WHO We Hire

Luiz Cent
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WHO We Hire is built on a simple premise: no great company gets built without great people. Luiz Cent talks with founders, CEOs, CTOs, CPOs, COOs, and executives at technology companies to unpack how they hire, where they've gotten it wrong, and what they've learned scaling teams from the ground up. Topics include hiring strategy, talent acquisition, team building, leadership, company culture, scaling startups, and building high-performance teams in SaaS and tech. If you're a founder, operator, executive, board member, or VC, this show is for you.

  1. 5 days ago

    Jeff Gothelf's 20-Year Rule: Measure Behavior, Not Output — Even In Hiring

    Jeff Gothelf is the co-author of the award-winning Lean UX (O'Reilly) and Sense & Respond (HBR Press), and co-founder of Sense & Respond Press. He began his career as a designer at early internet firms including America Online (AOL) and iXL, later leading teams at The Ladders and co-founding Neo Innovation, one of the first Lean and Agile agencies. For 20+ years he's coached executives at large organizations on OKRs, digital transformation, agility, and product management. In this episode, Jeff shares the two skills he says you cannot teach, the behavioral interview question he's used for years to screen for them, why hiring the "rock star" designer or engineer has backfired on him more than once, and his contrarian take on why AI will only ever get product teams 70% of the way there. What You'll Learn - Why humility and curiosity are the only two skills Jeff believes you truly can't teach in a hire - The exact behavioral interview question Jeff uses to surface how candidates handle failure - Why hiring the strongest craftsperson in the room has repeatedly produced toxic teams - How letting employees build personal brands under your umbrella sharpens your hiring brand (The Ladders story) - The three roles Jeff would still hire even in an AI-first team: product, design, engineering - Why "you know what would be cool" is the scariest phrase in software development - How one CEO's three-word confession ("agile is hard") rewired an entire bank's culture - Why values should come from action, not a poster on the wall — including how Jeff's firm turned down defense work Chapters: 00:00 The two skills you can't teach 00:28 The biggest hiring mistake leaders make 02:46 Screening for humility and curiosity in interviews 04:14 Why Forever Employable flips hiring on its head 06:49 How to let employees build brands without the risk 08:19 Hiring for cross-functional teams in the AI era 13:14 The contrarian AI take: 70% vs. the last 30% 20:00 Stop measuring features, start measuring behavior 24:34 Modeling psychological safety from the top 30:42 The three roles Jeff would hire first 34:15 Revenue-per-employee pressure and the outcomes shift 37:21 Values come from action, not posters Where to find the guest Jeff Gothelf: https://jeffgothelf.com Sense & Respond Learning: https://www.senseandrespond.co Email: jeff@gothelf.co Where to find Luiz Cent: Website: https://latamcent.com/ Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  2. 20 Oct

