This Week in Startups - Secrets of Startup Recruiting in the US AND Japan! (feat. Sho Takei) | E2233

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

This Week In Startups is made possible by:Northwest Registered Agent - www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistCaldera Lab - http://calderalab.com/TWISTPipedrive - http://pipedrive.com/twistToday’s show: TWiST is coming to you all from TOKYO as we launch Japan’s first-ever Founder University! That’s right, a full week of key insights from Japan’s top founders, investors, and tech visionaries… when we can pull ourselves away from our favorite izakaya spots, that is.First up, Jason welcomes HyreSearch.com co-founder Sho Takei, a veteran of Uber and CloudKitchens who now helps startups recruit top talent from around the world.Together they discuss the massive changes AI is bringing to every facet of the hiring process, Sho’s experiences working for infamously “super-pumped” Travis Kalanick, his tips for for establishing a corporate culture when hiring your first few employees, why being a co-founder is just a bit like getting married, and LOTS MORE.Timestamps:(00:00) We’re in TOKYO JAPAN for Founder University with Hyre co-founder (and Uber vet) Sho Takei.(03:13) The challenges of early Uber recruiting in Asia(05:22) Are Japanese workers motivated by stock-based compensation? Or is cash still king?(08:24) Why tax rates give Singapore and Dubai a competitive advantage.(09:17) Do in-person startups have an edge against entirely remote companies?(11:50) How Jason thinks Hyre could grab their ultimate domain name…(13:26) Northwest Registered Agent: Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity —  Learn more at www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist(15:32) Just because a startup tactic works in the US… doesn’t mean it will work in Japan(17:39) Travis Kalanick and Uber’s unique “super pumped” approach to recruiting(20:01) It’s hard to fire someone in Japan! The high stakes for hiring mistakes.(23:35) Sho’s tips for establishing a culture and hiring your first few employees (“hiring is guessing, and firing is knowing”)(25:33) Why being a co-founder is kind of like getting married(27:46) Caldera Lab: Whether you’re starting fresh or upgrading your routine, Caldera Lab makes skincare simple and effective. Head to  http://calderalab.com/TWIST and use TWIST at checkout for 20% off your first order.(28:59) How AI is revolutionizing the hiring process, and why you still need a human in the loop(34:02) How do you win over amazing talent that’s already happy at another company(39:47) Pipedrive: Bring your entire sales process into one elegant space. Get started with a 30 day free trial at http://pipedrive.com/twist(43:19) How Hyre operates as an agency and also an in-house recruiter(44:57) The surprising importance of “candidate experience” when hiring in Japan*Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com/Check out the TWIST500: https://twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp*Follow Lon:X: https://x.com/lons*Follow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm/*Follow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis/*Thank you to our partners:(13:26) Northwest Registered Agent: Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity —  Learn more at www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist(27:46) Caldera Lab: Whether you’re starting fresh or upgrading your routine, Caldera Lab makes skincare simple and effective. Head to http://calderalab.com/TWIST and use TWIST at checkout for 20% off your first order.(39:47) Pipedrive: Bring your entire sales process into one elegant space. Get started with a 30 day free trial at http://pipedrive.com/twist

hiring here. What are the best practices in Japan to find somebody truly talented? And then I guess are people also, I know a lot of colleagues have moved here. Their main goal is like just live here. Like quality of life and things. But, you know, they're always saying like, oh, but like, well, I guess from U.S., the tax is quite similar. Remote has changed everything. Yes. And also that affected the talent market a little bit because now everyone's like, hey, I only want to do remote or like, I only want to go to the office twice a week. The return to office culture, do you believe a startup, five days a week in the office,

six days a week in the office, just really crushing it, has a major advantage over those that allow work from home and remote? Yeah. So I always thought about this as a founder as well, right? Because actually, he hires a remote first. I would like to have like everyday office culture, especially in kind of our stage of the business, because it's like we're just starting, we want to hustle, we want to be aligned, spend time together. and yeah this weekend startups is brought to you by pipe drive bring clarity and control to your sales

process with pipe drive the number one CRM for small and medium sized businesses supercharge your sales today start with a 30 day free trial at pipe drive.com slash twist caldera lab whether you're starting fresh or upgrading your routine caldera lab makes skin care simple and effective head to caldera lab dot com slash twist and use twist at checkout for 20% off your first order northwest registered agent get more when you start your business with northwest in 10 clicks and 10 minutes you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity learn more at northwest registered agent dot com slash twist all right everybody welcome back to this week in startups welcome back to twist i am here in Tokyo for Founder University. Yes, we took our Founder University pre-accelerator. We brought it to Japan

with our partners, Jetro, and we're doing our first Founder University. So this week, I thought as a special treat for our listeners in America and around the world, we would meet with some founders here in Japan and some investors and do some live episodes here. I have a live audience here of over 30 different startups, and we're going to be doing the show live. All right, there you go. If you're interested in coming to Found University, it's occurring now on three continents in three cities, occurring in the United States, occurring in Saudi, and occurring here in Tokyo, you can go to Tokyo. Dotlaunch.co. Tokyo.

com. We've been trying to save up to get the M, but somebody else has the dot com. So today on the program, I've got the CEO of H-Y-R-E. This is a startup that helps people recruit talent using a data-driven approach, and the co-founder is Show Ticay, like George Ticay. Correct. Oh, my. I do have a number of impersonations.

Okay. So, you previously worked for a friend of mine and Wills, Travis, from Uber, and you worked with him at Cloud Kitchens as well. Yes. Tell me, what did you do for Travis at Uber? Uber and Cloud Kitchens. First of all, thank you so much for having me here. And hi, guys, I'm Sho.

