Ep 56: Laura Bilazarian: Not You Can, but You WILL Win

Diva Tech Talk Podcast

Diva Tech Talk interviewed former investment banker and social entrepreneur, Laura Bilazarian, CEO and Founder of Teamable (https://teamable.com), accelerating any company’s ability to hire top talent by “smarter recruiting through social networks.” A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business (https://www.wharton.upenn.edu/ ), with a degree in economics, Laura wanted to work at Google. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have the guts to go there without affirmation from my classmates.” Instead, her first job was at Miller Buckfire (http://www.millerbuckfire.com) an internationally recognized investment bank. “I traveled the world, and ended up doing private equity in Vietnam,” she said.

In the early throes of her career, Laura also played professional rugby, on the #1 award-winning national U.S. women’s team, strengthening her ability to work in teams, problem-solve, and stay calm under pressure. She observed that “What stops you from coming in first is your own mental state.” She quickly moved to the declarative sentence. “Instead of saying we could win a national championship, I started saying we WILL win.”

As she got deeper into investment banking, Laura said “at some point, I just felt that the work was meaningless.

I read Mother Teresa’s letters to God and I had a period of introspection. What is another way I can impact the world?” She traveled to Armenia, and observed that “tech is a place where you can all win together. We could all use data to connect people to the right work.” She conceived the concept, that became Teamable, and launched a Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com ) campaign around it. She continued to pursue investment banking, co-founding a fund devoted to Armenian companies; and Teamable’s development and data science activities also all take place in Armenia. While raising money for her own company, Laura’s investment banking background afforded insight into what investors were looking for. “I think that’s something that every CEO should learn,” she said. “Do something, like financial modeling, to really understand ‘where are the levers’ in your business. Not all levers are created equal.”

Laura’s three co-founders are technical whizzes – Armenian data scientists and crackerjack programmers. “The hardest math we did on Wall Street, they were doing in 5th grade.” Laura moved operations to San Francisco; met with Silicon Valley denizens including the top analytics team at Google; and continuously began to validate the approach and build the Teamable company and customer base. She pitched her first successful financing round at well-known Greylock Partners (www.greylock.com/), where they found an angel investor willing to take a chance on Teamable.

Highly egalitarian, Laura said that it simply became obvious that, when pitching, she should initially take the title of CEO. “I really don’t know when I earned it,” she said. “Maybe it was with the first money raised, or the first customer signed.” (NOTE: 40-person Teamable has raised over $5 million in its A round of investment, and has over 90 customers, to date. The company has quadrupled in size since February, 2017).

Laura stresses that “really being honest” in terms of feedback is crucial in the Teamable culture. “I want it to be radically transparent,” she said. She also prizes a hard work ethic. “Where you make the margin is work ethic. It’s discipline. It’s going above and beyond.” Finally, she is creating an environment focused on hyper-growth. “Never feeling comfortable; continuing to challenge ourselves.” Laura admits that her past two years were unbalanced and “a little dark.” But she thinks it is the direct cause of Teamable’s success. “If you maniacally commit to anything, for two years, you will succeed.”

Ever an ambitious learner, Laura is spurred by her technology colleagues and her access to Silicon Valley brain trusts. “I took the whole machine-learning course on Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/) at 2x speed, over a weekend.” Lean Startup is a book that Laura would recommend any would-be startup founder reading. “I can’t stand anything that seems like a problem,” Laura summed herself up and affirmed that “It’s super-scary to leave what you’ve done. But you can do it!”

For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.