    Why Lusha's CEO Hires Hungry People Over Experienced Executives

    Yoni Tserruya is the co-founder and CEO of Lusha, the AI-powered sales intelligence platform used by millions of sales and RevOps professionals, processing over a billion data points daily. He scaled Lusha from a simple Chrome extension in 2016 to a global team of 300+ employees, then intentionally shrunk the team twice in the last year to force AI adoption and get profitable. In this episode, Yoni breaks down why hiring experienced executives from big companies was his biggest mistake, how he embeds "builders" inside every department, and the counterintuitive hiring filter he now uses in the AI era. What you'll learn: - Why Yoni shrunk his team twice in one year and ships faster than ever with fewer people - The "builder inside every department" framework that turned marketing, finance, and HR into AI-powered teams -Why hiring executives from big companies backfired and what he looks for instead - The exact moment scaling broke his management style (hint: the 150-to-300 jump) - How constraints force AI adoption better than any top-down mandate - Why "hungry" beats "been there, done that" when no one has built the role before - The eagle metaphor Yoni uses to identify leaders who can both manage and build - How he runs team meetings across four hierarchy levels to kill bottlenecks Chapters: 00:00 Why you can't hire someone who's "done it before" with AI 00:53 Meet Yoni Tserruya, CEO of Lusha 01:30 Adopting AI across every department, not just engineering 02:45 Why every team needs a builder embedded inside it 03:33 Shrinking the team twice to force speed and AI adoption 04:35 The painful jump from 150 to 300 employees 06:20 How constraints unlock creativity and AI adoption 12:21 The hiring mistake: big-company executives who can't build 13:30 Finding leaders who can manage AND drill down 16:16 Culture you can't fake and full founder mode 18:26 Killing hierarchy without killing structure 24:00 Hybrid vs. in-office and when each actually works 30:11 Core values: build, measure, learn, delete, transparency 31:22 Hiring for curiosity, hunger, and fast learning 32:55 Why the role must be the best job the hire has ever had Where to find Yoni: Yoni Tserruya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoni-tserruya/ Lusha: https://www.lusha.com Where to find Luiz Cent: Website: https://latamcent.com/ Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  3. 13 Oct

    Crazy Egg CEO: Why The "Culture Interview" Should Be Your LAST Hiring Step

    Hiten Shah is the CEO of Crazy Egg and a 20+ year SaaS founder who has built Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and Nira, which sold to Dropbox where he later worked on product and growth for AI products. He's hired engineers, product people, and executives across companies ranging from early-stage startups to a 2,000-3,000 person org, and he's convinced that most founders are hiring the wrong way. In this episode, he breaks down his "vibe, environment, culture" framework, the exact engineering hiring test he's used for years, and why he never once held an offsite in 5+ years running Nira. He also explains why the Who Method only works for executives and what he actually looks for in every other hire. What you'll learn: - Why "culture fit" is the worst way to hire and what to replace it with - The exact engineering test Hiten uses: a 2-page brief, a plan, and a 90-minute feedback call - Why he scores candidates twice, once on their plan and again on how they take feedback - The "vibe, environment, culture" framework and why culture evolves but can't be developed - Why the Who Method only works for hiring executives, not individual contributors - The one trait he hires for above all else: raw learning power, not curiosity or aptitude - Why self-preservation has replaced mission as the reason people stay at companies - Why he never held a single offsite in 5+ years running Nira and what he did instead Chapters: 00:00 Trailer: Crazy Egg CEO: Why The "Culture Interview" Should Be Your LAST Hiring Step 01:09 Meet Hiten Shah: 20+ years building SaaS companies 02:01 What Dropbox taught him about leadership and dirt-moving 04:11 Why "mission" alone doesn't lead teams anymore 06:53 Why Nira never had a single offsite in 5+ years 09:01 The vibe, environment, culture framework explained 12:08 How to apply this inside a 1,000+ person company 15:30 The environment-first hiring process at Crazy Egg 16:29 The exact engineering test: 2-page brief and a plan 20:16 Why the Who Method only works for executives 24:00 The one trait he hires for: raw learning power 36:03 Why admitting you're wrong is the ultimate leadership signal Where to find Hiten: Hiten Shah on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hnshah Hiten's website: https://hiten.com Crazy Egg: https://www.crazyegg.com Where to find Luiz Cent: Website: https://latamcent.com/ Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  4. 29 Sept

