Critical Items to Consider When Bringing Your Medtech Startup to the US | LSI Asia '25

Joe Mullings  0:00  
Joe. Well, thanks for joining us. End of Day today, I'm Joe Mullings. I lead the Mullings group, executive search firm. We do a number of things, but executive search is really our primary core competency. And Ajay  is president of a pack and a partner of mine here. So just background on us. I've got 35 years in search firms been will probably give you some stats, more than 9000 successful assignments in Medtech, and we have probably done more than 120 build outs of O, US companies coming to the US. So the information we're going to share with you today is very salient on probably the things you don't know and the mistakes you may unintentionally make along the way. And Ajay, your background, yeah,

Ajay Nair  0:58  
sort of an atypical entry into headhunting. I spent about 21 years in medical device companies. Originally, I'm from the US, had a career there, starting with companies like Ethicon, Medtronic, Eli Lilly, gravitated more so into the commercial P and L side. Worked in the US for about 11 years. Started taking on international assignments, starting with Switzerland, then on, I sort of started my APAC journey. It's been about 14 years now in Asia, and almost all of my big company experience has been P and L and sales leadership. And the last couple of years, I've been working with young med tech startups, scale ups and join Jo in the Mullings group two years ago. So I run the International, predominantly APAC region of the business. Yep.

Joe Mullings  1:43  
And before we get started here, there's there's two inflection points when you're building a an emerging tech company. And I differentiate between emerging tech and startup, and I'll tell you the difference. But there's two major inflection points where you make decisions that could cripple your organization, because you make a decision or a series of decisions that don't manifest themselves for six to 12 months, and that's putting your clinical trial team on the floor in the US very first, or your commercial go to market team on the floor in the US. So most things, you can get an immediate feedback from your loop when we start to develop a medical device, because we used that startup R D world. But once you make that decision to pick your leader and your original hires in those two functional build outs, is where we end up coming in 90% of the time in a remediation situation where we have to unpack something. Six to nine months have gone through burn of burn rate, and then you have to sort of esprit de corps, gets bombarded, and then you've got to go back out now and do it again, the educated way. I'm not saying the right way, but the educated way. So you want to bring us energy, yeah, and anytime please stop us, put up your hand. This is not a lecture, it's a workshop. So we'd like you as much interaction, challenging Q and A as possible.

Ajay Nair  3:10  
Yeah. So the way we'd like to do this, and you know, just to kind of set up the frame, we'll share some topics, some sort of common areas that we experience working with clients, and then, of course, we're open to questions, comments and discussion. We'd like to just start with, you know, one of the common things we see, especially when international companies go to the US, they always go, I know someone or someone has told me about someone, basically your network connections. Now, that's not a bad thing, and that happens from us to international as well. But I think the real message that we'd like to share from our own experience is the best diligence you can do is to compare that individual to the best in the market, right? I mean, sometimes you're just kind of saying, Hey, I know someone who knows someone, I'm going to hire this person. But if you put this individual to the same vetting process as you would somebody from the market, you know you're actually getting the best buy for your for your money, right? So your network connections, you really need to kind of vet them to make sure that you're comparing against market experts. Yeah.

Joe Mullings  4:15  
And to that point too. And I'll give you some very off the cuff, which I'm notorious for, if somebody is available in the US at the time that you need them, they're probably not that good, right? They're unemployed. They're in between gigs. Usually the best people in the marketplace are already busy solving somebody else's really hard problems. So generally speaking, if you find somebody who happens to be available, the odds are that they're not the best person in the marketplace. You do have those outliers, but I will tell you, after 34 years doing this, it's a very rare situation that great players are available for your startup, for what you want to do at that risk level. Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Ajay Nair  5:01  
So Joseph mentioned this a little bit earlier, but one of the things that we're we specialize in and also a point of differentiation for us. When you typically work with a lot of recruitment partners or agencies, one of the things those who have worked with agencies, you'll see that there's a lot of what we call, you know, P and L barriers. So for example, you may end up working with a recruiting agency in Japan, and you're trying to work with that same firm in the US, and you're handed off to various teams. You have to re tell your story. So there's a lot of kind of dissonance in the whole brand, building the competency, hiring one of the things that we are pretty good at, I mean, it's probably one of our points of differentiation and our expertise, is we almost have a fluid P and L approach, right? You can speak to us. I'm based in a pack. Often I have companies who come to me and say, Hey, we're looking to hire in the US, and we sort of fluidly work within the team to kind of make sure that that brand, that company story, goes across, and we often manage those searches as well. So you know, the stats you're seeing here, over 114 build out. And the key thing here is we're not just always just hiring that one person you've asked us to do. We're building that foundation for the the next hires. So really, it's a team build approach, as opposed to a transactional

