Episode 404 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ben Sesser, CEO & Co-Founder of BrightHire.
Well this is a first…
It’s common to time my podcast interview around a milestone for a company like a funding announcement. But, this is the first time that in the span between my interview with the founder to the publishing date that the company announced its acquisition.
Last week, BrightHire announced that the company has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Zoom. It certainly is a combination that makes a lot of sense.
BrightHire is an interview intelligence platform. We saw its influence firsthand this past summer when VentureFizz hosted a series of AI job searching events. Talent acquisition leaders consistently mentioned BrightHire as the most-adopted application—a signal that immediately led me to reach out to Ben for this interview.
As Ben shares, when they started, "interview intelligence" was a brand new category in hiring, and they faced plenty of doubters. But fast-forward to today, and much like the success of companies like Gong for sales teams, BrightHire's value is now obvious. But isn't that the case for all great companies in hindsight?
BrightHire's investors include Flybridge, Index Ventures, 01 Advisors, Zoom Apps Fund, and others.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:48 State of Hiring in the AI Era
06:51 Ben's Background Story
19:40 Getting Started in the Tech Industry
25:26 Origin Story of BrightHire
33:06 Creating a New Category
35:31 The Value of Video in the Hiring Process
41:17 BrightHire Screen - New AI Screening Platform
45:51 Experience of Raising Capital
48:36 Biggest Lessons Learned
50:22 Common Mistakes Companies Make When Hiring
51:57 Lightening Round Questions
Episode Sponsor: As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.
All content for The VentureFizz Podcast is the property of VentureFizz and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Episode 404 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ben Sesser, CEO & Co-Founder of BrightHire.
Well this is a first…
It’s common to time my podcast interview around a milestone for a company like a funding announcement. But, this is the first time that in the span between my interview with the founder to the publishing date that the company announced its acquisition.
Last week, BrightHire announced that the company has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Zoom. It certainly is a combination that makes a lot of sense.
BrightHire is an interview intelligence platform. We saw its influence firsthand this past summer when VentureFizz hosted a series of AI job searching events. Talent acquisition leaders consistently mentioned BrightHire as the most-adopted application—a signal that immediately led me to reach out to Ben for this interview.
As Ben shares, when they started, "interview intelligence" was a brand new category in hiring, and they faced plenty of doubters. But fast-forward to today, and much like the success of companies like Gong for sales teams, BrightHire's value is now obvious. But isn't that the case for all great companies in hindsight?
BrightHire's investors include Flybridge, Index Ventures, 01 Advisors, Zoom Apps Fund, and others.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:48 State of Hiring in the AI Era
06:51 Ben's Background Story
19:40 Getting Started in the Tech Industry
25:26 Origin Story of BrightHire
33:06 Creating a New Category
35:31 The Value of Video in the Hiring Process
41:17 BrightHire Screen - New AI Screening Platform
45:51 Experience of Raising Capital
48:36 Biggest Lessons Learned
50:22 Common Mistakes Companies Make When Hiring
51:57 Lightening Round Questions
Episode Sponsor: As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.
Episode 390 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Maya R. Said, Sc.D., Founder & CEO of Outcomes4Me.
Maya believes that in our lifetime, we will get to a point where we can either cure or control cancer. That is a bold statement and one of major importance. As we kick off our interview, she shares the reasons why it could happen.
In order to get there, however, it is certainly going to take a lot of brilliant founders and innovative companies, but when you have founders like Maya who are building companies like Outcomes4Me, you can see why there is hope.
For this podcast, I am blessed to speak with so many amazing people, who are all very intelligent, driven, and optimistic… but Maya is in a league of her own.
Her academic credentials are beyond next level and what she accomplished within the healthcare industry makes her uniquely qualified to build a company that is contributing to this mission of either curing or controlling cancer.
Outcomes4Me is the first and only end-to-end, AI-driven patient empowerment platform that helps patients with cancer take a proactive approach to their care from diagnosis throughout every stage of life and care. Its direct-to-patient platform integrates clinical guidelines, genomics, trial matching, and symptom tracking to help patients navigate through a cancer diagnosis with confidence and clarity.
The company recently announced a $21M round of funding from new investor - Salica Investments, with participation from all existing investors: Labcorp Venture Fund, Forecast Labs, Northpond Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Asset Management Ventures, IRA Capital, and Merstal LTD.
In this episode of our podcast, we cover:
* Maya’s background story and her experience in academia at MIT.
* Her transition into industry and the various leadership roles she held.
* The full story of Outcomes4Me including how the platform works and how they help patients, plus their plans looking ahead.
* The importance of data to speed up innovation and the drug development process.
* The impact of TV advertising
* The overarch theme of what she has learned while building a company.
* Fundraising advice
* And more
Episode Sponsor:
As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.
The VentureFizz Podcast
Episode 404 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ben Sesser, CEO & Co-Founder of BrightHire.
Well this is a first…
It’s common to time my podcast interview around a milestone for a company like a funding announcement. But, this is the first time that in the span between my interview with the founder to the publishing date that the company announced its acquisition.
Last week, BrightHire announced that the company has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Zoom. It certainly is a combination that makes a lot of sense.
BrightHire is an interview intelligence platform. We saw its influence firsthand this past summer when VentureFizz hosted a series of AI job searching events. Talent acquisition leaders consistently mentioned BrightHire as the most-adopted application—a signal that immediately led me to reach out to Ben for this interview.
As Ben shares, when they started, "interview intelligence" was a brand new category in hiring, and they faced plenty of doubters. But fast-forward to today, and much like the success of companies like Gong for sales teams, BrightHire's value is now obvious. But isn't that the case for all great companies in hindsight?
BrightHire's investors include Flybridge, Index Ventures, 01 Advisors, Zoom Apps Fund, and others.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:48 State of Hiring in the AI Era
06:51 Ben's Background Story
19:40 Getting Started in the Tech Industry
25:26 Origin Story of BrightHire
33:06 Creating a New Category
35:31 The Value of Video in the Hiring Process
41:17 BrightHire Screen - New AI Screening Platform
45:51 Experience of Raising Capital
48:36 Biggest Lessons Learned
50:22 Common Mistakes Companies Make When Hiring
51:57 Lightening Round Questions
Episode Sponsor: As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.
