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TCT Exclusive: Hazel Mulhare, Partner @ Erevena

We are thrilled to announce this week’s exclusive with Hazel Mulhare, Partner at Erevena! With experience placing hundreds of executives at high growth companies like Asana, Box, and Carta, Hazel’s superpowers lie within the biggest challenge most founders face: acquiring executive-level talent. Having previously been a Principal at OSI, she also is able to approach these conversations from the lens of a VC.

From compensation structures (cash vs. equity) to planning future growth hires, Hazel’s domain experience evolves around adding top-notch executives and board members to the cap table. We sat down and discussed:

Hazel Mulhare

TCT: Thanks for sitting down with us, Hazel. Let’s jump in.

How did you start out with regards to your career?

Executive search isn’t something I knew about during University. When I finished at Trinity College Dublin with a degree in humanities I knew I wanted to work with people and do a job which was fast-paced and highly stimulating, so the search was a natural fit and especially search focused on initially VC fund and then VC backed businesses, which was growing so rapidly in Europe at the time (2011 post-crisis).

You’ve been a leader and contributor at several executive search firms like Kea Consultants, Dore Partnership, and most recently as a Partner at Erevena, focused on VC-backed businesses. You were also formerly Principal and Head of Talent for Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI). What’s the biggest difference between working as a consultant vs. on behalf of a Venture Portfolio like OSI?

I loved my time at OSI, as we were both funding businesses and building them from scratch. We had a huge fund (£615m), backed by some phenomenal folks like Sequoia and Google, and had access to some of the best scientists in the world in Oxford University. It gave me a lot of empathy for founders, seeing them in the trenches as they start out and strive to use technology to solve huge problems. However, I love my current capacity in an executive search firm as you are really ‘on the hook’ to deliver an excellent outcome for a client, they are paying you a not-insignificant amount of money to find them the best possible person for their business and you develop a strong sense of alignment on outcomes. I like that outcome-driven approach, vs being in more of a purely advisory seat. I also love winning new business for Erevena and chasing down exciting companies for us to work with.

You recently published How to Hire Leaders for your Start-up, a decision framework for how start-up founders and business leaders should think about making leadership hires. What would you say is the biggest mistake that founders make when making key executive hires?

Not being specific. 

What do you need this person to really achieve? Everything in the job description (external) and scorecard (internal) needs to lead back to that mission statement for the role. If you are a founder hiring for a function you’ve never led, you may realistically be wooly on the ‘how’ but should not be unclear on the ‘what’. A great recruiter and certainly great candidates will help inform whether the ‘what’ is feasible for one person in the timeline you have in mind, but it will help clarify the key skills and deliverables they will need to exhibit in their current and previous roles.

Erevena has made executive placements at Asana, Lemonade, Railsbank, Box, and Carta, plus many more. How does your firm’s approach differ from some of the others in terms of pipeline, clientele, and process?

I saw a tweet from a founder recently who was dismayed that they’d visited 4 or 5 search firm websites and saw a sea of middle-aged white men who all said the same thing about their business. Like a lot of sectors, there is something of a homogeneity to the way search firms describe themselves, and in reality, there is a lot of overlap in best practice across the best boutiques and larger search firms who serve the VC backed market.

For me, I chose Erevena because I believe my colleagues are genuinely excited and curious about the world of high growth technology. We are an LP in some VC funds, so we’ve got skin in the game. We are able to work with companies from Series A through to public listing and beyond and we work across functions and across geographies. We also do that as one firm, which is unusual. I know about what all my Partners are working on across our different offices, and we are all swapping ideas across sectors, geos, and stages.

Given how long an executive search can take, how do you know you’re hiring people with the right skills for hyper-growth companies, where the business needs may look different than when the search started by the time the candidate is placed?

We ground the initial conversations in ‘where do you want to get to’. More often than not our clients share with us what they’ve shared with investors about their aspirations and so we are thinking for the medium term. Because we also start working with companies early and as a business follows them through, we often work with them on iterations of their various functions over the course of their growth. We also course correct during a search where that is relevant, we have 20 years of experience working with fast growing companies, so some change and iteration is par for the course. 

What advice would you give to rising startup executives or operators looking to land their first C-suite role at a VC-backed company?

I wouldn’t worry too much about titles, sometimes it serves you better to come in as a VP or a ‘Head of’ and really excel at it. Ultimately I think you want to balance a percentage of the role that you know you can slam dunk, balanced with space for growth. I would say in the world of corporates etc, that might be 80/20, in a start-up you probably want to look at 60% of the role and be confident you are going to outperform and 40% where you know you’ll be pushing for growth. I am also a fan of telling my friends that they have a unique hierarchy of needs in a job and things they will prioritise over others. This is also important as you balance your risk appetite with what you’re looking for. 

On the flip side, how should those looking to land their first gig in VC-backed companies approach the recruitment process?

It’s always a good idea to always take calls from recruiters, even when you’re not looking so that you’re on their radar. Additionally, you want to be networking while you’re happy and thriving, so that when the time is right to make the move you’ve built up a reputation as a great operator, not just someone looking for their next gig. 

Once you’re in a process, prove that you’ve done the things they need for this role (use lots of examples), but also be curious about the business and where you’d fit in, and then be proactive about how you’d approach it. Send detailed follow ups after mid and late stage interviews with your thoughts and questions for next time. Do the research, talk to as many people connected to the business as possible and try to spend some informal time with the CEO!

With regards to compensation, how do executive placements in Seed-Series B companies look vs. growth companies? Does one tend to favor cash/equity mix?

It does depend on the business and this can be quite geography-specific. The rule of thumb is that you have more risk upside (ie. equity) in an early-stage company, but it tends to rationalise at Series B and even sometimes at A, given how competitive the talent landscape is in SV, NYC and London. If you are going to a very early stage company and taking a large hit on cash, you might want to have a very frank conversation with the founder about how they view this scaling at investment rounds or other milestones. There are some good benchmark calculators like Index’s Option Plan. 

A genie says “I will grant you one wish. You can join any cap table you’d like for free”. What cap table would you join and why?

Stripe. And not just because they are my Irish compatriots! I am such a huge fan of what they’ve built, how they’ve balanced culture, vision, and growth. 

What are you passionate about outside of work?

I read a lot of non-fiction, and in non-Covid times I go to the theatre a few times a month and also host dinners (although am told I am a mediocre cook but an excellent pourer of wine!). I’m currently reading ‘Breath’ by James Nestor and attempting to re-learn how to breathe!

The year is 2030. What’s the state of talent placement in venture-backed companies?

I’d like to think that the best executive recruiters will still be a valuable partner to VC backed companies as they add their advisory lens, but I have no doubt there is a V2 of Linkedin or competitor which will have shook things up by then. I am hopeful that there will be more opportunities for companies outside of the main tech hubs, and that work will be more distributed, but highly connected. I also argue with myself on whether meritocracy is possible or exists, but I hope we will have discovered new and better ways to find and assess talent that goes beyond a resume. 

Follow Hazel on Twitter (@hazelmulhare) for more insights into tech executive & board search!

Additional Executive Compensation resources:

We Looked at 101 Startup CEO Salaries - Here's What We Found (via Crunchbase)

How do you Determine Proper Compensation for Startup CEOs and Early Employees? (via Visible VC)

Pave raises millions to bring transparency to startup compensation (via Techcrunch)

Deal News 11/28 - 12/4

Pre-Seed

Seed

Series A

Series B

Series C

Series D

Series E

Sources: Crunchbase, Twitter, LinkedIn

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