XA Podcast 022 | Alex Gold On C-Suite Hiring, Self-Awareness And Culture | People And Talent Series

Hear from an acclaimed tech recruiter on how he got started in the business, the challenges of finding the perfect C-Suite fit, the importance of self-awareness and generalist skill-sets and some of his most memorable projects

Discussion Topics: Alex Gold on C-Suite Hiring, Self-Awareness and Culture | People and Talent Series

• The inception of True Search in SE Asia
• Going against the grain with a different business model based on niche value
• Why you need great teams to do well in SE Asia
• The importance of self-awareness
• The growing importance of being a generalist
• Most memorable projects
• Perspective on Culture
• Thoughts on angel investing

Transcript: Alex Gold on C-Suite Hiring, Self-Awareness and Culture | People and Talent Series

Sergio Salvador: All right, and in today’s episode, I am very, very glad to welcome Alex Gold. Alex leads the Southeast Asia business for True and specialises in leadership such as for Internet software and Fintech investments of leading virtual capital firms. Prior to joining True Search, he ran his own boutique search firm in Singapore. Alex brings over 15 years of executive search experience, including five years of conferee within the technology practice. Alex has been in Asia for six years, having previously lived in London and San Francisco. Without further ado, welcome to this episode, Alex. Tell us something about yourself.

Alex Gold: Thank you, pleasure to be here. So I’ve actually been in Singapore for 11 years, and I’m aware that six years is a little bit out of date. So I’ve been here since 2011. And in the time that I’ve been here, I’ve worked in three very different sorts of ecosystems or environments, probably a better word to use. So when I came over here, I did my first sort of role in-house for a company called McGraw Hill, which people will know is standard and poor’s, which is the credit rating agency. I joined them when the Department of Justice was finding the company $2.5 billion dollars for their role in the subprime mortgage crash of 2008, which is an amazing time to effectively try and bring people into an organisation when you have an open book against you. And that was my first exposure to effectively working in Asia. So that role covered eight different markets, primary focus was China and Japan. And then sort of secondary was Southeast Asia. It very quickly taught me where I could be effective and where I couldn’t be effective as a sort of attractor, China, and Japan being two fairly obvious examples. And it was a great exposure, just understanding the cultural nuances of all these different markets. You hear it all the time, how the fact that Asia is nicely sort of clustered into one region, but when you’re actually out here, and you experience it yourself, how completely different operating in China is, versus Japan versus the seven or eight other main markets. It really brought that home to me. And so I did that for a couple of years. The whole time I was there, doing the in-house role I was constantly spending all my time researching and reading about what was going on in technology, what was going on in this sort of entrepreneurial space. And my wife said to me, well, this is kind of ridiculous, why don’t you make the step, and put it back into that world. And so I met with a few firms that were kind of operating in tech, and I wasn’t particularly impressed with vision, with the lack of focus on a lot of the firms that were kind of also touching technology space, this is from a search from a recruitment search perspective.

So I set up my own firm, with no network, no track record, zero relationships, didn’t know any candidates, didn’t know any VCs. So looking back now, it seems like potentially a fairly stupid idea. But I had the support of my wife. And I knew one thing, because I’ve met so many recruitment firms in Singapore, I kind of knew what the bar was. And I had the confidence, I’m sure I can be better than 60% of those firms here. And so what I did was I spent a lot of time in the first sort of six months with my own firm meeting a lot of the VCs and this was at a time 2014 where the Singapore government had it effectively at least supported and written cheques for a number of VCs here like Jungle, Monks Hill, etc., etc. So you saw the sort of first green shoots of venture capital here in Singapore. And because I was really the only one that was going like talk to these firms about kind of sea level hiring and quite frankly, I was too early. I was probably too early, but I had these relationships, so I’ve created these relationships before there was almost a commercial need or a commercial requirement. And so, when the ecosystem matured a couple of years later, that actually were you know, the guy’s kind of that I had met two years preceding that kind of remembered me and actually put me in a really good position then because I knew the ecosystem was going to mature, I knew that once the Singapore government decides that they’re going to invest in an ecosystem that it’s not a fly by night thing this is a very, very long term decision.