Yeah, I joined Travis, like Uber in 2015. So actually back then it was still, you know, it's a 4,000 people company, so it was still massive. Like I couldn't, I didn't talk to Travis then early in Asia. So I was based in Hong Kong, but I was looking after APEC recruiting. When I joined the office, there was only four people in Japan. And, you know, of course, Uber was a sexy brand in the US, right?

But in Asia, I was still like, oh, it's like an illegal taxi company, what is this? Like I don't want to get in strangers cars. So it was like not as easy as you would think to recruit here. Yeah. But yeah, so recruited for Travis and then after Travis left, I saw his tweet. So I actually shot him a message.

A famous tweet where he said he was working on something new and to DM him. Oh, I didn't DM him like Ryan Graves did, but I shot him an email. I didn't think he would ever reply back, but I told him my stats at Uber and I was like, I'm gonna come build with you. reply back, let's get you in the process, and joined as the 50th employee.

Oh, Cloud Kitchens. Yeah, amazing. Second in Asia. All right, so let's talk about how the United States and a company in the U.S. can come to Japan, and then we'll talk a little bit about the nature of startups in Japan. You mentioned something I thought was pretty interesting, which was it was a little bit hard to get and to recruit talent for Uber, and I'm assuming Cloud Kitchens maybe a little bit less because Travis had a track record for this crazy.

new American company. Why is that? Well, I mean, kind of talk. And you can be candid. Okay. I'm going to be like just maybe focusing a little bit on Japan situation. I mean, I've done all of like global recruiting, but I think Japan is quite interesting because I mean, as you guys know, like Japan is quite a candidate driven market, very passive. I feel that, you know, a candidate market in Japan is a little bit more like, they're trying to find like more risk management. Whereas in the U.S., it's like, like, you know, it's like, like, they're trying to see, like, what if I join this company?

What is my opportunity cost if I don't join this company? So they're always looking for the growth. Is there a stock-based compensation driver here in Japan or around the APAC region like there is in the U.S.? And has that changed over the decade you've been doing this? Yeah, I think like Uber was really one of the kind of first companies in Japan to like offer stock to employees. in my opinion. And of course, Uber was a, it is a generational company. There's not that many companies that's gonna be like that.

Yeah. Like, you know, your investment also. A hundred billion dollar company, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the concept is new. Like nowadays, if you're trying to work for a startup, it's like kind of expected in Japan. It's like, well, I don't get stock. Oh, not really interested.

But that changed just in the last 10 years. Yeah, correct. And what is the impact of the people who worked at Uber who then saw the company go public? How did that occur here? here in terms of the notability of it. Did the press pick it up? Did entrepreneurs here say, wow, the stock options are really where it's at?

Because I have heard in the past from entrepreneurs in the U.S. looking to expand in Japan and other places, just people are conservative. They think stock options are a scam. They think it's not real. So they think it's a way to pay you a lower salary. So what's the best advice, the best practice today, and how do people look at it? What was it like when maybe there were some Uber millionaires or even more here? Yeah, that's a good point.

And like, well, just to kind of like to that point, in the past five years, there's a lot of like startups been coming into Japan, like a lot of foreign tech startups. But then they would like, you know, bounce, like exit the market in like a year. So that kind of ruined the momentum of like, hey, stock is great because like Uber did it. People really saw like my ex-colleys, you know, who joined in 2012, 2013. they're not working anymore and have like venture capitals of their own. But I think nowadays, Japan like still, they still need cash, right? Unless you're coming from like investment banking or like management consulting who, you know,

already saved up enough money to be able to take that risk, they will. But usually like people still want cash nowadays in the market. And hiring for a startup here. So let's say you're a startup based in Japan. you're looking to address the U.S. market. Let's talk about talent going that direction. And even hiring here, what are the best practices in Japan to find somebody truly talented?

And then I guess our people also, I know a lot of colleagues, have moved here because of the quality of life and because you can get a visa here and you can work here now as an American, I think, a little more fluidly. So talk a little bit about that. Are we talking about Japanese trying to go abroad, right? Sure. Japanese is going abroad.

And then I guess the subpart of that is Americans coming to work for a Japanese company here. Yeah, I think what I see is, so that first case where, like, you know, people from the states that want to come to Japan, like, yes, their main goal is, like, just live here, like quality of life and things. But, you know, they're always saying, like, oh, but like, well, I guess from US, the tax is quite similar. Yeah.

But if you're coming from, like, Singapore, Dubai, and all these lower cost tax places, then it becomes a little bit challenging. Ah, because they have no tax or five or 10% tax. Correct. And you can go work there. So that is a competitive advantage for the Dubai's of the world. Right. And that's why I see.

But then you also have to live in Dubai. Yes. Which might, if somebody's making a choice, maybe Japan has a bit of an edge culturally. Yeah. So I see, you know, a lot of sort of like, let's say YouTubers, for example, right? They are Japanese, but they live in Dubai. But they travel here back to Japan, but they don't stay over 183 days or they go to different places, right? Because they're a remote job anyways.

Remote has changed everything. Yes. And also that affected the talent market a little bit because now everyone's like, hey, I only want to do remote or like I only want to go to the office twice a week. But we are starting to have that return to office culture back, right? Let's talk about that. The return to office culture, do you believe a startup, five days a week in the office, six days a week in the office just really crushing it has a major advantage over those that allow work from home and remote? Yeah. So I always thought about this as a founder as well, right?

because actually he hires a remote first. But I see a lot of these companies that is in tech, startup, they just started. And I think, like, the energy that they have, the mentality that they have, you know, kind of go on the field, fight on the field, and leave everything there. I see that a lot with, like, the return to office. And I see a lot of, like, startups who have a return to office like five days a week. Yeah, they're crushing it, right? But then there's remote where, of course, there are distractions.

