EP 19: Stop Hiring Fast: The 10-Hour Rule for Choosing the Right Leader

[00:01:02] Adriaan Kolff: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of The Leaders in Talent Podcast. Today I have Puren Ucar on the podcast. Puren is a talent advisor with over a decade of experience working as a talent partner in VC funds like Early Bird, and currently she’s working as an advisor to founders and VC funds.

Puren, welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:38] Puren Ucar: Hi Adriaan, really, really great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, I think this will be a very enjoyable podcast. You know, I find you always very authentic in your communication, and yeah, I think we have done very good work together. So yeah, I feel very excited to be here.

[00:02:00] Adriaan Kolff: Yeah, so good. Feels a little bit full circle, right? Because I remember we probably got introduced six, seven years ago, and we actually—yeah, right—worked for some of your portfolio companies. And when I saw you now working as an independent advisor, I was like, “Puren, let’s talk. Let’s hear a little bit more about your journey, and also looking back, but also what excites you about the future.”

[00:02:21] Puren Ucar: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:24] Adriaan Kolff: Hey Puren, and we might hear a little bit of background noise on your side because you have a new addition to the family. Should our listeners know about the new addition?

[00:02:34] Puren Ucar: This is a slightly funny address, but I have this small kitten. Yeah, his name is Pom Pom. We found him from the street. He needs to be near me, otherwise he cries. So yeah, sorry about that.

[00:02:49] Adriaan Kolff: So for our listeners who do not have any visual: Puren just showed a one-week-old baby kitten. This is the cutest thing ever. So Pom Pom is sitting on Puren’s lap, because otherwise we’re going to be hearing crying all the time. So, amazing. Welcome to the podcast, Pom Pom.

[00:03:45] Adriaan Kolff: So let’s dive in, right? Take us back to your time at Early Bird. Share a little bit more about what Early Bird is as a venture capital fund, and what does it mean to be Head of Talent Advisory at a VC fund?

[00:04:00] Puren Ucar: Yeah. Maybe starting from the latter, I think the answer to this question varies a lot. Even though the fund portfolio could be similar—let’s say the fund portfolio could be early-stage investing, Seed to Series A across Europe—it really, really depends on the partners’ vision and how they prioritize talent and who they bring on board to execute that and build out that function. I think it varies a lot.

So I think it’s hard to address the second question in general, but I can maybe address what it meant to me and what I did at Early Bird, if it makes sense.

But yeah, I mean for me: Early Bird is an early-stage VC fund that invests in Seed and Series A companies. And I stayed there for like seven years, and my role evolved a lot. Because once there’s an investment… When I joined, there were only like 15 companies; when I left, it was more than 50. So the playbook and how we interact with the founders evolved a lot. I can double-click on that, but let me first stop if you have any follow-up.

[00:05:08] Adriaan Kolff: No. Be as colorful as you can be, right? Because speaking to different talent leaders, I know there’s this general curiosity about working as a talent advisor for a venture capital fund. For many talent leaders, this sounds like an amazing next step in their career. But I also know from speaking to other talent leaders who have been at venture capital funds, it’s actually quite a difficult role, because there’s no clear rhythm or playbook. Like: what are your KPIs? How is success measured? How do you deal with the investment side of the business versus the people, talent, leadership side of the business?

So give us a little bit more color on your role and how you were able to be so impactful for almost eight years at Early Bird.

[00:05:51] Puren Ucar: Yeah. Well, you positioned it well. I think that product–market fit for the VC talent function is very hard to find. And I think it’s not really there yet for every VC, but in my journey, product–market fit literally changed once every two to three years.

For, I would say, the first couple of years it was more around—I’m coming from an exec search background—so in the first couple of years it was very hands-on: helping founders to build up their core leadership team. More like first leadership hirings: heads, directors, etc. And also in parallel collecting lots of recognized behavioral patterns and frameworks.

Like: what are the challenges that the founders face on leadership hires? What roles seem to be harder to fill compared to other roles across the leadership team? What else? How to navigate those challenges with the founders—how should you communicate, what should you communicate, what should you not communicate, etc. I think there are lots of frameworks that I was able to build based on these recognized behavioral patterns that I collected in those two years, being very hands-on helping founders to build out their core leadership team. So I guess that’s the first two years.

And then the next two to three years: it was more around “once we know what good looks like.” Once we know it—because we’d also done leadership hiring, some of them worked out, some of them did not work out—it also enabled us to build frameworks of: what does a successful, high-performing leader mean in an early-stage scaling company?

