Top talent? Your future is our investment!
When it comes to recruiting, we put our money where our mouth is.
In his book Skin in the Game, Nassim Taleb argues that if you have no skin in the game, you shouldn’t be in the game in the first place: “If you give an opinion, and someone follows it, you are morally obligated to be, yourself, exposed to its consequences.”
Think about that as it relates to recruitment. How many talent agencies invest millions of dollars in the startups they work with? How many dedicate months or even years to a due diligence process to ensure the startup is a worthwhile partner? To wind up working with less than 0.1% of the startups that have engaged with them? How many reap the profits (if any at all) only after years of shared success?
Nice to meet you. We are Tamuz Vardi and Tal Bussel, a team consisting of a former financial controller (Tamuz) and a software developer (Tal) with absolutely no prior experience in recruitment or talent management. Zero. Tamuz is passionate about modeling data sets and finding unique ways to put all the pieces together to fit the puzzle. Tal is a creative entrepreneur and former elementary school basketball coach who learned to code in order to bring all his peculiar ideas to life.
But at Aleph, we pride ourselves on doing things differently. So now we run the Aleph A-List, Aleph’s talent agency that connects top talent to top Israeli startups within our portfolio. Israel’s high tech industry is flooded with tech companies, and the talent shortage has become a huge issue. If a company can’t fill a key position, it can delay them from moving forward and building and executing on their vision, and speed is a huge competitive advantage for a startup. In this world where top talent can choose to go anywhere, we believe that Aleph, acting as a trusted partner for both our startups and talent, can be an effective facilitator for bringing this talent to our portfolio companies.
If you’ve read any of our blogs, then you already know that when we invest in a company, we don’t merely write a check and walk away. Rather, we do everything we can to make our investment successful, from providing world class UX, branding and storytelling experience, to building a platform team to help with sales intros, follow-on funding and solving the talent challenge. Skin in the game.
When one of our companies hires someone we’ve introduced to them, we get no financial rewards. In fact, our intentions are clear from the outset: since we are measured solely by the value we provide to our startups, we simply want to help them hire the best candidate possible to get the job done and help move the company forward.
Our interests are similarly aligned with the talent we help to recruit. Looking for a job and investing in a startup are similar. We are trying to connect people with journeys, with visions and with their passions so they can pursue the career of their dreams. We take experience, skills, seniority and objectives into account. We want to help talent find a place where they can really make a difference, in a company that’s making an impact on the world. We’ve already done the due diligence — these companies have our stamp of approval.
Being a VC also means that our brand, our network and our relationships are our most important assets. Israel is a very small country with a very dense startup ecosystem. Randomality and optionality dictate that we never know where our next big thing will come from. We can’t afford to do anything other than our best.
At the end of the day, our value as a team is measured entirely by the value the new hire provides to the company, and vice versa. You do well, the company does well, we do well.
Our companies have great aspirations — making the world’s roads safer, making healthcare more accessible to the masses, creating idea machines, disrupting insurance — and our main goal is to help them move forward with these meaningful visions.
But they need people. And they need the right people in order to realize their visions to change the world. If you (or a friend!) are Aleph A-List material, check out our talent form and give us the chance to help you find your dream job.
