When do Startups Need HR? With Beth Nevins, Founder of Developa.io

Episode 67 When Do Startups Need HR

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Transcript 

Hessie Jones 

So as startups evolve from small agile teams to growth oriented organizations, there is this need for strategic people management and this becomes a lot more critical at this stage at the early stages, many startups focus on product development. They focus on market. Penetration, even financial viability. But once they get to the stage of product market fit people, strategy becomes a lot more important. Welcome to tech uncensored. Hi everyone. My name is Hesse Jones and today we’re tackling the question when do you start up? Founders need HR, so while network Connections, HR hacks work as Band-Aid solutions to get a start up to where they need to go. The growth stage offers a greater mandate, so to acquire great talent to effectively manage this expansion and to develop a culture where employees actually feel connected to the company’s mission. And the most important thing is to actually scale responsibility under the law. So properly building your infrastructure for HR allows your organization not only to grow in scale, but it develops its level of sophistication and care for the business and the culture that you’re actually. Developing and when you invest in HR, what you’ll see is improved employee satisfaction. You will hire the best talent. You will retain the best talent and overall your organization health will will. Will be a. Parent. So I’m pleased to welcome Beth Nevins, who is. Is the founder of developer IO and and she’s an experienced leader and people in talent management. And so we’re going to examine the transition from a founder LED HR hacks to professional HR practices and we’ll start to discuss some of these things about the benefits. Of what HR can drive while also insurance ensuring long term sustainability for the company. So for founders who are navigating this complex landscape of people management in their high high growth environments, this session will show you how to build resiliency. In the culture, in the cultural driven organization that will ensure your long term success. So welcome. Yes. 

Beth Nevins 

Thanks Hessie for that amazing introduction. Yes, my name is Beth, I’m founder of developer dot IO and I’m based in London. So what do we do? We support founders and the founding team in C2 Series C Venture Capital backed tech startups and specifically across the. People and talent expertise arena. There are three sort of core services that we really help with. One is candidates and the talent strategy that comes with that and actually sourcing talent. For the founders, the second one then is more on people, projects or consulting bringing in strategy around good design as we scale regarding people and talent. And the third thing that we support then is coaching, which is more on leadership development and specifically a founder program that levels them up on their recruiting. And leading leaders capability. Uh. So that’s us and I I love the idea that you said Founder HR hacks coverage to get into that. There’s plenty of. 

Hessie Jones 

No, exactly. So I would, I would say you have the credibility in the chops to actually answer a lot of these questions. OK, so, so let’s start about the definition of human resources, because you and I had a discussion earlier that this term is actually a little bit antiquated. So tell me about it. 

Beth Nevins 

Yeah, I mean. Personally, I’m not fanatical around language, although I see the value in in. Changing that over time. So let’s break this down. So traditionally, when we think about work and and and how work used to operate more in the industry. Sense there’s a lot of focus on output and productivity and measurement, so traditionally HR supported, you know, you know, productivity efficiency, you know, administration, back office type support and so forth. But now the shift is focusing much more. On what’s called. X which is people. Experience and the irony of of that is focusing much more on cultivation rather than purely focus on on measurement. So what goes in to enhance that output and ideally the outcome of what we actually want to get in the right way for sustainable growth. So people experience is all about good design and healthy design around that input. Enable us to to cultivate high performance and the only place that I focus slightly differently, different to some of the people in my community is. Some people would equate PX to people first in their definition where I personally. Would say that PX and people experience is all about alignment. There’s no first involved. It is aligning the business need and the people the employee team need at the same time. That gives us the best outcome, having weighed up all needs and all trade-offs involved and the right design that goes with. That is, is important. So yes, there’s a new branding. I think that’s important. Historically, HR has been seen and has certain associations with that language. So I think it is healthy to have a a new brand and a new definition of the. Way forward for for. People, teams and the value that they can bring. 

