20VC: Biggest Takeaways From Working With Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston, Why You Should Put Off Hiring For As Long As Possible & Why Seed Stage Investing Is All About Optimising The Top Of The Funnel with Harj Taggar, Founder & CEO @ Triplebyte
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Harj Taggar is the Founder & CEO @ Triplebyte, the startup that is changing the world of engineering recruitment by building a new kind of interview that evaluates tech skills, not credentials. They have raised from some of our favourite seed investors and all past guests on the show including Felicis Ventures, SV Angel and Initialized Capital. As for Harj, prior to Triplebyte, he was the first partner brought in at Y Combinator since its founding, where he remained as a Partner for 4 years. Before that he was a YC founder, co-founding Auctomatic which was acquired by Livecurrent Media.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Harj made his way from the UK to YC's first Partner to now founding Triplebyte?
2.) Question from Garry Tan: What was the most surprising thing when Harj first became a Partner @ YC? What were Harj's biggest learnings from working with Paul Graham and Jessica Livingstone in the early days?
3.) Remaining in those very early stages, from Harj's experience seeing so many companies pass through YC, what do startups look like at those very early stages? How does Harj recommend finding co-founders? Test and iterate on ideas? Work towards product market fit? What does product market fit look like to Harj?
4.) How should we approach hiring as an early stage startup? What are the signs of great hires? What does the optimal interview process look like? How can we optimize the on boarding process?
5.) What should founders look for in VCs and vice versa? What were Harj's learnings on how to be a great seed stage investor from his time with Garry & Alexis @ Initialized??
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Harj’s Fave Book: Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC, Harj on Twitter here!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back and you are listening to the 20-minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings found most |
| 0:04.1 | commonly on Snapchat at H. Stebbings with 2Bs and also writing some more academic, thoughtful |
| 0:09.1 | pieces these days on MahitoVC.com. I'd absolutely love to hear your thoughts and feedback on that. |
| 0:14.6 | But to the founders Friday ahead and what a founder we have in store for you today. I'm delighted to welcome a fellow Brit in the form of Hage to go up. Now, Hage is the founder and CEO at TripleByte, the startup that is changing the world |
| 0:25.8 | of engineering recruitment by building a new kind of interview that evaluates tech skills, not |
| 0:30.7 | credentials. They've raised from some of our favourite seed investors, and all past guests actually |
| 0:35.1 | of the show, including Felicit Ventures, SV, Angel and |
| 0:38.3 | initialised capsule. As for Hajj, prior to TripleByte, he was the first partner brought in at Y Combinator |
| 0:43.8 | since its founding, where he remained as a partner for four years. Before that, he was a YC founder, |
| 0:48.9 | co-founding Automatic, which was acquired by live current media. But before we dive into the show with |
| 0:53.5 | Hajj, with the New Year comes new routines, |
| 0:56.1 | and one of mine is sleeping more, and that's where the Simba hybrid comes in. |
| 1:00.0 | It's the most advanced mattress in the world, |
| 1:01.9 | with a unique combination of 2,500 conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam. |
| 1:07.2 | It offers the perfect support for two people, |
| 1:09.2 | a mattress that responds to you and your partner's sleeping patterns. |
| 1:12.6 | Delivered free, with a 100-night sleep trial, free returns and a 10-year guarantee. |
| 1:16.6 | What is the risk? Start your free trial at simba sleep.com. |
| 1:20.6 | Another target of mine for the new year is productivity, and there's no better for that than serious insight. |
| 1:24.6 | The plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook, which automatically |
| 1:28.5 | updates activities in Salesforce so you don't have to. And it was named number 41 on the Inc 500 |
| 1:33.9 | list of fastest growing companies, and it has more than 1,700 customer reviews on the Salesforce |
... |
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