So it's kind of hard to find the right balance, but with remote you can actually access good talent as well, right? So it's really the tradeoff. But if I could, I would like to have like everyday office culture, especially in kind of our stage of the business, because it's like we're just starting. We want to hustle. We want to be aligned. Right. Spend time together. And it's hard to reverse it once you've gone down one of the different paths.

We as a company have done return to office as an investment. investment firm. We now have, I think, 12 of our 20 people in office. And I told everybody, you can work from home if you're on the top 25% of the company. And I said that when the company was 100% remote. And they said, well, what happens to everybody else? And I said, I don't know, what happens to everybody else? And performance went up. We do allow some remote work, but those people are expected to really be the highest performers if they want to have that ability. Talk to me about the funding requirements here in Japan for starting a company and the funding environment. We're going to have our Angel University for the first time here in Tokyo on

Thursday. Today's Monday when we're taping this in January. And so there's started to become a bit of an angel syndicate building up here. So tell us about it. I think the funding requirement is not that difficult. I mean in my space like recruiting like Japan is a quite regulated recruiting market. So you need a license. You need a license to have a recruiting. Yeah, staffing agency. You have to have a license. It's super proper.

You need to have, yeah, you need to take a course and everything and have a proper license. But that requires like $5 million. So you just need $5 million in the bank, and then you're good to go. But that's just recruiting. Every industry has different standards, but. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about your startup, hire h.y r.com. What is it?

Hiresearch.com. Yeah. Someone to write. Dot com, I think. I mean, getting a four-letter domain name in 20, 25, 20, We actually contacted the owner and we were trying to buy, but they were quoting like 500K US. I'm like, no. 500K US.

Yeah, for H-Y-R-E.com. You can get it for 200. We could talk about the negotiation. So, yeah, what you do is you buy, we'll do a little mini tactical talk here, you buy like four variants of it. You tell the person who has it, hey, listen, I have these four variants. I have the trademark. We don't need it. It would obviously be nice to have.

Our company's growing. We're venture-backed. We'd love to buy it from you, for 200 plus a kicker if we raise our next round and we raise over 3 million, we'll give you another 100K. And then if we ever go public, we'll give you 250K. So we'll give you 600K total, whatever it is, a little bit more than yours, but you'll get to have

a little upside there. Or 1% of the company, something like that. And that can sometimes shake and loose. It depends on, are you dealing with the owner or the broker? A broker. Yeah, that's the problem. So also, like, we also don't really have any plans to, like, go public.

Or, yeah, do fundraising. It doesn't matter. They don't know that. That's true. All right. When we get back from this important break, a little pause for the cause, I want to talk to you about the differences in building a company here versus the U.S. and the lessons from the U.S. that work here and the ones that don't when we get back on

this week in startups. Being a founder is a lot of work. You have to focus on your fundraising. Then you got to hire the perfect team. Oh, gosh, product market fit. finding your first customers, but all of this means nothing. If you're not actually a real business that's structured properly, giving your investors and clients the confidence to partner with you at launch. We're constantly recommending Northwest registered agent to our founders because for just

$39 plus state fees, they will act as your registered agent. That means they take care of all the paperwork, making sure your business remains compliant, protecting your privacy, and more. And as a founder, Hey man, there are so many organizational odds and ends that you have to worry about. So why not have a partner who can focus on all those little details? Then you can obsess about your customers. And Northwest Registered Agent is even going to help you set up a phone line, a professional email account, and find you a great domain name. So here's your call to action.

Go to Northwest Registeredagent.com slash twist to get your company set up the right way. All right, we're back with this week in startups, live from Jetro. in Tokyo with our guest today, show Takai. Differences in the customer base and running a company here, what are the things that when Uber or Cloud Kitchens operated here worked exactly the same as they would in the U.S. and what was challenging or different for cultural, regulatory, any reasons, yeah, talent reasons?

So I think for, well, like going back to the Uber and Cloud Kitchens experience, Because I've actually, like, when I joined the company, like, we were very small, and I was involved in the U.S. recruiting as well. So I hired a couple, several talents over there. So I kind of got to see that, you know, market, which was quite interesting. I think for, like, for me, whatever kind of works in Japan, like operational and process-wise, could potentially work, you know, in the West, right? But whereas what they do in the U.S. and try to bring it here might not. not be so accepted. So I see a lot of like the startup like like an Uber or like different other startups that will, you know, from the US will come to Japan. They think because it

works in the US is going to work in Japan. What were some examples with Uber specifically that didn't work here? Yeah. So it was very challenging because like, for example, the Uber interview process, right? It's very different. Like you'll have an analytical exercise where you get like an online thing. You have to pass like certain marks and it's a multiple choice. And as a candidate, it's like, hey, this is what you do first. Okay, sure. Like, maybe it's like a sort of like a logic test or whatever. Then you go through interview process.

Then you have this deep dive where it's like a one hour, take home exercise, put together a strategy, and then present it to a panel, right? That was like, happens in the West, but in Japan, like, the interview process doesn't don't really do that, right, before. How did they see that? They thought it was overbearing, insulting. Yeah. So for the right, and that process, the Uber process really helped kind of filter

out who's the right candidate for Uber. Right? So like someone who was more startupy, whose hands on and willing to like do these open to doing these kind of things, like generally was like a very good culture fit. So but people were like, wait, why are you testing me? And we were just like, yeah, reflag, yeah, that's going to happen. Ah, fascinating.

Yeah. So it was a good way to filter out cultural fit and how much they wanted the job as well. Everything's a test and it's a little bit of spec work. You're doing some work that you're not being compensated for, right? They wouldn't give them $100 to do this. Right, right. So you really had to see how much they wanted it. And if they were a 9 to 5 or maybe a big company person, that would not be appealing to them.

