The Gradience
Knowing the Right Time to Hire as a Startup with Aamir Virani, Advisor, Explorer, and President of VSHAD Holdings
January 3, 2023
Joining us this week to explore this topic is Aamir Virani, Advisor, Explorer, and President of VSHAD Holdings. He is a co-founder of Dropcam, a company that established home monitoring cameras and cloud video analysis and which was later acquired by Google Nest and rebranded as Nest Cam and the Nest Aware service. Before that, he was a software engineer at PowerReviews and the Lead Software engineer at Xobni. He was also a member of the Presidential Innovation Fellowship, 2021 and an angel and venture investor.
Building a startup from scratch involves testing the feasibility of your ideas, checking whether they work, raising funds, scaling and getting proof of concept.

All these require your utmost concentration, and you can focus on what matters when there is no internal turmoil in the company.

As a result, you must hire and work with people who are not only skilled and talented but also share your values. These people are those you respect and those with the same cultural alignment.

In this episode of The Gradience Podcast, Jose Guardado is joined by Aamir Virani, Advisor, Explorer, and President of VSHAD Holdings.

They cover:

πŸ‘‰ [ 00:05:19 ] How working as an employee in other companies before starting your own allows you to learn

πŸ‘‰ [ 00:09:31 ] Mutual respect is one of the things to be on the lookout for when co-founding a company with someone

πŸ‘‰ [ 00:16:30 ] Test-run your ideas and your products to ensure they work before looking for a big-time investor. Have a proof of concept

πŸ‘‰ [ 00:19:07 ] When bringing someone new into your team, ensure that there's a responsibility the person is accountable for and that there's cultural alignment

πŸ‘‰ [ 00:26:36 ] As a new startup, you don't have to hire too fast, especially if it's for a task that isn't pressing or doesn't require much expertise, because you might not have enough funding to do that

πŸ‘‰ [ 00:30:37 ] As a founder, you must ensure that your teams are comfortable and in a place that allows them to succeed, even after the startup is acquired
 
πŸ‘‰ [ 00:33:23 ] Acquisition and merger of a startup can serve as an opportunity to learn for the founder of that startup

πŸ‘‰ [ 00:38:59 ] There are different ways you can work in government service. You can apply and join. An example is the US Digital Service

If you are a startup company interested in learning all about the challenges you might encounter through your journey, tune in to this episode of The Gradience Podcast, a Podcast by Build Talent.


Subscribe here:

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πŸ‘‰ Email: podcast@buildtalent.io 

And connect with Aamir here:

πŸ‘‰ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avirani     
πŸ‘‰ Twitter:  https://twitter.com/avirani
πŸ‘‰ VSHAD Holdings: https://vshadholdings.com


About the Show

β€œThe Gradience” is a podcast by Build Talent, wherein each episode, we’ll be speaking with a founder or expert as we discuss the art & science of hiring leaders, why it matters, and how you can keep up. 


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