AV8 | Season 1 Recap And Highlights

From favourite moments to putting lessons in play, Hau and Adrian reflect on their takeaways about hiring and retaining early team members.

Discussion Topics: Season 1 Recap and Highlights

• How the show came into being
• The importance of people strategy
• How the show’s making a difference for founders
• ‘Eye-opening’ and ‘Intriguing’
• Amazing analogies
• Aha moments
• Founders were open and introspective
• Setting new hires up for success
• Things to cover next season

Transcript: Season 1 Recap and Highlights

Hau: Hello everyone. We are your host, Hau and Adrian, and welcome back to AVV Founders and Friends podcast Season one. We’re sitting down with successful founders in Vietnam and Southeast Asia to get a behind the scene look on their first hires and early teams for their companies.

Adrian: And today is a little different as we will both be the host and the guest and we’ll recap the past episodes in season one, share our thoughts and reflections and discuss what’s next for AV Founders and friends.

Adrian: So today, all you get is Hau and myself and we have a lot to discuss, a lot to think about, and a lot to reflect on. 

Hau: Absolutely. Adrian, this has been in the making for us, I don’t know, for the last couple of years of, you count from the time when we started talking about the idea of having a podcast.

And then we recorded our first episode sometime in Q3 last year, I believe. So yeah. I think this is a good opportunity for us to think back about our vision for the podcast and this particular pilot season. So what was that vision before we started and now looking back, is that vision realized in your opinion?

Adrian: Yeah. So when we first started talking about a podcast, we had no idea what we were going to record. One of the things that always stood out was that we wanted to have a podcast and conversations that reflected the realities of being a founder, building a startup.

The realities that we see also from the VC side, right? But these are the realities that don’t make it into the, to the news articles about fundraising. They don’t make it into the conversations when a founder is pitching VCs. And so these are often things that don’t get discussed a lot.

So that was the first thing. And we wanted to be able to reach existing founders, current founders, soon to be founders who are really curious about the entrepreneurial journey. But emphasizing that, month zero to month 12, because that’s arguably the hardest part of the journey, right?

Where no matter how much experience you’ve had whether you’re coming from corporate or you’re coming fresh outta school. There’s just so much that you don’t know. 

The importance of people strategy

The first three hires by the company is like a foundation stone which is very important. Also inspite the team being small for a newly founding company, people strategy is very important. 

Hau: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I remember back when we were brainstorming different ideas and really for us, it was about being able to answer the questions about who the first three hires for any startup should be. Where to find them and what do they look like, right? If they’re good first hires what does good look like?

But the first three hires were always only the starting point and all the conversations that we’ve had with our guests expended quite a bit as we follow the evolution of all of these teams, right? They got to 10, 20, 50, up to a few hundred people, some all in one place, and some are regionally or globally distributed.

So we went really deep as well into some of the topics that I believe were very common. People, pain, points for startups. And why it was important for us to talk about the first few hires because again, we’re catering to early stage startups people who are in, month zero to month 12 of their journey.

I think it’s also equally important to give early stage founders a sense of the bigger picture as well. Even in your first months or year of your business, it’s never too early to be thoughtful about your people’s strategy and your approach. And building a startup is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

So you need to pace yourself and you need to think long term. And people’s strategy is definitely not an exception. So I would say, what we’ve been able to do, in my opinion is pretty in line with what we set out to achieve from the beginning. 

Adrian: Yeah. And I agree. And I actually wish there we could have more, more episodes, more stories. And there’s, yeah, this is something we’d definitely like to continue. Yeah. 

Feedback to the podcast

Adrian recalls Amit from CrazyTok telling him how AVVF podcasts help himself while managing his own pocast production company.  There was another person who came to Adran and told how the podcasts changed thier hiring strategy from just skill based to people based. Also there was a person who asked Adrian for the resource list he follows for the podcast which made him realise there is a gap of content about such topics. Ho had moments of self doubt too. 

Hau: Yeah. I’m curious if you heard any feedback from our listeners. What was some of the feedback and how did you feel about it? 

Adrian: Yeah, I think generally launching a podcast and, there are people who congratulate and say, oh, really like your podcast and it’s helpful.

