 Hello, everyone. How are you doing? How is slush going? Big, big turnout. I'm very glad that you've stuck around with us, despite the fact that it is nearly 5 PM and people are getting ready for their evening activities tonight. But very glad you've decided to stick with us. Yeah, I'm really glad to have Jessica Neal, a partner at TCV, former chief people officer of Netflix, and Lurian, chief people officer of Kavac, massive Mexican-used car marketplace global business with huge recognition globally, to talk about a pretty interesting topic, which I think a lot of people are talking about already here at Slush. This idea of talent, what it takes to build a successful company that is cognizant of the issues and challenges around bringing in excellent talent and then scaling that globally. It's a fascinating topic. Lurian, just to start with yourself, co-founder of Kavac started with an operation in Mexico, grew that worldwide. I'd love to hear from yourself a few anecdotes about what it was like to even start a company. I mean, where did you look in terms of trying to find the right talent, the right people to build the company that is Kavac today? Great. Happy, so happy to be here full of energy. This is an amazing event. And I'll tell you a little bit. I think that when we decided to start Kavac, the first thing that we said is we need to have a problem that is big enough for us to solve, to be really engaged, and to have the solution to be able to solve it and the product. And the third piece, which is very important, is talent. And how we're going to find people that are actually going to commit their day to day and waking up every morning to fill this idea and make sure that we deliver the product. And at the beginning, you end up being a stalker, pretty much. We were LinkedIn stalkers, emailing people and asking them and making sure that they would at least answer and respond to what we were thinking. Because at the beginning, it was very pitch mode. So the first recruits, we used to spend a lot of time pitching and telling them, this is what we're building. This is how big it's going to be. This is why we're the right people to build it. And these are all the people that are helping us build it. And after that, we got their attention. We made sure that we made that dating process long enough for them to visit our operation, get to know the team. And once we saw that spark in their eyes, that's when we switched to recruiting mode. And we're like, OK, now we know that you love this. Let's start with a very rigorous process. So people knew that they were joining something amazing and then celebrate and made sure that they felt very valued and very part of what we were going to build later on. Totally. Yeah, it's interesting just kind of hearing, even trying to inspire people to be part of that journey, part of that mission. And Jessica, former chief people officer of Netflix, scaled the company to thousands of people. I mean, I'm sure you as well would have some experience of what it's like to drive a successful company on the people front. I mean, yeah, just in terms of, you know, to Laurie Ann's point around how you actually convince people to believe in that mission to come on board. I mean, how do you go about it when, obviously, Laurie Ann was talking about the start of the journey, but Netflix, when you kind of grew beyond the sort of DVD business that we all know from back in the day to the streaming giant it is today, I mean, how did you sort of look at attracting talent and bringing people on board? Yeah, well, when we were DVD, nobody wanted to work there, so it was a lot harder. But I think it becomes even more complex when you do have a bit of a brand, because then you are a destination that people want to be at. And then it's really figuring out who the best people are, right? And that's the hardest part. And I think, you know, having a saturation of talent within your company and building a high performance culture takes a ton of work. And so it's a ton of work attracting the right people and figuring out how you're going to assess them, how you're going to see that spark, right? And when you come to work, you're coming to do something that you're passionate about with a special group of people to do it with. And when you get it right, there's nothing like that. But you don't always get it right. So as much effort as you put on the front end and sort of building the pipeline and selling and getting the right people in, you're going to make tons of mistakes. So when you don't get it right, you have to be equally aggressive about correcting that. And then that's how you can saturate the company with more talent. And I think a lot of companies struggle with the sort of middle group, which I call the good layer. You can have your superstars. You have your duds. Those are easy to figure out. But it's all the people in the middle that are good. And how do you move them to greatness? And if you can't, then how do you be honest about that in a graceful, genuine way and be good at saying goodbye? Totally. And this is something I really want to ask both of you about. That problem, or not a problem in many cases, but just that hurdle of trying to attract people to a company that is going through the motion of scaling and becoming massive and growing really fast. You take on more people in operations across the world. And you might lose some visibility over what exactly you're managing and who's where and things like that. How does that work for a company like, in your case, at the time, Jessica, Netflix, trying to kind of realize these are the ingredients that I need to fulfill that mission of keeping talent. Not just getting talent in the first place, but keeping that and keeping them believing in the company and the pace of its growth. Yeah, and I think this idea of keeping and retaining is maybe the wrong lens. I think