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Account Executive @ Deel | 🌍 🌎 Posting about Startups in ANZ.

As an Account Executive at Deel, I help companies in Australia and New Zealand scale their teams and operations with the best HR platform in the world. I have over five years of experience in various selling and B2B sales environments, including SaaS, FMCG, and founding a skincare company.

I am passionate about growth startups, regional economies, ag-tech, alternative medicine development, basketball, equal opportunity for migrants. I also post weekly about startups in APAC, reaching over 150k impressions in the past year. I love to chat and connect with people who share my interests or need my support. Feel free to message me below or contact me at michael.tsakirellis@deel.com or michael.tsakirellis@gmail.com. You can also call me at 0438352334.

Michael Tsakirellis

Scouut

We're Scouut: builder of world class startups and Talent Partner for Eucalyptus, Bugcrowd, Citro, Medinet and Sauce (to name a few), as well as ventures from Paloma, AirTree, Startmate, x15 and many more.

Succeeding as a start-up really boils down to two things:

- Making the right decisions at the right time.
- And hiring great people who can execute them.

We guarantee the latter half of that.

Fancy doing the former? Reach out any time, any day:

0477 622 408
Matt@scouut.com.au
https://scouut.com.au/

Co-Founder & Director | Startup Scaler

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Start building ELITE startup teams with The Startup Hiring Playbook: https://amzn.asia/d/57UUFJr

Building the best Software & Design teams in Australia's start-up & scale-up ecosystem is what we do.

Partnering with 100+ start-ups & scale-ups, and with an expert team that's placed into Canva, Atlassian, Eucalyptus, Bugcrowd, Kolmeo and Milanote to name just a handful, as well as portfolio companies from Blackbird, Paloma, AirTree, Startmate, x15 and more, we know a thing or two about hiring in the space.

We help our clients to:

- Find and attract the best talent in the country
- Perfect their interview processes
- Offer over 1 in 3 candidates they meet via Scouut
- Secure roughly 90% of the candidates they make offers to
- Have an unbeatable EVP
- Retain their best employees in a candidate short sector
- And more!

Companies that choose to partner with Scouut have an unmatched advantage when it comes to all things hiring.

Fancy joining them? 👇

0477 622 408
matt@scouut.com.au
https://scouut.com.au

Matt Cook

Early startups don't owe anything to Junior software engineering talent.

It's not your responsibility to train them or give them opportunities.

That is if you *don't* hire them, of course. because the second you do, it's absolutely your responsibility to do right by them, and give them the training, support, and level adjusted opportunities they require to grow.

Now, personal opinion is that early startups shouldn't hire Juniors. I just think it's a headache you don't need when you have other extremely pressing priorities to attend to.

But, if you've made the choice to hire Juniors anyway, you *must* take responsibility for their development as an individual, and their career. 

I see so, so many startups hiring Juniors or even early Mids to save cash, and then just hanging them out to dry, expecting them to just "come up to speed" without any training or support at all. 

Ironically, this kind of hiring and team building burns cash faster than practically all other options (and, for the most part, it's only 1st time founders doing it, which says a lot)

Of course, there comes a time when Junior talent becomes a real asset, but it's generally not until you have dedicated Team Leads which can often be well into Series A, especially these days. 

There might be some Junior talent reading this, and thinking that I'm making it harder for them. Truth is, you probably shouldn't join a startup either. 

Join a thriving scale up instead, learn from people who know what they're doing, get trained properly, where there's structure and opportunity at the perfect level for you to be challenged, but not drowning, then move. 

Startups ARE a fantastic environment to learn in - but only if you can swim. 

Learn to swim elsewhere first.

Preventing Mis-hires For VC Backed Startups Through Design First Hiring & Critical Team Design

"Side hustles" are all the rage these days.

They're especially popular with my generation, to the point where some people may even feel left out or behind if they don't have a side hustle. 

I think it's because stuff is so expensive, people want to feel like they are doing a little extra to earn a bit more, but...

This might be unpopular, but unless your side hustle is a hobby that you'd be doing even if it didn't make you money, I think it's a poor use of time. 

Most people I've spoken to are making an extra ~$5K a year with their side hustle. I'm not going to scoff at $5K but, even if your side hustle's only half a day a week, it's not exactly worth it.

I am absolutely, positively, 100% certain that if you spent half a day a week focused on improving at your day job, you could justify a much larger pay rise than $5K by this time next year. 

In most cases (I've seen this more than once), the side hustle may even cost you a pay rise or promotion, as it's hard to be at your very best when your attention is split across multiple jobs.

Now, if you're planning on eventually going full time with your side hustle and scaling it to a point where you can earn far more than any normal salary, that's different (although you should probably go full time on it now).

But if you're just doing freelancing or handy work or uber on the side for some extra money, I promise that time is better spent improving a skill that will directly increase your salary, or just working harder in your actual job (to justify a promotion).