One particular piece of feedback and comment stands out. We work with CrazyTok outta Singapore, and they are a kind of media company that helps in producing podcasts, and so we’ve been working with them and they’re a startup too, right? And I’ve known Amit for years, from our time at Uber.

Great guy set out on this journey himself and discovered all of these things about podcast production. He has his own podcast as well as helping produce for other companies. And, he posted, I think after our first or second episode that he’s listening to these episodes and he’s this is really helpful for me.

Yeah, so it’s, I think it, it goes to say something when the people that are working on the podcast find it really relevant for them and helpful for them. So that really stuck out. 

There was another moment I was at an event and I don’t remember their name, but I was speaking to someone and I mentioned the podcast and they actually had listened to it, and they said that it made them think about how they were hiring their own team. Cause they didn’t have a team yet, right? And so I think there were some assumptions on, hey, I’m just gonna, interview a bunch of people and whoever’s gonna come in yeah, that’s gonna work this based skills-based, and I think it forces this reflection on what are the real qualities that they want someone to have when they’re coming to the team? 

And it ended up not really being about skills, yeah, those are, the ones that I remember there was one comment that someone wrote on one of the original posts where they asked for reading resources and I made me really think, cause I had stopped. And I was like, oh man, I think maybe we should share like a reading list or something. 

But I think what it is. It showed me too, that there wasn’t a ton of content around this topic, right? And so a lot of the lessons that were being shared in the episodes and also the things that you and I were talking about before we started recording and even after we were recording the episodes these are things that came from personal experience.

They were observations, right? And yeah, there are books that you know, Have some of these topics, but the fact is that a lot of people don’t know Exactly. What these books are, how to apply this stuff in practice, so yeah

Hau: Awesome. Yeah for me, this is a pilot season. So we very much learned as we went. And we got some positive feedback that I really appreciated it. But at the same time, we were still trying to figure out how we could do a better job. A little bit of self-doubt crept in for me. I think after episode number five, I started to wonder like, Hey, are people getting bored? This, right? We’re talking about essentially the same topic over and over again.

But luckily when episode six came out, there was somebody commenting I think on AVVF’s, LinkedIn post that was promoting the episode and said, oh, such a great conversation more, please. So that was like the tiny bit of validation, that I got, and I felt much better after seeing comments like that.

One word to describe the AVVF series

Hau says for her the podcast series was eye-opening as all speakers opened some new flow of information for her. For Adrian, the podcast series was intriguing. He recalls the episodes with Chris who was friends with his cofounder and also Jason who believed in retaining employees. 

Adrian: What is one word that you’d use to describe this season and why? Can’t take my word. I’ve been thinking about this since last night. 

Hau: I dunno what your word is. I actually had two in mind. But yeah, if I have to pick one, I would say eyeopening. For me as a co-host, I learned so much from all these conversations that we’ve had with all of our amazing guests, right?

It’s such a unique opportunity to be able to ask all the whys and the hows, and. See all the work that is, quote-unquote under the hood, right? How these organizational leaders think and take action to build the best teams. And that has been a mind-blowing experience for me. And I remember getting so energized whenever we recorded an episode and how the gears in my brain continue to spin right after we finish.

What is your word? 

Adrian: My word was intriguing. I think similarly there are things I felt like having been a founder that I was aware of, or I knew or experienced, but intriguing because there are all these mutations or permutations of the same experience, right?

But seeing how those manifested for individual people, and how the different dynamics from each of the founding teams, how those were different. Chris was talking about, having his team for 10 years, right? They worked together for 10 years and, people who were like, Hey I brought in my co-founder who was a good friend of mine and, they’ve been working together for 13 years, right?

But there was the kind of the foundational elements, things like culture and values regardless of how those, that early team came in or how they were found, how they started working together, then those still existed.

And hiring based on the stories they told. And  Jason talked a lot about onboarding. And that’s the concept of self-serve hiring. And so being a very, as a COO and being very methodical looking deeper into the operations, it wasn’t just about, Hey, how do we get this person in broad scope, values, things like that, but getting into the mechanics of how to really keep this person, how to make sure they’re gonna be successful.

All right. Yeah. And so it is. You can tell oh, that’s something he really takes pride in, right? Yeah. That’s where he really focuses. Yeah. And I think the other one that stood out for me was, Chris.