it's, look, I don't want to keep you if you don't want to be there. But if you want to be there and you're amazing, of course, I want to keep you. But I think being honest about a working relationship and being honest about the phases that a human goes through in their personal journey around their career and around their family and around their life. And then also, the company has its own journey. And sometimes those journeys can be on the same path for many, many, many years. And you're able to flex and adapt. But sometimes you want different things. And when we were a startup at Netflix and doing DVDs, what was great then wasn't great when we were going into streaming and going global. We needed a different skill set. And some people from the beginning scaled all the way. And some people didn't. But I think if you can have a culture of honesty to have direct conversations about what's working and what's not, it produces for a much more conducive team and trustworthy environment where you don't feel like it's failure. You feel like it's a success. And isn't it a wonderful thing to be a great place to be from versus just a good place to be at? Yeah, yeah. Lurianne, any thoughts as well on that kind of issue? Kavak being a company that started from a very small point, but now is scaled and got lots of capital and a $9 billion valuation. This is a much bigger business we're talking about than it was right at the start. What were some of the kind of learnings that you found along the way as you grew the company? Yeah, I definitely agree with what you're saying. The people at the beginning is very different than the people that you're going to need after your scaling and you're becoming a very big and global company. And it's about making sure that during this trip you have the people that are there at that precise moment where you need them and that they can grow along the way. So it's something that you're growing together as a company. Kavak is growing, but these people are going maybe if it's the time for them to go to have another challenge in another team or in another place, it's being honest about doing that because the company changes and the culture changes. You just need to be very intentional about how it changes so it doesn't surprise you and you're like, where am I now? So you know where it's kind of going and some people want to change with that and some people want something different. And when it comes to the sell, for a tech company, oftentimes it's the place to go for people who are looking for a new role, something that's very challenging in many ways but exciting in others. But there's different ways to do this, right? You have salaries on the one hand and Lord knows tech has seen inflation when it comes to salaries and expectations. Seeing some kind of pressure against that view nowadays given the sort of challenges that we're seeing economically. When it comes to today, and maybe Lorianne to start with you and Jessica if you could pitch in as well, how do you figure out what are the best ways to get the right talent and make those pitches in terms of the salaries that are on offer? You had this war for talent that existed in 20 and 21, now in a very different year after 22 in which we kind of saw the economic signs go the other way. How do you kind of convince people to sort of stay invested on a personal level and financial level? Yeah, and I think if you add to that, if you go back to Latin America and the entrepreneurship ecosystem that we had, it was basically non-existent. So you had people that had a very, the talented people had a very clear career path with a very clear financial incentives aligned to it and you're convincing them to join entrepreneurs that have not been successful in the past and you're telling them, don't worry, we are gonna make it, we are gonna be successful. So we really had to engage people with a vision and engage people with a dream of being the first group of entrepreneurs that were actually going to be able to make something big and open doors for other entrepreneurs because we had to bring in people that were sacrificing maybe half percent of their salary versus inequity that they didn't understand and that people that just wanted to build this and I think that's what made us very successful as well because people were really in it to build something, something that was lasting, something that was gonna change the entrepreneurship ecosystem in the region and I think that's why people still keep, of course, after fundings, we're now able to pay decent salaries but at the beginning it was very difficult. Thanks Leigh, Jessica. Well, we had a slightly different philosophy at Netflix where even from the beginning we wanted to pay the best and so our thought was that we'd rather pay someone top dollar that was amazing versus three average people because we knew that if we pay top dollar, even though we were a startup, that their work would 10x the work of the three average people and so we just sort of went all in on that from the beginning and the result of that was that we had less people but it was actually a good thing because we got done with a lot less people. Leena business. Yes, and it was more scrappy and it was faster and it was more agile and then we weren't just sort of dragging along this other group of people who may not have been the perfect fit, right? So that's a very tough thing to approach as well. I mean, when it comes to the right profile of a person that you need at the right time and again going back to the kind of shifts that we've seen over the past couple of years, there's been this kind of, I guess, flight to quality both on a company and business point but also in terms of the people who were right for that role at the given time. Jessica, when you sort of look at the environment at the moment and trying to find the right fit, what is it that you look for in