Joe Mullings  6:22  
and we refer to commercial, we refer to commercial as anything front of the house. So that could be clinical clinical development, clinical trial could be your first go to market, your market development person and or your sales person. So that when we say commercial build outs, we refer to that as front of the house.

Ajay Nair  6:43  
So some strategic foundations for market entry. Joe shared some of this in his in his talk earlier today. But I think the key message here, and probably again, from experience, extrapolating one of the things that we see a lot in international bills, especially as you come to the US, often structural. So what we have in the in the last box, they're saying early operational decisions. These are things that are critical to hiring people, and often companies are thinking of this very late in the game. For example, a professional employment organization, I you don't have an entity in the US, or you don't have an entity that can host employees in the US. You don't have an entity location. You haven't figured out your org design. What does your organization in the US look like if it's a contract manufacturing you haven't identified who those partners are. A lot of this market sensitization and readiness to host individuals need to be done ahead of time, and when you start doing it at the very end, often we'll see clients who have they've gone through offer stage. Sometimes some offer has been accepted. None of that logistics, none of that structural stuff, has been thought out. And especially bringing you know, hiring people in the US Americans are a slightly opinionated group. I can say that they they see that onboarding process to be a reflection of company culture. Joe,

Joe Mullings  8:11  
yeah, and that's true. Market mapping on salaries is also really important. So usually, when organizations will come to us, they'll say, we want to hire X. And invariably, I don't know if there's a country that has a higher expectations on compensation than the US, so it's always thicker shock, whether it's recently Switzerland, India, Australia, Israel, you usually are way off the mark. You could hire somebody for the money you want to pay, but it's not going to be the person that's going to outperform for you. So the first thing you should do when you get into that US market is your partner should be able to do a market mapping of the talent, what's called avatars of who you would potentially want to hire, the LinkedIn profiles for those people and their current salary ranges now you've got a good bearing on and I can guarantee you, it's not going to map up against what you told your venture capitalists or your or your investors on what it's going to cost you to come to market in the US never happens. So that's what you've got to do first. You've got to do a market mapping survey, and your partner again, if it's us, fantastic. If it's not, this should be on your to do list. Will you do a market mapping survey? Survey for the top 30 people? I should consider for this their LinkedIn profiles, potentially their resumes, and also what their comp branches are. Now you'll be able to put an offer out, or at least a package out in the marketplace that will attract the best person in market. And as AJ mentioned, oftentimes the European APAC, they want to be on the East Coast for time zone differences. Most of the time, they usually want to be in Florida, Texas, for whatever reason, they've got to be incorporated, and you've got to have all your answers up front. And we'll go into a couple items later on, the comp package and Ben. Fits that if you don't have that established, tightened right up front, and you think you're going to scramble at the end, you're probably going to lose it due to somebody in their mind going home to their SIG other. Hey, I'm looking at this job, looking at this opportunity, and it's located out of Singapore, but I'm going to be at first us. You know what the question is, the SIG others is insurance benefits, how you're gonna get reimbursed for your credit card every month, travel, etc, and if you don't have those answers, there's doubt that's gonna infiltrate that person's mind. So you've gotta have all that done beforehand.