That's fascinating. What else was unique about Travis's ways of recruiting talent? Oh, there was a lot. I mean, that's why I'm so fortunate to like, I mean, Uber was basically my first job. And I had no experience, right? but I was able to surround myself with these really entrepreneurial experience people and it got to learn really fast. One thing about Travis was like he put recruiting function as one of the frontline functions.

You know, usually companies would put sales first, right? Because I mean, it's a revenue driver. Right. But Travis actually like prioritized recruiting. So like operations function, obviously most important, but recruiting was like equally as important. And you knew that because he spent time. Correct. He would spend time with the recruiting team and you know he will give us an hour every week just with the recruiting function. He wants to hear what's working, what's not. And when you're recruiting for that type of founder or leader, like, yeah, I mean, it's, you recruiting becomes fun, basically. So, yeah, I think, like, Travis did a really good job. And he still is a big fan of, like, recruiting. That's why I think it's... What did you learn from him in terms of recruiting? Like, did he have some other unique ideas about having people who were super...

pumped was, you know, his, you know, either you're super pumped or you're not here kind of a situation. Like, yeah. And how did you test for that? Because, like, maybe some people are performative and they're extroverts and they would do very well on a super pumped kind of, you know, interview over video or even in person. But that might be performative, not reality when they get on the job. And somebody who's introverted who, you know, how do you know that they're super pumped?

How do you filter for something weird like that? Yeah, I think Travis was quite open about like different functions. So like, you know, everybody's different, right? Like if you're a salesperson, you're naturally extrovert. If you're an engineer, maybe you're more not like the talking type. So he kind of understood that and how we assess like the culture fit of super pumped as like, do you ride Uber or like, do you, I don't know, share promo codes or like, tell me about Uber, how much do you know about Uber?

Why are you interested in Uber, right? The more they can say obviously it's they're, yeah, super interested. So they've done their research when they're in that process. They have ideas. They're super pumped to get the job. And they're following up with you, et cetera. Yeah. But he also didn't want someone who's just going to do things.

He wanted someone who is willing to push boundaries. So see, like, how much can they, like, push to, like, you know, they don't want to just be stuck in a box, right? Like, if you are asked to launch a city and if you're like, oh, we can't do this because of this, like, no. You have to have that mentality. aggressive, we're going to win no matter what. We're going to change the world. If you have that safe mentality, Uber is not for you.

How did you deal with mistakes? Because when you're hiring, you have a couple of days, a couple of weeks to make a decision, and you're going to make mistakes. What was his instruction and what have you learned that you've carried forward in terms of when you make a mistake? You realize you hired the wrong person, getting them out. In the U.S., or at least in the West, I think, you know, firing someone and letting them go is a lot easier. than Japan. So actually, like, when you're hiring in Japan, it's a lot more difficult because, like, it's hard for employers to fire in Japan. What do they have to do? Oh, if you want to fire someone

in Japan? Well, there's different ways, tactical ways. But, of course, well, there's one of this thing that's not relating to any of your prior work experience, but what would the things that people would talk about if we were having drinks with a bunch of HR people in Japan? What would they say or the backdoor ways to do this. Yeah, so one of the big corporations would do is, like, they will make a new department say like, hey, we're going to launch like Malaysia. Like, you want to, you know, it's a new business, it's a new business vertical. I think you should run it.

Open the function. Get them to be like the launcher or whatever it is. And they're like, hey, we're shutting down the function. So buy, basically. So you put all of the weak people on a boat. You send them out to sea. You don't want to do it that obvious. And then you sink the boat.

pretty much. I mean, there's different ways, but yeah, that's one of the big court moves. Ah. So create a division and then shut the division. Yes. Yeah, that's pretty hardcore. Generally, it's really hard to fire in Japan. So when, and this is for U.S. companies as well, like foreign tech startups in Japan, when they hire in Japan, they're a lot more careful than in the U.S. Right. Because U.S. you can just. Can you hire people as consultants for some period of time, put a limit on the length of the relationship, and do people use that technique for both parties to try before you buy kind of situation to date before you get married sure there is one rule like you don't want to hire someone on a contract basis knowing that they're

basically going to be doing full-time stuff right because there's like that gray area but let's say like I mean actually a lot of the companies that we work with they they don't have an entity in Japan yet right but they want to test the market so there's a couple ways of hiring these kind of people one is you know you hire them as a contractor right like a freelancer testes them out with the understanding as like, hey, you do well, you set up the entity, you're coming full-time with us. Got it. There's that way.

And there's a few companies out there, like, you know, like a EOR. You can, you know, there's companies like that where you can hire someone if you don't have an entity. Because, again, Japanese people, they like stability. Some people are okay. Actually, a lot more people are starting to like freelancing because, like, they can write off tax and all these things, right? But if you're a full-time staff, then you got to pay all the

the tax is possible, right? Right. So, but you have all these benefits of like medical health insurance, pension, all these things that you get. And that might correlate with the type of employee you want or you don't want. If you're a founder and you've got an at-scale business, you might be looking for stability the same way employees want, and you just want the operation in another city, in another country,

to work, you know, in a tight fashion. And maybe you're not looking to push people to do all the innovation in that region. You just want them to operate the business really well. I see a lot of situations where a company will ask, I don't know about Japan yet, but can you, yeah, basically they'll find a consultant to kind of green like the market just to see like if this market is worth it. Then they're going full hard. Tell us about hiring your first or second or third, those first two or three positions, you know, after the co-founders. Let's say you have a three-person team. You're all co-founders.

You have equity. How do you go about hiring those first two or three people? and the big C word culture. How do you make sure that their culture fits and you're starting off correctly? What's the best practice for you? Yeah, I like to say, like, hiring is guessing and firing is knowing.

