Time to Cancel Resumes - #9
There are never any "qualified candidates."
I dislike cancel culture. The fact that I even understand what that means shows that I’ve been exposed enough to that garbage via peripheral media mechanisms. Regardless, it’s time to cancel resumes.
Let’s state the context of my reasoning and rationale for this argument:
I’ve been building startups ever since I left corporate in the early 2000s.
My first company took 9 years to acquisition. I understand the grind.
I’ve had two early equity buy-outs. Nice.
I’ve built a couple venture funds. The Venture Media model works.
I completed my third book on how to create a gravitational brand in our new mobile-video-remote world we live in. It’s free and every operator I invest in needs to read it.
TL;DR - I know what it’s like to grind a dream to pay day. I know what is required to successfully manage other’s money and use deep maths (our specialty) to return outsized results for both investors and operators.
Resume or Relationships?
Not once have I hired based on a resume. Never. It’s not even a good way to filter candidates. ALL of the candidates have all the key words in their CV already. Analogue is the way to go. Face time is the way to go. Real people shit is the way to go.
“Creating content can solve all of your problems.” - Me
You’ve heard me say this many times, and it’s absolutely true. Why is this true?
Because creating content for the world you’re actively living in (working in) is the best way to attract and bring people of like mind to what YOU are doing. Over time, interest becomes intrigue. Partnership with your viewers is merely a conversation away.
You’ll find every single role necessary for your startup to succeed WITHIN the community surrounding your market. You can find co-founders, leadership, engineers, designers, sales, marketing, financial, legal, and more. You can find everyone you need. By creating content, you’re telling the world about what you’re doing. If you’re savvy and humble, you can even ask for help.
What you’ll find is that you never really cared about a resume.
What you’ll find is that all you really needed was a (relationship) with someone who cares enough about you and what you’re doing to help you build your dreams. They found you online. You engaged them. You grew a relationship (and it doesn’t need to take years, a couple months will do). If it’s a technical role, ensure you get enough evidence of their delivery. If it’s design, make sure you get the entire portfolio. If it’s leadership, make sure you problem solve with them (now). This will tell you a lot about how they think, how they operate, and if their brain is the brain you need.
Even corporations can create interview/hiring/on-boarding processes that are more 'human.' We need that in our digital/zoom/teams world, now more than ever.
Living the Model
At StaaS Fund, we live the model we created:
“Venture media” is an alternative investment model that combines four indomitable vectors of profit generation: Platform Market Fit, People Market Fit, Technical Engineering over Financial Engineering, and a Global Community.
Our Managing Partner at our fund is a 7 year member of my community.
Our Principal, a 4 year member of my community.
Our Controller, a 2 year member of my community.
These individuals found me. We found each other. We spent time learning about each other with intentionality, leveraging common threads of interest, vibrant discussion, open questioning, and problem solving together. This IS the recipe for learning and growing with another human being over years of intentional engagement.
For me, my world is the whole world of digital currencies, from mining to software development. From hardware to software. From social to mainstream. We run the whole ecosystem stack in digital finance. This was our common thread. A common interest in the world of digital finance, cryptocurrencies, and the hardware and software that was being built for it.
All of our investments are in community members. We’ve written about why we only invest in community! Why? Because relationships.
You Have a World Too
What is your world? There is a community for that. Find it. Seek it out. Some of your greatest relationships will come from it. Especially, if you stick with it for the long haul. If you’re an entrepreneur, there is a good chance your best team mates will be from the community that your work resides in. Dig in. Find them. They will work with you.
For venture capitalists leveraging the Venture Media model, they know that digging into the communities that their capital deployment thesis focuses on is exactly where they should be engaging, creating content, socializing, problem solving, contributing, sharing, and building. How are you going to deploy capital into an entrepreneur when you, yourself, don’t even know the TAM (total addressable market) in its entirety? What is entirety? You must be deeply engaged in the social apparatus around you. It takes a lot more work for a VC to do this, but that’s the point. The world is waiting for a better class of capital-deployer.
Reach out. Engage your world. The help you need is there.
I’m here. Ask me.
All the best,
ps
solid article..listening... time for action.