is to raise money. And the previous presentation was mainly about this, so I won't get too much in the details. But then obviously in order to build an MVP and then find your product market fit, probably you have to get your foundations and product development done. And then that means that you have to have people who actually are in the beginning full stack developers and engineers and they can build your early stage product and as well as make sure that your website and all I present is there. In the beginning we have tried to obviously balance everything on a tightrope as every other startup funder has done. It might feel if you are on a roller coaster ride, if you're an entrepreneur, there are so many ups and downs. Obviously when you get your funding secured, you need to get your product out in the market. You have to find early adopters and realize some form of a revenue stream, which might be challenging. But then this is like the cycle of getting there and building a sustainable business. You will find bottlenecks as you grow in every department and project. And if you are two step ahead, then you can ensure that these bottlenecks will be as smooth as possible. You have to think about building a redundant team and as well as stabilize the different bandwidth issues. So for example, if you get like multiple customer support requests, obviously in the beginning, I was the one who was taking care of these queries, but then we had to hire someone because my bandwidth wasn't enough. Or I was the one who was issuing invoices to our customers in the beginning and then we had to get someone doing this because my bandwidth again wasn't enough and this applies to every first function in every startup, I would say. So as we grew, I think there is a great balance of finding the best talent for each project and as well as to build out the people management function and deploy the different individual contributors under each of these functions. For us, it started with myself, Bensa, and then I've met in the first couple of months a guy, his name is Balint, and I've met him through a conference and he was working for another startup and he told me he's also taking on freelance projects and I told him on a Friday, hey listen, can you get our website done by Monday? And he said, are you kidding? I said, no, he said, okay, I can do it. So in two nights, he didn't sleep, he developed our website about five years ago and then I knew that he's the one, he should become our CTO and after spending some months to convince him to join full-time, he actually take on the role and then in university, I had a very talented classmate, his name is Miklos and he was actually like a designer but as well as he fulfilled the PM role at a software development company. He told me that he would be glad to join after actually designing of his website and also designing like the pitch deck and he become our CPU and these are the people I've been trying to spend most of my time even now. They are still today or CTO and CPU and they have a lot to push things through and actually they had as big of a learning curve as myself and my co-founder had. Yeah, as I mentioned, I was doing a wide range of different tasks myself as a co-founder in the early stage so I was trying to be close to the customers, make sure that we have the right priorities of the product roadmap, I was looking for investors, I was taking care of finance, my co-founder Benza as the CEO, he was doing most of the sales, making sure we have an office and there is someone who is cleaning the office or putting new kitchen towels in the office and so on. As well as Mickey was taking care of CPU of design, product management and even testing the tool so he knew Jira very well and he helped us to implement a different framework for every different project we've had. As well as of course Balint or CTO was taking care of the development as a full stack engineer. Then as we grew we realized that we have to separate the backend function, frontend function, we have to build a DevOps team and then we actually haven't had a known tech hire until we were 12 people. So until 12 people it was just Mickey, myself, Benza who wasn't coding and actually everyone else was an engineer and I think we didn't need it, actually sales and marketing people until the point but then we have decided to hire people part time in the beginning and double down on content creation. We are a B2B business but we have realized that actually B2B and B2C sales is quite similar so people are looking up different topics and they are usually typing different keywords into Google. So we have created a blog and then in this blog we have actually tried to explain or target customers how to solve different problems they have in a DIY method. So I am not a native English speaker but I was good in drafting this blog post every week. I have drafted one. We've hired from Upwork a proof reader, a copywriter person and he has created like a very easily readable native type of content piece every week and then we also hired someone who made sure that we have the right SEO setup there for every article so the metadata and so on was polished by him and as well as we have hired like a PPC agency to start to invest some money into paid ads on LinkedIn and Google so we could start to measure conversions and similar metrics and then eventually as we grew like over 20 people these functions were moved in-house for cost efficiency reasons and as we scale, I felt like every stage was totally different so when we were 20 people I could just stand up in the office announce something and everyone heard it but then we were 50 people it was like only half of the team and we were like 300 people as of now and it's totally different so there's no way I can actually talk to everyone at the same time unless we gather together or jump on or tone whole sessions and you have to scale up the way how you communicate with the team as well and it's quite challenging to be honest and in the beginning I was involved up to 50 people in every interview which made up about 40% of my time and even up to like 150 people it was about 30% at least of my time to hire people and then now currently it's about 25% even at this stage so I would strongly advise if you are a startup founder to be very close to your interviewing and hiring process to make sure you hide the right person for the right job at the right time and what we've also realized is Central Europe or Eastern Europe is not the best place to