Blaine Burton

Here's how I think about recruiting at Clay in three analogies: 1. Recruiting is like a solar system 🪐 ↳ Like orbiting planets, Clay and candidates are both in constant motion. Recruiting is about timing and fit: sometimes alignment happens right away, and other times it takes years of circling back. For certain candidates, it may take multiple touch points over time before Clay and a candidate’s orbit come close enough to align. ↳ At the beginning, you start with a blank canvas, you try to fill in the colors as best as you can with interviews, references, etc. Then compare that picture with the spec for your role. ↳ I'm not making value judgments if someone is "good" or "bad". I'm just trying to understand their story, peek into their soul — figure out who they are! — to determine if Clay's role is a good fit for them at this moment. For example, someone may not be a fit if they need more support than Clay can give them at this stage of growth. 2: Recruit like you're fishing 🎣 ↳ Know when to chase with energy & urgency. Know when to ease up and let them come to you. ↳ It's a dance where you always need to sell and evaluate the fit at the same time throughout. The best people make that tension feel natural! ↳ People want to feel wanted. Bring high energy and enthusiasm even if you're hiring for a great role. 3: Interview like this emoji → 👯‍♀️ ↳ Interviewing shouldn't be combative, even though sometimes it feels that way. Ideally you and the company are working together to get the right information to determine if there is a fit. ↳ You get information at every part of the process. For example, in an offer negotiation, you learn more about the candidate by how they act and engage if there's conflict. Candidates also learn how companies act too (e.g. Clay does not make exploding offers). I hope this is helpful! Curious what people think and if there are any questions, feedback or ideas!

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Martin Eberhard played a key role early at Tesla and even brought in Elon Musk. Then he was pushed out of the company for pennies. Founders get most of the attention in Silicon Valley, but the ecosystem is built on the people who take a chance and join early stage ventures. Unfortunately, those same people are often the easiest to cut out. Founders can dilute early employees, change vesting terms, and restructure equity with little effort and zero consequences (you can literally do it in Carta in 5 minutes). Daniel Kottke was a close friend of Steve Jobs and helped build the Apple I and II computers. He got no equity (Steve Wozniak eventually gave him a few of his own shares). Brian Acton co-founded WhatsApp and stayed through the Facebook acquisition. When he left Facebook over privacy concerns, he had to walk away from $850 million in unvested stock. There’s more awareness now around how vesting works, what happens during a liquidity event, and how to think about re-ups and dilution. That’s good. But the truth is, if someone really wants to screw you, they can. It still comes down to one thing: trust the people you work with. Or don’t work with them at all.

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Product-market fit genuinely feels different...and it'll show up in the data Demo to close rates are the easiest thing to look at for product-market fit right now. Vertical AI startups in our portfolio are seeing 50%+ demo to close rates, even with brand new account executives selling the product. It's happening in every market from AI takeoffs to AI CSR/Voice software to AI procurement solutions. When you see a demo to close rate over 50% chances are you have a jaw dropping customer experience and you should put your foot on the gas. If you're seeing something dramatically lower in mid-market or SMB ACV categories, it's worth revisiting your product and/or your pitch.

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Zynga sold for $12.7 billion. Its founder says startups fail due to this: They try to innovate too early (unless its deep tech). Mark Pincus calls it the “All new fails” rule: 1/ Don’t start with “new”: Start with what’s already proven to work. Copy it legally, study it deeply. 2/ Proven means 10 out of 10 users say: “Yeah, that works.” If they don’t, it’s not proven. 3/ Founders fail because they skip the proven phase: They chase novelty before they’ve earned the right to innovate. 4/ The Zynga story began with poker: Same table, same felt, same gameplay, nothing original. 5/ Then they made it better: No downloads. Just click and play. Friction cut in half. 6/ “Better” means 10 out of 10 users agree: Not your team, not your investors, real users. 7/ Only after proven and better do you earn “new”: That spark that surprises and delights users emotionally. 8/ Zynga’s “new” was showing your friends’ faces: It made games social, not solitary. 9/ Forget MVP, build a minimum viable idea: A concept that hits emotional resonance before metrics. 10/ Seek true signal: You’ll feel it viscerally before you can measure it. 11/ Silicon Valley worships originality: But originality without resonance is noise. 12/ Better founders are great students first: They copy what works before they try to change it. 13/ Most products die from founder ego: They’re “new” before they’re useful. 14/ Users don’t care about novelty: They care about ease, trust, and delight. 15/ “Proven → Better → New just works. And it built a $12.7B company. 📩 Get ai + vc intel in your inbox via my newsletter Startup Riders, link under my name ☝️ 📌 Source: Mark Pincus on Why Most Startups Fail a16z #ai #llms #agent #startups #founder #vc

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Six years of building digital products taught me this: Speed and clarity aren't opposing forces, but they're partners. Here's a reality check on product development that we were thinking over the last few months: Speed does matter. But not the kind where you're racing to push features without direction. I'm talking about the velocity that comes from crystal-clear understanding. From scaling Fcode Labs projects across multiple regions, I've noticed a pattern: • Teams that invest in clarity move faster naturally. (Knowing "why" and "what" they are buidling) • Clear requirements = fewer "back-and-forth" cycles • Aligned teams make decisions quicker • Well-defined problems attract better solutions We are now investing a lot to develop the mindset for developers to understand "why" and "what" they are building. It's a long term plan. Think about construction. You wouldn't start building a house faster by skipping the blueprint. You will have a blueprint.. and aligning everyone to the blueprint is what enables speed. In today's AI-driven landscape, this becomes even more critical. When you're integrating cutting-edge tech, unclear requirements can slow you down. Do you have proven practices that's helped your team maintain both speed and clarity in development? #ProductDevelopment #EngineeringLeadership #FcodeLabs

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The best UX feedback is not a heatmap. It’s a guest telling you, “that felt easy.” No one raves about good UX—they just get on with their day. That’s the bar we try to meet at Honest Greens. Frictionless, not flashy. #ProductDesign #CustomerExperience #HonestGreens 

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