Ajay Nair  10:36  
So yeah, just building on what Joe said, Right? Oftentimes, what we see with clients who are looking to hire their very, very first individuals in the US often seem to only think through base salary and bonus as kind of the two levers, but really building on what Joe has said, you know, depending on where you're pulling those individuals from, if they're leadership roles, there are corporate performance bonuses if you're in commercial roles field, individuals, often as people are walking off a base commission, type of structure in a territory that they've built over time. Now you're asking somebody to step off and create and take risk the first year guarantee is extremely important. Or some sort of step off mechanism where reps feel comfortable the time it takes to build your business. They have that, that soft landing commissions, you know, capped and uncapped. This is something important to kind of really understand in the US. If someone's taking coming from a comfortable base bonus commission type of structure, they're very excited to come into an uncapped scenario, but people have to really understand what that means on both sides of the fence. Right stock options for 1k I think the last I'll summarize this as don't make benefits and afterthought and don't make the frills and afterthought, because these are negotiating levers for top talent,

Joe Mullings  12:02  
yeah, and one of the items on there for 1k is really important, because in the US, you know, it's little bit of a retirement mechanism, and nearly every executive will take advantage of that, and they will absolutely tap that onto the back end of the salary expectations of while I'm leaving about $22,000 On the table, on that, that math is always going to come through on the back end of that. And per AJ, is point the first year guarantee. So if you're, if you're what's called a commercial person who is actually developing a market for you, and depending on the sales cycle of your product, you so obviously that's going to matter too. So if you're selling a nine month sales cycle, you've got to make sure that you're offering a 12 month guarantee on salary, and that's that's tough, and that's got to be in your business plan to your investors up front, because you don't want to have to go back and have to sort of propose that at the 11th Hour, which then stretches out the process. So that guarantee is very, very important, and you've got to generally match where, again, on the sales side, where that sales person is, and most of the time, depending on what you're selling at a VP level. And we'll talk about that. We didn't go into titles actually in this presentation. If you want to hire a VP, hire a director. If you want to hire a chief revenue officer, hire a VP. Few reasons, but two primary reasons is, the lower you go, the harder they're going to work and grind it out. And if somebody is insisting on having a VP title, you can let them earn it and tell them you're not going to hire a VP in their place unless they don't execute second they're going to go and they're going to look at comp levels in the US, a VP of sales is going to probably make 20 to 25% more than a director. So they're going to, they're going to look for a comp package relative to the title they're coming into, and generally an emerging tech company or a startup company, you need somebody who's going to be a player coach all the time, first in, first in the market. You don't need an executive, so to speak. And I mean that almost in a derogatory statement, you need somebody who's going to do something. So what you need is you need a hardcore player coach who's going to be out there and be your number one salesperson, or you're number one, driving your clinical trials, on site selection, patient recruitment, and doing all of the field work, if you will, that typically they wouldn't want to do and you want to scare the people that way as well. Let's pause for a second. Any questions in any of that so far, challenges, further information. Okay, I opened up with this one because this is the one that gets everybody's attention. These the reflection points of success or failure most of the time your clinical trial hire the team or the sales team, because you don't get a clear signal for six to 12 months. So, you know, I I got this. One in the wrong order, because you got to get it more right than wrong. You'll never get it perfect, but you want to at least get it directionally, you know, on the target. So

