The Importance of Talent
At Framework, our mission is to help visionary entrepreneurs build and scale world-class companies. We believe that “a Great Company is a great place with GREAT PEOPLE.” Without great people, it is really only a place. When looking to invest in a company, we begin with the entrepreneur and their team as it is one of the four core principles we founded the firm on. As such, we are excited to announce our first hire on the investment team since our Fund’s first close in December: Shradha Mittal — Head of Talent. As the Head of Talent, Shradha’s mission is to enable and work with our portfolio companies to reach their full potential, starting with the entrepreneur/founder.
How will she accomplish that seemingly momentous task?
At Framework, we want to help entrepreneurs identify factors that have brought financial and cultural success while mapping talent requirements to growth accelerants. We aim to leverage the proprietary tools, network, and knowledge we have built over our years of experience to arm management teams with the advice, mentorship, and when appropriate, coaching to not only build their teams but increase cohesiveness and augment the values that drive company culture.
This process while seemingly simple is actually fairly complicated. Why?
At our core, we human beings are a composite of behaviors, experiences, and personalities. As teams scale, they become more complex. The interplay of individual goals and objectives needs to blend with the overall objectives of a company, which in the context of a rapidly growing company can be a monumental task on its own . Alignment towards a common goal: solving customer problems can get lost or muddled. Our experience has shown us that the combination of a founding team with a seasoned talent executive can derisk this process through the use of data and experience to help reduce the challenges and complexity that come with scaling a team of A players. That is why we are so excited to have Shradha on our team! Shradha will work with our entrepreneurs to help them and their teams amplify their cultures in order to build high-calibre teams executing on a common vision.
Often, the job of a founder and an executive team can be lonely and filled with many emotional ups and downs. We believe that in order to make it through those events, human beings need someone to talk to. We believe in a safe place to explore those limitations and inhibitors that all of us have, that keep us from reaching our potential.
We believe so strongly that people — aka TALENT — is what makes or breaks a company that we have made it a core pillar of our investment process. To achieve success in our investments and for our entrepreneurs to be successful, we find it necessary to double and triple down on the most non-technical aspect of our jobs: PEOPLE! — WELCOME TO THE TEAM SHRADHA! She starts April 1, and we can’t wait.
P.S. Each week our team meets seasoned executives and great talent in the ecosystem who are interested in our portfolio companies. In addition to our Talent Growth Framework, we also enable an efficient and effective recruiting process by working with our companies to identify who in our network and/or database could make sense for any existing or future position. While complimenting any recruiting efforts, this engagement process can also derisk one of the largest tasks facing our companies: — hiring/recruiting and the science of “How to hire?”.
P.P.S. One Talent tool we think is cool and are starting to see more and more companies use is chocolatesoup.ca — Note that we are not an investor and have no financial interest in the company, we simply like what it helps companies do.