So I kind of knew that was always good, the market was always going to cheer, I just had to wait. And that’s what I did at the same time that happened, my best friend in San Francisco, who was working for Intel Capital, had gone to a recruitment event was sponsored by a company called True, which I’d never heard of. They’d said to him that they were looking to expand into Asia. So serendipity, they put me in touch with the founders of True. And this was the first search firm. These are the first founders I spoke to who were actually entrepreneurs first search by second. And everything they said about what they wanted to be and equally, what they didn’t want to be really, really resonated. So they kind of aqua hired my startup, and I started with them in 2017. I was on my own for the first year and a half, two years, I also had my twins, identical twins at the same time, which is not very conducive to starting your own firm, or launching a firm. And anyway, fast forward to now we have 45 people, three different markets, I think we are in terms of number of searches and revenue, are now the most sort of successful firm within the I would say not just technology, which is sort of private businesses, privately backed sort of ecosystem, both venture and private equity, alternative of course, I’ve been talking for a long time, we could probably dig into the work that we’ve done with more specificity. But that’s just an overview of how I got to where I am today.

Sergio Salvador: Thank you Alex, that’s a great introduction to get to know you a little bit about your career and how you got where you are today. And one thing that strikes me is a lot of what you did today with your firm that’s today in this region, is actually working with VCs piece to private equity, but also startup founders themselves. And it’s always interesting, because I think, in my own experience, there are two great rules about especially early stage startups that make it difficult from the kind of recruitment and executive search perspective to work with them. And one of them is that while people, of course, are possibly the most important asset in any company, the thinking about people usually comes last after product and business and a few other things. And it’s also kind of this perspective that early stage startups would rarely go out and spend money to work with external search firms. And certainly, having experienced it myself I can say that I have seen a little bit of that. But I was wondering, since many of those who listen to these podcasts are founders themselves, right? What are your thoughts about this?

Alex Gold: So is the question about sort of the reluctance necessarily to sort of pay for recruitment or to search?

Sergio Salvador: Yes.

Alex Gold: Again, this was when I started at True 2017 even with my own firm, I think a lot of people that I’ve met with when I was sort of validating what my approach should be, was, you’ll never do retain, this is not the market, this is not the region where people pay upfront for these types of services. And the temptation was quite frankly, to move to the kind of more potential model but quite frankly, there’s 5000 recruitment firms in Singapore that do contingent and I don’t think the world needs another contingent firm. The reality for what we do is on any average sort of search, the amount of resources and operational kind of support needed to do a great search, and most of the searches we do are global. And if they’re not global, they’re at least pan regional. I’ll give you a good example, see on an average, we did the day to day an average CTO search, we speak 380 candidates 380. There’s no way in the world that a contingent firm could possibly spend that amount of time and effort and resources. But if you’re looking for the top 5% of talent in a given function, a huge part of what we do is make sure there’s the network there isn’t there’s definitely skill involved. I’ve been doing this for 15 years as pattern recognition. But quite a lot of what it is is just is run worldwide, it’s swap. And if you’re doing the retainer model, the minimum expectation, minimum expectation, I talked to my team, that’s awesome you have to speak to pretty much everyone in the market, in order to find that top 5%, because then we’ll have the top 5%, maybe only one person and that’s top 5% is actually even open to a conversation or even open to looking at that given moment.

So I think we do offer something that’s very different. We’re not a firm that you would use to help you on a number of different hires. We don’t do like 10 o 6, but rarely do we do certainly in Southeast Asia we don’t do 10, 15 engagements at one time. If you want to hire a world class CFO, if you want to hire a world class CTO or BPM, or Chief Sales Officer, then the chances of you I think, getting that individual for contingent firm, who could really only spend two weeks on a given mandate, before they start moving on to another mandate is very rare. I think the other thing which you said we spend a lot of time with founders really testing out hypotheses of what good looks like most of the time we work with a client that’s never hired that role before they’ve never hired a CFO before they’ve ever hired a CTO before. What we do before we’ve even taken on the search part of our due diligence is we actually have to meet people in our network, who we know to be great CFOs or great CTOs. A for them to assess whether or not the founder was ready to hire that person, quite frankly, but also for the founder to understand what good looks like, because they’ve got no calibration. And importantly, also to know how to sell to that particular function. I think that a lot of founders forget that this is conviction building on both sides. I can talk for hours on that last point, but long and short version is it’s a much more sort of intensive process if you’ve worked with a farm like us, it’s three months, generally minimum three months, it’s pretty intensive, but that’s the only way you can get great, great talent.