Ajay Nair  15:10  
this is an area that I'm I'm very, very passionate about, but also because I've lived and worked in multiple countries, I've hired in multiple countries, and now I get to do it on the recruitment side, and I often see not just my own experiences projected on others, but I often see clients going through the struggles as well and hired individuals as well. I mean, it goes both ways, right? So we've just highlighted a few things to think about. The premise is the company's founding culture is your home culture. As you're expanding to other countries, you now need to think about that culture as well relative to yours, right? Often we'll have clients who you know, countries like India, China, Australia, even Australia like you think, Oh, we both speak English, sort of, but Australians, you know, they'll come to the US, and they'll go, whoa. Americans are really aggressive, and they really want these decisions made super fast. So you've got to have that acuity. You've got to have that awareness of what's our culture and what's the culture of the individuals that we're trying to bring on board, especially when you're building the first teams, because that's your foundational culture in that in that new country, right? So just to highlight some speed to decisions, this is just for your own thought process and provocation, but us, speed to decisions are a lot quicker, and especially on commercial levels. They want answers quick and so top management needs to be able to respond to those things. And by the way, as Joe's alluded to earlier, this begins right at the interview process. Right? It's because I can tell you individuals who are going through the interview process when they see slow speed to decisions that reflects a lot on Okay, is this how it's going to be all the time so sweet to decision is something that you need to think about on both sides of the pond. Communication styles, some cultures a lot direct versus other cultures tend to be more circular, right? And so again, a big consideration for us hiring is how individuals in the US will come in and by the way, this is different within regions in the US, right? Those of you who work and live in the US know what I'm talking about, East Coasters versus west coasters. He's an east coaster. I'm a West coaster. So, you know, we can dial it up and dial it down, but there are different communication styles. Joe, you mind if I run through, yeah, please do individualistic versus collectivistic. Now, in Asia, you'll deal with a lot of collectivistic culture, right? A lot of this is what the team wants. You know, we really need to kind of think, collect collectively. Even in Australia, there is a phrase that's called the tall poppy syndrome, right? You don't want to be the individual that sticks out and wants everything now in the US culturally, sometimes that's rewarded. You are the driver. You're the entrepreneur. You're the guy, you know, guy or gal, setting up the business. So you really have to think through of the people you hire. What are the types of culture, and you got to permeate that into the culture of the company as you're trying to set up these teams pace. I think we can kind of allude to it and hierarchy. I mean, in Asia, hierarchy equals tenure, equals achievements, promotions, et cetera. In countries like the US, it's real metrics, it's performance, it's what you've set up. Sometimes it's on a quarterly basis or a yearly basis, is what people are reacting to. So we've just put this up here in terms of home culture versus what we call hiring culture to be thoughtful about the things that you need to be thinking about.

Joe Mullings  18:58  
Yeah, and I take this a step further. And again, I'm from New York, and as AJ inferred, I'm a little more forward than most people, but it's based on experience. And he talked about region, so I do a lot of work with Israel, and my Israeli founders all the time will always worry about, can this person deal with an Israeli culture and the demands required, and the communication style and the forwardness and the the ability to have a very animated discussion and still hug each other when it's over. Where, if you take somebody from New York to do that, you know you're you're going to misinterpret that as disrespectful. But you know, in certain cultures, the behavior you have to you have to accommodate, is the person you're hiring in the US, and you need somebody to keep you honest. Is the person you're hiring in the US going to be tolerable of our culture and be able to communicate with it, because. If you don't match that, I'm not looking for you to match the US culture. I'm looking for you to select your first three to five people that will be able to deal with your culture. So when I hire for a French startup, I need a very specific culture there. Israeli startup, very specific culture. India startup, very specific culture. Even the UK, believe it or not, very specific culture. And if you get that wrong, you have this quiet dissonance that starts, starts, starts. You'll start to see communication drop off. You'll start to see lack of performance, but you'll see it way too late, because you're not there looking at it. So I strongly recommend that you bring a third party in to be the the conscience that stands between the culture that you have that started this company, that still is going to come into the US and these first three to five people are going to be your change agents that is going to allow both cultures to outperform together. But if you don't get it right in those first couple that gets spread and almost side chatter, that is going to create an us versus them, and it happens all the time in every single US company I've ever bought to to a US company I brought to the US. So you need somebody in the middle there who's going to challenge you in that area, because too many times, just like, Yeah, they'll be fine. We went out to dinner with them. They seem like they could fit us. And that's where a big miss occurs. Okay,

Ajay Nair  21:42  
I'll just add maybe two, two quick points. One is, you know, some cultures start with price or salary first, and when you hire in the US, that is not a good practice. When you start talking to people, and it happens, right? People will start interview conversations with, Hey, how are you? How much do you make? Or they'll say, this is our budget for the role. Right away, you've disenfranchise the individual you're speaking to, right? Versus a hey, I want to get to know you. What have you done? Tell me about your accomplishments. Tell me what your where your compensation is at. Right? Now, it's a much more sort of looser or passive, or way of kind of asking those kinds of questions, right? And the second comment I wanted to make is, especially with hiring in the US, from an international perspective, US employees, especially, you know, those who have been successful very much subscribe to a do what you say mentality. And as you're an international client, you're kind of coming into the market, especially when you have type a commercial individuals, if you say you're going to do something, I launch a product, you're going to invest in the country, you're going to grow the team, you're promising someone a next metric increment. At some point you have to deliver these sorts of things, right? Because with that remoteness, with the distance from you hiring to where home office is, to Joe's point, more of that dissonance that's created from you're not delivering on your promises, when your employees remote start going quiet, they're shopping for jobs, right? So these are just some things to think about with a global sort of perspective. Yuval,