So, you know, we, when I look for people, like, I want to work with someone that, you know, obviously I can trust, right? Because it's such a small team. You know, even if the person's, like, super competent, but if you can't trust them, like, you know, it's going to be a huge thing, right? So.

And how do you feel? filter for trust? What are the techniques that you would advise a friend who's starting and like, here's the way to figure out if you can really trust that person to be that fourth, you know, first outside hire? So the strategy here, well, all the tips here will be like try to get referrals from friends that you trust. That's in a similar industry. That kind of helps. Right. And usually like when you're a startup, like you won't completely hire someone that you don't know. Or maybe you will. But usually you want to start with someone that you can trust. and maybe it's a friends of a friend, referral,

so that, you know, if anything happens, you're like, hey, what the hell, right? Why did you refer this person? So, I mean, usually if you're a friend and if you know your friend is, like, legit, usually people around them would be kind of similar, right? Right. So that's how actually we went about it. By the way, there's levels of friendships as well. It's not like, hey, I met this guy, like, two weeks ago, like at a club,

and, you know, he seems cool. Who's popping bottles? Yeah, yeah. He's really cool. He seemed cool. Like, it's really got to be someone you spend a lot of time with. Right. Like someone you can really trust your life with.

Got it. And especially these is so important for co-founders. Right? I think a lot of here, like maybe you have your own startup, but maybe you're only one person. Or maybe you're trying to find another co-founder. Like, if you can, like, you want to find someone that's like, ideally a friend of yours that's been with a lot with you, right? Right. That's ideal.

But if not, I would recommend to have like a founder's agreement because then it's kind of like getting married, right? Like if anything happens. What should be in that founder? agreement? Yeah, things like, hey, what's like your role? What's the expectation? So it's like very aligned. And like, hey, what if this happens?

What do we do? How do we split shares, whatever it is? Right. And this is why the vesting schedule for the founders is important. And a lot of people don't even have a vesting schedule until they get to the seed round or their Series A and then the VC say, hey, listen, we've seen this movie before. We need to everybody to be on a vesting schedule to make sure this goes tightly. And if you don't have a co-founder and you can't find a co-founder, what does that say about the founder in your mind?

Again, we're on this week in startups. We're on Twist. Permission to be candid. I mean, I've seen both sides. Like, I've seen a single person founder, you know, struggle to find a co-founder. So maybe they found a C-O, but that's not a co-founder like title. A lot of times, they'll not last very long. If you're a single co-founder, that's still okay, because I have a lot of friends who do that as well.

Yeah. Most investors are a little concerned. It's a pink or a red flag, especially in an accelerator. How many people here are solo founders? Any solo founders? One, two, three. So four. So about four out of 30 are. And for our program here at Founder University, we always pick multiples. We don't want solo co-founders unless they are extremely, extremely good at recruiting and talent. So we filter for that. So for the four people, you're good at finding talent, I assume? You're terrible at it or you're good at it? Okay, we'll work with you. All right, when we get back from this quick break, I want to ask you about the impact of AI on hiring and which positions you think will be gone or will be very different in the future

and then how it's actually impacting the hiring process when we get back on this week in startups. If you watch the video version of the pod on YouTube, probably notice that Alex and I have radiant, beautiful skin. I don't like to talk about it, but we all see it, right? And that's not just a genetic accident. It's because of our newest partner, Caldera Lab. They've spent years developing and testing skincare products specifically for men, and they make your skin feel smoother and healthier. It gives you more youthful experience, and who doesn't want that? When you're getting up there in your late 30s like me, you get this

puffiness around your eyes, maybe even dark circles. like I have, but Caldera's eye serum makes your skin more resilient and leaves me looking well rested even when my sleep number, yeah, sometimes it dips a bit, right? I only get six or seven hours. So it's time to elevate your skincare routine with Caldera. Head to caldera lab.com slash twist and use the code twist at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's C-A-L-D-E-R-A-L-B-com slash twist caldera lab.com slash twist. We're back here for Twist in Tokyo. Thank you. Wow.

So let's talk about AI. It's obviously impacting every job. Startups are resource constrained. So startups use AI tools much more often than regular companies because they're always trying to do more with less. They're always very inquisitive and interested and curious about tools, it's kind of their advantage, right? But then there's also AI tools that are coming out to help people sort. So I was at a dinner in Singapore last year and I asked 12 founders, how many people have hired an outside HR person or recruiter to write a job description? I'll ask it here. How many people have hired an HR person to write a job description in the last six months? Okay, nobody. How many people have used chat GPT or another large language model to write a job

description? Raise your hand. Hi. Okay. It's, literally almost everybody. And if we were sitting here 20 years ago, the first thing you did was hire an HR person, a talent person, part-time, fractional, and they wrote your job descriptions. Now, the job descriptions coming out of AI are better than anything you could write,

I think, you tell me if I'm wrong, and then I think sorting through them. So I'll ask here, has anybody here used AI to sort through applications? Raise your hand if you're using AI to sort through applications. One, two, yeah. So that's gonna be the three. That's gonna be the next trend,

because that's what I'm hearing from sophisticated founders is they put all the resumes into notebook L.M or whatever and say which ones are best suited for this job and why. So tell me a little bit about AI first in the hiring process. So I think as long as like companies need to hire humans, like there always needs to be a human in the loop, I think. Like for how I see AI as like, by the way, AI is like game changing, right? It's kind of like before like 30 years ago in recruiting we had like roll

decks and like a phone call, like a phone, right? But now then like LinkedIn came around. And then I think this phase now with the new AI technology is like this is where like the new world is going, right? So for myself, like actually, you know, we actually build our own internal tools like a software that, you know, it's a database, but it's sort of our CRM or ATS, if you will, right? Applicant tracking system, CMS content, contact management system. Yeah. But you say CMS? CRM? CRM, sorry. So yeah, customer relationship management. I have CMS on my brain constantly because I was in the content business for so long.