Hessie Jones 

That’s excellent. Thank you so much and I’m happy to hear that this has evolved as as we discussed and it’s always been one sided and the goals of the organization tend to tend to, I guess be prioritized against, you know compared to you know the health and happiness of the organization. Overall, so I’m glad to hear that that has changed. OK, so let’s let’s tackle the 1st. So there are founders that that wear multiple hats in the very beginning. So they take on many tasks including the the role of HR or even as you say people management despite the fact they don’t even have any real training. So they bring on their Co founders, they bring in employees they. They established these contracts and processes used, but they may not necessarily be compliant and so like the role of HR, may actually be either outsourced or it’s actually attributed to, let’s say, one of the senior managers role. So at at this stage, what kind of responsibilities should, let’s say, the person that that’s executing on this role have? 

Beth Nevins 

All right. Well, it depends on the stage. So I would start very early onwards and be sensitive to to my risk appetite. But very early on if the founder is pretty much you know, 0 to one and what I mean. Why? That is fundamentally the most critical thing that businesses do or die. So they want to prove the market potential by having early stage customers with a minimally viable product. So they need to build that in the beginning. So what that means is the fundamental concern at this point. To be very honest is talent. It’s hiring. So what can HR help? Advisory at this stage is fundamentally getting them to understand what stage fit is and in the very early days when they’re finding their founding team, in my opinion, stage fit is pretty much synonymous with the world with the word culture at this point. So what I mean by that is fundamentally. This one thing. Thing. So let’s just say we were using their recruiter as an example, and the recruiter was coming into a seed stage or a very early stage company and we’re interviewing them and we’re saying to them, OK, so you need to find us some people, what do you need fundamentally that you think is the lever to help us find these people their. Answer will be too late now. They’ve answered with tooling because they are from a 500 to 1000 person company. And they have a lot of. Resources so then. We have to go to that candidate. OK, well, we have nothing. We have no money, no resources, and all the constraints. So now, what would you? 

Now, if they can answer that, that’s demonstrating first principles thinking and that’s what we want. But the difference here is if we already had the right stage fit candidate. Who had already. Been in that zero to one environment, they would have already taken us to that answer naturally. And that’s the fundamental thing in terms of. Getting that right fit in the culture very early on. Is making sure we’ve got that raw first principles mindset that can literally box their way out of any problem by hook or by crook, to still give us the outcomes with with pretty much next to nothing. And you need that across the board and your first 10 to 20 highs at the very least. So that’s what we’re looking for there from a compliance perspective though, you’re right, there are I think we’re developer. My company is useful even at this stage as we have done the people HR element down the line. So one of the things we keep an eye out for where there is some risk early on is the contract side of things where of course the founder will be issuing a contract themselves. And to save money, they can sometimes be using some automated or some off the shelf SAS tools that do do contract management, but there’s some risk in that if you don’t. Know the nuance to. The clauses that we oversee and can advise them on, for example, making sure the housekeeper and on location, depending on how they’re operating hours, who they report into. Is important, but more important than that on the contract or spotting things on the nature of the business. If they are an AI company, IP is something that we can spot. If that’s pretty weak or that can attract some lovely developers and. And also looking at things like have they actually integrated their position on share options or equity as part of the employment contract? And if you speak to most employment lawyers, that’s usually not advised, not necessarily shouldn’t be done from a compliance perspective, but it’s not always beneficial. The reason for that is. You will not be putting all the terms and conditions around share options or equity as part of that employment contract that will exist as a separate agreement. And so if that is the case, it. Should remain separate. Particularly when you may change things in the business down the line that impacts equity, you don’t want to be going through a jurisdiction compliant consultation then with all employees around that change. If it simply can be changes changed based on the nature of the the share option agreement, which is a separate agreement. So that’s certain nuances that. Only we can kind of spot because you’ve got the HR hat that that an external recruiter might not spot. So there are those types of things that we look out for. And then once your post product market fit. Then the founder needs to take off some of those hats. So there are a few things that they start working on the company and their team, their leadership team rather than all the minutia of every single task that needs to go under them. And the thing you’re coaching founders on at that point is then how to make the most impactful fewer. Decisions and decisions on everything. That’s the mindset shift. You have there. And then the role of HR and the skills they can bring as you’re scaling. Is focusing on a few things, not just the obvious life cycle management. You know what I call people, operations, design, training and compliance, but they are very useful for three things. One is business, partnering with managers, particularly when you may have a lot of first time managers that come with scaling startups and that’s a benefit of joining those types of companies. Two is they should have good change management skills, ideally better than most because the rate of change now is growing at different rates across multiple teams and could be in different territories and that’s a lot to control and facilitate leadership to keep an eye on how we have a bit more consistency and how we manage the rate of change and navigate through that going forward. And the third skill set that HR people people can really bring in this scale up transition post product market fit is being able to speak different languages of different teams and different micro cultures and territories. But also interpret the languages to each other and bring those perspectives in the same room. Then when making decisions and the reason that becomes very important is not just from multi functions, but actually the founder will no longer necessarily be day-to-day with employee number. You know 87104 for example. And you want to make sure that there’s not a disconnect, or their perspective still being facilitated and brought to the table when we’re trying to make those decisions. So as I go back to my original. Point on PX and the evolution is it’s those perspectives that we can bring to the table together and facilitate that as really. Useful as you scale. 