somebody who wants to get involved in the mission? How do you assess that? Well, I'm personally a little bit of a human lie detector so I have that going for me. But I think it goes back to what Laurie-Ann was saying. I bet it's that passion, it's that spark. It's when you're talking to them about not only what they have done in their career but what you're doing and you see the light in their eye and you know that they want to be part of it. And sometimes I think there's, look, interviewing is humans, interviewing humans. So it's inherently flawed. No one's figured out the AI behind that yet, it doesn't happen in some room here today at the conference but you're gonna make a mistake because there's only so much talking you can do and you're not doing the job together. But I think if you can get really good at digging into the passion but then also pulling the thread to get more details on how they approach problems, how they solve things, what would it be like to work with them on a day-to-day basis? So the closer you can get to that, the better kind of assessment you're gonna have but again, it's not a full-proof plan. Yeah, there's no one size fits all approach is there when it comes to that question as well. So the tech industry for the past couple of years, we've seen this kind of hypergrowth from in COVID times where you had companies thinking that this was the best time to grow and scale and hire the most amount of people for the biggest impact in terms of the product. And obviously the online adoption that you saw during COVID led to a lot of that as well. Given the time that we're in today and companies trying to take tough decisions, you've obviously seen cutbacks and layoffs and difficult decisions here and there. When you kind of assess the current market and the ways in which you can kind of keep the ship sailing but still try to kind of be mindful of the very human element that you're dealing with when you're kind of hiring and trying to keep people within the company. How do you sort of approach this in a compassionate way? And what is the sort of the latest in terms of how the tech industry is dealing with with some of the issues in the broader economy? Yeah, so I think what you're alluding to is layoffs and perhaps a re-correction of over hiring. The good news is that employment rates are still quite low. So people, even though the layoffs have happened, people are finding jobs. But I think what organizations have realized is that throwing bodies at a problem doesn't necessarily solve the problem. So even though there was a lot of growth and a lot of hiring, productivity might not have been where a lot of organizations wanted it to be. And there was this money in the bank and there was an opportunity and it made sense to do it at the time. But I think when you're a young organization and you're growing and you're growing really fast, there comes a point where you kind of take a step back and you look at that growth and you say, what's the impact that it's having on the business? Is it positive or negative? Do we hire the right people? Do we hire them in the right places? Because when you're moving fast, sometimes you don't see those things. And I think a lot of organizations over the last year and a half have taken a step back to say, okay, we're in hypergrowth. But did we do it well? And I think some and many came to the conclusion that perhaps maybe they didn't do it right in the right areas or there was a sort of re-correction that needed to happen. Yeah, just to reflect on that a little bit more, were the decisions that were taken by some of those companies, were they the wrong decisions? Or was that just a reflection of the fact that you had to kind of be a bit more economical and scale back the ambitions slightly? Lorianne, if you have any... Yeah, I don't believe it was the wrong decision. I think it's the risk that you take as an entrepreneur because you're riding this boat and you're thinking of how the context is gonna look. You're thinking how much you're gonna be able to actually do. And then you need to see what gets thrown at you and how you manage it. So you try to be playing all the time with, what scale do I need, what capacity do I need it? And then you kind of have to be adjusting and tweaking along the way, as long as you're learning. It's very easy to get into, when you start in hypergrowth mode, it's very easy for everyone to tell you, I can solve this with four more people. And you, okay. And then you start in that. And then the moment you're like, wait, let's step back and think maybe it wasn't for more people. Maybe we needed this. So I think it's part of the growth process. And the beauty of it is that I've had people when they leave because of these things, changes that say in the company, they're like, thank you for the experience and having been part of that growth, having been part of a story, even though you had to shift directions a little bit for X or Y thing, and you had to readjust. But the journey for them was really what mattered. And they knew because if you're joining a startup, you know you're doing something risky. You know that you're gonna need to make changes along the way. And obviously it's not the end of the road, is it? When you do leave a company, I mean, you have that experience that you've kind of built up. You can take that, transition somewhere else and take it to new experiences. So just, I mean, going forward, given the time that we're in, where is tech going from here? You know, I know it's a loaded question, but to whittle it down a little bit, I mean, we're seeing lots of talk about artificial intelligence and just the amount of impact that can have on companies of all stripes. In the people operations and HR, I'd be curious to know maybe, Laurie Anne, if you could kind of weigh in on how much that's impacting the business. You know, I'm super excited. I believe