How I Sourced Two Product Hires for a Portfolio Company

This post is not for me to boost my ego on the “value add” I bring to my portfolio companies. It is more about two unconventional scaling methods as a solo GP to help bring in some key hires. But did I mention how valuable I am as an investor 😂.

Anyway….

The first is using a marketing automation feature within my investor CRM called Affinity. It is not a complex feature. It is “send bulk email.” For example, I have made a list of “Operators” in the CRM in which I sent an email with the subject line “I need some help.” The body of the email was only two or three sentences about needing a product hire, along with the job description as an attachment. Then Voila, a bunch of qualified candidates- one that ended up being hired.

The second way was someone reaching out to me via Linkedin in response to a post I posted about traveling to Dallas that morning. I wrote - hit me up if you want to meet. When my plane landed, I had a DM of someone I had never met before, but we were connected through a common company. We squeezed in lunch, and he was in between gigs. He had an unusual background that was a perfect fit for an open req for a portfolio company. I connected them and, once again- hired!

I do very few things on that scale as an investor. Being organized with my network through technology and constantly posting on social media have proven to help.