Audience Question  23:24  
I think you're very correct about saying that you have to have a brief stress between the phone company and the local management wise, or it does work. Thank you very much. But you also have to add the point that you have to do it on the board of directors, and that's a very critical issue, because both of directors, they don't understand the other culture, bring the company or bring the the joint venture, whatever structure it is, into trouble. So my advice to, if I may, to who, to whoever want to do this kind of building companies or move or building bridges towards the other, to towards the US, a priori, to create a mixed bold so in the board of directors, there'll be half of the local and half of, let's call it the target country, in this case, us, because without the board being synchronized with this, everything you did wouldn't

Joe Mullings  24:29  
work. Yeah, and you all brings up a really good point. I mean, in a perfect world, if you could have, if you have one country, having half the board directors in the other, that's a that's a dream world. But if you're interviewing for a job, you and you're first in country. I don't care what country it is, if you you want to see, is this your first entity, or your investors first entity in that region? Because they're just not going to understand the small nuances that are going to matter in that region. And so you know this is more about you hiring, but if you're interviewing, you want to find out, is this your first entity ever in this and tell me about that, right? And then you want to also interview the board, and the board should also be expected to be interviewed by that that person, not them interviewing the person, right? That's really, important, because you want that person to be successful. So thank you, Bob for that. That's really important.

Audience Question 2  25:29  
Just any thoughts, given that probably a few of us, like me, are coming into the US with rather limited resources, shall we say, as a startup, thoughts on geographic coverage when it comes to spanning what is an enormous country geographically, and also, you know, population distribution wise, any, just any thoughts in terms of establishing commercial presence,

Joe Mullings  25:51  
yeah, so it really matters. I'll answer that first, and then AJ can chime in. It matters what the therapy is and what the function is, right? So if I'm doing orthopedics, I may want to be down in Florida, right? If I'm doing total knees or something like that. If I'm doing something in the vasculature, I may want to be in the heart attack belt, right, Alabama or Louisiana, you know, those areas. I definitely want east coast, because, again, depending on where we are, you know, it's, it's, it's, it depends on and then when you heat map the talent in the US medical device. But if your commercial sales, it doesn't matter that much, because nearly all your commercial sales people are remote, right? So if we're going to keep this to the commercial end, I would really index around nearest airport. What therapy you selling, where are your call points if you're running clinical trials, obviously you want the person near those clinical trials? And I'll say this, and I've said it in public domain, I would never hire a West coaster. They don't work hard enough, right? They spend way too much time doing soft things. I would hire an East Coast person, or northeast person, soft things, hacky sack and pizza parties and walking their dogs and wall climbing and 

Ajay Nair  27:00  
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, 

Joe Mullings  27:01  
surfing. Yeah, yeah. But I would hire an East Coast person. That's it.

Ajay Nair  27:07  
Unless you go so far west, you're in Australia, then you're then you're, all right, you're almost an east coaster. But

Joe Mullings  27:12  
culturally too, you know, if you get people in New England, they're going to work harder than, you know, people in the Bay Area, they just do. They might not be smarter, but they're going to work harder. So some of that region, some, I'm just going to tell you the truth. I mean, this is after 9000 placements, and probably 9000 I missed. That's the way that the workforce is, yeah.

Ajay Nair  27:34  
I mean, look, I'll just go back to just,

Joe Mullings  27:38  
you can't deny it, I left.

