What made you want to have an impact in HR Tech?

What made me wanna work in human resources was the ability to shape the lives of the people I interact with… helping them to learn the organization and the infrastructure, to making sure that we’re giving them the tools for success.

HR Tech was something a little bit more organic… we’re talking about going back to COVID, that dirty word. I felt there was something missing in the HR space, so I decided to start studying data analytics, and for me, it clicked. It made sense—that was the missing piece. HR needs to be at the forefront of reshaping the future of work.

 

Biggest “oh sh*t” moment?

 So my biggest oh sh*t moment was recently actually. Um, I get up at four o’clock in the morning every morning and I got up at four o’clock and I was like, oh sh*t, I don’t wanna go to the gym today! Because it’s the one thing in my life as a founder, I can still control and decide yes or no.

And in that moment I realized, oh, I really am truly a founder living a founder’s life!

You know, my days are more busy than they used to be. Everybody comes to me for answers. It’s my job to help not only keep everything focused, but you know, I’m out there begging for the dollars. Telling our narrative.

So yeah, every day is kind of like an oh sh*t moment.

 

Weirdest or funniest thing that’s happened while building PPA?

 The weirdest thing in founding a company and it’s kind of, you know, sad but not so sad. I was doing a HR tech competition and I pitched and the crowd is into it and they’re like, woo woo.

And, and one of the judges came up to me as we were taking photos and he goes, you know, it’s okay to be sad. And I’m looking at him in my mind, I’m going: First of all, um, were you here, did you not see the crowd like cheering me on? Did you not see people coming up to me and asking questions? What is it to be sad about?

I mean, I get it. I didn’t win – if you wanna call it that – the competition. But I walked in with zero connections and now I have like a half a dozen. So there was nothing to be sad about, but it was weird that his reaction was be sad, and mine was like, oh, cool, I’m gonna move forward! This works. The narrative works.

I got this.

 

What about advice you would have loved to receive earlier?

Just do it. Don’t listen to anybody else’s negative whatevers. Even in failure there’s success, and failure is never really failure if you’re able to take something from it… Build your own table and bring your own damn chair.

 

Startup myth you’d like to debunk?

 If I had to debunk a myth, it is that “every journey is the same journey.” Every journey is not the same. There are certain milestones that are the same. But you have to go into the journey understanding that you can plan for some of the big milestones, but how you get there is so based on things you can’t control, like market conditions, how people receive your message, how much time it’s gonna take you to get from milestone one to milestone two.

All those things are based on partly you, but also things that have nothing to do with you. So you cannot judge your pathway by somebody else’s, and you can’t find your successful path until you fail a lot. The more you fail, the closer you are to success, and that is so hard.

 

Most over-used buzzword right now?

“AI.”
(Earlier eras?) “Unicorn… scalable… and I blocked out my crypto years, but yes—crypto and blockchain.”

 

What’s your super-power as a founder?

 I am not sure I have a superpower, but I think it is my ability to celebrate others.

In building my team, I tend to shy away from the term founder or CEO. I like it to be collaborative. I call my team collaborators all the time because I do believe in that we’re going on this journey together. I don’t believe in you working for me, but with me.

So I think because it’s important to me that everybody be a part of the journey, invested in that journey, and be able to see how that journey has value to them. People work hard, they give their best, they do things. Whether I ask them to or not.

 

One piece of advice for aspiring founders?

 You have your end game, you listen, you do your research, but again, I can’t emphasize enough. You listen. You pivot, you integrate where it makes sense. Then you put out your seeds and talk to people, and then you follow up with people.

And timing sometimes works out really great in your favor. But there the biggest core consistent takeaway is volume. Understanding how to approach people in a way that makes them interested. Understanding that just because they said no today doesn’t mean they won’t say yes tomorrow.

Listen to the market when it says to you, these are things you need to have in order to attract investors, and then be prepared to change, pivot, do what you need to do to make yourself more attractive. And that doesn’t mean even if you do all those things, that it will all just go perfectly, but you do find a better pathway to success. Even it means bootstrapping.

You still find a successful way. It just isn’t gonna be 1 + 1 equals 2. Sometimes it’s 5 – 3 + 12 equals …. who god knows!