And once we had that framework, I guess that second two to three years was more around making it scale: working through the right exec search firms, working through the right recruitment agencies, the right recruiters, so that we can literally scale that way of working and make sure that we have the right partners who understand our way of working. I would say that two to three years was the second “tenure”.

And then, I guess, the last two to three years, there was also a new kind of product–market fit. It was around: now that we have the ecosystem—right recruiters, right partners, we know what good looks like—but now this was the time when we had, I think, more than 40 portfolio companies. So it was more around: how can we scale internally?

You know, I also built out lots of playbooks on: how many people do you need, at what stage; what are the business challenges that you’ll see as a result, so that you need to make that hiring, etc. So with that, maybe the team around me… before I left, I had a team of five including myself.

[00:08:10] Adriaan Kolff: Oh wow.

[00:08:11] Puren Ucar: Yeah.

[00:08:12] Adriaan Kolff: You had actually one of the largest VC talent teams.

[00:08:16] Puren Ucar: Yeah, it was a pretty large team.

[00:08:18] Adriaan Kolff: And because typically, what I’ve seen with other venture capital funds, it’s usually one Head of Talent or Talent People Partner—depending on the title—that’s responsible for everything. So it’s quite a broad role. What was the philosophy of having a larger team? How hands-on were you during that time, and what are maybe some of the KPIs that you had for your team?

[00:08:58] Puren Ucar: Yeah. I guess one of the reasons behind having this big team is that, I think after the third year of my time as VC talent, it was very obvious what kind of outcome and impact we built. Founders were very happy. We built out very strong leadership teams within those companies. These companies turned out to get lots of good revenue, good funding, etc. It was very visible, and then the founders were sharing that feedback with the GPs. So it was very easy for me to justify and then scale the team.

How hands-on I am… I think also in the first one year, again, it was very hands-on. Because I had lots of internal resources, and it’s very easy for me to read because I built them for myself. But now it’s about other people using it. So again, I needed to be more thoughtful around: how to make it easy to read, easy to understand, how the other new talent people could be trained by it, etc. So I guess that part was still in the building phase.

And I was also hands-on around… we had a great team. They’re all still there, and I really admire the talent people that I had there, that I recruited there. And… but I guess also the first years were more around helping them to manage founder psychology. Because you sit on the investor side, but you provide some help, and you’re not the operator. It’s just the dynamics of the relationship that you need to be very thoughtful about—what you need to communicate and when you should just wait. So I guess that comes with experience. I think that was a part that I was instilling a lot in the team, I would say.

[00:10:48] Adriaan Kolff: And for your team, right—what were some of the KPIs or objectives for your team?

[00:10:54] Puren Ucar: Well, what we were looking at… It was hard for us to say “this is the KPI.” We looked at metrics, but in the end there is not one metric for us to say, “For this increase or decrease, we are successful.” Around success we were just following metrics to see where we were at.

We looked at founder NPS for sure—like we asked feedback from the founders. The other thing is we looked at the roles that we helped with: per year, how many exec-level or non-exec-level roles that we helped founders with. Did they work with any recruiters? Were we happy with the performance of the recruiters, etc.? Just following up on those metrics.

What else? We also looked at the metric of the roles that we were involved in—whether the placed candidate stayed more than two years. So we were also trying to track that. I guess these are the main ones. We also tracked time to hire, time to fill, even placement. But with the VC, if we’d give ourselves the KPI of “placement,” it kind of skews the incentives, because we care about whether there is a great placement; we don’t care about whether there is a placement or not.

So we look at those metrics, but I guess for the sake of looking at them, let’s say.

[00:12:12] Adriaan Kolff: Interesting. So actually not too different from what you would see in an internal team, except that the urgency is different, right? It’s really quality focused: the NPS, if the hire is still in their seat after two years, and then how that process was run. Interesting.

Hey, and you mentioned something interesting early on. You said in your second kind of stint—you have section one, okay, search; section two, “what does good look like”; and section three, you were building out the team, right, in terms of your career there. In section two, you said you developed a framework to understand: what does a good leader look like. Do you remember, what was the type of framework? Because I think that’s very interesting for our listeners to understand—what kind of framework you used, or how you would look and define what a good leader looks like.

[00:13:04] Puren Ucar: Yeah, I mean, I think from an Early Bird point of view, I cannot share the framework because I think that’s their IP. But I can share my take on it and my perspective on it.

[00:13:17] Puren Ucar: Well, I mean, I think there are some high-level things that everyone would look at: whether the hire is coming from the right stages, whether they’re coming from the right go-to-market fit so that they can ramp up. I think these are more like given.