Hessie Jones 

  1. That’s great that you’re able to to actually show the distinction and on how that rule changes over the different stages. Let’s let’s go. Back to, let’s say the company size where where you are very small, so you could be you and your co-founder or you can have let’s say up to 10 employee. These what are the key things or element HR elements that that founders cannot absolutely neglect in in this stage because regardless of you know, budget constraints, these are the things that that they have to. They they must have in order to minimize their risk down the road.

Beth Nevins 

Yeah. I mean, they will have to spend money. On a contract. So I think that that’s the first thing that they should seek some advice on, and OK, they may decide to use an automated tool or get some, you know, legal advice from an employment lawyer to build you one. But I think that that is spend that you can’t avoid, you know, contractually upfront. So that’s the sort of main thing and and potentially depending on the nature of the business, you may think it’s very important even to have an NDA. You’ve seen how some companies around competition and AI and how. Competitive some of these things are that can be very important in technology. So I think you know those two key areas where spend would have to go on from a compliance perspective. And then I think you know to be honest, you know I say this throughout the talent who you hire in is the make or break regardless because they design the strategies. But very early on, right. If Co founders don’t align and haven’t got the same goals, they may break down, but if you have not got the right. Element in the first sort of 0 to 20. You’re not getting anywhere anyway, so working out how you can use that budget creatively is going to be important on getting the right initial founding team. Now you may hack it and leverage your investors other founders in your network. You know, you might have to hustle, get creative with what you can do with, you know, the best agents or. Which people you know, where is it equity? Is it that we make an agreement down the line that we can give them more roles in the future? Is it that we can do some sort of collaboration but get creative in terms of trying to see the long term partnership or opportunity that could be created with suppliers that gives you the the best, more cost effective strategy, leverage your existing team to be recruiters? For you, you know, three people may have 10 connections. Each is already 30 connections. You can sort of tap up. So it’s really making sure that you’re leveraging your inner your outer circles as much as. Possible. And you know, there’s also the skill and being a great communicator. If you can’t translate that vision on free platforms that are to your disposal and articulate that really well from a copywriting perspective, then it’s very hard then to attract the people that you need when you’ve got low brand, all you’ve got is yourself and your words. So that’s really important to really refine that articulation as early as Poss. Go. 

Hessie Jones 

That’s it. That’s a really good point, because I think in the in the, in the age of social media, this is one of the best ways to actually when I say hack in hack the HR role it’s it’s it’s actually doing that on LinkedIn etcetera and you’re talking about. A little bit about the the importance of brand and how that gets established very early on in, in developing some of these early messages on social media and how that starts to find you not only as founder but founder of. Of what kind of culture you’re you’re planning to develop? 