Trust is about intentions

Adrian recalls some mindblowing analogies that guests like Chris have drawn upon. He says trust is about intention and confidence is about ability and the difference is the same as that between speed and velocity.

And he said trust is about intention. Confidence is about ability, right? And redefining and reframing some of the terms that we use on a regular basis. When we talk about hiring, we talk about teams, but putting them in a context that Is really impactful to your organization and shows, demonstrates why they really matter.

So I thought that was like really intriguing. I think the first example of that was Kartick’s velocity versus speed. So it’s anyway, he said that. I was like, whoa. And it’s you look at the definition, it’s exactly what he shared. But putting it in the context of a startup and, in some ways a contrarian view of Hey, you gotta move fast, but before you move fast, you gotta make sure you’re moving in the right direction.

Then, yeah, that was super intriguing. And so these are some of the things. That I wrote down what I find myself saying to other people, right? Yeah. I feel like I should always say, look, and this person said that. But yeah. 

Moments that struck a chord for them

Adrian recalls how he learned that people do not use reference checks properly which they should. For Hau, it was eye-opening for her how the first few hires can make a huge impact to the company as these people go on to take a very large part of the company roles than originally hired for. 

Hau: Awesome. Do you have any aha moments that you’d like to share with our audience? 

Adrian: Yeah. One, I think this was a big one that came in maybe two episodes, how wrongly we have been using reference checks, like the audacity of us to not know how to use reference checks, right? The audacity of most people to not how to use reference checks. And Chris brought this up and is quite comical, right?

And I think he, he said that if there was. You do a reference check at the end of an interview cycle. Yes. And the only way that person’s not getting a job is if they’re a criminal. And so what’s the point? I thought it was really funny because it’s absolutely true, right? Yeah.

And Zang referenced Minh Giang from Newing. She talked about reference checks as a way to, to uncover behaviors. And that is really the core part of an interview or interview process for someone as a C-level candidate.

And dispelling this idea that interviews are everything, and she said yeah. Interviews don’t really mean anything. It’s the reference checks. Yeah. And understanding how this person behaves in these contexts. So that was like a big aha moment for me. We don’t do it in the very beginning. And so it just, it started making me think, oh, how do we better use reference checks in when we’re looking at deals?  Yeah. 

Hau: Yeah, no I also didn’t expect reference check to be such a controversial topic in our podcast. I agree with all the things that you’ve highlighted. Those are also aha moments for me personally. But if I also have to pull up and talk about one key takeaway, and going back to the topic of your first three hires, right?

It’s actually this whole season that gave me an idea of what the value of good first hires should be, right? When we looked back at all the sharings from our guests I paid very close attention to how they described what these people have done, how they have evolved in the organizations, and what they are appreciated for the most, right?

And I noticed. If they stay around, the roles and responsibilities would develop very significantly over time, way beyond what the original job descriptions were. Right? And in line with that, what the founders and executives appreciate the most about them is often not what they do on the technical side of the job, even though they might be brilliant at these things, right? So the more intangible contributions are what the founders highlighted the most, how they helped the to build the foundations for the companies, how they contributed to defining the DNAs of the organization. How these first few hires recognize the blind spots that their founders or executives might have and challenge them to be better leaders.

How they’ve adapted very quickly. They grew as the business grew and they roll up their sleeves to do more than they originally signed up for. So I look at it this way The biggest values that Great First Hires give to a startup are very often not the things that are listed in the JDs.

Openness to re-examine

Adrian was surprised that founders were ready to re examine their shortcomings and then be introspective to make adjustments into the culture of their companies. 

Adrian: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great point. Something I’ll also add to that is, I was quite surprised by their openness to, reexamine some of these thoughts, these assumptions, be introspective and make adjustments, right?

Being someone who is inquisitive open to new ideas, open to learning from the live experience that you’re having, you’re not reflecting five years down the road.

And yeah, I think regardless of past experience as a founder, regardless of years of age. I think everyone demonstrated that quality, so I was quite surprised by that. One thing, as I remember, we were trying to steer away later on, we were trying to steer away from some of the culture conversation, but it always came up right? It always came up.  But I think the reflection on it is like really powerful. Yeah.