But apart from that, we were also… I was very intentionally looking at the retention rates. I’m very obsessed with retention rates. And I think it’s great, in the last maybe six or seven years of any person, if that person would stay in one company more than three years and that company was performing. Because I think that’s a very good indication that they know what good looks like, because the company was growing, and because they’ve been there over two years. I think it also gives a sense of their performance. And then the bonus would be: if they stayed and they also got promoted within the company. So I think that’s also a very good sign that you look for.

But I think these are very easy to screen on paper. What does that really mean? What I was really trying to build the framework on was to understand how intentional those people are—how thoughtful they are. Are they aware of what they spend their time on? Do they know whether what they spend time on is really aligned with their functional OKRs, like business outcomes?

So just really digging down. Even though it could be, let’s say, a people leader role, I was really digging down to understand: do they own business metrics, like go-to-market motions, etc., so that it also shows me they’re able to zoom in and zoom out.

So I guess that would be another crucial thing. Just maybe to wrap up: I think it’s more around how much clarity of thinking they have, how structured and thoughtful they are, how deep they can go, and also their ability to zoom out—whether they understand the business and whether what they do is really linked to the business outcomes.

[00:15:19] Adriaan Kolff: Yeah. Clear. Very, very good. And I’m sure our listeners will be able to piece some kind of framework together.

When you work with founders—and you still do, right—what do you see are common mistakes that they make when they hire their leadership team?

[00:15:38] Puren Ucar: Yeah, I think there are a couple. One of them is: do they really spend enough time assessing the candidate? Because I think for founders who are hiring leadership level hires for the first time, it is very easy to get into a trap. Leadership profiles by nature have lots of experience, so they have lots of “MBA content,” so it is very easy for them to sell a story.

So I guess at those moments, it’s on the founder: whether they make sure they’ve identified what is really important for them, and whether they spend enough time to assess those areas.

What I typically recommend for any leadership hire is that the founder needs to spare—maybe the founders collectively spare—minimum 10 hours with the candidate before being able to say that, “Yeah, they’re the one.”

[00:16:39] Adriaan Kolff: Is it? Wow.

[00:16:41] Puren Ucar: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:42] Adriaan Kolff: And okay, so help me understand that from a practical point of view, right? Because often with Early Bird, you would come in, you make the investment, then you would get in front of the founders, you would look at their leadership teams like, “Hey, we need to hire a CMO, maybe a COO, maybe a CPO,” like any of those roles, right? Time is usually not abundant, right? Typically it’s, “We need to move fast. We need to quickly scale. We got this money, we need to get to our next milestone.”

So how would you balance speed and quality and spending 10 hours with a senior leader?

[00:17:17] Puren Ucar: Yeah. I mean, I think for the final candidate, to spend 10 hours with the company… if you look at the stages: let’s say they meet with the founders, other exec team members, maybe one board member; they conduct a case study; they have like a one-hour check-in or lunch or dinner with the founder, etc. So I guess altogether it ends up being 10 hours.

But in terms of time, I think that question is interesting because this is literally always the pressure. Leadership hiring searches take a minimum—two and a half to three months. And founders sometimes are on fire that they need to make the hire. I think my role is to remind them of two main things.

The first thing is that, for leadership hire, they need to make the hiring decision based on conviction, not based on fear. If you make the hiring decision based on fear—fear of “If I don’t make the hire, I would lose a year. If I don’t make the hire, this function would vary”—it just leads to lots of, I would say, negative and fear themes. Versus the conviction hire: it’s more like, “You know, I trust this person to do the best job. I trust this person. I’m confident enough that this person will take us from here to there.”

So I guess in terms of mindset, I would try to help them and coach them to look at it from that angle.

But then the other thing I always try to be able to advocate is: let’s say they make this hire without conviction. For this leadership hire, they would have at minimum a two-month notice period. After they come on board—because this is a leadership hire—they would need a minimum of four months of ramping up and onboarding. So that’s six months. And then, let’s say you would need two to three months to figure out that this person would not work out. Now we’re at nine months. And then you’ll need to let that person go; now we’re at ten months. And then you need to start from scratch.

So you’re literally, at minimum, losing a year if you mis-hire a leadership team member. So I guess these are the angles that I’m trying to bring.

[00:19:28] Adriaan Kolff: It’s because I’ve been in it too many times. Luckily, as the founder of a recruitment business, I’ve been able to avoid some of these pitfalls. But also I’ve been—supported… I would say me and my co-founder—we’ve been subjective. I wouldn’t say hiring out of fear, but yeah, maybe hiring out of fear, because we…

[00:19:48] Adriaan Kolff: We desperately needed a Talent Director. And we gave someone the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out from a cultural perspective, but it cost us 10 months. Ten months of our growth. And it was, again, such a hard lesson to learn when you’re in the weeds. In the beginning we were so excited: “We’ve got this covered. Ah, all our problems are going to be solved,” right? And it was the opposite. It was the absolute opposite.