Ajay Nair  27:41  
It really goes back to mapping, right? Like you've got a this, I would say there's to Joe's earlier point. There's two inflection points, the clinical, the commercial. And a lot of times we work with clients who are moving into clinical stage, so pivotal studies and they already have a sense of where are they doing clinical trials at so if they're at the clinical stage, we're looking at people who can cover those trials and cover those studies. But when it comes to commercial, we have much more leeway, because we know individuals can cover large territories. But again, we're looking at density. We're looking at mapping. We're trying to figure out where the most procedures are often. We're looking at who are the right KOLs that need that kind of coverage, right? So you take all these factors in, and it really goes back to, if you're working with a partner who understands these elements, they'll do that with you. They're going to share and align your data with you, going, what do you know about the region? And here's, here are our thoughts of the of the region. Here's where we think you should hire people. So it's a, it's a partner effort,

Joe Mullings  28:43  
excellent. Or is that the last one? That is the last site? Okay,

Audience Question 3  28:50  
question. So I'm CEO of a Singapore startup, and I understand the US and market dynamics fairly well in the vascular space. And I'm just kind of curious about your thoughts. You know, for a foreign startup coming to the US, if you you know your team, you've been working on the your technology for the last five to 10 years. You devoted your waking, every waking moment of life, to it. And then there's the perspective from the any investor that's trying to fund your move to the United States in order to enter the US market. Is, hey, if I'm going to invest 30, $40 million for you to launch a product in the US, I really rather have a US centric team, you know, or somebody who's been been in one of the big corporates, Boston Scientific, Abbot and so forth, in order to lead the team. This is a sort of, sort of, you know, there's a tension there, right between the original founding team and then the team that maybe the investors need to see to really, really launch. How have you seen this dynamic play out? And any advice and thoughts?

Joe Mullings  29:58  
Yeah, it's a, it's a complex. Question, and it's, look o US companies love headlines, and hiring out of a strategic is hiring a headline, and it's not necessarily hiring a doer. Generally, when you're at one of the large strategics, you want to know what great looks like, but then you want somebody who's moved to an emerging tech startup and has lived that world because you don't want that first dose of reality at your expense if you're a startup. So that's number one. Number two, it's a point. AJ, and I didn't touch on but I'm glad you brought it up. One of the most challenging parts is you have your startup team in Singapore and Israel, wherever it is, and that's their baby, and now they send that baby overseas, especially the engineers, and now that baby's overseas. And what do engineers not want to be told that their baby's ugly? And so when you send that baby overseas, and you have to adjust that technology, because you're learning in the market there, it comes back. That's where that US person needs to have that other person in the home country, that they talk together. First you need to have that intermediary. If you allow that US person, no matter how gifted they are, to talk directly back to the non interpreter, you're going to end up having these layers and layers of dissonance occur over time. So I just I didn't want that to go by. But I don't think I would hire if I was coming o us to the US. I would not be hiring headlines. I would not be hiring pedigree. I would be hiring somebody who proved that they could take a product and start at the bottom of the office building and work their way up to the top of the office building in that therapeutic specialty, knows the KOLs. They may not be the prettiest person, but they will act because this that's not going to be the person that takes you to your acquisition. Most likely either. Keep that in mind, you're going to trade out that lead commercial person by the time you start to get from zero to 10 million. That's the hardest pathway. Zero to 10 million on that early adoption, once you get the flywheel going, you may look at something different, which is why I said earlier, hire a director, a director still knows how to work, and a director out of a startup who understands that therapy. So that's what I would say to that. Yeah.

Ajay Nair  32:25  
And all I was gonna add is those first two to three years of your presence in that country, assuming the US is so critical that if you're bringing someone who's already a headliner or a C level, or a, let's say, a VP level. They're looking for their first CEO gig. So they're using this opportunity as a launch pad, right? And that's not the right commitment you want in someone in that first role, yeah? Again,

Joe Mullings  32:53  
you don't want their first dose of adversity at your expense. You know? I have, I think I could probably count less than five CEOs that I've taken from a large strategic down to a startup, which is our primary business, that were successful. That's a that's a very small number. They're greatly skilled, but not at what's required hand to hand combat every single day. It just doesn't happen very often. So we've got just a couple minutes left. Any other questions on that outlier? Questions, anything at all

Audience Question  33:34  
you all want to that you have to take into account, is a phone company going to trying to go to the United States. What's the purpose? Why they go? They may be they may don't need the company. They may need a distributor, if it's only for distribution. So that's another type of person you want to hire. You may want to move the whole company in the future to the US, to make the headquarters another totally different qualification. So I would say before even you move, you have to think why you want to do it, what's your purpose, and based on this, you can select the right person. And I think that has to be emphasized to whoever tried to go there.

