S7: E1. Hiring advice from a climate VC ft. Heidi Lindvall (Pale Blue Dot)

During this series, we’ll be discussing the art of building strong, high-performing teams to give your startup the best foundation possible.  I’ll be speaking to industry experts about inclusion, employer branding and establishing culture, plus I’ll be hearing both the VC and founder viewpoints and experiences when it comes to finding and supporting the best talent.With fundraising being so crucial to any startup, it’s important to understand how VCs see talent and assess it not only when making their investment but also beyond, when things start to scale.   We’re starting this series with Heidi Lindvall, a general partner and investor at Pale Blue Dot. Over her career, she has herself built SaaS and B2B companies, and has run two accelerators helping founders to scale. Now the other side of the table, she focuses on pre-seed and seed startup investments.  Pale Blue Dot is a seed-stage climate tech VC that backs visionary founders, building future-shaping businesses.2:06 - Heidi’s experience of building teams as a previous founder.4:40 - Were there any advisors or resources you used to learn how to pull a team together?10:55 - How to handle realising you’ve made the wrong hire.14:46 - Would you advise working with a business coach or advisors when first starting out?18:16 - Why did you move into accelerators?22:18 - What stage did you take people into the accelerators?23:11 - What were the common themes that you saw companies struggle with from a team and hiring perspective?25:00 - How can founders assess whether someone is a good fit for a startup?29:02 - Competing on salary at early-stage companies.31:58 - What would your advice be around offering equity at early stages?33:36 - From a VC perspective, how important is the team when assessing an investment?37:28 - How important is the advisory board and can that offset gaps in a founding team when you’re assessing an investment?41:24 - Where have you seen team building and hiring done well in your portfolio at Pale Blue Dot?44:49 - Should you always be recruiting and building a talent pipeline?47:16 - How involved do you get in hiring with your portfolio companies?48:49 - Do you see hiring challenges differ between locations or are they fairly universal?50:08 - What is one final key piece of advice you would give founders when it comes to hiring? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.