#recognizing talent

[acebasefacespace-not-kai]

This man is every talented. 😆😆😆

[vinceliuzzi-blog-blog]

Empathy at Work

The Importance of Empathy in the Workplace When managers show empathy in the workplace, they improve their effectiveness and increase trust and collaboration on their teams. Empathetic leadership is an asset to organizations because it increases performance and culture. Why Empathy at Work Matters & How to Encourage Empathetic Leadership It’s critical for companies to hire and develop more…

Empathy at Work

[jbp4usv-blog]

JBP4USV: Recognizing Talent

As part of my quest to become the next Analyst at USV, I’ve started this campaign JBP 4 USV to provide the world (read USV) with some insight to the hard coding in my brain that makes me tick — the skills and differentiators that make me the ideal candidate.

“Recognizing Talent”

As with anything we do in life, practice makes perfect. The ability to recognize talent is no different. And there is no question that recognizing talent is a key skillset of a successful analyst at a VC firm.

The USV team has access to the best deals and entrepreneurs, and obviously they prefer to invest in these deals. But the reality is (and according to their own post) there is always going to be a significant portion of deals with first time entrepreneurs. And with first timers, the people and team are more important than the idea and product. This is where it's absolutely critical to recognize true talent from the pretenders.

I've worked for an international bank leading teams on multi-billion dollar projects. I became the go-to problem solver for failing projects, so I would have resources and people thrown at me from all angles to get things done. With a steady rotation of projects and people, I became quite competent at identifying the talent in very short time frames.

I've also been working on a startup of my own for the last 6 months and much of this time has consisted of searching for a talented technical co-founder (a common problem for us non-brogrammers). Speaking with countless developers and interviewing many, I've certainly put in my time at the free throw line.

There's also a natural instinct to it that I attribute to my attempt to surround myself with talent, study human psychology, and be a passionate people watcher :)