[00:20:16] Puren Ucar: Sorry to hear. I’m sorry for this experience, but also it was a very practical and tangible example of what I meant. So thanks for sharing.

[00:20:23] Adriaan Kolff: Yeah, no, a hundred percent.

Hey, and what do you help founders with? So this is one part, right—how to hire good leaders. Where else do you come into play in terms of some of the challenges and common pitfalls or some of the things that you try to prevent them from doing?

[00:20:43] Puren Ucar: Yeah. I’m a big fan of calendar audits. I was opening my calendar—even now and back then—and it’s pretty much always similar: like 70% of my time always goes to helping founders build out their core leadership team. But if you double-click on that, I think there are lots of different pillars in it, including helping them to sculpt the role, making sure that they calibrate the right seniority, making sure that they work with the right recruiter for that search, making sure that I connect them with top two or three calibration profiles for them to calibrate what good looks like.

And making sure that there is a good hiring process—meaning at times I sit in on weekly update calls with the recruiters, look at the hiring funnel health: how many people are at the top of the funnel, how do we feel about the conversions, etc. Just making sure that we have a high-performing process in place for the hiring.

And at times helping them, making sure that they have a very solid assessment of those candidates. So I help with that, and I also conduct assessment interviews. I help them with back-channeling. So you can think of it as very end-to-end, but it’s very laser-focused on leadership hires—or, let’s say, not only leadership but direct reports to the founder. It could be a very senior IC, anywhere from senior IC to C-level, as long as they report directly to the main co-founder. So that’s, let’s say, 70% of my time.

And then the remaining 30% is more around building support mechanisms and insights, mostly as a coach. I also have a very good network of founder coaches. So depending on the challenge that the founder faces, I connect them with the right founder coaches, with the right advisors, mentors, leveraging also comp, ESOP-related intel, sharing my playbooks—because I’ve been building a lot also by myself in my recaps, etc. So it’s sharing those experiences. That would be the remaining 30%.

[00:22:46] Adriaan Kolff: So now you’ve left Early Bird and you’re working independently. What made you decide to make this move?

[00:22:54] Puren Ucar: Yeah. So my mom and dad, they’ve been entrepreneurs for decades. I think literally even before they had me, they became entrepreneurs. So I think that was something I’ve always admired in them, and it was something on my heart.

But I think—what I’m also realizing now—is that making that kind of bold move takes a lot of inner courage and time. So I think it was more around the timing on both parties, right? Both for the firm and for me to start that journey.

[00:23:29] Adriaan Kolff: How is it?

[00:23:31] Puren Ucar: I’m really enjoying it. Yeah, I’m actually very proud about it. It wasn’t… I mean, you’re a founder yourself, so I think you will know it better than I do, because I think you’ve been a founder longer than I have. But there are always ups and downs.

But I think right now, where I am in life, I think it’s a great point for me to have it. Because it has lots of fear involved, self-doubt involved. There’s lots of unknowns. So it’s more around: how peaceful and how grounded you are with all of those unknowns and the fear. So I think from that angle, I understand that it’s not for everyone, for sure. But I’m really enjoying mine.

[00:24:25] Adriaan Kolff: Hey, and Puren, it’s interesting, right? Because you’ve coached founders, you’ve been in that advisory role. So what are you doing right now, in terms of your work as a founder, to help you overcome those fears or some of the things that you run into?

[00:24:41] Puren Ucar: Yeah. So I guess there are practical ones, but there are more “soul” ones. On the practical ones, I realize—this is one of the things that I always advise founders, and now I try to apply it in my own practice—it’s being very intentional about your time, and making sure that you prioritize what’s important.

Now it’s only me and I am the main revenue channel. And I have only, let’s say, 60 hours per week, or like 70 at maximum. So how am I going to spend that time to make sure that I’m doing something that I like, I have a good revenue stream that I like, and I’m also generating high-quality output that would make other people happy. So I guess there is always that thought process around that, that I try to spend time on, intentionally, every week, and ask those questions to myself.

I think it’s more like practical things. I do calendar audits, etc. There’s a dog.

[00:25:49] Adriaan Kolff: Yes, I hear dog walking. So good, so good. And I think my wife is going to record a podcast here soon, so we have a busy living room in terms of recordings.

That’s nice.

Puren, you said something interesting. You mentioned at the beginning of the call as well—you mentioned “calendar hygiene.” What does that mean?