Beth Nevins 

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I I tend to to be more intentional, branded a little bit later on the line because I think a founder goes through such a transition of who they are and then how that plays out in the business. You know, that’s something that I, you know is even a separate offline exercise to be very honest that you need a safe space with the founder on to to do that and that that’s more a coaching. Conversation. But you’re right. You know, cash is king. But these days, content is. OK, the strongest, the strongest brand these days will will tend to win. So you need to be thinking about that far earlier than before where OK, first of all, you’ve got a good product you know no matter how good the marketing is, the product’s not great. So please don’t you know spend all your time on LinkedIn and not on the not on the product. But you know it is important when you’re. Thinking about building up that awareness a bit earlier than you might have done, or your personal brand to attract, yes, I mean. The challenge is it’s a self perpetuating like prophecy. Everyone’s on there, so you’re kind of not in the game or part of that game you’re you’re kind of behind through the peer pressure whether you like it or not. So you kind of if you don’t wanna beat the game, you kind of have to join it at at this moment in time and the way social media’s going. So you know, it’s. It’s kind of something we can’t ignore these days. 

Hessie Jones 

You. You’re helping me segue into the next question which which is really about the role of, as you say, people management and how to help startups attract and retain some of the top talent especially now. With with I guess technology evolving the way it is and the skill sets also changing every single day and the requirements and and. Also, the cost of getting some of the top developers out there, how what? What would you say the role of people management would be at this stage? 

Beth Nevins 

So I think the like the playbook or the strategies of how you go about thinking about this hasn’t changed. It just means what we’re looking for and what they need has changed. So. So I’m talk about the state of play right now because I think I think we’ll go into future work in a moment. But you know, if you’re attracting, you know the role that. Talent and HR together and. I. Mean people here, people. Things can support founders with thinking about is OK, like, what does the business do? Then. What do we need capabilities wise? Who do we need? And that’s what’s called a candidate persona. So like what typical type of person will be successful here? And then, you know, looking at. Where do we find them? You know, where do they hang out? That’s kind of our attraction strategy. And then people teams can really help them define what’s called your value proposition. So, like, what makes us different to our competitors that will meet those needs of the markets and the talent? You know, we, you know, we want to find employees. And what are we going to double? Down on because. I think that’s. The the key thing I try and coach people teams early on is we literally can’t do everything as much as we want to be the best at learning and development. We want to be the best at reward. We pay everyone 100 percentile, blah blah blah. We just can’t. So like what are the two or three things? That really we want to be known for at this point in time and really excel at in that messaging. In addition of course first and foremost, the vision and mission early on is where you kind of need to focus the the playbook on at that stage and time. And then ironically, there’s like 2 roles really, with first time founders and the recruiter skills that you need to look at with attraction. So first time founders in my experience like core capabilities is they’ll be able to pattern recognition reasonably well based on some early training that they can sell. You know that’s the fundamental role of what they’re doing in attraction. And what that? Means then is that the mantle on the recruiter and expectation of their responsibility is massive, so founders need to hire absolutely unbelievable recruiters because they need to do the. They will probably have very high weighting and experience then to have to navigate through the situational relevance. Have they actually done the right projects, the right technologies? They will be fundamental in EQ and leveraging that through their training experience, which the founder won’t have yet in terms of assessing for risk. Assessing for motivations of the candidate, assessing for that stage alignment, asking the right type of questions, which is situational questions, behavioral questions, different techniques, and they’ll need to deploy. So there’s they’re doing a lot of assessment and being relied on for that plus then. Doing a lot of selling themselves too. So that’s the big mantle that good recruiters need to be used for, which is why you need to be very careful early on that you get an absolute a player recruiter partner with you because they play such a bigger role than the founder capability. Maybe at that point in time. And that’s not all founders. That there is a big. Gap there sometimes in the training that’s needed because they may not have done that before simply through, you know, not enough candidates through yet to to be able to build that recognition up. And then on the retention side, that’s where you know the founder and the people team play a big role together and that’s on a wider strategy. But you’re thinking a lot more on if we’re thinking of what’s called people as a product. So the company is a a product. In the beginning you’re focusing much more on acquisition and activation. You know can we get them to the effect of through on boarding and do their first sort of impact piece. But the longer to thing about retention is you know are we improving impact as kind of like a North star? And in doing that then it is this cultivation piece of thinking about their engagement that leads to sort of performance and retention. How do we think about then the enablers to that through, you know, management, training, development, all these other things that we have to start looking at well-being are different variant pinpoints. But again all of the retention piece. Uh comes down to a bigger strategy piece of how far the business needs to retain people, which is a very commercial discussion to be had. And and there are different unique business needs at different times based on uh, whether a company should be restructuring or redesigning. And I don’t mean right sizing or over hiring, that’s a separate problem. But what I mean is the org design of where we need to put people in different roles at different stages of time based on whether you might want to, I don’t know. Be moving from mid tier customer to enterprise all of a sudden to go from you know XR to something over. Time. That’s an entirely new business strategy that’s going to fundamentally impact the business on a on a big level. So that will impact existing hires and how you look at retaining them and perhaps skilling them to be able to move to enterprise clients for example. And then fundamentally bring in a whole other set which may impact then you know retention and and what they may need. Those new highs coming in as well. So it’s it’s, it’s super multifaceted. Once you get into the retention piece long term. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah. Can I ask you a personal question? Have you ever dealt with a company that had to do a major pivot and had that impacted their existing culture and employees. 

