Why hiring amazing people works

When you’re building very quickly, hiring a reliable team is essential to get you off to a good start. In this episode of Build Mode, Isabelle Johannessen sits down with Isaiah Granet, CEO and co-founder of Bland, a voice AI group that has grown from seed to Series B in just 10 months. Their team has grown to 75 people and Granet has some insightful advice on how the company found hidden talent in the most unlikely places.

With a new college startup team, Bland’s first recruits were chosen because of their passion, not their parents.

“We were looking for a very long time for our startup engineer. The person we ended up hiring, his job was a few months at an insurance company in Iowa. And before that, he was a manager at Taco Bell, and before that at a factory,” Granet told Build Mode, adding that the team found him through his GitHub account.

“The thing that got me was not his talent,” Granet said. “We asked him, “What do you do for fun?” And I’ve never seen a bigger smile on his face. He said, ‘I like to code.’

After the hire, Bland began to prioritize people who were self-interested and young and naive like the company. From philosophers to beekeepers, Bland’s community is built on people who don’t have a modern culture.

“There are people out there who have things that aren’t important on a CV, but it’s great. It just shows that passion, because it can be put on anything,” said Granet.

As the company has grown over the past year, the leadership team has had to learn not only how to hire, but how to keep the team motivated and happy. In this episode, Granet explains in detail how Bland created a successful payroll system and made sure all early hires understood the payroll process.

There are problems with the intellectual property of these works, he said. Scrappy talent can be inexperienced, so the company often has to replace employees who may need time to grow in rank.

Bland hopes that if it invests in an employee, the employee will also invest in the company and invest in the project to succeed. “If you’re not delivering results, we expect you to be in the office six days a week, 12 hours a day,” Granet said.

This style of writing can also be difficult to develop, especially at the rate Bland is growing. The co-founders are closely involved with the team to ensure they are doing their best, Granet said.

A startup team can make or break an early stage startup, and Bland’s unique recruiting and lightning-fast growth strategies help find the secret sauce for talent acquisition. “I think in most cases, honestly, early adopters should go with their gut and everyone should find their own way to recruit,” Granet said.

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Isabelle Johannessen is our host. Build Mode created and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience Development is led by Morgan Little. And special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.