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. 1d ago

    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/

  2. Aug 11

    The Framework This 25-Year Entrepreneur Uses to Deploy AI Without Killing Jobs

    Brian Esposito is the founder of Esposito Intellectual Enterprises and CEO of Diamond Lake Minerals, a public company he grew from a $1 million market cap to nearly half a billion dollars in just three years. With over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience across more than 25 industries, Brian has never worked in the corporate world or had a boss. In this episode, he reveals his framework for identifying the wrong people before they damage your business, why he has an "allergic response" to AI replacing human capital, and how he helps founders avoid losing control of their own companies on the fundraising hamster wheel. What You'll Learn: - Why watching how someone treats a waiter instantly reveals if they're an opportunist you should avoid - The "golden rule" filter Brian uses to identify people who will put your business at risk for materialistic gain - How to reclaim equity from advisors who aren't performing their duties within 30 days - Why surrounding yourself with drama-filled people drains your ability to run 25+ companies simultaneously - The mindset shift from "raising money" to "earning money" that prevents founders from losing control - Why Brian never tries to replicate himself anymore after wasting years attempting it - How negativity in your inner circle runs your energy at "ten RPMs" and destroys what you can accomplish - The specific question Brian asks to identify if someone's god is money: do they brag about materialistic things? Chapters: 00:00 Episode 18 - Who We Hire: The Framework This 25-Year Entrepreneur Uses to Deploy AI Without Killing Jobs 02:30 Why Watching People Thrive Is More Rewarding Than Building Companies 03:54 Brian's Allergic Response to AI and Human Capital 06:28 Using AI to Enhance Jobs, Not Eliminate Them 08:25 Why Live Entertainment Will Explode as Human Connection Becomes Rare 11:06 Journey: The Platform Fighting Back Against Spotify's Data Hoarding 16:52 Finding the Right People by First Identifying the Wrong Ones 19:59 The Golden Rule Test for Spotting Opportunists 21:42 Why Negativity Is the Fastest Way to Drain Your Tank 24:29 From Nail Polish to Space: Building an Industry-Agnostic Career 29:26 Diamond Lake Minerals: $1M to $500M Market Cap in 3 Years 37:37 Rewiring Founders Away from the Raise Money Hamster Wheel 43:48 Being the Bad Guy Who Makes Advisors Accountable 45:08 Why Brian Stopped Trying to Replicate Himself Where to find the guest (Brian J Esposito): LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brianj.esposito Social Media: @BrianJEsposito Where to find Luiz Cent: Website: https://latamcent.com/ Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  3. Aug 4

    InEvent CEO Reveals The #1 Tech Role Every AI Company Is Hiring

    Pedro Góes is the CEO of Snapdat & Ziplit and founder of InEvent, a Y Combinator-backed (S19) event technology company that has generated over $20M in enterprise sales and serves Fortune 500 clients including Amazon, Coca-Cola, KPMG, and Santander. A 3x "Most Influential in Events" honoree and BizBash 40 Under 40, Pedro has scaled InEvent to 150 full-time staffers with 200-300 people working daily across the globe, and even produced live broadcasts from the International Space Station. In this episode, he breaks down the exact hiring ratios, internship playbook, and role shifts reshaping team composition in the age of AI. What You'll Learn: - Why every full-stack developer now requires 3 quality analysts on the InEvent team - The exact reason project manager roles are being killed and what's replacing them - How Pedro built an internship pipeline that gets 2,000 applicants in the first week - Why paying interns $25K to grow into $150K roles beats hiring senior talent cold - The counterintuitive interview tactic Pedro uses to filter out "hype" candidates - Why event industry roles are AI-resistant while radiologists and PMs are not - The 5% RSVP conversion rule for founders throwing their first in-person events - How to run a dinner strategy using your CRM heatmap instead of hiring an event manager Chapters: 00:00 The shifting roles in event technology 01:15 Pedro Gois background and building InEvent 02:00 The post-2020 boom and the shift back to in-person events 03:27 Launching Snap Data to solve post-event sales follow-up 05:08 Running massive scale events for the UN and US Presidents 07:35 Global remote hiring and the value of human connection 12:27 Reallocating dev budget: Why AI requires three QA engineers per full-stack dev 13:43 Removing project managers to connect CS directly with engineering 16:15 Achieving 100% pipeline coverage post-tradeshow with instant AI follow-up 28:00 Interviewing for high-responsibility roles and rejecting hype 29:20 Building a global remote internship program that yields company managers 33:20 The founder playbook for running high-ROI customer and prospect dinners Where to find Pedro: Pedro Góes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedrogoes InEvent: https://inevent.com Snapdat: https://snapdat.ai Where to find Luiz Cent: Website: https://latamcent.com/ Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  4. Jul 28

