The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:36:45 · John Willett
[00:36:45] S1: a CEO. Sort of. When we first started it, yeah, and then when we raised the first round from Ali Corp, they were like, there's... They were like, someone needs to, like, be the boss day to day, and and they're obviously right about that. It was interesting at first. I mean, I, yeah, I like the angle that I'm super low ego and it just all easy and, and probably not quite true. I was like, I can't believe I'm, I'm quitting to start a company. I'm not even the CEO. And it was pretty clear, like if it was gonna be one of us, it should be Gabe. I mean, like partly because he had a better investor network and partly because Gabe is just... Gabe is one of these people who like that dude is a CEO. Like you meet that guy and you're like, that guy is gonna be the CEO of... Hopefully it's Rogo that makes him like a legendary CEO, but if it's not Rogo, it'll be some other company where he becomes like a Travis Kalanick figure, like a Brian Chesky thing. He's just incredible in so many ways. And so like that was just pretty clear. And that wasn't even me being like humble. That was more me observing the kind of guy that that Gabe is. And then within a few months, it's like we're a real company. Like we've hired a couple engineers, we're trying to do stuff and like all of my energy and thought are just directed towards how do I actually try to like make this company successful. And everything else is just so kind of like stupid to, to think about. I have more like scope and stress and responsibility and like everything that I know what to possibly do with. So there's no there's no semblance of like, oh, I wish I had like way more.
00:38:02 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:38:02] S0: Tell me about it on the social signal point. I feel hiring's a good example of that as well. And like you said before, you've hired a lot of ex investment bankers that have left a part that perhaps had more prestige and more financial upside, at least back then Yeah. When you joined Rogo. How have you gone about that? Because, again, I know firsthand, like, convincing someone to join a company. Maybe now it's a bit easier because you've got the credit and you've got the valuation and [00:38:26] S1: the [00:38:26] S0: investors and all that, but maybe the first couple of years, like, till maybe your series b, it might have been tricky. Again, any stories on how you convince some of these like smart people to Yeah. Yeah. Come work for you instead of Anthropic or OpenAI? [00:38:40] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a good point or good question. I mean, definitely in the early days, every conversation that you have potential hire, it's like you're like raising money. Like you're doing the full, like, end to end pitch. Like, this is our right to win. This is why we're here. This is what your equity is gonna be worth. [00:38:54] S0: Maybe you can use Europe as an example. Tell me... Let's... That could be an interesting case study. Like when you decided you're gonna come on the ground in Europe, how did you build a team?
00:39:03 · John Willett
[00:39:03] S1: Yeah. Well, I mean, for the ex bankers, it's a pretty compelling job. I think in a lot of ways, like there are a lot of folks who are in investment banking who want to have operating roles for a variety of reasons, maybe because they want to be operators long term, maybe because they want to go into VC or growth equity or tech investing and that's often the best way to do that and gain kind of credentials in this space. And if you're going to be an operator, it's a pretty good gig, right? You get to really apply all of your previous financial experience. It's very cross functional. It's very commercial, very client facing. It's very growth oriented. It's also a lot of product and edge collaboration. You're And part of, like, kind of like a... You know, I don't wanna call us a rocket ship, but like a a... You know, you're part of a quickly growing company. And, you know, I think for a lot of our engineers, it's like if our engineers are gonna have, like, infinite opportunities to join really fast paced high growth companies. That's just the nature of being like an AI or, you know, good backend engineer. There aren't that many opportunities to like join a company like this where your skill set's super applicable and it's like, you know, this venture scale business that's growing incredibly quickly. So in Europe, it's like, hey, we have all that. We have that backdrop. We have that kind of product market fit. We have the funding. And then here's a chance to do like the early stage thing again. It'd be kind of that startup within a startup, be even more cross functional, even more autonomous and help win the geo. What I've seen is there's sort of two different types of folks who join. There's the current rogo user or product and and, you know, likes it enough that they're like, could get behind this for my career. And that's my favorite because any call they join, if they introduce themselves as a former rogo user who joined, that's like the, you know, best possible recommendation. And then the second type of person is someone who is in seat as like an analyst or associate at a bank and then becomes sort of like a AI czar within the firm. Like they join like the AI committee and they're helping roll tools out and internally and test stuff and build workflows.
00:40:52 · John Willett, Vidit Agarwal
And often you see someone like that after like a year of doing that, they're like, well, is 25% of my job. This is the best part of the job by far. I don't like the other stuff. And if I join a place like Rogo, I could do that the whole time, except it's way higher leverage. I'm doing it across a ton of different firms, impacting way more people. I'm part of a tech company, so this is a very different vibe, less bureaucracy moving way faster, and then a lot of equity upside in what I'm building. So for both those two types of people, I think it's pretty compelling. If you pluck a random person at a bank, there's a good chance they would never think about quitting and joining a tech company, but for the self selecting group, I do think it is a pretty compelling pitch. [00:41:30] S0: Anything you're seeing on expectations from talent on REM or ESOP, like, it's a very competitive talent market out there. Mhmm. And folks can, like you said, they can go to Harvey or Legoro or Decagon or a Bridge or one of these, like, application layer companies that are killing it. How are you getting them to Vargo? Like, are you offering any benefits that's above market?
00:41:30 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:41:30] S0: Anything you're seeing on expectations from talent on REM or ESOP, like, it's a very competitive talent market out there. Mhmm. And folks can, like you said, they can go to Harvey or Legoro or Decagon or a Bridge or one of these, like, application layer companies that are killing it. How are you getting them to Vargo? Like, are you offering any benefits that's above market? [00:41:51] S1: Vis a vis, you know, like a Ligure or Harvey, it's probably a somewhat similar, you know, package, I I would assume, and it's more person to person. And it... It's gonna come down to like, hey. These are the specific problems that we're gonna want you to tackle in your in your first year. It's probably more personality compatibility with whether it's me and Gabe or other folks on the team. So I think it's more idiosyncratic. I don't think we figured out like a systematic way to beat, you know, these other app player companies at at getting talent. I think it's just trying as hard as we can on on each candidate to tell our story.
00:41:51 · John Willett, Vidit Agarwal
[00:41:51] S1: Vis a vis, you know, like a Ligure or Harvey, it's probably a somewhat similar, you know, package, I I would assume, and it's more person to person. And it... It's gonna come down to like, hey. These are the specific problems that we're gonna want you to tackle in your in your first year. It's probably more personality compatibility with whether it's me and Gabe or other folks on the team. So I think it's more idiosyncratic. I don't think we figured out like a systematic way to beat, you know, these other app player companies at at getting talent. I think it's just trying as hard as we can on on each candidate to tell our story. [00:42:21] S0: I said before, let's compare and contrast to different markets. I think what's particularly interesting, I said this to you the other day with you coming into Europe is, I mean, all those companies you mentioned, I don't think the founders have moved. The founders are still based in The US. I mean, Lagora is based in Sweden, but the others are based in The US. They've hired a GM or they've hired a chief business officer. Yeah. I think that goes to clearly your belief in in yourself to put yourself on the ground and uproot yourself. But I'm curious how do you compare and contrast US versus Europe versus APAC? Any distinct differences between the three markets?