Alex McCall

If you're a startup Head of People without a comp philosophy, here's how to put one together instantly. Literally right now, let's go 👇 Don't let a comp philosophy overwhelm you. You already pay people, and you already do comp related things. Too often people don't realise they already have a starting point and they just need to write it down. Let's do it. • What percentile do you aim to pay, on average? • Do you use compensation benchmarking data? • If you do use pay data, what kinds of companies do you compare yourself to? • How often do you review peoples pay? • What are the ways in which someone gets a pay increase? • Do you have job levels (even rudimentary ones)? • Is pay tied to performance in some way? • Do we offer more than just base salaries (i.e. bonuses, health care etc.)? • How do you balance pay fairness? • Are there any laws you're aware of relating to peoples pay? Talk about how you adhere to them. Congrats, you have a comp process. Once it's written down, it's real, and you can begin to iterate on it. • Ask your people what doesn't work about it. • Ask your TA team if it supports or hinders their hiring. • Share with your leaders and get their feedback. Congrats, now you have a bona fide comp philosophy. Now obviously I don't recommend you just write this down and launch it, but I really wanted to demonstrate how simple it can be to do something preliminary like this and make inroads to building trust with your people. What's stopping you from building and launching a comp philosophy?

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I’ve pitched to 400 + investors. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s this: The smartest founders don’t just answer questions well. They know how to ask killer questions, too. After working with Professor Elizabeth Stokoe, an expert in the science of conversations. I invited her along to Included VC to share her knowledge with the fellows. The most powerful thing Liz shared with me is designing questions for the answers: 👉 “If you know the kind of answer you want, you can design the question to get there more clearly.” 💸 VCs expect most startups to fail. They’re betting on outliers, big markets and bold visions. Instead of asking: “Do you invest in this sector?” Try this Question: “Which sectors are you actively backing this year?” This tells you how they’re thinking and what they’re excited about. 📆 Every VC fund has a cycle. In the early years, they write new cheques. Later, they mostly reserve capital for follow-ons. Instead of asking this: “Are you actively investing right now?” Try asking this: “Would you be willing to share where you are in this fund’s cycle?” It’s soft, but it signals you’ve done your homework. ⏱️ Traction is important, but timing is everything. VCs invest when the moment feels right, not just when you’re ready. Instead of asking this: “When do you think would be the right time to raise?” Try asking this: “What usually triggers a quick ‘yes’ for you?” It gives you a window into how they actually make decisions, beyond the theory. Fundraising isn’t just about storytelling. It’s about designing conversations that move things forward, bring more clarity to both sides, and support more open and transparent conversations that lead to better decision-making. Want the five investor questions I give every founder I coach? Drop a 🔥 and I’ll send them your way. 📸 Picture taken in Shoreditch, London, August 2019. With my Co-founder, Kayleigh & Elizabeth Stokoe

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Building in public is scary as a founder. There is uncertainty on how work in progress initiatives will be received, and judgement too. However, one of the greatest unlocks enabled is reflecting on what we are focusing on and why. Recently, I've been back in Sydney, where Build Club was founded. In this period, a focus of our team has been dog fooding what 'building an AI first / native workforce actually means'. For us, we recently built an 'AI inbound sales agent', which automatically triages inbound leads. We have had a lot of learnings 👇. We had seen other companies implement it and thought it would be a simple AI use case as it was so popular. But it took us more than one week to get right! Our biggest learnings: - identify a repeatable use case: map out the process beforehand - problem solving mindset: trial different tools like AirOps, Relevance AI before committing - QA test: AI is still prone to hallucinations, even if you think you 'have it right' there are so many edge cases. Keep the human in the loop to start. Another highlight was celebrating the launch of HP ZBook with Brad Pulford, Melissa Collison, Aman Sangar, and Lisa Teh (built for the future AI workforce!). We still have a lot to learn and AI use cases we want to build internally! Would love to hear what you are doing day to day to enable your team with AI. #BuildClub #founderlife #AIstartups #futureofwork

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