    Pearl VP: Why Companies Laying People Off For AI Will Regret It In 18 Months

    Sam Mallikarjunan is VP at Pearl, where he's building out an entirely new business unit connecting experts with people who need real help not just AI answers. He previously served as GM at Agent.ai (Dharmesh Shah's AI marketplace that hit 1.5M users), CEO and co-founder of OneScreen.ai, CRO at Flock.com where he helped quintuple revenue, and Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs where he grew monthly recurring revenue 200x and built a community of 160k+ members. He also taught Advanced Digital Marketing at Harvard and served as Faculty Chair for Digital Marketing at USF. In this episode, Sam breaks down his frameworks for org design in the AI era, why laying people off for AI will backfire within 18 months, and how "shared custody agreements" are reshaping career development inside modern teams. What you'll learn: - Why standing out in the AI job market is like "applying for a chef's job by making them a meal" - The exact HubSpot LATAM playbook validate with a generalist first, then hire the specialist - Why laying off people because of AI will hurt companies in the next 18 months - The "shared custody agreements" framework for developing careers when org design breaks down - Why hiring people you've worked with before quietly creates a culture of insiders and outsiders - How to sell mission over brand when you have zero employer name recognition - The difference between translation and localization when building international teams - Why psychological safety matters more right now than hiring "AI-native" talent - How the only recruiter to crack Sam's AI screener actually did it Chapters: 00:00 Trailer: Pearl VP: Why Companies Laying People Off For AI Will Regret It In 18 Months 00:39 Meet Sam Mallikarjunan 01:26 The HireMe HubSpot story 02:43 Why every AI-powered applicant looks identical 04:11 Why Sam left AI agents to join Pearl 06:20 Will we have more entrepreneurs than employees? 10:23 Building HubSpot's LATAM team from zero 14:14 Translation vs localization when hiring globally 16:36 The roles Sam refuses to give to AI 19:04 Shared custody agreements: the new org design 26:08 Hiring for adaptability vs deep specialization 30:24 Recruiting without brand recognition 36:11 How one recruiter cracked Sam's AI screener 40:58 Where to find Sam Where to find the guest: Sam Mallikarjunan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallikarjunan/ Sam's website: http://mallikarjunan.com/ Pearl: https://www.pearl.com/ Where to find Luiz Cent: Website: https://latamcent.com/ Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  5. Jul 21