    The "Savage" Reference-Check Hiring Tactic Most Recruiters Are Missing

    Evan Walden is the Founder in Residence at Findem, where he takes new AI recruiting products from zero to one for venture capital and private equity portfolios. Before this, he spent nine years building Getro, the talent network behind roughly 1,000 job boards for the world's top VC and PE funds, which Findem acquired in November 2025. Earlier, he cofounded ReWork (acquired by Koya Partners) and started his career running a recruiting agency in the social impact space. In this episode, Evan breaks down the exact outreach script that turns passive candidates into advocates, the IQ vs EQ framework for using AI in recruiting, and why "we treat everyone well" is a terrible company value. What you'll learn: - The 15-minute feedback outreach script that turns passive candidates into advocates for your search - Why the "savage" reference-check tactic can quietly become your best senior-hire pipeline - The IQ vs EQ rule for deciding which recruiting tasks to hand to AI and which to keep human - Why hybrid teams (part remote, part in-office) break down and what to do instead - How to know if someone is actually built for remote work before you hire them - Why your company values should be a polarity ("we do this instead of that") not a platitude - The "go up the mountain" cadence for making values a living document instead of wall art - Why one misaligned early hire creates outsized cultural damage in a sub-10-person team Chapters: 00:00 The 15-minute outreach script that creates advocates 00:51 Meet Evan Walden, Founder in Residence at Findem 01:20 From recruiting agency to Getro: the accidental origin story 06:00 What VCs actually taught him about hiring networks 08:00 The "savage" reference-check hiring move 10:50 Building a global remote team since day one 12:35 Why hybrid work quietly breaks your context 14:08 Should new grads take remote jobs? 16:10 IQ vs EQ: where AI belongs in recruiting 18:06 Replacing LinkedIn Recruiter with Claude and MCP 21:17 What acquisition taught him about culture 29:00 Why founders skip values (until it's too late) 32:23 Making values a living document, not wall art 34:43 The "polarity test" for real company values 35:53 Where to find Evan and Findem Where to find the guest: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanwalden/ Findem: https://www.findem.ai/ Where to find Luiz Cent: Website: https://latamcent.com/ Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  5. 22 Sept

    How This CEO Hires for the AI Era

    Joe Walsh is the Chairman and CEO of Thryv, where he leads a global company serving hundreds of thousands of small businesses. Before Thryv, Joe spent over 20 years as President and CEO of Yellowbook, scaling U.S. revenue from $38M to $2B, and later served as Executive Chairman of Cambium Learning Group, where he took the stock from $0.70 to $14.50 per share. Across his career he has completed 77 acquisitions, launched into 250+ new markets, and expanded companies into 46 countries. In this episode he reveals his frameworks for finding hidden talent inside acquisitions, restructuring executive teams, and building a global culture that survives transformation. What You'll Learn: - Why Joe elevates internal talent instead of hiring external CEOs during turnarounds - The "honeypot of talent" rule for spotting upper-middle managers inside acquired companies - How to build a "perfect cocktail" of legacy employees and new hires without creating a Tower of Babel - Why closed-minded employees "self-select" out of transformations (and why that's a feature, not a bug) - The back-to-back Zoom method: how a CEO stays close to customers with five 25-minute calls in one afternoon - Why nearshore hiring in the Dominican Republic beats offshore contractors in India or the Philippines - The President's Achievement Award: how Thryv uses quarterly cash rewards to drive 300% productivity gains - The "Done 3" core value that shapes every customer interaction at Thryv Chapters: 00:00 Trailer: Who We Hire Episode 22 01:00 Restructuring Talent in the AI Era 03:00 Building an AI-Native Platform for Small Business 04:29 What Joe Looks For When Investing in Teams 06:16 The Back-to-Back Zoom Customer Method 08:53 Studying at the Feet of the Master: Yellowbook Origins 11:10 The $0.70 to $14.50 Cambium Turnaround 14:26 Restructuring Executive Teams: Elevate From Within 16:07 The "Honeypot of Talent" Acquisition Rule 20:05 How to Get Legacy Employees Bought Into Change 23:03 President's Achievement Award: Rewarding AI Adoption 25:03 Core Values That Live on Your Mouse Pad 27:03 Why 88 Hires in the Dominican Republic Became 788 30:00 Advice for CEOs Hiring Internationally for the First Time Where to find Joe Walsh: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-walsh-8551a83a/ Website: https://www.thryv.com/ Where to find Luiz Cent: Website: https://latamcent.com/ Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  6. 15 Sept