Sergio Salvador: Well, that’s great, Alex, thank you. Thank you for your thoughts. And, again, you know, maybe I want to emphasise, and go back to something that some of your comments, kind of regarding how you work with founders, what it is that you observe, and you see how you approach it. And specifically, I’m curious to know more about how important do you think it is to get hiring right for companies, especially the type of companies that you work with those VCs and private equity firms, and most importantly, startups.

Alex Gold: I was talking to someone about this the other day I know this, maybe this answer isn’t necessarily going to win me a lot of fans. But there’s a phenomenal investor, he was the CEO of a comfortable wealth, I think that the company Wealthfront and a very successful partner at benchmark, which is one of the sort of seminal VCs in the US. He has, I won’t quote him exactly. But he basically had this philosophy, which was, when a great team meets a lousy market, the market wins. And when allows you meet a great market, the market wins. The magic happens is when a great team meets a great market. And that’s when something special is going to happen. The reality of Southeast Asia today, so if you were to compare it to five years ago, the market is if not infinitely better, it’s you know, I’m much more bullish about the overall ecosystem. It’s in a much, much stronger position than it was five years and it’s improving every year. But I still think let’s just talk about Southeast Asia, I still think as a market, Southeast Asia is not a great market. It’s maybe not a bad market, it’s probably somewhere in between. So therefore, you agree with me that it’s in the middle market right now. If you don’t have a great team, you will get a below average outcome. So I can talk a lot about why teams and senior hires but just talent in general is important. But I think that’s my fundamental kind of answer, that if you don’t have a great team, in an average market, you will get at best average outcome.

Sergio Salvador: Fantastic. So a lot of what you do day in and day out is dealing with people. Some cases they may be clients, many cases there may be people that you reach out to for potential opportunities in some other cases, maybe pursuing people that are actually actively considering what is the next adventure in their career. I’ve always thought that’s a privileged position since you get to know so many different people, and I’m wondering if there is one truth that you have learned in your career in general, on people and talent? Easy question.

Alex Gold: Yeah, is that one truth kind of feels like sort of one ring to rule them all. I think and this applies actually, because this is the first time I’ve been in a management role myself, I’ve generally always been an individual contributor. And as you know, as well as I do, a lot of people who are good at the sales part, don’t make the best managers. So having to learn what it is to be a manager and to be a leader and so that’s given me some fresh kind of perspective. And one of the things to reinforce is just how important self-awareness is I think when you work with people that are very self-aware. And then also when I apply that then to clients and to candidates and potential clients, it’s many ways to become self-selecting, because if you know who you are, and you know what you’re good at, you know what you’re not good at, you know, what you like doing that, you know, what you don’t like doing, you know, whether you’re extroverted or introverted, what gives you energy, etc., etc., you’re much more likely to self-select the right people and the right company, similar to a marriage. So I think self-awareness and self-regulation are two things, I definitely look for a lot more particularly in more senior candidates. I think when we’re in our 20s, speaking for myself, I don’t think I was very self-aware. I don’t think I was particularly introspective. But when you get to positions, and more seniority, and you’ve seen more of life, and you’ve just got a few more scars, a few more grey hairs as well. If you still don’t have figured out who you are, by the time you’re 35 it’s going to get harder for you, I think you’re going to make the wrong mistake, you’re more likely to make the wrong selections when it comes to who you want to work with, who you want to spend time with.

Sergio Salvador: And that reminds me actually, I think it’s difficult to live in this part of the world without picking up a few concepts from other types of other religions, so philosophies of life. And I recently was reading a book that mentioned a concept in Buddhism, regarding the fact that there is an idea that goes that every breath that we take, we are creating a new person. And I thought that was beautiful in the sense that there is a certain kind of connection in my mind, to having a bit of a growth mindset and the growth ability is if you are creating a new person, that new person can be a better you next time.

