Hiring is one of the toughest challenges startups face in today’s global economy. They are competing for talent not only against “name brand” companies, but also the incredibly rich and robust startups from around the world. Our guest today has seen that struggle both as an operator and now as an investor, Michele Delcambre , is the operations partner at Felicis Ventures , one of the greatest venture firms to form in the last decade. Prior to Felicis, she led HR and Talent divisions at some of the fastest-growing technology companies like Atlassian, Okta, Databricks, and Stripe. This is a great conversation with a ton of insight for founders at all levels. About Michelle Delcambre: Michelle is an Operating Partner at Felicis and leads Talent and People focused initiatives. In this role, Michelle leverages over a decade of experience in high-growth companies to advise and assist companies across the portfolio on their People and Talent best practices. Prior to joining Felicis, Michelle led Talent and People Operations functions for a number of successful technology companies building and scaling hiring practices, People strategy, and People technology solutions during incredible growth periods. Michelle has seen various stages of scale, as the first US-based recruiting leader for Atlassian scaling from a few dozen to a few hundred employees, and growing organizations from 500-2,000 as the Head of Talent at Okta through their IPO. Additionally, she helped Stripe to operationalize the People and Recruiting functions as they scaled from >2,000 to over 5,000 employees. Michelle is a native of Louisiana and attended Michigan State University. A word from our sponsor: At Ripple, we manage all of our fund expenses and employee credit cards using Jeeves.  The team at Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at anytime. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or to pay any setup or monthly SaaS fees. Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cash back on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part is Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days in any currency you want, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month. Jeeves also recently launched its Jeeves Growth and Working Capital initiative for startups and fast-growing companies to enable more financial freedom for companies. The best thing of all is that Jeeves is live in  24 countries including Canada, US and many other countries around the world. Jeeves truly offers the best all-in-one expense management corporate card program for all startups especially the ones at Ripple and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to officially partner with them. Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of our Tank Talks special with a‍ $250 statement credit after the first $2,500 in spend or a $500 statement credit after the first $5000 in spend. Lastly, all Jeeves cardholders receive access to their Lounge Pass program and access to over 1300 airports globally. Visit tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to learn more. In this episode we discuss: 02:41 Michelle’s journey into Talent/HR 04:20 How Michelle’s view on talent was shaped by her time at Atlassian 06:22 Lessons she learned from her time at Zenefits 09:56 How she helped Stripe transition to remote work during the pandemic 12:16 What resources needed to shift when Stripe went remote 12:59 How Stripe’s culture survived and thrived during the pandemic 14:31 Why remote work has increased the available talent pool and how startups can win the war for talent 18:40 Why good employees leave companies and how remote-only or in-office only is more complicated 20:31 Policies that founders should consider to attract talent 24:44 Why Gen Z wants in office to find mentorship 26:50 How DEI efforts help companies become stronger 29:25 The use of data in recruiting and HR 30:48 Tools Michelle recommends to track HR data 31:30 How to build a talent pipeline 33:18 Common mistakes that hiring managers make 36:15 Balancing moving candidates through the pipeline versus rushing bad candidates into a role 38:37 Michelle’s role at Felicis and how she helps its portfolio Fast Favorites: 🎙- Favorite Podcast: The Trojan Horse Affair , Things You’re Wrong About   📰- Favorite Newsletter/Blog: The Tedium 📲- Favorite Tech Gadget: Apple Watch 📈-  Favorite New Trend: Tiny library rooms 📚- Favorite Book: To Kill A Mockingbird , The Changing World Order 🤔 - Favorite Life Lesson: All people have more in common than you think