How to set up a candidate for success

Hau recalls how Christopher from AITOMATIC said he makes sure the new hired employee demonstrates what he learnt from his first project and how will it help in his job further. 

Awesome. Yeah, thinking like moving forward a little bit, besides just standing out? It’s something that, you’ve taken and applied to the way you work the way you think about people management or hiring? 

Hau: Yeah, A lot actually.

From Christopher Aitomatic when we were talking about onboarding a new hire, he mentioned that he would give the new hire project and ask them to present to the broader team about the impact they’ve made on that project within the first two months, I believe. I actually shared that idea with our team and I believe we’re applying that for our new hires right now.

And then something else that I also wanna highlight is actually something that did not make the final cut. And so this is when Jason mentioned that. At virtual internships, they’ve developed work-with-me guides to distribute to new hires. For example, Jason has one about working with him and he would give that to somebody who would join and work with him directly so they can navigate that relationship.

I actually asked him to share the guide with us. Afterwards because I was so curious and I took a look and it’s super detailed, right? What he’s good at, what he’s not good at, what type of manager he is, what influences him, how to give him feedback and so on. And it’s not just simple descriptions either, right?

I am this type of manager. They’re actually rationales and examples to help people really contextualize all this intel that they receive. And I love it so much, 

Onboarding is a part of hiring process

Zang from Newing told that the hiring process is not ended once the peron is hired because the probation is a part of the hiring process too. companies should take the final decision after onboarding and if the person fails to clear probation that should be a learning for the company too. 

So yeah. And then the final thing, I know that this is getting long, but something that I would love to also share, and this is for me, like a personal leadership mindset thing. More than anything. And that was Ming Zang talking about how she believed people should think about onboarding as part of the hiring process.

Yeah I won’t get too much into that, but yeah, for me, I had never thought about it that way. I always thought of them separately. It was hiring and then there’s onboarding, right? So that kind of framing really made me think differently about how we make the best decisions for the organization on people, right?

And of course, we should always think, Hey, what happened? What went wrong? What could we have done more if somebody failed onboarding or probation? But at the same time, being able to see that as a way for us to gather additional data points and make a better decision on hiring, I think it’s a great way to look at it.

Adrian: Yeah. Ditto onboarding as part of the hiring process. I think both Giang from Newing and Jason from Virtual Internships talked about this, right? And. Yeah, it’s, it forced reflection for me. Like I, I always know that yeah, onboarding is important, but to contextualize it as a part of the hiring process means that even after we give that offer that the job isn’t done right, this person’s not actually hired, right?

And hiring and I think this kind of emphasis from a lot of episodes is not about just giving this person an offer and saying they’re part of the team. It’s this complete psychological buy-in to joining the company, right? And so we, you think, we think back to Esther from Pops Worldwide and she talks about people that have been working with her for 14 years.

Yeah. And in a market that moves this quickly and there’s always new opportunities. There’s always someone knocking your door and saying, Hey, join this company, or Start this with me. To keep someone for 14 years as a startup is amazing. And so there, that says that there’s just real psychological buy-in.

And when you start, when you’re a startup, there’s not much that you have. You can’t say, oh, this is the amazing product and all the traction that we have, right? Onboarding at an early stage is so critical, right? Buying into the impact That the solution’s having buying, even that this problem is something worth solving, right?

And I think Chris from I-Automatic talked about that, right? Yeah. Aligning on purpose and Regardless of what skills somebody has, technical skills and does it matter as much as buy into Hey, this is a problem that we should be solving and this is the real world impact that this can have.

Hau: Yeah, a hundred percent. Actually talking about onboarding, I think we started out with designing an onboarding process for our team, for new hires.

We’ll have this jam session to really get on the same page about what’s happening next and how we can work together. So yeah the possibility of application, just, from all of these learnings. It’s really endless. And so my next question for the two of us is, We had a lot of good stuff.

What is left to cover

Adrian says he wants to explore on topics like people management, conflict resolution in a company, performance measurements, etc. We cover a lot of ground, but I’m sure there are things that we would have loved to hear more about. For you, what are those things? 

Adrian: So two things. I think one of them is just managing people, right? Managing people would involve things like conflict resolution. Ooh. That comes up sometimes when we talk to founders, right?