    The Enterprise Sales Legend on Why LLMs Will Never Stop Hallucinating

    Kris Lawson is the co-founder and CEO of Ruby AI, the world's first always-on autonomous sales agent with full context, memory, and multi-agent intelligence built to give every rep an AI edge across the entire sales cycle. Over 20+ years, Kris scaled go-to-market organizations at Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, Snowflake, and Vidyard, famously becoming the first Oracle rep ever to lose a deal to Salesforce before being recruited to help build Salesforce Canada from a 4-person Regus office to over 800 people. He later built Snowflake Canada from zero to $35M+ ARR, has personally closed over 1,800 new logos, and is co-founder of Snow Angels, a Snowflake alumni investor syndicate backing data and AI startups. In this episode, he breaks down the hiring profile that wins in the AI era, why founder magic doesn't translate to sales teams, and the "cognitive surrender" trap that's quietly reshaping how buyers evaluate every deal.What You'll Learn: - Why coachability is the single most important trait when hiring reps at scale - The exact reason 9 out of 10 sales academy hires fail when they join startups - The "PG Savage" hiring profile Kris used to build Snowflake Canada from zero - Why first-line sales managers should have 12-14 reps, not 6, in the AI era - The full-stack AE model that compresses SDR, AE, and CSM into one role - Why quotas should double while base comp stays the same (with more upside) - How to test candidates for being "AI-pilled" during the interview process - The founder mistake that quietly kills story fidelity as sales teams grow Chapters:00:00 Trailer: The Enterprise Sales Legend on Why LLMs Will Never Stop Hallucinating02:10 Losing to Salesforce at Oracle and getting recruited04:09 The hiring profile that built Salesforce Canada05:37 Why coachability beats pedigree07:28 Building Snowflake Canada from zero14:50 The PG Savage profile and why sales academy hires fail 9/10 times17:41 The three founder mistakes that kill story fidelity21:38 First call decks and story adherence in deal reviews26:24 The full-stack AE and the AI-pilled interview test31:31 Manager span of control: 12-14 reps, not 635:20 Doubling quotas while keeping comp flat38:32 Hallucinations as a feature, not a bug43:38 The founding team hiring sequence: SDR, then 2 AEs, then player-coach46:07 Why hyper-personalized content is the new minimum Where to find Kris:Kris Lawson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krislawsonland/Ruby AI: https://heyruby.ai Where to find Luiz Cent:Website: https://latamcent.com/Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  6. Jul 7

    The Truth About AI Agents and Why They Must Serve People with Michael Grinberg

    Michael Grinberg is the founder and CEO of the RevOps Shop, a specialized revenue operations firm helping B2B companies optimize their data and CRM infrastructure. Prior to building his own company, he worked his way up through HubSpot for over six years, gaining deep insights into fast-scaling organizations and global talent density. In this episode, he shares why traditional employee templating fails, how to structure dual organizational charts for business outcomes and culture, and his controversial take on why AI agents should never be treated as teammates. - Why trying to template human behavior in business rarely works and how to adjust expectations to match individual journeys instead - The highest leverage method for turning employees into high-agency owners by managing outcomes and completely stepping away - How to design a secondary culture organizational chart using social pods to build a fabric of remote connectivity - Why you should mandate that entry-level remote hires become the squeaky wheel to extract necessary context from busy executives - The financial framework for evaluating AI integration by keeping agents strictly in systems budgets rather than people costs - Why the traditional hiring process is breaking due to fake profiles and how a live screen share test exposes real capability - Using life adversity and immigration as a core behavioral heuristic to identify unbreakable grit during interviews Chapters:00:00 The role of AI agents in the modern workforce01:10 Introducing Michael Greenberg and the RevOps Shop03:00 Why grit and overcoming adversity predict candidate success07:34 Giving your team ownership of outcomes instead of dictating the process10:20 Lessons from HubSpot on sourcing talent globally18:25 Creating a two layer org chart for business operations and team culture20:43 How to onboard entry level talent into a chaotic executive schedule26:09 Why AI tools belong in your systems budget and not your headcount34:00 How the immigrant perspective shapes entrepreneurial resilience40:35 The ultimate live screen share test for vetting remote hires Where to find Michael Grinberg:Website: https://www.revops.shop/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sales-and-marketing/ Where to find Luiz Cent:Website: https://latamcent.com/Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  7. Jun 30

    Why AI Sales Agents Will Never Replace Humans (The Accountability Problem) with Mark Schopmeyer

