Lessons from one of the world’s top executive recruiters | Lauren Ipsen (Daversa Partners, General Catalyst)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2022

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Lauren Ipsen is one of the most well-known and respected executive recruiters in the industry, having placed over 90 senior product leaders at companies including Twitter, Reddit, Opendoor, Postmates, Nextdoor, and many others. She is currently the Director of Executive Talent at General Catalyst, and prior to that was a senior leader at Daversa Partners. In today’s podcast, Lauren shares advice for founders on hiring senior product leaders, tips for product leaders on finding better opportunities, and the most common mistakes recruiters make. She talks about how to play the long game of networking to find the best talent and about recruiting best practices, and we also dive deep on market mapping, LinkedIn, and how to approach reference checks.

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Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-from-one-of-the-worlds-top-executive-recruiters-lauren-ipsen-daversa-partners-general-catalyst/#transcript

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Where to find Lauren Ipsen:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-ipsen-6a5a84113/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Retool: https://retool.com/lenny

• Miro: https://miro.com/lenny

• Vanta: https://vanta.com/lenny

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Referenced:

• Gokul Rajaram on Lenny’s podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/gokul-rajaram-on-designing-your-product-development-process-when-and-how-to-hire-your-first-pm-a-playbook-for-hiring-leaders-getting-ahead-in-you-career-how-to-get-started-angel-investing-more/

• The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577314808

• You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment: https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Here-Discovering-Present/dp/1590308387/

• Your Own Backyard podcast: https://www.yourownbackyardpodcast.com/

• Top Gun: https://www.amazon.com/Top-Gun-Tom-Cruise/dp/B001K3K5MO

• BeReal: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bereal-your-friends-for-real/id1459645446

• Strava: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/strava-run-ride-hike/id426826309

• Spotify: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spotify-music-and-podcasts/id324684580

• Joe Suliman at Daversa Partners: https://www.daversapartners.com/team/joe-suliman/

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In this episode, we cover:

(04:46) Lauren’s background

(07:52) Why the best recruiters seem to be migrating to VC funds

(09:44) Mistakes founders make in searching for their first senior product leader

(13:26) Questions for founders to ask when thinking about who to hire

(16:07) The three main types of PMs

(18:27) What do job titles mean, and why are they more susceptible to change in a startup environment?

(21:50) What should product leaders do ahead of hiring senior product leaders?

(23:14) How to network with great talent

(27:37) Why the timetable for recruiting is variable

(29:02) How to be productive with your time by tapping your network

(30:27) Why recruiting via LinkedIn might not be the best use of your time

(33:17) Lauren’s favorite placement of all time

(37:30) The importance of diversifying your experience

(40:16) The art and science of staying long enough to have a meaningful impact

(43:23) The importance of creating real impact as a leader

(47:57) Good questions to ask references and how to dig deeper

(49:35) Resume red flags and the importance of honesty

(53:39) Interview tips for product managers

(57:29) Common mistakes recruiters make

(1:00:57) Advice for founders looking for a recruiter

(1:04:24) Lightning round

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Transcript

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0:00.0	regardless of whether or not you're hiring you should always be keeping a pulse on the market.
0:05.2	That is the most important thing and I think that should be the case for both candidates and
0:11.6	you know folks that are hiring like you never want to put yourself in a
0:16.1	position where you have no idea what good looks like whether that's from a company
0:19.6	standpoint or from a candidate standpoint so both parties should always be having a good
0:24.2	understanding of which companies are thriving, which individuals are
0:28.0	building great things and are well-known commodities and their organizations and get great references.
0:35.4	Oftentimes, I encourage founders to simply chat with what good looks like and get a really good sense of kind of what benchmark candidate profiles could be and who knows where that person will be in a year or what have you but staying really really close to really great people and using them from an advising capacity or getting
0:56.0	them ingrained in some type of involvement in the product prior to actually having that specific
1:01.7	need, I think is really important.
1:05.0	Welcome to Lenny's podcast. I'm Lenny and my goal here is to help you get better at the
1:10.0	craft of building and growing products. Today my guest is Lauren Ipson. One of the most
1:15.3	important skills for founders and senior product leaders to develop is the ability to hire
1:20.0	great people. You won't be able to build best company or the best product if you
1:24.8	can't hire the best people. And Lauren is one of the most experienced and
1:28.9	successful people in the world when it comes to hiring product leaders. She's placed over 80 senior product leaders across tech companies
1:36.0	and has worked with some of the biggest companies out there.
1:39.0	When I asked a bunch of really smart product leaders
1:41.0	who their favorite product recruiter was, Lauren's name came up a ton.
1:46.0	In her conversation, we get super tactical about what founders need to do to find the best product
1:50.6	talent, what product managers should be doing during their career
1:54.1	to give themselves the most opportunity, and we also touch on what recruiters themselves often
	...

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