🚀 Hiring Sprint: How To Build a Killer Team | ft. ex airbnb, loom, ebay, onfido
Brought you in partnership with Yotewo - The Fastest Way to Hire the Right IT Talent
Yotewo links you with top IT professionals who effortlessly blend into your team and accelerate success.
💥 Featuring:
🔊 Danny (ex- Head of Ops @ Airbnb UK, Senior Analyst @ eBay) on assembling your early GTM team
🔊 Exited Founding Engineer on how to hire your first engineers
🔊 First CS hire at Loom on launching a CS function from scratch
🧠 ZeShaan (ex-Onfido) — scaled Onfido ($650M exit) from 50 to 250 people as Director of Talent. He’ll be building your end-to-end hiring playbook.
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💰 Loads of VCs from the Gen Z VC community joining us afterwards for a sunset rooftop party.
These are the folks who’ve built the teams behind some of the best-known tech products.
Now they’re helping you build yours.
Hiring is Hard.
If “start hiring” is on your to-do list, but you’re not sure where to start—you’re not alone. Hiring isn’t just about filling seats. It’s about building a team that can take your startup to the next level without slowing you down.
From Funding to Next Hires is a hands-on sprint designed for founders ready to hire smarter, faster, and with way more confidence.
By the end, you’ll walk away with a complete, ready-to-use Hiring Playbook.
THE AGENDA
09:00 - Arrive
🔍 Workshop 1 – Hiring Deep Dive with Danny
09:30 – 11:00
You’ll hear from the co-founders of a stealth startup for early-stage hires:
Danny (ex-Airbnb | ex-ebay) on building your early GTM team
The founding engineer of an exited AI-first startup (EF6) on how to hire your first engineers
The first customer-facing hire at Loom on launching a CS function from scratch
🔍 Workshops 2-4 – Sprint Time!
Delivered by ZeShaan who scaled Onfido ($650M valuation) from 50-250 people worldwide as Director of Talent.
🛠 Module 1: People Strategy & Planning
11:20 – 12:30
A rapid diagnostic session to uncover why early hiring so often misfires. You’ll learn how People Debt creeps in when a company scales without a workforce plan, and how to swap reactive “fill-a-seat” thinking for strategic, goal-backed hiring.
Topics Covered:
People Debt and its hidden cost
Founder’s dilemma: strategic vs reactive hiring
The three operating lenses: WFM, WFO, WFP
The Seven Rights of workforce planning
Live pain-point mapping on your own company
🎯 Outcomes:
Recognise the early warning signs of People Debt
Link every future hire to a concrete business goal
Identify which “Right” (capability, shape, size, etc.) you’re missing now
Walk away with a clear view of the people gaps most likely to block your next milestone
🧱 Module 2: Role Prioritisation & Job Specs
13:30 – 15:00
Turn strategy into action. You’ll triage every gap with the “Optimise-or-Hire?” checklist, decide which roles truly matter this quarter, place them on a four-quarter timeline, and write a concise, outcome-driven job description using a structured model.
Topics Covered:
Align hiring with a single milestone
Map real workstreams behind that goal
“Optimise-or-Hire?” decision tree
Must-Have Nice-to-Have Reconsider map
Quarterly sequencing timeline
Scoping a role
🎯 Outcomes:
A prioritised hiring roadmap, sequenced over the next four quarters
A lean, evidence-based decision process for every future gap
One fully-scoped job spec ready to post tonight
🤝 Module 3: Interviewing, Selection & Onboarding
15:15 – 17:15
Build a lightweight, repeatable hiring system. You’ll translate your B T S E R bullets into a four-level assessment rubric, design a four-stage funnel that runs in ten days or less, draft high-signal interview questions, and finish with a 30-60-90 onboarding plan that protects retention.
Topics Covered:
Constructing an assesment rubric
Designing a lean, four-stage hiring funnel
Writing signal-rich interview questions
Peer-testing questions
Building a 30-60-90 onboarding runway
🎯 Outcome:
A clear, bias-light rubric and scorecard everyone can use
An interview script mapped exactly to the rubric—no wasted questions
A time-boxed funnel with owners, dates and decision points
An onboarding plan that gets your new hire productive—and keeps them
🤝 Module 4: Playbook Assembly & Wrap-Up
17:15 - 18:00
Compile your Hiring Playbook
Pair share: your biggest mindset shift?
Group Q&A
✅ By 18:00, You’ll Have:
📊 A Prioritised Hiring Roadmap
📝 A High-Impact Job Spec built using systematic logic
🧠 A four-level assessment rubric + interview script
📅 A 30-60-90 Day Onboarding Strategy
🔄 A Repeatable, Startup-Proof Hiring Framework
PLUG OUT | Golden Hour ☀️ with Gen Z VCs
18:00 - 20:00
Rooftop. Sunset. DJs. Food. Drinks.
Founders + VCs
Vibes on vibes.