And it’s yeah, it’s not to say, Hey, my team members don’t like each other, but hey, there’s some tension in the office, right? Because person A wants to do this and go about it this way, and person B. Doesn’t agree with that, right? And they’re both important people on our team.

They’re great contributors to the organization. Yeah. So how do you resolve that? Especially from some of the larger organizations, I would’ve loved to talk more about how to manage people resolve conflict, how to define your own management and leadership style, right?

I think it was apparent that every single person, every single guest starting with, car tech all the way through those having their own management style, leadership style, but getting into, why that is the case and how that’s evolved I think would’ve been really interesting.

One thing, thing that comes up in my conversations with founders especially after they’ve raised their first two rounds or something, and their team starts growing is, getting into the performance. Like how do you, what are the right ways to measure performance?

And performance, measuring performance can be. Something, it’s, it can be really scary, right? It’s like we’re doing this experimental thing and Hey, if it fails, then I might not perform here or not, right? But being able to measure performance in a really fair way, that’s reflective of the objectives of the organization, but also truly helps team members and these critical hires succeed, right?

And yeah. Yeah. Be able to do it with. With proficiency, with empathy as well, and make sure that it’s a productive tool for the organization. 

Hau: I absolutely agree with you. I would love to be able to dive into more of the long term people stuff, communication rituals, goal setting. Career development, all these things that you have to do to keep people around, make sure that they thrive in your organization.

So this is a good segue to the next question then. What is next for AVV Founders and Friends podcast? 

Future of AVVF podcasts

Adrian says he may explore topics like executive coachings in the next seasons. Also he wants to evaluate pitch decks live so that people know what are VCs looking for while funding for a company. 

Adrian: What’s next? One of the things that I, realizing more and more being in the VC industry and working with variety of different companies and founders, is that people still are really big topic.

And I do think that there’s so much more to cover around people. And not necessarily just Hey, your first hires and stuff like that. But yeah, talking about performance, talking about OKRs, right? And how do you really set goals and things like that, right? Yeah. Also around Just the evolution of the individual that is the founder.

So getting into things like executive coaching, right? So the lessons that people learn through that, or the experiences that executive coaches have working with founders, why it’s really helpful.  

Hau: Yeah, 

For sure.  And yeah, we I actually would love to hear what our audience think is the most relevant to them and what they would love to hear from us and from the podcast. So yeah, if you have any ideas, if there is any topic that really resonates with you, do let us know.

Adrian, maybe you can talk about how they can reach out to us. 

Adrian: Yeah. For any ideas if you’d like to be a guest you’d like to work with us on something like this, then please send us an email at hau@avv.co. So hau@avv.co and adrian@avv.co. That’s a d r i a n @avv.co. 

Now one thing I’ll add something that I am really, I’m curious and I’m excited to maybe do, is just go through pitch decks live. Ooh. Because I think, founders always want to know how VCs look at their decks, how they review it and what they think. And there is a lot of things that come up in these discussions. And as we review decks, we get comments from our team.

And they could be about market size, it could be about founder market fit, it could be problem, solution fit, right? I think being able to do that live for, a few people, gives them some insight and better helps them to be able to create their decks. So that’s something I think would be really interesting.

Hau: Yeah that topic of fundraising narratives it’s something that we also spend a lot of time working with our portfolio companies on, and especially I think in the current funding landscape when things are a little tougher, right?

It’s not as easy to raise money anymore. Then the importance of being able to tell a compelling story that would attract the right investors for you is there, right? And and yeah, that I would love to talk about that too.

Adrian:  Awesome. Yeah, I think anything else you wanna cover?

Hau: No, I think that’s it. That’s it. That is a wrap for AVV Founders and Friends podcast season one. It’s been a fun and super rewarding 

And even though we did all of the recordings online via Zoom, it felt very much like we were sitting across from our guests and chatting over coffee. And also as I mentioned, we had a lot of good laughs. And I really hope that our audience feels that energy. 

Absolutely thank you to all of the guests all of the listeners and especially thanks to you ho for being a great host and partner in this journey. And yeah, looking forward to the next episodes for AVV Founders and Friends podcast.

Thank you, Adrian. Thank you everyone. We’ll see you again soon.