    Mark Schopmeyer is the co-founder and co-CEO of CaptivateIQ, a modern commission-management platform that scales incentives for revenue teams. Prior to building his own company, he led finance and strategy operations at BrightRoll and worked extensively in growth-equity technology investing. Under his executive leadership, the company has scaled to serve nearly 1,000 customers globally, including enterprise giants like Netflix and Stripe. In this episode, he breaks down the psychological flaws of spreadsheet-driven management and outlines his core framework for spotting elite leadership talent. - Copied comp plans from larger firms lack authenticity and can easily drive your team in the opposite direction of your actual business objectives. - Spreadsheet math often misleads finance teams into keeping quotas artificially high due to a false belief that sales reps stop working once they hit their targets. - Top performing sales representatives are driven by a desire to maximize their paychecks rather than hitting a bare minimum quota. - When introducing short-term spiffs, leaders must define a clear narrative and exit strategy to avoid the incentive implicitly becoming permanent. - Cultural screening must be an explicit, dedicated stage in the recruiting funnel rather than a casual addition to tactical manager interviews. - Skill barriers have collapsed with the rise of artificial intelligence, making a candidate's intrinsic will the primary determinant of hiring success. - Elite executive hires can be effectively filtered by evaluating just two core qualities during the interview process, clarity and energy. Timestamps:00:00 The origin story of CaptivateIQ and broken compensation4:35 Finding a co-founder and the Y Combinator experience09:12 Why venture capital will not magically build your company13:03 The fundamental flaw in copying other companies' compensation plans17:16 Why finance leaders misunderstand sales rep motivation at quota23:27 How to design effective short term spiffs without breaking culture28:07 Designing a strict interview process to protect your core values32:38 Strategies for maintaining company culture across international borders36:55 Why AI agents cannot replace the accountability of a human sales rep41:53 The clarity and energy framework for hiring legendary executives Where to find Mark Schopmeyer:Website: https://www.captivateiq.com/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mschop/Email: mark@captivateiq.com Where to find Luiz Cent:Website: https://latamcent.com/Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

  8. Jun 23

    ScaleStack CEO: AI Raised the Bar! Here's What "No Slop" Hiring Looks Like with Elio Narciso

    Elio Narciso is the co-founder and CEO of ScaleStack, an AI-powered go-to-market infrastructure layer powering billions of data points for enterprise customers, and the host of the Revenue Engine Masters podcast. Before ScaleStack, he spent four years at AWS running their global startup program with front-row seats to hundreds of companies building revenue engines, became a certified Amazon Bar Raiser with veto power on hires, and built two prior companies including one that cleared $50M. In this episode, he breaks down the Bar Raiser system, the follow-up question framework that exposes BS candidates, and why AI has raised the hiring bar so high he wouldn't hire his own past self. - Why lowering the hiring bar at Amazon during COVID created cascading effects, including missing the AI wave entirely - How the Amazon Bar Raiser program works and why veto power changes hiring behavior across an entire org - The follow-up question method that breaks down rehearsed answers and AI-assisted interview scripts - Why Elio flips the interview by making candidates ask him questions first, and what their questions reveal about curiosity - The "what did the customer say?" question that exposes whether a candidate is truly customer-centric or shallow - Why ScaleStack shares interviewer feedback before debriefs, breaking from Amazon's protocol - How to evaluate a co-founder using complementary skill sets, kindness in failure, and humility in success - Why "AI slop" first drafts are an instant red flag and what real upleveling looks like in 2026 - The closing rule for founders making their third or fourth hire: be your own bar raiser Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open: scripts, agents, and rising expectations 01:00 From AWS to a third startup: what changed in hiring 03:30 Becoming an Amazon Bar Raiser and how veto power works 06:30 Follow-up questions that kill rehearsed and AI-assisted answers 10:50 The ScaleStack interview system and cultural fit values 13:50 Flipping the interview to test for curiosity 17:30 Pre-briefs, live docs, and debrief structure 21:50 "What did the customer say?" and exposing BS candidates 24:50 Choosing co-founders you actually know 35:50 "I wouldn't hire myself two years ago" in the AI era 40:00 Final advice: be your own bar raiser Where to find the guest: Elio Narciso on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elionarciso/ ScaleStack: https://scalestack.ai Revenue Engine Masters Podcast: https://scalestack.ai/podcast 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
    19
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Luiz Cent
  • Show Website
    WHO We Hire