Alex Gold: Yeah, and there’s a book I was reading recently called Range. And I certainly grew up in an era where it was all about hyper specialisation, like if you wanted to get ahead and have an impact that you need to specialise, being a generalist would work against you. I think part of that growth, at least framework, is leaning into discomfort and into areas that you’ve got no competency and that you’re going to be a beginner and frankly you’re going to suck at it and then you’re going to get potentially humiliated as much as that’s uncomfortable. I see that again with people that have gone on to be very successful that I know they’re very, very good at that part. They’re very good at kind of having a beginner’s mindset and trying different things, most of which, by the way, don’t even necessarily kind of fail. But it also helps them know what they’re good at. I think if you just stick to one thing, and that’s all you do, you’re living life, kind of through black and white, you’re missing out on so much. So that maybe that’s another thing I kind of look for is just the breadth of it is not just career, but just in life.

Sergio Salvador: And maybe on that note I’m wondering if you could share with us, perhaps an anecdote or two, about any projects that you can remember the most, I see you’re already smiling there, and I don’t know if I should ask you, maybe one that went horribly wrong, then another one that you’re very proud of. And I’ll let you kind of sidestep the first one, if you want, and just put the one that you are very proud of.

Alex Gold: I will go for my earlier career. I’ve got one particular kind of horror show, which may not resonate with everyone, but having you work for Egon so I think you’ll be able to feel my pain. I was working on a CTO search for a pretty well-known global bank. And this was dealing with the executive board, and it was one of our biggest clients, and I called up someone for the role. And I didn’t call them up necessarily what I sent them an email, I didn’t call them up necessarily as a candidate, I just sent them a note saying we’re doing the search this is the client, this is the role. And the person on that list on their list of LinkedIn, had a nondescript title and non-script was working as a consultant strike advisor. Little did I know that he was actually in the role that we would search for, and he hadn’t been told that he was being replaced. And that went back to the chairman and the CEO that went to my chairman and CEO and I literally just been promoted and sort of putting that sort of high potential career track two days after that, I get hauled into this for the see obviously, and when they kind of went through what happened I could sort of tell this was a very honest mistake, but for two, three days, I thought that was certainly the end of my career, but we kind of recovered that. We recovered the relationship.

Searches that I’m proud of I think there’s a lot of searches in the last couple of years really, really, really hard searches where at times, if you spoke to the founders we were working with, I’m sure there were times where they were like, how would you want to fire these guys or like they’re just not doing it, or we’re just not meeting the right candidates and we sort of stuck through thick and thin because pretty much every search never goes in a direct straight line and it goes through its own curves, ups and downs. There’s a few CTOs searches that I’ve done recently, which I’m really, really proud of. I think I can’t talk about it in public. But I can say with some confidence that we brought in two of the best CTOs in Southeast Asia, really, since the inception of the ecosystem in the last six months. One phenomenal guy from China. He was very successful at Tencent and Matewan. And another guy from the US. So one of the product search was with Gojek Sequoia who introduced me to Nadine Andre and Kevin back in 2017. And basically my first client flew over to Jakarta. And I now know that Ajey was the CTO, that basically they gave me a hospital pass or what you might call like a grenade search, which was to find the chief information security officer who had public company experience, but there was no CISO in Asia who had public company experience. So we went and found someone in the US who would move to Singapore, but spend most of the time in Indonesia. So as you can imagine, it was an unbelievably challenging search. But we found a guy called George Doe, who is ethnically Vietnamese. He and his wife wanted to explore and have an adventure. He went through public as a CISO. So you know the stars aligned and that’s what then led to I don’t know 10 or 15 consequent searches with Gojek.

Sergio Salvador: Fantastic. For whatever is worth in the past I did feel your pain. It does sound like it has a bit of a scar from which you learn these things.

Alex Gold: In the moment, it feels horrific it goes when you get older.

Sergio Salvador: That’s nothing. And as your stories especially with GoJek, and obviously, all of those projects and work that you have done with startups in Southeast Asia, but also the type of people that you have essentially got together to create great teams, right? Something that was on the back of my mind, when you would explain those stories has to do with culture, and our founders, and the people that we work with, in the XA Network across Southeast Asia that seems to be a very important topic for them. And I’m wondering if you have any thoughts in general, about the importance of culture, and especially in the topic of getting people maybe from different cultures together, you already mentioned two or three different countries or backgrounds of people that you got to work with other people in Southeast Asia, and I imagine the cultural aspects would have played a certain role in building those things.