Beth Nevins 

Oh well, it pretty much happens at every inflection point. I mean, pretty much after every fundraise, there’s a significant change in, you know, the acceleration of the business, not just in terms of like the rate that needs to keep growing like 10X in every single like year basically. But also as I. Said like how you do that. So like if you’re going to increase your revenue, it could be through like you know product diversification and that. Impacts, like a lot of like how you’re building robustness of the platform technology and uptick, as I said, it could be like different customer segmentation or. A customer base that you start going into and they may need different features or different needs. It could be simply then just using selling the. Same product but. Then into multiple countries. So all of a sudden you’ve got different cultures all come in and that impacts people of how they, you know, work with diverse talent and teams in different times and all the rest of that comes with scale. So this has happened operationally just through like. Organic growth and like success in that way, but then you also have it in the state of play that we have post COVID world, which has been a lot of over hiring as we’ve seen. I don’t need to tell you about  that and there is a a a change and shift of focusing a lot more on performance right now and what we can get and going back to those lean core principles and less. Is more and. So forth. There’s a balance there though, because still the best companies still need to grow and and do so. So we don’t want to be stuck in that cycle. So again, this is all nuance. And context related and. And yeah, I’ve been part of that. I’ve been part recently of a company cannot name but 100 million plus in in funding and came in and did an audit for the board and the complete whole you know. The the the entire strategy didn’t fit the commercial. You know the business model or even the commercial direction. So that needed a whole new strategy and and and right sizing that comes with that to take the business forward in the right direction. That was ultimately the right thing for the right people who stay there and the right thing for the company to to survive. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, that’s I and I. It’s par of the course. I I’d say as as technology ebbs and flows and as technology companies start to get into this fray of uncertainty. Then I guess uncertainty becomes the norm. I would say so let’s how does tell me about culture and and because that’s the thing that ends up permeating an organization from the early onset to now that a company being like. Seven say 100 plus even 200 employees. How does that change and what is the role of HR or slash people management when it comes to infusing and maintaining that culture? 

Beth Nevins 

All right, I’m getting. I’m getting no philosophical here but. I I tend to come back to fundamentals and and arguably this does come back to language actually ironically, but I think like first of all I like to look at roles and then definitions. So like what is the role the founder plays in culture now? For me, the founder is accountable for the culture. 