Yeah, so we built the software. So for example, like in my world today, when we do calls, like let's say we speak with a candidate, right? After the candidate interview is done, usually traditionally people will have to like write notes and like, oh, what did I do? Yeah, sure, there's AI note taker and then you kind of call. For us, we built a system where soon as you're done, everything's integrated, everything's in place, all the salary information, all the everything one candidate wants. And then our system goes, okay, based on the CV and the note that you did, there's these other candidates that is in the database that could be good.

So it kind of pushes like, hey, you pitch this role. There's a bunch of different candidates that comes onto the platform. Also the client's side. So like, hey, you pitched this company, but there's four other companies right now actively that you can actually introduce the candidate. Right. So it just kind of, it makes us become like 10x recruiters. Right.

Because the original recruiters, after 20 years in Silicon Valley or here, they would be like, you know, I think you would fit the culture of these other companies. Do you want me to try to get you an interview there? But in reality, AI does that so much better because it's going to be able to look under in so many different corners and find trends that maybe the recruiter wanted, couldn't find. Yeah. I think, but for AI, I really think really like the admin and the sourcing part is where the AI can replace. But at the end of the day, like, it is a human business and recruiters need to influence.

Like, nobody wants to talk to a robot and join a company, right? So I strongly believe recruiters will not be replaced, but it's just going to help a recruiter do so much more, like 10x what they're doing. Got it. Similar to an engineer, right? Similar to an engineer. What do you think of these AI interviewers? People are using AI interviewers. I've been given this pitch by a number of different startups.

Hey, we can use AI to interview somebody. and people are complaining now, at least in the United States, that they've sent 200 resumes, done 100 AI interviews, it's not even a human on the call, and they feel a little bit insulted by that, that a human didn't even take the time to consider them, and then they never hear back from the robot. It could work, really, if it's like a really volume,

like it could be a factory thing or whatever it is, but it has to be super volume, right? Because then that's the only way you can really hire that many people, at once. So if you need to hire like a thousand people a day, I think that works. But if you're like doing a full time, you know, if you're hiring an operations manager, like, of course, like the person's going to join a company that had human in the loop, right, at the end of the day. It doesn't matter how great the company is. If they're not even going to take the time to, like, have someone speak to them, of course, it's not, it's a great, not a great experience, right?

Best advice on shaking talent loose who are in an existing job that they like or love even, They're at a company. And this is, I think, really something you have to think about because somebody who's on the job market and who doesn't have a job, man, that says something, right? That's, I think you would say, what's left in the bushel at the orchard or whatever, at the farmer's market. And then there's the people who are thinking of leaving, they're putting out feelers, and then there's the people who are not even looking. But maybe, you know, they would consider it, but probably not. So I think it's pretty obvious how you get the first two. They're curious or they're desperate.

But what about this third group who they're not in the market? They don't even have a LinkedIn or their LinkedIn isn't updated. How do you get those the really great, great, you know, talented individuals who can change a company forever, but, you know, who are coveted by their bosses currently? There's many candidates like that in the market and the real market. being able to convince, and yes, you're right. I mean, everybody, every candidate has different situations, different contexts. Maybe they hate their manager or situation changed or something. So I typically don't try to discount.

But yeah, when you look at a profile, you kind of know if this person hopped around so much, like, why would they stick in your company for the next one year or two years, right? So in Japan, like a lot of people are like, oh, this person's too hoppy, too jumpy, not stable. Like, no, we don't like that. But yes, you're right. Like I think a lot of these people in the company that stays for a long time, hard to get. And the market is so small, especially in tech, everybody knows each other.

And if you see a profile, it's like, you ask someone, like, do you know this guy? Yeah, he's very good. So you get that kind of reference check very easily. But in order to really convince the person to leave a job is like, yeah, you gotta like really throw. I mean, at first you gotta like really understand what drives them and what motivates them.

If it's like growth or whatever the reason might be, you do have to basically throw out a lot, like roll the red carpet basically. Like whether it's equity, given 1% the company or 2% whatever it is. And of course, use referrals to kind of get them chatting. And that's kind of what happened with Uber as well, right? Like Dara, he didn't want the job.

He was at Expedia for a while. And, you know, people kept the tag, like going at him, full court press. Yeah. And then, yeah, like really good recruiter, really sold it to him, right? The vision in the future. So those folks, you're going to need to find their friends to get the entree. You're going to have to really understand them and listen to them. and figure out what it is that drives them.

Typically, those high performers are already going to be in the top compensation bracket. So if it's not comp, it's what? Could be the manager, right? Or the relationship that they have. Got it. Or maybe they're not, they don't want to leave. Maybe it's too risky to leave that job, right? But everybody has a price and you just have to push and push those questions to really find what is.

Would they tell you when you're on the phone what their salary is and their comp? If you get enough trust from them? Yes. Because you're trying to help them too. Right. And what is the number that makes the top performer leave in terms of if you were to just pick a percentage increase in their total comp? What would the total percentage where they take the phone call, they listen to you, they engage? What's the number?

Usually like a tech executive here would be like a million U.S. comp. Wow. Yeah. So if you say, yeah, we can offer one million, they'll be like, yeah, okay, I'm listening. Yeah. So, and what percentage more than what they're currently making kind of wakes somebody up and they say take the call? Well, if it's like a really hard person to get, like they've stuck in the business for like five years or 10 years or something, and they're an executive, I think, you know, somewhere like 50%. I mean, maybe not even 50, maybe it's like 80.

But, you know, there's a lot of. So it has to be a big jump to sheet one of those people. Or it's like, hey, we'll pay for your housing, all your kids, tuition. You find those kind of ways. Holy cow. Help them reduce tax, whatever it is, whatever the problem they have, you find that problem and solve it for them. Wow.