Alex Gold: Yeah, I mean, we will definitely not have enough time for this. It’s talked about a lot here. And either times felt not always but definitely, at times felt like it was an exercise that founders feel like they kind of need to do. But don’t put a lot of real thought, and a time and attention into it. Not in all cases, it’s kind of like, well, let’s just have our values, and we’ll stick them by this table, that table, you know. So there’s definitely a time where that felt like it was the case. I think it’s improving now.  I almost say it’s kind of like your operating system. So how will people behave when you’re not in the room? Where would you have no agency control over? And that’s quite frankly, how 95% of people’s time is spent when no one else is sitting there with their shoulders or with them. So it is incredibly important. But I think what’s more important True as a firm, I think we’ve got one of the best, if not the best culture within our industry we don’t talk about it that much. And I’m often more nervous about working with companies who all they talk about is that culture and those values. Because I actually think when it works really well you don’t need to go on about it, you don’t need to proselytise because it’s how people behave on a day to day basis. And then it’s how you hire, you have to have it codified into your hiring practice. So if you’re hiring the right people, if you’ve got a clear sense of what your key values are, and then you codify that into your hiring framework, it kind of takes care of itself. Now I’m being maybe a bit trite, but I honestly think get those two bits right and it goes a hell of a long way. And then what is also important is that when you do hire wrong, people have a clear sense of what behaviours are tolerated and sort of amplified within your company, when you do make the wrong hire, it’s quite clear, it stands out. You can pick up on it pretty quickly.

Sergio Salvador: It’s interesting that you describe culture, almost in the same terms, I describe technology in general, I do have a background in technology, and I always say something similar. It’s like, if technology is working, no one notices it, you only notice it when it’s not working. And that’s how you should be really, you should never notice the technology you’re using, because it just does what it’s supposed to. I have never thought about culture that way. But I think you’re also very right about that. So maybe we changed a little bit of track, and we go back to you for the next few minutes. And one thing that I’ve learned is that you’re also an investor yourself I understand you put a little bit of money here and there as an angel investor if I’m not wrong, and I was hoping to get some thoughts from you and your investing philosophy is also you’re very privileged in the sense that you get to work with many founders, many CEOs of early stage and later stages start-ups but you also have an opportunity to put your money where your mouth is, if you will, and put some money behind companies from time to time. Tell us a little bit about it.

Alex Gold: I am very fortunate. I mean, it can could also be very expensive for me if I’ve got a bad batting average. But certainly I would never call myself an investor, it’s nearly always more circumstance. Because to your point, I’m very fortunate enough by the network that I’ve got to get quite a reasonable amount of deal flow. And, of course, I mean, a lot of operators that then become founders, and I have to know them before they become a founder, so I’ve built that relationship with them. And I’ve got insight into how they were as an operator. So I suppose I have some asymmetry advantage, not huge, but certainly some asymmetry advantage. And the only other thing that I think I have an advantage is just being an above average judge the talent and character. You know, one of the questions I can answer with more certainties could I see this person attracting the most talented people that I know. And that’s going to be really important for a business that wants to scale, it’s not the most important sort of zero to one, it’s not unimportant, but it’s certainly pretty important for one to two. You know, when it comes to market sizing, commercial due diligence, technology, etc. it’s not my forte, and I’ll rely on others to do that, but it’s very much secondary for me. So by like the founder, I’ll always introduce them to other sort of angels and people that I hold in high esteem, and I’ll also take feedback from them, which helps me to kind of remove the bias and it fills in the gaps for the bits that I’m fairly sort of ignorant or not as good at. So it’s all very opportunistic, but it’s something I enjoy, and it’s something I’m doing more of now than then sort of three years ago, I’m seeing more operators coming out and I feel sort of very bullish about the quality of mid-level senior operators that are coming out of some of the scales, technology companies, because they had the one big thing that we didn’t have a nine years ago is they have insights. They have the insights of all the mistakes and all the things they’ve got right or the company they worked for got right going from baby to toddler to teenager to adolescent adult.

