Hibob: Bringing the Winds of Change to HR tech
My professional decisions have always been about the equilibrium point of impact, with the goal of touching people’s lives and changing them for the better.
Investing in ventures, for me, meant making sure that the right companies received the right amount of funding. By ‘right,’ I mean those that had the potential to scale quickly, provide exciting and professional growth opportunities, stimulate the economy and change the way we live and work for the better. With my entrepreneurial spirit and execution-oriented mind, I promised myself that if I happened to come across or think of an idea myself that gets me excited enough to believe I can impact people for the better, I will follow my heart and pursue it. This led me to join Hibob, a startup with the mission of putting people first.
People are always the secret sauce
The future of any business is reliant on its people, a group that becomes a value-generating asset with the right guidance and attention. The people who make up the company are the building blocks that comprise its DNA. It’s no secret that the success of a company is dependent on the company’s ability to harness the right group of people that are not only talented but are also a good fit for its goals, aspirations, and vision.
The intersectionality of theory vs. reality drove my decisions as a VC investor. I constantly had to measure and evaluate the intangible elements that set a company up for success. Factors such as market size, industry positioning, founder vision, go-to-market strategy, and funding all have the ability to make or break a startup.
Nevertheless, the leading success indicator has always been around the people and company culture, including the attention given by leadership and individual fit to the company roadmap and goals. For Israeli-based companies that seek business globally, minding cultural gaps is key. Hence, my focus (on top of other considerations), often came back to the question, “Is this the right team to take this ship across the ocean?”
In today’s ever-changing world of work, this question is critical when it comes to building a team, managing individuals, and ultimately retaining top talent. Considering employment experience alone only provides half of the picture. Just like deriving conclusions from your team’s performance reviews without knowing what other professional or personal events took place during the performance period, these practices are as effective as trying to find your way in the dark.
Understanding who your people are outside of work, what makes them tick, and what meaningful relationships they have in and outside of the office, is not only essential when evaluating their fit to the company’s DNA, but also offers a clear assessment of your ability to motivate and retain them.
The story of people — just like in many other industries — is in the data.
How tech can take the bias out of people management
Grasping the full picture of your team, including soft skills, network within the company, and the correlation between events and people’s happiness at work, is a basic principle at bob. In my time here, I have come across three main resistances that I would like to challenge here.
- Resistance #1: “I already know my people well enough”
Some managers might respond with the notion that they know their people well and therefore don’t need a fancy, beautiful platform for engagement. While this might be true in a small company of 30–50 people, it doesn’t scale. In order for company leaders to know who their top talent is and in which order, they’ll need help. In today’s tech-savvy world, the salvation has repeatedly derived from software solutions that allow for agility and scale.
2. Resistance #2: “I don’t need new data to make decisions”
We’re humans who are biased by design. Crossing data points can reveal insights that are gems when it comes to making management decisions regarding your teams, especially at scale.
3. Resistance #3: “People-related managerial decisions are instinctual, they don’t require data and analytics”
A dear friend of mine used to say, “I can’t die the only one who knows the company passwords.” This reminds me of how we so often lose track of the reasoning behind many important decisions mainly because there’s no record of the soft-sentimental basis for taking them. Having the opinion about your team in your mind or gut is not nearly as smart, collaborative nor scalable as having it arranged, sliced and diced in your system of record — detached from a specific individual’s attention and time, available and at any given point in time. Add data analysis capabilities to that — that’s where you’ll find bob. A system that preserves the soft data, not only hard metrics.
How to identify spaceships like Hibob
When I took part in investing in Brodmann17, a visual deep learning company that has detection capabilities akin to a spaceship compared to the existing bicycles in the market, I was asked, “Why does the world need Brodmann17? It’ll do just fine with simple computer vision classification capabilities.” I responded by explaining that humanity did just fine with old bulky screen boxes that we used to call TVs and computers. Yet, when there’s a new standard in a market, the world aligns. The examples are endless. I see Hibob as the spaceship of people management.
Spaceships are complicated to build, expensive to put together, and require a team of bright, highly skilled astronauts to fly them — yet they are the only ones capable of reaching the moon.
In the same manner, Hibob brings a new standard to its industry of people management. The company brings managers and executives together to collaborate with People & Culture leaders and employees in an aim to change the status quo. Our goal is to allow different stakeholders to have the holistic people picture in front of them when taking proactive actions in managing them. People are not an HR ‘problem,’ they are the business unit’s biggest asset, and that’s the way they should be treated. Strong tech power provides support for every managerial decision and offers a digital experience that gives them the notion of success in their work.
