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After realizing he needed a more rigorous hiring process in his fast-growing company, the entrepreneur author details his step-by-step interview process based on Topgrading hiring principles. This process enabled the author to recruit the best people possible for his company's top positions.
Fern Mandelbaum, is a Partner at Monitor Venture Partners. Ms. Mandelbaum is an entrepreneur and CEO who specializes in creating and growing technology focused businesses. Since 1998, Ms. Mandelbaum has worked with CEO's helping them develop and refine their business concepts, recruit management teams, key advisors and board members, implement fund raising strategies and establish strategic alliances. Her portfolio includes: New Vine Logistics, CaseCentral, Informative, NapaStyle, WetFeet, Care2, and LiveAdvice (merged with Keen). She has worked with, and secured funding for her companies from many of the leading venture capital firms, including: Mohr Davidow; ATV; Kleiner-Perkins; Draper Fisher Jurvetson; ThomVest; and Carlyle Ventures. Between 1991 and 1998, Ms. Mandelbaum was co-founder and CEO of Skyline Products, one of the premier toy invention firms that was sold to IDEO Product Development, the largest design firm in the U.S., in 1998. Skyline achieved annual growth in excess of 200%, becoming one of the top toy invention firms in the U.S. She was responsible for all marketing, business development, financial, legal, and strategic planning aspects of the company, and licensed over 80 products to 50 companies during her tenure. Between 1988 and 1991, Ms. Mandelbaum was a General Manager at Metcal. She created and managed a division to develop and commercialize foodservice equipment incorporating Metcal's proprietary heating technology. Prior to, and while, attending business school, Ms. Mandelbaum worked at Bain and Company, SRI International as a research analyst in the financial industries center, Hewlett Packard, creating the used equipment vendor program, and the Kyoto Shinyo Kinko, managing the initial stages of a new product introduction. Ms. Mandelbaum received her M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1988 and her B.A. in Economics from Brown University in 19
Mike Maples, Jr. is the managing partner of Maples Investments, and is an entrepreneur in his own right. Before becoming a full-time investor, he worked in a variety of executive and management roles in high-growth companies. His background spans a variety of markets including consumer technology, small business, and the enterprise, and he has served in various executive roles in product development, marketing, and corporate strategy. Mike began his technology career in high school, when he started a software company that developed games and educational products for the original IBM PC. He has been passionate about the technology industry ever since. Most recently, Mike co-founded Motive, Inc., the world's leading broadband software company in 1997 and played key roles in its growth from raw start-up through sales of $100 million. Motive was one of the only successful technology IPOs in 2004, and the most successful infrastructure software IPO for the prior three years. At Motive, Mike was General Manager of Motive's Corporate Business Unit, as well as Chief Marketing and Strategy officer. Prior to Motive, Mike was responsible for worldwide product marketing at Tivoli Systems, where he managed the company's product portfolio from its early-stage development through its 1995 IPO and growth to a $750M line of business within the IBM Software Group. Mike began his professional career at Silicon Graphics, where he served in business development and product marketing roles. In his spare time Mike is an amateur artist, movie-maker, and calligrapher. He holds an Engineering degree from Stanford University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a guest-lecturer on entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, Stanford University, Princeton University, and the University of Texas.
This serial entrepreneur shares the story of how she came to understand the importance of recruiting experienced entrepreneurs to her board of directors. In one instance a new director advised her to hold off accepting an offer for her company, enabling the company to grow and gain value for potential sale later.
Mr. Martin joined Pacific Biosciences in 2004 as a seasoned executive with a 25-year track record managing leading edge technologies, new ventures, and high growth businesses. Previously, Mr. Martin was Chairman, President and CEO of ONI Systems?a high-speed optical telecommunications company he founded in 1998 and took public in 2000. Named the Fastest Growing Company in Silicon Valley in 2001, ONI was sold to Ciena in 2002. After its sale, Mr. Martin served as a consultant to Ciena, a CEO in residence at the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, and was a Director at Cloudshield Technologies. Prior to ONI, Mr. Martin was President and Director of 3DO?an interactive gaming company. His earlier experience includes running desktop engineering for Apple Computer and founding Ridge Computers?designer of the world's first commercial reduced instruction set computing (RISC) minicomputer. Mr. Martin received a BS in Electrical Engineering at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Mr. Martin currently serves on the Board of Directors of Pacific Biosciences and Infinera.
While effectual boards of directors can strengthen a growing company, this author asserts ineffectual boards can just as easily cripple a company's growth. Entrepreneurs should follow proven and concrete procedures for developing and operating strong boards of directors.
When key leaders are ready to move on to new challenges or even retirement, their legacy can be greatly diminished without good succession planning.
Unless you have a strong team at the top, you and your company will struggle under the weight of growth. Knowing how to select, manage and lead a Top Team is one of the secrets to growth.
When it comes to compensation, the issue is not what you can pay, but what you can offer to the people you need to grow.
Marissa leads the product management efforts on Google's search products- web search, images, groups, news, Froogle, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google's first female engineer and led the user interface and webserver teams at that time. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google's search interface, internationalizing the site to more than 100 languages, defining Google News, Gmail, and Orkut, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Several patents have been filed on her work in artificial intelligence and interface design. In her spare time, Marissa also organizes Google Movies- outings a few times a year to see the latest blockbusters- for 6,000+ people (employees plus family members and friends). Concurrently with her full-time work at Google, Marissa has taught introductory computer programming classes at Stanford to over 3,000 students. Stanford has recognized her with the Centennial Teaching Award and the Forsythe Award for her outstanding contribution to undergraduate education. Prior to joining Google, Marissa worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Graduating with honors, Marissa received her BS in Symbolic Systems and her MS in Computer Science from Stanford University. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence. Courtesy of Google, Bart Nagel
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