that maybe for the first time we're going to be able to build solutions through AI that can actually help us measure the human part of the business. Because when anybody asks you, so tell me a little bit about, you know, how do you know if HR is successful, if the people, and it's hard, because you don't have real metrics, you don't have a way to tie all this data with the KPIs completely and understand and actually see, you know, how can you predict if a person is going to be successful or not? And now we have the tools. So hopefully people who are thinking how to use those tools, of course for the customer, of course to keep building things and products, but also to enable and unleash people in a way that we can all be more productive and happy while we're being productive. Yeah, I would agree. I think, you know, for a very long time there hasn't really been a lot of innovation in this space. And right now you're seeing a lot of entrepreneurs come with ideas, whether it's using AI or other technology, to really enable the people, organization and organizations in general to have a more, you know, sort of full understanding of what's going on and being able to connect all the dots. And prior, you know, as the CHRO, all the tools they had to use were so fragmented. None of them talked to each other. Like, you know, and you couldn't have a full picture. You had a spreadsheet here and a spreadsheet here. So we're getting to the point where, one, innovation is happening in this space which I'm so excited about. And two, real meaningful change that has needed to happen because it's all a bit antiquated is coming. So I'm hoping some of the folks in this room who are, you know, these problems will come talk to me at DCV. Well, on that note, Jessica, you know, you're here with the funds. I'd be curious to know the venture environment right now. I mean, are you seeing any signs of promising founders, you know, the new kind of wave of founders that are coming in? How much is AI playing a role in that conversation? There's a lot of talk about AI. Which is exciting, you know? And there's so much that's going on in that space that, you know, you can't help but get wrapped up into it. However, in a good market or bad market, there are always interesting founders, right? And innovation is happening all the time. And, you know, you look at, like, when some of the most iconic companies have been created, it's been in, like, sort of down markets, right? And here come these, like, folks that I know whether it's at Facebook or Apple, whoever. And so it's an exciting time, but it's a different time. And I think I saw Sequoia up here earlier talking that, you know, it's kind of slowed and some are waiting, right? But I think all the time and every time there's brave entrepreneurs out there taking that risk, they have a vision, and that never stops. And so that's what's so exciting about the job is to be in those conversations and to know who those people are. And then, you know, if all things are right, you know, perhaps you connect and, you know, get involved. But it's fascinating and inspiring. I just find that whole journey and that whole step to really take that risk to be one I don't think most people would take. It is a jump, you know, definitely, you know. To start a company is something else entirely. And I mean, if you have any advice for the room, you know, I mean, there's plenty of folks out there who are, I'm sure, looking at starting a company, maybe already in a successful tech company and want to know what is the right, you know, way to kind of go about it. How do they, I guess, you know, on the one hand, maybe, you know, Lorianne, you can share some perspectives on growing and scaling and building out for the products and the people teams. And then, Jessica, I'd love for you to weigh in on, you know, how do you approach, you know, a venture investor? What's the right recipe to get a TCV on board as an investor? Happy to. This answer could take so long if you have, like, the whole day. But I want to structure it, you know, a little bit. And first, if you're building something, make sure you're building something that has a big market. Because if you want to have and you want to scale, you really need to be focused on a big market. The other thing is that make sure that you build it with people that are as passionate about this with you. You spend up a lot of time with them. You spend time with them all the time. And at the end, it's the talent. It's the people that you're building with that makes, you know, the effort worthwhile to actually wake up in the morning and keep doing this all the time. And the third one is the power of your own mindset. I think that's what that was one of the things that changed most when I became entrepreneur and jumped from my corporate job to an entrepreneur is being able to kind of block all the noise around you and just say, OK, because I have COVID ahead, right? So what can I focus that I can actually control, that I can actually do to move the needle today without listening to all the noise around me? And that actually helps you push every day forward until you build something amazing because you never stop building. And then you realize and you're like, wow, look at what I built and I'm so excited about what we're going to continue building in the future. Well, I think to your point, you have to have a good market. You have to have a good idea and a good dam. No, we focus more on later stage, well, public and private. But outside of the market and the idea and a decent ARR, you really are betting on a team, right? And so it's the belief in the idea and the conviction around the business, but it's also the belief in conviction around the team because it's the people that are going to pull it off. And so when we're doing diligence and looking at organizations, of course, we're looking at the numbers. But