Joe Mullings  34:16  
And that's a great point. As AJ mentioned, our initial intake call with our clients talks nothing about the position. It usually talks about got a question here you can ask them for the mic. The initial intake call is tell me about what you're trying to get done, right? People. Hire people to solve problems. So we want to understand, why are you coming here? Why do you think you have to come here? What is your goal? What are those deliverables look like in the first 12 months, and odds are, you probably need some major readjustment and and it's not out of the ordinary for somebody want to come in. They'll meet with us and they'll say, oh shit, let us get back to you. And six months later, they'll come back to us and say, Okay, we're ready to go now, and they're adjust. Right? So that's a really good point as well.

Ajay Nair  35:02  
There's, there's a flip side to that as well, right? I mean, we represent clients, and we need to know the why. We absolutely need to know the why, but at the same time the individuals were screening and vetting for you, we need to know their why, right? So the more we know about why you're coming to the US. What's your purpose? What are you trying to achieve? Fundamentally, what are you looking to build? What's the culture, what's what are you looking for in this person? We then extremely vet the individuals who were presenting to go, why are you coming to this role, right? Is this a paycheck? Is this a next bump, or what's the underlying passion? So, so it goes both ways for us to try and vet that. I

Audience Question 4  35:43  
Yeah, do you have any thoughts on equity and options, stock options in particular, relative to, you know, experience and, you know, hierarchy in terms of the role versus stage and size of the startup. Just any thoughts on that at all?

Ajay Nair  36:05  
Yeah, okay, good. Yeah. I mean, look, I think depending on where you're at in the stage of your company, and as you're bringing individuals to what are ascension roles, equity always makes it attractive. But you know, we also try to vet what stage and what individual you're trying to bring into the company. For example, if you're bringing a senior manager or a senior director, sometimes those individuals, if they're coming from commercial businesses, may not understand the equity story. However, if you've got someone who's done a commercial leadership role in a startup, they understand the value of that equity. So, so I think, you know, yes, on both sides, we talk in the clients, I'd say, give us a sense of what are all of the options that you are willing to present, and how is it measured? Is also important, right? Because when we talk to individuals, we inevitably get asked, What's the vesting period? What's the value, what are the milestones, things of that? So we try to really understand that story, but at the same time, we're trying to present it to the right people so that it actually sticks. Because if you're bringing in the wrong person who doesn't understand that kind of metric, honestly, there's no stickiness factor there. Yeah, and

Joe Mullings  37:15  
the equity is just one of the levers that we talk about, right? There's multiple levers when people make a career decision. One is cash, one is equity, one is title, one is role, responsibility, influence, etc. So there's a number of levers in there. We're also quite candid with people. And I always tell people, I said, Listen, the odds of you cashing in on this a meaningful sort of economic opportunity in your in your lifetime is remote, if you statistically look at it. So you need to be looking at this from a career development perspective. You need to be looking at this as cash compensation on an annual basis. And if there's a transaction that occurs during the time that you're there, fantastic. And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't ask for equity and that there and I, and I say that to the client too, because the clients too many, too many times say, I know market for this position is 250 on a base and 200 and a bonus, but we want somebody who's interested in building something right. And it's a fair statement, but they're not in love with your company, yet you are right, and that gets lost. Sometimes it's like, you can't ask me to love your company day one, and have me bet my standard of living on that. So, you know, you can go around this room. Anybody who's been in a startup here, how many of you cash a check larger than seven figures? There you go. Okay, so, so while the equity is important, it's not something that we ask people, which is why we have a, you know, a premier name in the business. It's not something that we ask people to bet on. It's a mindset. Equity represents a mindset and the type of people you're going to go to work for. Equity represents people who are wing walkers and people who will take chances. That's what it represents. It doesn't represent somebody who's chasing money. It represents a culture and a maniacal drive that they're going to work, wake up every day and ride their bicycle, drive their car and chew off their left arm for this vision, and if I happen to cash a check, all the better. But that's what we like about the equity. Nobody's ever cashed a check in this room that's been meaningful, and that's just a good sampling size, I think we're out of time. Thank you very much. 

Ajay Nair  39:26  
Thank you everyone.

Joe Mullings  39:26  
Appreciate the time.