[00:26:10] Puren Ucar: Yeah. So what I do is literally, starting from weekly basis and then doing it on monthly basis and also on a quarterly basis, very intentionally I look at my time: how I categorize it, how much of my time goes to deep work, shallow work, interviews with founders, with VC partners. I’ve also categorized it based on the stakeholders, based on the work I do—whether it’s an interview or an advisory call with a founder.

Just to have a sense of: how does it look, and whether I’m happy with how it is today, and how I would like to keep it in the next two quarters so that I’m intentional around my time. I find it very useful, because that was also in my previous roles and also now—when I advise and when I work very closely with founders—I also always suggest calendar audits to founders. Because how they spend their time…

[00:27:10] Puren Ucar: …30-people headcount company, 200-people headcount company—it changes a lot. So how aware they are of where they spend their time, and where they really need to spend their time so that they can delegate or hire… it creates awareness. So I’m now applying that to myself.

[00:27:30] Adriaan Kolff: So good. I can probably use some help there as we’re rapidly scaling as well right now with Matchr. And time is… my agenda is just back-to-back full with meetings, and I’m not sure if every meeting is as beneficial as it should be. What would you say to me—where should I get started? If you would make this practical, what would you tell me about how to look at this?

[00:27:56] Puren Ucar: Yeah. If I were you, I would start simple and look at your last one week, and see the ways you’d like to categorize it. Would you like to categorize your week by how you spend time based on clients, based on stakeholders, based on the work you do? And then literally write those down in an Excel table and then see it.

After that, you can do it for last one month, last one quarter. And then I think once you have all of those, we have follow-up questions like: which part do you like the most? Which part gives you the highest revenue? Which part do you want to do the least? Which part can you delegate to the team?

And then, based on that, I think we can project the next quarter or next year pie chart so that you would know where you would like to evolve. And then we can build a plan to get you from the current pie chart to that future pie chart.

[00:28:47] Adriaan Kolff: So good. So good. Okay, I’m going to take your advice now. And the funny thing is: now I need to find time to do it. Can you imagine? Now I need to find time to do it.

So my leadership coach, he taught me the framework “to be on the balcony and to be in the dance.” And what he means with that is: by standing on the balcony, you overlook the playing field, right—the battleground, the dance floor, whatever metaphor resonates with you. But the important thing is that, if you’re able to zoom out, you’re able to oversee the field and see what’s important and what’s not important. But you also need to be in the dance, right? You can’t only live up on Mount Everest all the time. You also need to do the work and be in the dance. And it’s this balance of doing both.

I remember he asked me, he said, “Adriaan, how many times do you take a step back and just think about the business?” I had to think about that question, and I realized that I barely take time to think about the business. And he said, “The role of the CEO is not to always be in the dance.” Especially with a growing company, you need to think ahead in terms of what’s ahead, what you need to plan for, what are some of the problems and challenges that you’re going to be facing, but also what are the opportunities that are on the horizon to be able to plan ahead. And you do that by thinking.

So I hear what you’re saying—that really resonates with me.

Puren, last question: from your move to now being independent, what are some of the things that have positively surprised you, and what are some of the things that you find harder or didn’t expect?

[00:30:21] Puren Ucar: What I find surprisingly easier is that I like getting to know new people. And when I feel like I’m bonded with that person, it just turns out to be something else—as a business, or sometimes as a bigger part of my network. If I feel good about it in my heart, it just turns out to be something that is good. But if I wear too much on my brain, then sometimes it creates anxiety and it doesn’t really serve the greater good. So that’s something I’ve realized and really like.

What I think is difficult is exactly this topic that we talked about: my time becomes so valuable. Literally every one hour, before I start a specific task, I need to remind myself: is it the right way of spending my time, really? So that’s rather difficult, as I’ve found. And now I understand why founders are always swamped, etc. I think, now with this experience, it enables me to have even more empathy as well.

[00:31:36] Adriaan Kolff: So good. Puren, thank you so much. How’s Pom Pom doing?

[00:31:44] Adriaan Kolff: Oh my goodness. Dear listeners, Pom Pom, the one-week-old kitty, is sleeping in Puren’s lap. Super cute.

Puren, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. Time flies when you’re having fun. What is the best way for people to connect with you—is that through LinkedIn?

[00:32:02] Puren Ucar: Yes, please, through LinkedIn. And I’m always open for any kind of talk that people think they would need help with. I really enjoyed this podcast and the time. Adriaan, you make me feel very comfortable and engaged, so yeah, thank you.

[00:32:17] Speaker 3: Thank you.

[00:32:18] Adriaan Kolff: Great.