Sergio Salvador: I think I can only echo that sentiment coming from the industries that we come from different career paths, but definitely very, very focus on people you know, who always look for the same things as well, kind of myself, on the basis that people are the most important asset of any company. And going back to what you said earlier, which I think made a significant impact on me about building the best possible team, a one can build. I think that can decide the fate of any idea whether that idea becomes a unicorn and a multimillion dollar business or not having the right people behind it. Maybe a couple of additional questions, just to wrap up briefly. And the first one would be about a recommendation. I always like to finish this conversation with a recommendation if you have one of a book or eBook for that matter, that you might want to recommend to our listeners.

Alex Gold: So I’m terrible at remembering titles and that’s the problem with Kindle and eBook.

Sergio Salvador: I can try to do a sneaky Google search here while you’re talking, if you want.

Alex Gold: No, no because I bought an audiobook, which I listened to recently, which is very, very helpful when you have a one-year-old, it’s not sleeping. And I had read the book a long time ago. But maybe I just like put out a memory but I listened to the audiobook which is excellently done. And it’s called Endurance, which is about Shackleton’s failed attempt to reach the South Pole in I think early 20th century. And I mean, listen to the audiobook it’s so good at transposing you into the environment, which back then was I mean, I can’t even probably do it justice, I can’t describe how horrific the experience must have been for the 30 or 40-year-old men that was stuck in the south pole for four months in the most horrendous conditions with no food, no warmth with none of Patagonia jackets that we have today. So that book it’s all about challenges and adversity. And I think it helps me put into perspective the true meaning of a career. And it’s fairly inspiring. And I think, the hardship that they went through, you know, even though that sort of world’s most awful torture could not even come close. And through it all what’s so amazing when you listen to or read it, that Shackleton was clearly just the most unbelievable leader because through it all, there was no infighting amongst the men. They didn’t give up; they didn’t lose hope. And hearing what they went through, it feels almost like inconceivable that wouldn’t have happened, at least with the odds, or at least some of the men. But the fact that didn’t was testament to Shackleton’s leadership, courage, fortitude, and I think because he was always the first one to put his hand up to do the really horrible jobs or tasks. So he just led by example. So I highly recommend it.

Sergio Salvador: And I have to say, well, while you were describing it, you didn’t bring it up specifically, like one word that was in my mind, how you were describing the story that came up was resilience, something that we’ve all had to see a lot of them develop in the last couple of years or so, and something that is actually very, very important also in the world of startups, in the startup ecosystem, many startups are, at the end of the day, a bit of a roller coaster. That can be a good thing. It might mean that you’re going in the right direction, certainly as founders and leaders of start-ups resilience is a type of ability or a skill, if you will, that helps them see through, which is also something investors are looking for in many cases. All right. So we’ve come to the end of this discussion, we need to wrap up, Alex, before we do that, where can others find you and connect with you? What are the easiest ways?

Alex Gold: So at LinkedIn, I’m honest, LinkedIn is probably the easiest and best I mean, as a recruiter, LinkedIn is both a blessing and a curse. But it’s probably the easiest way of getting a hold of me.

Sergio Salvador: So LinkedIn looking for Alex Gold from True Search.

Alex Gold: Yeah, the photo on my LinkedIn, people won’t know this this is a slightly funny backstory to we did corporate photos three, four years ago, but I had just come back from a trip and I had been sleeping for about an hour and I had my twins, but I’ve been sleeping for about an hour all night for about two weeks, I looked horrendous. So the photo that’s on there, actually, you can’t see it, but we cut out one of my twins, it’s actually our baby photos. I just edited it.

Sergio Salvador: I’ve seen all kinds of profile pictures on LinkedIn. This doesn’t sound like the worst one. So don’t worry much.

Alex Gold: All you would see is like the top of a baby’s head.

Sergio Salvador: So there you go. So Alex Gold on LinkedIn, look for the baby pictures, the cut up baby pictures. Alex, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. I had a great time with this discussion. And listen, I’m looking forward to our next coffee.

Alex Gold: Sounds good. Take care. Thank you.

Sergio Salvador: Thank you. You too.

Alex Gold: Bye.

Our Guest: Alex Gold

Alex Gold is the MD for True Search in South East Asia. True Search hires leadership for privately held, growth stage and PE/ VC backed internet and software businesses. Prior to this, he was the founder of Quantum Search, before which he held roles in S&P Global and Korn Ferry.