find go-to-market people so there are not many success stories of startups who actually could sell abroad and for this reason we have decided to open up an office in London about three years ago and we still keep today our R&D operations and tech development in Budapest which is actually very good for our OPEX but as well as it's just very limited in terms of the talent pool, how many great salespeople or marketers we can find over there and so we have to make a move and I have moved to London three years ago and in the beginning I was very active at events I have broadened my network and actually could hire a lot of people to refer us and we have been utilizing different job boards to receive some inbound candidates and as well as I was doing myself a lot of outbound so I was messaging candidates on LinkedIn to convince them and it's actually quite powerful if as a CEO you message someone on LinkedIn because they also will feel special and the conversion rate is quite good in this way but we have realized also that when you are hiring hats and VPs it just doesn't cut it so you have to use hat-henters you have to work with an exec search firm so obviously they are very expensive but to grow faster you have to have these people who have the experience and it's just like the way how it works so in the beginning we were quite hesitant about paying so much for a hat-hunter firm but then we have realized that it's a must-have so three years ago we have opened up or shop in London Jimmy Fong or Chief Commercial Officer joined and we kept our R&D center in Budapest and then we have also set up two new offices and later one more around the world and these offices are go-to-market offices so what happens is we try to be as close to the customer as possible therefore we have people who are like them in their own time zone and then these functions are supporting us in business development, customer success and also in some cases DevOps and it's not only about who to hire but how to create a scorecard when you hire them or how to have like isolated responsibilities so if you don't delegate something it might not get done so we haven't delegated watering or cocktails in our first office and unfortunately it has passed away which I'm very sorry about and you have to create as you grow OKRs and key PIs for each department which you have to live up to and make sure to actually reach those goals and in the beginning I think what was actually quite useful for us is bootstrapping for a long time so we could build a lean mindset and actually understand how we can lengthen our runway and my advice to every startup founder will be to have at least one year of runway if they want to please their existing shareholders yeah as we grew we moved to a new office obviously we had new challenges and one of the challenge was actually to select the color for the new office carpet which we decided to select our own color and then we felt like in this new office actually there are way more things to decide about not just the carpet and it felt like we are among all these different tight ropes as a growing business what I would like to emphasize also on this point is how important diversity really is if you don't have a diverse culture then you will see a stagnation of innovation and a lack of company culture I would like to also make a point of how important is trust make sure in your probation time you set the bar high enough and you also hire the best person you can find for the job and focus on the what when you actually talk with your reports and not the how to have their buying so if you try to explain all the time how things needs to be done they will lose interest and it will work against you and as well as innovation which is also created by your diverse team will lead you to a successful product launch and then I would encourage you to hear everyone out in the team even if they have no connection to the product to see how they feel about different features and maybe you will hear something you haven't thought of so as I have explained being part of a company at 20 hat count 250 is totally different and we have grown in less than 3 years from 20 to 250 which is quite immense so scaling up from a start-up scrapping us to actually be like a corporate entity is really different you have to take care of building functions customer success, product managers, tech marketing finance and delegate everything you can you have to get certifications like ISO 27001 so to get pentas done because big clients will ask for those and in terms of the scrapping us actually in our first office we had the shower and we were also lack of space so we had to put a desk and a chair into the shower which was used by us as a phone booth and I kind of miss this kind of scrappy ideas and in the new office we actually bought some real phone booths which were expensive but also we could afford it by then because we got funding secured and then I think as I explained when you begin your journey as a start-up you should definitely hire multitaskers and then later get specialized people Jimmy, our first chief commercial officer he's actually sitting in the first row here he took so many hats in the beginning he was taking care of even marketing until our CMO Matt joined and then Matt helped us to actually build more functions out and then it helped us to grow and reach even higher levels I think also it's very important to balance egos your people might take proud of their work but you have to be smart about how actually you make sure that these egos are balanced out and depending on what kind of company you would like to build and what kind of culture you build, I think it's crucial to have this right he's also the start-ups official debt joker so what I learned is also success equals people plus processes to the technology you have to make the right highs at the right place at the right time and if you want to reach this you have to balance flexibility but also you have to stay focused for us actually balance also means that we try to at the same time solve the issues our customers are facing due to fraud but also provide them a way to reach the easiest form so we have actually announced a freemium model of our platform so every online business, small, medium, large can leverage this free plan forever and that will be it thank you so much for your attention I hope some useful advice were shared feel free to come and join my mentoring session and wish you all the best for Slash and thank you again for joining