Hiring Executives

Brian Armstrong, Co-founder & CEO, Coinbase

Brian goes through his end-to-end executive hiring process, which covers: Speak to subject matter experts [1–2 weeks] Choose the hiring committee [1–2 days] Draft mission/outcomes/competencies [1–2 weeks] Source candidates [2 weeks] Build the relationship [1 month] Evaluate candidates [1 month] Close them [1 month]

Marco Zappacosta, CEO, Thumbtack

Macro goes through how to think through job descriptions for executives, how to structure the interview process, how to back-channel to assess skills, and how to present back-channel findings in a final meeting.

Jeff Markowitz, A Blueprint for Executive Hiring, Greylock Partners

Jeff goes through the five stages of hiring executives: planning, working with candidates, referencing, figuring out compensation, and making an offer.

Jonathan Swanson, Co-Founder & Chairman, Thumbtack

Jonathan covers a number of tactics to help ensure the success of an executive hire: 1) Ask for the candidate's last 360 degree review 2) Lean in on outbound recruiting 3) Calibrate your quality bar by meeting other executives that are in similar roles

Delian Asparouhov, Investor, Khosla Ventures

Keith explains how to separate executives into value-creating or value-protecting, and then how to interview each.

Ben Horowitz, Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz

Ben covers 4 steps: creating the job profile, interviewing, referencing, and making a decision. He dives the deepest into the interview section, with a variety of example interview questions.

Josh Hannah, VC, Matrix Partners

References are important for executive hiring, as resumes and interviews are likely to leave out any negative experience. This article goes through how to do reference checks at the executive level.

Dana Stalder, General Partner, Matrix Partners

Dana Stalder and Jess Lee go through the process for closing an executive-level hire: always be selling, make it personal, go the extra mile, get smart with data and compensations, and use your VCs.