The CEO, depending on what stage you are and titles and so forth. So the founders accountable for culture in the company, that’s very important. It’s not just or only HR or people, it is the founder. The CEO. So that’s very important to understand that and how does that play out then in, in their responsibilities? Well, fundamentally it’s role modelling and how they make decisions that is very important in terms of their role and responsibility when it comes to to culture, then we look at the role of the people team. I think the people team are critical and. Needlers to you know the culture that they found and the vision they want to set and and people, teams certainly can create people, visions that align with with that. But you know we have to appreciate this very much. Found alleged as founder LED companies for a reason. So I encourage the founder to lead on on people where some people get excited that they’ve got this role at the table. So full but and and I’ve been in that camp years ago and I was younger and didn’t really understand. And then I came to really appreciate no, it’s it’s all about founder like push it onto the founder, help the founder, make sure the founder wants this in terms of their, you know, their vision and their their view on people. And then there’s like two things on the the definitions then that need to be like super clear that aren’t always. So for me like. Values stay the same overtime. And culture evolves is more fluid. So let’s break that down on what I mean. So values are things that we believe are key enablers over a period of time to achieve in our mission and and how we can make decisions. And for me they are more useful in times of conflict. Crisis and how we commute. 

That’s how I think they should be used. I’m less concerned on whether they used day-to-day and we can like, seriously. See them embedded. All over the place, or suck up on. The wall where? Culture is much more around the idiosyncrasies and things you might see organically, day-to-day, and the rituals we have at that stage in time that help us get the work done and how we tend to sort of operate. And there are two things I think need to be explained and then. Where people teams come in to help culture then is on two big enablers. One is like good design. So can we help facilitate some like like touch design principles and how we want to do? Mine operations and infrastructure and people products and things people will use in the company, that sort of standardized and keeps to the sort of philosophy and principles that we want, whether that’s lean, light, whatever, transparency, whatever. And and two is like good people, that’s the people role in in culture as they keep going back to these inputs obsession. That I I seem to have today is, you know, making sure that we are. The gatekeepers or focusing attention there on making sure that we bring in great people that align to then build those systems and and teams that we need to to take us forward and with that then some people argue that culture is defined by the lowest level of behaviour that you will tolerate. Well, that’s when we think about good people and standards. That’s where people teams can really help with standardising what is our definition of high performance and and low performance and so forth and standardize that across the company. 

Hessie Jones 

That’s great. That’s great. I like how, like you’re even talking about how culture develops organically and that that you don’t necessarily sit around the table with your Co founders to define your mission and vision without without infusing an understanding of what is the kind of company. Want to create. I wonder if those are the those are the discussions that are even had at the very early stages. 

Beth Nevins 

Yeah, I I look, I think culture is organic, but it’s again, I I don’t want to contradict myself too much, but it it also has to be a little bit intentional. As I said, you know what, what are what is the target state that we might want to be going through operationally and and again cultures the rituals and changes that might need to happen to to make that happen. And again you know let’s say. Culture is intentional in the sense that I go back to some of that stage fit synergy. You know, we don’t want to hire people that can’t and block themselves early on, and that’s quite important then in the culture that you might want. And how that looks and feels and how we do things early on in in the company too. So I think you need to be a little bit intentional for what you’re looking for and how that might play out at the stage and time. But again, it’s likely to form very early on in that DNA around the founder behaviour in any event and that’s the beauty of early stage performance. It’s just so visible. 

Hessie Jones 

Mm-hmm. That’s that’s a that’s a great answer. OK. So I have one more question for you. That’s OK. So for companies who haven’t invested in developing a lot of the stuff that you’re talking about the the practices, some of the policies, what kind of risk do they run into and how can they? And can they catch up? And I’m specifically looking at what does that look like from the first meeting that you have with the founder who is just exploring like what to do as he starts growing? 