That's hardcore. Yeah, because at the end of the day, yes, they love their manager. They love their whatever. But at the end of the day, if they have family, they're going to take care of their family first. It's just a great story I heard. Just as an aside, there was this famous studio head. I think it was Mike Ovitz. And Mike Ovitz wanted this director to do the film, Tootsie, with Dustin Hoffman in it.

But the director he wanted didn't like Dustin Hoffman. But Ovitz, if it was Ovitz, might have been another person, had dinner with the director and his wife and went to the house. And the driveway was ripped up and was kind of damaged. And he got to the house. He was talking to the wife. And he noticed the driveway. And he said, oh, this is an incredible house she got and whatever. And, you know, what's your plan for it?

They had just got in this house. And she's like, yeah, you know, but I got to redo this driveway. In LA, it's notorious for being very expensive. And so Ovitz told her, I have these great contractors and they're gonna do a project for my house, but I'm going to, I can push mine back six months. I'm gonna get these guys to come and fix the driveway for you and I'll pay for it if you can get him to do the movie.

And she said, excuse me, you're doing this movie with Dustin Hoffman and just close the deal right there. And it was all because this driveway was making his spouse insane and that was gonna cost $200,000. to relevel it because they were in the Hollywood Hills. And he solved that problem for them. So this is very interesting. When we get back from this quick break, I want to hear all about your startup, how you're doing it, how you make money when we get back on this weekend startups. You can't have an effective sales team without an effective and above all organized sales process.

Trust me on this one, I've seen thousands of startups basically fail because they had messy, chaotic systems in the sales department. It's one of the biggest red flags there is. This Week in Startups, it's about helping founders, so I want to tell you about the tool we use to stay organized here on the Swigand Startups. It's called Pipe Drive. They bring your entire sales process together in one clear, easy to understand and centralized space, giving you just one place to check for all the customers and deal information you need. I'm a big fan of data, right? Especially here at this week in startups. So teams that use Pipe Drive close an average of three times more deals every month. It could be you. Join over 100,000 companies using Pipe Drive. And when you use our link, you're going to get a 30-day free trial. No credit card or payment is needed. Just go to pipe drive.com slash twist to get started. That's pipe drive.com slash twist. All right, we're back, Twist in Tokyo.

We're here for Founder University. One of the great joys of my life is helping people on the margins. My team and I at the launch fund, just helping founders start their companies. We're doing it in the U.S. We're doing it in Saudi Arabia and Riyadh with Senobal, and we're doing it here in Tokyo with JETRO, an incredible organization that really supports founders and does so many different accelerators and programs and we're the latest to join the movement here in Tokyo in helping founders. If you want to learn more, go to Tokyo.launch.co. We're going to be doing this again, but literally this is the first week that we're doing our 10-week program. What do we do in Founder University?

We help founders get product market fit, build out their team, understand their first couple of customers. It's generally companies in year zero or year one. And we invest in some of them. And we build a deep relationship with them. Although we don't have to. Sometimes they don't need money. They're doing so well.

Okay, so you started a company hire. Worked for Travis. Two tours of duty. That was enough. Yeah. So, yeah, work with Travis, you know. But those of you are listening to the audio, show goes, yeah. No, no, but really.

And he, Rezo, yeah. I mean, he's intense. Yeah. But you now carry that intensity forward. Yeah? No, I'm all about it. Like, I really see myself as a builder as well. So I think for Cloud Citchens, like, beginning was really cool because, like, small team.

Like Travis was, I was on Travis's like interviews with like general managers that I was hiring for him around the world, got to work with him super closely. But like, as the company grows, you're going to just get like layers and layers and layers, right? Yeah, sure. So that became like just two years in Cloud Kitchens. I felt like, okay, it's becoming Uber again for me. Yeah. So this was in 2020 during COVID. I was comfortable, but I wanted to feel very uncomfortable.

And so I was like, you know what? I'll leave Cloud Kitchens. I even left some, you know, like equity that was almost about the vast. Oh. Yeah, I left. I'm still a shareholder as well. But started 2020 when my co-founder. And, you know, like when I was at Uber,

I was looking for like agencies that could support me, right? Because I was hiring like 50 people in Japan, like by myself, like I need help, right? So I was getting external, you know, support. And I didn't find a lot of recruiters in Japan that understood tech yet. Yeah. At the time, this was like 2015, right? So it was really hard to find a few. And then, you know, of course I ran into my co-founder.

He understood we worked together. And then we were like, yeah, why don't we start our own thing? Right? Because like we bring like an in-house experience. Like we built Uber, we built Cloud Kitchens, helped recruit in Japan, A-PAC global, and bring that agency side of things, right? So how we're different is like we mix the in-house, the strategy that, you know, we have and the execution and the experience

and then mix it with agency side, right? So now we work with a lot of these like, you know, we brought Asana to Japan in 2021, 2020. We did their Japan launch and Singapore launch. We worked with Figma, Pinterest. We brought them all here, right? Wow. So with that, because how we partner with them is like,

we will become your in-house recruiter, but we will operate as an agency. So they thought, like, they saw the value in that, right? So we're not just introducing candidates, but we were like really hustling alongside these founders and these management people, right? So we work with like a lot of startups, CEOs, and personally for me, like,