    Shark Tank Investor Reveals Why LinkedIn Was Never Built To Solve Recruiting

    Alex Torrenegra is the founder and CEO of Torre.ai, a global job network automating recruitment with real-time, super-intelligent AI. Previously, he bootstrapped Voice123 and Bunny Studio to $100M+ in revenue, holds multiple patents in job marketplace dynamics, and served as an investor on Shark Tank Colombia and Shark Tank Mexico. MIT named him an Innovator Under 35, and the World Economic Forum tapped him as a Young Global Leader. In this episode, he breaks down the 112 hiring factors his team identified, why personality tests barely predict fit, and the flat team structure he's betting his unicorn on. - Why LinkedIn was never built to solve recruiting, according to a direct conversation Alex had with former CEO Jeff Weiner - The 112 hiring factors Torre identified by studying thousands of recruiters, and why only 80 are deployed so far - Why personality traits like Big Five and HEXACO failed as predictors, and what candidates were already doing to make them redundant - The professional genome concept, where the platform learns from what you apply to and what you ignore - Why Alex plans to cap his company at roughly 20 people even at unicorn scale, all reporting directly to him - How Torre replaced traditional squads (designer, QA, tech lead, engineers) with technical product managers who each manage AI - The data-backed reason mission-driven companies pay lower salaries and still recruit better talent - Why two AIs negotiating a candidate match takes 2-3 minutes, while Torre's centralized system does it in under 100 nanoseconds 00:00 From Voice123 to the global job network 03:30 Why Torre isn't Latin America focused, despite the arbitrage 05:45 Preventing North Korean impersonation and the reputation solution 09:30 Why LinkedIn was never built for recruiting 14:20 Systematically eliminating interviews with AI screening 18:45 5,000 AI interviews per day and radical transparency in rankings 22:00 The Nasdaq of jobs vision and why AI-to-AI matching fails 26:30 The 112 factors and why personality tests barely predict fit 31:00 Professional culture vs personality: what actually predicts fit 34:00 The 20-person unicorn: flat structure and no board 38:30 Mission-driven hiring and why impact companies attract talent cheaper Alex Torrenegra: Website: https://torre.ai/ Website: https://me.torrenegra.com Twitter: @torrenegra Email: alexander@torre.ai Where to find Luiz Cent: Website: https://latamcent.com/ Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  7. 25 Aug

    REtokens Broker-Dealer CEO: "You Can Know AI, We Still Won't Hire You"

    Tyler Vinson is the Co-Founder and CEO of REtokens USA Inc. and REtokens Capital LLC, a FINRA-member broker-dealer and SEC-registered Alternative Trading System building the first real estate–exclusive digital asset marketplace in the United States. He's personally closed over $100M in investment real estate transactions and driven roughly a quarter billion in tokenized real estate volume, all while holding Series 24, 7, and 63 licenses as a #1 best-selling author. In this episode, Tyler breaks down how he went from traditional real estate operator to essentially an investment banker, why he fired and rehired every one of his first licensed hires, and the exact partner-vetting questionnaire that saved him from a near-disaster co-founder deal. What You'll Learn: - Why Tyler parted ways with every one of his first licensed hires (Series 24s, compliance officers, FinOps) and what he replaced them with - The near-miss co-founder story that taught him partnerships are "like a marriage" and the questionnaire he now uses before signing anything - Why the front-end/back-end complementary split with his 30-year friend became the foundation of REtokens - The hard rule for hiring in 2026: "You can fill a seat and know AI — we're still not going to hire you" - Why REtokens is not refilling roles when people turn over, and how AI proficiency became a full tool belt in the last 6 months - How scaling in tokenization looks less like traditional hiring and more like M&A across ecosystem segments - The regulatory hiring stack you're forced to build for a FINRA/SEC-licensed company (Series 24s, CCO, FinOp, cybersecurity, SOC 2) - Why Tyler says "go with your gut" is cliché but non-negotiable and the real cost of a wrong hire beyond salary Chapters: 00:00 The AI hiring shift that started in early 2026 01:05 From $100M in real estate to $250M tokenized 02:14 Why real estate hiring profiles completely changed 04:32 Do you need a technical co-founder? 06:36 The near-miss partnership Tyler walked away from 08:07 Partnerships are marriages the questionnaire that vets them 10:29 How to actually leverage coaches (and when not to) 12:19 Staying current on roles that didn't exist 3 years ago 14:36 AI proficiency: fewer people, more output 20:14 The regulatory hiring stack nobody prepared him for 24:24 Why he fired and rehired every licensed role 29:31 Scaling through M&A instead of org-chart hiring 32:17 The one hiring lesson for founders in a new category Where to find Tyler Vinson: Website: https://retokens.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realestateinvestment/ Where to find Luiz Cent: Website: https://latamcent.com/ Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  8. 18 Aug

