When you ask most VCs that haven’t been founders to interview a VP candidate, they often don’t know the right questions to ask.
They weren’t founders. So they just pitch the company and try to help close the candidate
That’s OK, that’s great. Having someone from a top VC firm try to sell the candidate can really, really help close a VP candidate. Trust me, 95%+ of VP candidates are very flattered to be talking to a partner at Andreesen, Sequoia, Redpoint, Accel, Lightspeed heck even SaaStr Fund sometimes 🙂
But if you want help on whether or not to make the hire, you’ll often hear, “I’m not sure if they’d be great, I was mostly just selling” when you ask for feedback from them. You hear that line from VCs again and again. They don’t know if a VP hire is truly great. Or they are just dazzled by where they worked last. They think just because the candidate worked at Datadog / Twilio / HubSpot / Cloudflare / Wiz / whatever leader, and talk the talk, that they are likely a good fit. And that’s usually … wrong.
A VC that has been a successful founder though can do more. They can help you figure out if the hire is the right one. They’ve made that hire and screwed it up. That’s not the same as just selling the candidate. They may not get it right, but they will generally give you very different hiring advice than VCs that haven’t truly done it themselves.
I bring the point up because hiring VPs is critical, it’s one of the most important things you’ll ever do. And your investors will often be closely involved. And yet, many times they … won’t know.
If they were CEOs / founders, they can do more. But do you want that, though? Or do you just want your VCs selling to your VP candidates? And did where they last work, was it close enough to what you are doing? Just let VCs who were founders know if you want that help.
Just let them know, as it’s different than just selling.
And make sure you don’t overly rely on VC feedback on your VPs if their LinkedIns and logos are strong. They are as blinded by them as the rest of us.
image from here
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Jason Lemkin, Khareem Sudlow