Also, you might think that you don't want to go above and beyond for your employer - so don't, be selfish and go above and beyond for yourself. Build your skills and leave. Get paid elsewhere if they won't pay you.

Is it common practice for employees with ESOP to get investor updates?

And if not, why not?

Earlier this year, I invested in a startup. Ever since, I've been included on their monthly investor update email from the founders, and although they don't have employees yet, it got me wondering whether people with ESOP get those updates too.

I know of at least 1 company that does do this, but I bet they are the exception, not the norm - and that's a shame.

I actually think there's two reasons why employees should get those updates:

1 - If they have ESOP, they are investors too. Top calibre people could work at FAANG or similar for more money, but chose to invest the difference by working for you instead. 

2 - Although it's a short read, a couple of minutes max, it always addresses wins, challenges, and the main goals. Your employees should always be keenly aware of all 3. If you can share it with your investors, you can share with them.

Founders vent to me all the time about how their employees and potential employees don't value the ESOP that they offer - but if you're not keeping them updated on company progress, and more importantly, how they can impact that progress as an employee, why would they?

It wouldn't completely solve your problem (it's not a problem, it's reality and logical maths, that's for another post though), but it would absolutely help.

It also just gives people confidence - confidence that even if there are issues or challenges, the founders are aware, and are working on them. 

Confidence from investors is helpful. Confidence from employees is necessary.

Maybe you already do this as a founder, but if you aren't, would you? 

And if not, why not?

Was talking to a founder a few days ago who's looking to hire for a role with a major drawback.

Most roles have the odd downside, but this is one in particular makes the role particularly undesirable for good people who have options, which is what I told him.

That part's not new, lots of companies hire for roles that good people won't accept - his response was new for me though...

"What do you mean? You're a recruiter, your job is to get good people to accept even when the job is not good."

No, it's not. 

My job is to ensure that good startups with good opportunities land at the top of the priority list for exceptionally talented people. 

I'll either do that by helping you market your good opportunity in a way that leaves no doubt about how good it is for the right people. 

Or I'll help you fix the opportunity itself before you go to market, to make sure you're never asking great people to take an average or below average role.

My job is not to polish a turd, and convince great people to take your bad job.

Great people don't accept bad jobs. And if they do, they leave as soon as they realise the lie you've sold to them. 

Instead of hiring for roles that aren't attractive and trying to papers over the cracks - how about fixing the cracks themselves by addressing those downsides, or adding extra value into the role to make up for them?

Or you can keep thinking that it's normal for 10-20% of your hires to leave during probation (our placements are below 0.5%, it's not hard, or accidental).

But no - a recruiter's job is never to get good people to take bad jobs, ever.

A candidate said something the other day that I don't think any companies are really thinking about...

For me, based on what I've heard, most AI gains in software engineering come from how individuals are able to extract the most from AI for their specific job. 

In other words, it's not from company wide initiatives, but switched on individuals who take AI usage into their own hands, for their own very specific workflows.

This leads to some pretty big contrasts in how one person uses and benefits from AI, vs another, even within the same company, and sometimes within the same team. 

And this became oh so apparent when I spoke to an Eng Manager the other day who's open to something new. 

"I'd be bringing my agents across too, they aren't just getting me, so I'd want to be paid accordingly"

He went on to explain how he has built out workflows that mimic an entire team, not just him as a single engineer. 

Now, I want to say a few things quickly:

1 - He could be full of shit.

2 - Some other engineers are achieving crazy things with AI, they just don't describe it as "a team of agents" - is it the same, or different? I don't know.

3 - If he isn't exaggerating and he does have this 'asset' that will follow him to his next role, he is right to be thinking about it differently in my opinion. 

But the question is, how do you define the value of that? 

I suppose it would be like hiring a salesperson with a huge following. That following (YouTube channel, for example) is an asset that they bring with them.

They might charge $5K a pop for a sponsor slot to other brands. If you expect them to just feature you for free or regularly talk about the product on the channel, you are naive. 

It carries real value, and you *should* be paying for that if you as their employer will benefit from it.

If this guy's 'agent team' really does reduce the need for hiring by even half a role, let alone the 4-5 that he suggested, he is well within his right (imo) to make a case to be paid for that asset too. 

Similarly, if he - or perhaps someone in your team - is currently spooling up an AI powered workflow or team, who owns that? You? Or them? 

(Your contract almost certainly says the company owns it, but you could make arguments as to whether it's enforceable).

He seems to think he owns it, not his current employer. I'm sure they would disagree though.

If it were a YouTube channel, or a LinkedIn account (like mine, which indirectly generates a very large amount of revenue for my company), the employee would own it, not the employer.

Is this the same? Again, I don't know...

Anyway, regardless of how you feel about AI and whether it's more efficient or not, you simply can't argue that it's *changing* the way we work. 

And it would be naive to think that won't have knock on effects to some of the topics, or questions, or thoughts, or reservations that often surface when hiring...

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Michael Tsakirellis

Matt Cook

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The Battle

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