Introducing Jenny Buch, Talent Manager at Point Nine

Once a startup has released the first version of its product, raised some funding, started to get the word out and is getting some traction, the biggest challenge almost always becomes hiring. No matter how great the founders are and how much good advice they get from investors and advisors: You need people to get shit things done. And before long, you need more people (AKA managers) to help other people get shit things done, too. Recruiting great people can be extremely time-consuming and difficult, but if you don’t manage to build a great team, you are guaranteed to fail.

Or, as Michael Wolfe put it in his awesome talk at our 4th annual SaaS Founder Meetup last week:

All companies start differently but end up the same:

Success depends on hiring and managing a great leadership team.

Given that hiring is the #1 challenge for almost all of our portfolio companies, it has always bugged me that we’re not better at helping our founders find great people. It’s not like we haven’t been trying it and sometimes we’ve been able to find someone in our network for an open position at a portfolio company. But I’ve always wished that we’d be able to provide much more help.

Jenny sent me two pics ... and
forgot to tell me that I should pick one. ;-)

That’s why we’re thrilled that we’ve hired an experienced recruiter with a strong network, Jenny Buch, to focus on this challenge full-time. In her role at Point Nine, Jenny will (besides taking care of internal HR issues) advise our portfolio companies on anything related to recruiting, culture, employee engagement and HR strategy and will help them hire awesome people. In her previous roles, Jenny has recruited dozens if not hundreds of people for fast-growing tech startups and we can’t wait to see her magic unfold in the Point Nine family.

Welcome, Jenny!

PS: Hiring a talent manager isn’t a new idea in the VC world, and large firms like A16Z have built big teams to support their portfolio companies in a variety of areas. We can't compete with that, but we’re a little proud that we’re one of the first (the first?) micro VC funds to invest heavily into this role. :)