I like to work with companies that's like not well known in Japan or like elsewhere. right like so that's kind of like my personal passion because I get to work with the founder and CEO very closely I helped them with their talent strategy HR recruiting whatever all that stuff but also like just go out in the market and just sell that company into the market because people like what is this company right and I spend a lot of time pitching and you know a lot of the startups what they would do is like they'll interview the candidate like let's say a founder oh there's a

candidate let me interview and they grill them right but it's like the candidate doesn't even like it's not even sold on the opportunity yet right so I always tell my founders like, hey, spend, if you like the profile, spend 31 hour, 60 minutes, selling the company. They want to hear from the founder. Right. And that helps these passive candidates to become more active. Right. Right. So a lot of these companies, like, even Uber, when they came to Japan or wherever, they grilled them super hard, right? Like, even if it's like a outbound, hey, let's chat, I want to talk to you about, I want to chat with you about Uber. Let's get on the chat and they start asking questions. It's like, no, you got to

like sell the company first. Get them excited. Get them. pumped. You want to transfer that enthusiasm to them and then that makes it much easier to close and convert. Some candidates are like they speak to a really nice startup and I didn't like how they rolled and just grilled me. I don't like this company and they lose that opportunity. So that bedside manner that the interview process is a major part of closing. Candid experience. Like it's really super important in Japan. I've seen a lot of great candidates fall out of the process because like they were taking like a week to schedule or like, you know, they were like not updating them and like these small things. Well, it kind of matters. If you are not consistent, you're not

attractive, you're not thoughtful during the recruiting process, a really high-end candidate's going to say, well, what is it going to be like when I come work for you? You're going to be even less responsive, you're going to give me even less attention, you're going to be even, because now I'm in the building, you're going to be on to the next one. So you do want to feel special if you're making that big change. Yeah. So Canada experience is like super important in Japan. So you got to like follow up, keep them updated, make them feel like they were wanted. Because they might just think like, oh, I'm not important and like there's another candidate they might want to hire and drop out of the process. What are some of the most intelligent tactical

things you've seen a founder do to recruit talent. Oh, yeah. Like any weird anecdote that you can come up with, yeah. Yeah, so, well, actually, like, well, I don't know if I can say this, but, like, this was during Cloud Kitchens as well. Like, you know, Travis. You can say it. It's okay.

I'm good to Travis. I really. I really, like, again, I said Travis really puts recruiting number one, right? Yes. So, I mean, this is not, like, super strange or whatever, but he hosted like a global tour back in 2018. So he was hosting in every major city like Beijing and, you know,

Seoul, Shanghai, and he was trying to recruit for Cloud Kitchens. Right. Right. So he would, like, he would ask his team to like, hey, all the great profiles, let's invite them to a happy hour. And then Travis will show up.

And he'll do like a happy hour, like 30 minutes, 60 minutes, happy hour and sell Cloud Kitchens to like an audience of 100 people. Wow. And then they'll apply after. Wow. He did this tour.

And I missed that. leg by like one month but like they they did a private jet tour so a lot of my like colleagues like they were on the private jet with Travis going around these cities if I joined a month earlier I could have done that but I actually met Travis in Seoul like the event and then yeah saw that happen and so that was a really great strategy like founder taking time to like recruit a level talent and just mingling with them and interacting with it really is interesting they somebody told me when I was talking to somebody about parenting and they had particularly really great kids that had come out really well.

And I said, what's the secret? And he said, oh, do you know how kids spell love? And I said, no, tell me. Because I know it's not L-L-O-V-E. There's some insight here. And he said, T-I-M-E. And so, yeah, don't cry, everybody. But that's how kids spell love.

Now, if you're talking about a family and a team, and you're building a team, the founder, the most precious resource they have is time. giving and spending that time is how you show love. It's how you show respect, right? And in an adult context, it would be more like respect and honor. Just talking about time, like, as a founder myself, also like, you know, it's been like six years in entrepreneurship. And I'm always in my office, like hustling and just working.

But I, like, this was last year. Actually, I was thinking and I was like, why am I hustling so hard? Why am I, like, trying to outwork everyone? Like, why am I just in the office all day, right? what am I working for it? And I was trying to find my why. And my why was like my family. But then am I spending time with them?

Like my son is four years old, right? And he's only this young once. So as a founder, I kind of like, okay, I made a rule like when he's home, two hours after school. I'm going to spend as much as time as I can with him and my family. But then after that, I'm going to go hustle. Well, this is another tip I have for you. It's not the quantity of time. It's the quality of the time.

and so many parents are at the park with their kids and they're playing candy crush or they're texting their friends or in the group chat and really it's can you put this away and can you be present i can tell you like just 30 minutes present with a child doing an activity uh or going skiing for two hours any of that like just really being present man it really matters yeah uh i think yeah and then the other thing i've told founders is well if you're doing this for your family and you're going to create a better future for them. And they get to see their parent, their mother, their father, whoever it is, both working really hard and being productive in the world. That's what makes great adults out of those kids because they have a model. My father, my mother worked hard. They worked hard. They cared about us.

I saw them on a Saturday, take care of us, go to the office for two hours, take a business call, then cook us dinner. Wow. They were hard working. And there's a whole generation maybe who is less hardworking and resilient. But if you teach them to be entrepreneurs and you teach them to be resilient, you teach them to have a work ethic, that's the most beautiful thing I think you can do for kids, especially in the age of AI, especially in an age where maybe their futures are uncertain.

All right, listen, if anybody's hiring in APEC or even in America coming here, global everywhere, go to hire search, H-Y-R-E-Sarch.com. thank you for sharing so many tactical lessons with us. You did a great job on your first this week in startup's experience. Let's give them a big round of applause. And let me say thank you to my team working really hard. Bianca, Lon, Ricky, I think that's everybody from my team who came. All of our mentors, Will Barnes, Amanda, such a great team here making this amazing experience. All of our partners at JETRO who have been working hard with us for months to bring this together and for the companies in our first cohort of Founder University here in Japan,

do the work and work harder. Okay, that's my advice for you. Work harder. All right, we'll see you next time. Bye. Thank you.