Beth Nevins 

OK, so I think this will comes down to like being very careful on how you position risk and discuss risk with a founder. So what I. Mean by that is, you know, as I said like, you know, write an order for a board or a, you know, a professional COO is very easy to discuss. You know, you go. Into business and you look at what’s going on with people and talent. And fundamentally, there’s three business risks, which is. One execution risk. Two can be financial risk and three is like brand risk and there are definitely certain minutiae risk like legal. Security and all that that. They fall into those 3 buckets ultimately, and those are the things that you can spot very quickly. As a experienced people or talent leader, when you’re looking at the current state of play and certainly when operations are skilled and and things have got a bit out of control. But the conversation we have with the founder then about how you position these things is OK like a. Like how great is that risk and the likelihood of it to actually happen? B. We then analyze the reward versus the risk, and this is where like bit scaling like Reid, Hoffman’s book and the theory of that kind of helps. Like, you know, do we believe that just growing and forgetting about this debt and the risk is actually, you know, a trade off to achieve brick things if it pays off, it’s just better to ignore some of these fires right now and just carry. You know, bulldozing through for growth reasons, then that’s a discussion we have from a commercial perspective and then like, see, you know, this where values does come into play, right, we’ve we’ve got these risks. We’ve got these problems. Uhm, you know how from a values perspective, whatever they may are, do we want to address these? Because that will be indicative and play out then in terms of how people perceive we’ve ignored them or addressed them or whatever. So I think, you know my point is people teams should be able to accept that we can make recommendations for sure and that is our job to do that. But you know, particularly on the outside now my my job is to advise not necessarily influence or I’d be more of an influencer as a as an operator perhaps. So I think you need to be mindful of that with founders and if if founders align and you come to a conclusion. Then that things need to change. Then first of all, you need to agree then what that target state might look like and just come back to that. Why? Why we’ve agreed that this is the case. So you’ve got full buy in and that messaging is consistent across that leadership team. And then look at baking into your road map, how we then that’s going to to play out. Now the one thing I see with people, leaders that I’ve mentioned over time. As an operator and as a consultant is. It if the risk is ignored and then you know it happens, then the people leader needs to be very smart with the fund to make sure that that’s discussed upfront, that if we ignore this and it happens, this is the impact then on our existing road map in terms of delivery because this is where burnout happens where the people leader hasn’t had the foresight. Perhaps of like the the scenario playing and and then they are still expected to deliver on this colossal road map, particularly for quite lean and trying to do all these things and then fighting some of these risks that didn’t pay off there and which could come through disputes or certain. You know different employee relations problems and that leads their burnout of their time. So it’s that’s the way you have that conversation then with the founder. CEO is as I go back and just summarize is you know, play out those scenarios and how that would impact an existing road map that remains or do we create a new one together. 

Hessie Jones 

Thank you. That’s a. That’s a great synopsis on on why this this needs to be done even earlier on. So thank you so much. I think that’s all we have time for today. And my goodness, you’ve opened up my eyes to to the role, the important role of of people management and I think I don’t think. People understand actually at this stage like how important this becomes, especially as the company grows. So thank you so much, Beth. Where where can people reach you if they need to contact you? 

Beth Nevins 

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Hessie, by the way, where can you find me? So my website is developer which is DEVELOPA dot IO and I’m on LinkedIn. I do tend to post quite a bit going back to our branding point and I’m Beth Nevins and we also have a company. Page codes to. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, perfect. Thank you. So just for just to to kind. Of wrap up. For startups, HR isn’t just about the paperwork and the policies. It’s really about nurturing the heartbeat of of the organization, which are the people. And thank you for for hitting that home in spades. So for our. Audience if you have any other topics you’d like us to cover, please e-mail us at communication. At altitudeaccelerator.ca Tech, Uncensored is powered and is produced by altitude accelerator and we’re hosted on Spotify. You can get us wherever you get your podcasts until next time. My name is Hessie Jones. Have fun. And stay safe. 

Host Information

Hessie Jones is an Author, Strategist, Investor and Data Privacy Practitioner, advocating for human-centred AI, education and the ethical distribution of AI in this era of transformation.

She currently serves as the Innovations Manager at Altitude Accelerator. She provides the necessary support for Altitude Accelerator’s programs including Incubator and Investor Readiness. She will be the liaison among key stakeholders to provide operational support and ultimately drive founder success.

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