Recruit, retain, resign, re-skill, repeat

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked:

How has the great resignation changed the way startups hire?

The conversation started with defining the Great Resignation and sharing numbers to back the sentiment that everyone can’t stop talking about. As always, the flowed to naturally care more about the employees within startups, and their feelings, than employers and the power they’ve traditionally sat atop. 

To check our ‘what about VC’ box, we talked through what startups are facing today in terms of a labor market, how it has changed, and how they might be able to compete with big-tech’s big dollars. After all, is any company going to be able to beat Meta on comp? Probably not.

Alex thinks VCs are the new recruiters, which will help startups some. From the other angle — putting labor in our remit and not capital, for once — Natasha wants to ditch her 9-5 to represent Shopify employees, it seems. We won’t let her, naturally.

Closing, it appears that the forces driving more venture capital into early-stage companies are not too far from the causes of the labor shortage. Everyone is looking for return, either on their labor, or their capital. And that means a tight hiring market, and picky workers.

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.