we're also looking at the team and how impressive are they and their ability to work with each other because it's hard, right? And you're going to hit some bumps in the road. And how are they going to react when that happens? Creative differences, differences around management and governance, all of these questions that come down the track. Can they lead a group of people more than 10? Yeah. Now, growth stage, that's been a challenging part of the market. You're seeing a European, a state of European tech report that was released today, kind of shared a lot of insight about just how tough things are at the moment. In European venture, you've seen that kind of withdrawal of US and Asian investors from the tech industry as a whole. When it comes to growth stage, I mean, what is the outlook for TCV? I'd be curious to know, do you see companies managing to raise funds again at some point in the future? Where is the magic timeline for when we start seeing an end to a lot of the cold pressures that have faced the startup world for the last year or so? Well, you keep asking a lot of questions where I need my crystal ball and I left it in the back. But yes, I think I don't know what time. I mean, I don't think any of us were predicting that there'd be two wars happening. I mean, none of us could have even imagined COVID. But I do think that capital is needed and innovation is happening. And so normalization will happen. And perhaps a year and a half ago, two years ago, wasn't quite normal, right? So maybe we'll get back to a normal pace of investing in diligence. A bit of a sort of step back to reality, really, in terms of what should be a good business approach. Lorianne, do you have any kind of outlook in terms of obviously no crystal ball? I think every time somebody tries to predict when IPOs are coming back, for instance, it's this year, I know it's next year, but it's never quite the right time. But just in terms of when some of those issues start to fall, I mean, obviously, Kavak being a global company in very late stage, you'll obviously have a sense of what things are currently like within the business. I mean, when it comes to revenues, and it's almost a paradox, isn't it? With venture, on the one hand, you're kind of seeing revenues growing quite sharply. For Kavak, I know that it's been a state of growth. On the other hand, you're seeing that kind of reaction from markets that isn't quite matching up. I mean, how do you bridge those two conflicting things that are going on right now? Well, I think that coming from emerging markets, you learn that we go through cycles of up and downs all the time. And we started seven years ago, COVID wars. So it's kind of like we say, OK, let's breathe. This is a cycle that we're going through. And you go a cycle in which everything is up, then you go one when you need to tighten up the belt, make sure that you're very lean, that you're operating, and then you kind of push for growth. So we're still expecting, we know that right now, we're in that bottom cycle. And expecting that it's going to change, hopefully sooner rather than later. Totally. Got one minute left on the clock. I know I ask a lot of future-looking questions. And I know it's such a hard thing to predict the future. Nobody can quite know what is the perfect outcome looking ahead. But Jessica, Lurianne, in terms of the HR functions and that the people functions, what's that going to look like in five to 10 years' time? I mean, it might look very different to what we have today, the kinds of software that are out there, the operations. What does the future hold for people and HR functions? And how will tech kind of drive some of that innovation? Yeah, I need my crystal ball. But I think that, hopefully, there's been an evolution in the function to become more strategic and a better partner to the business. And that evolution has been happening over the last 10 years. It's certainly been happening over the last five years. But really, what's happened in the function today, in terms of all the things that you have to be responsible for, of course, you're the HR strategist and the culture and people strategist. But you're also the chief medical officer. You're the chief diversity officer. You're the chief operating officer in many sense. You take on so much more than expected. So I think the function, in terms of responsibilities, evolving. And the great thing that we talked about a little bit earlier is that the technology now is coming up to play to match that evolution. So what I'm hoping for is that in five years, 10 years, the function has really evolved to be this strategic business partner that's really helping the organization scale. But then also it has a supportive platform technology that allows it to deliver on that. And so I don't know. That's my thought. And I know we're out of time. But for me, my hope more than we're going to go is that we're going to be able to use technology to understand people more and to understand how we can get people to be very passionate, but also deliver results through all of this. Because we're very complex. And maybe through AI and all of these things, we were actually able to get that to a level in which we can understand and we can actually help people do better at whatever they're doing and just achieve their dreams. Totally. Well, that's the ultimate goal, making people more productive, happier, and wanting to be part of the journey. So yeah, Jessica, Laurie, Anne, thanks so much for taking the time and joining us to have this fascinating chat on the state of HR and people today. Thanks so much as well, everyone, for joining. Really appreciate it. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your slush. And get off and have a few drinkies. I think there's a few people already on that journey now. But thanks again, guys. Really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.