    How This 5x CEO Knows When A Senior Leader Has Hit The Ceiling

    Douglas Braun is the CEO of eProductivity Software (ePS), a global software company serving thousands of packaging manufacturers across more than 100 countries. A five-time CEO with a 40-year career in enterprise software, Doug has led teams from Stockholm to São Paulo, promoted internal talent into executive seats, and grown the ePS India office from 60 to 170 people in 18 months. In this episode, he shares the exact frameworks he uses when inheriting a team, promoting from within, running acquisitions as mergers of equals, and deploying AI without cutting headcount. What you'll learn: - The 90-day rule Doug uses every time he inherits a company (and why "what you did yesterday is what I want you to do tomorrow" buys him time) - How to tell the difference between an executive who needs coaching versus one who has hit the ceiling - Why Doug spends 60-70% of his time on the road and three-quarters of that with employees, not customers - The 24-hour response promise he makes to all 400 employees (and why he's 98% good at it) - Why every one of his nine executives personally owns customer accounts, including the CFO and Chief Legal Officer - The "human in the loop" AI hiring philosophy and why AI is not about cutting 20% of staff - The M&A rule Doug learned from a Fortune 500 CIO: acquisitions are "slow and painful or fast and painful, pick fast" - Why he took 17 people from an acquired 28-person company and 11 from his own team (and what that signals) - The 85/15 to 70/30 tactical-to-strategic shift every founder must make at the $10M mark Chapters: 00:00 Cold open: coaching vs. hitting the ceiling 01:04 Intro and Doug's 5x CEO journey 02:16 Inheriting a team and managing fear and uncertainty 03:53 When a shared vision is impossible 06:22 The 90-day rule for retaining top talent 07:47 Promoting from within: the UK chief product officer story 10:02 Doug's superpower: getting people on board 11:20 The 24-hour employee response promise 15:49 Leading across Sweden, France, India, and Brazil 17:11 "You won't last": the 5th CEO in 10 years 20:19 Sitting in cubes with the India team 23:09 Hiring in the age of AI 26:51 Why every executive owns customer accounts 33:27 The merger-of-equals M&A hiring framework 40:18 Advice for founders scaling 50 to 150 46:32 Where to find Doug Where to find Douglas A Braun: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglasabraun ePS (eProductivity Software): https://epssw.com/ Where to find Luiz Cent: Website: https://latamcent.com/ Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

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About

WHO We Hire is built on a simple premise: no great company gets built without great people. Luiz Cent talks with founders, CEOs, CTOs, CPOs, COOs, and executives at technology companies to unpack how they hire, where they've gotten it wrong, and what they've learned scaling teams from the ground up. Topics include hiring strategy, talent acquisition, team building, leadership, company culture, scaling startups, and building high-performance teams in SaaS and tech. If you're a founder, operator, executive, board member, or VC, this show is for you.

Information

  • Creator
    Luiz Cent
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    26
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Luiz Cent
  • Show Website
    WHO We Hire