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How do investors shape the early hiring decisions of startups, and what impact does this guidance have on both immediate hiring outcomes and future fundraising success?

Image courtesy of interviewee. October 16, 2024

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This video discusses the collaborative process of job design between entrepreneurs and investors in early-stage startups, emphasizing the importance of structuring roles and responsibilities as part of organizational development. It explains that entrepreneurs often engage external collaborators, particularly investors, to help build enduring job structures due to their limited resources. While investors are crucial to the success of startups, the relationship can be fraught with tension as both parties desire control over company direction.

The research conducted via interviews and observations in the startup ecosystem reveals insights into how entrepreneurs and investors navigate the job design process. The findings indicate that job design is especially consequential at early stages, with initial job roles serving as foundational scaffolding for future organizational structures. Despite existing literature primarily focusing on job design as a deliberate internal process, there is limited understanding of how external influences, particularly investors, contribute actively to this process.

The study introduces a two-step model of job design collaborations—recognizing the need for new work and engaging in interrelated processes to allocate tasks across jobs. The collaboration not only addresses immediate hiring needs but also equips entrepreneurs with frameworks for future job design, showing that the collaborative processes yield lasting job structures that adapt as startups grow.

The contribution of this research highlights the significance of external actors in shaping job design and suggests that similar dynamics may occur in established firms, where different types of investors and experts play a role in job design processes. This video opens avenues for understanding how external collaboration can influence organizational structures across various contexts.

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Here are five key points from the video:

1. **Job Design and Organizational Structure**: Entrepreneurs play a crucial role in designing jobs and the surrounding organizational structures, which significantly influence the efficiency of work and employee behavior. These initial job designs create a foundational framework for future organizational development, impacting who is hired, the nature of tasks, and relationships formed within and outside the organization.

2. **Resource Constraints and Collaboration**: Due to limited resources (time, money, expertise), entrepreneurs often seek external collaborators, particularly investors, who can contribute valuable resources and insights for effective job design and organizational structure creation.

3. **Potential Conflicts in Collaboration**: While collaboration between entrepreneurs and investors can lead to improved job design, it may also result in conflicts over control and decision-making within startups, complicating their working relationship as both parties are interested in maintaining influence over the startup's direction.

4. **Importance of Initial Job Designs**: The initial job designs in startups significantly influence subsequent organizational structures and hiring practices, as these early jobs tend to become entrenched over time, limiting flexibility in future job design processes.

5. **Two-Step Model of Job Design Collaboration**: The research identifies a two-step model for job design collaborations, where entrepreneurs recognize the need for job design and then engage with investors to structure jobs effectively. Investors provide expertise or broker connections to others who can assist in job design, leading to the hiring of appropriate talent and ensuring enduring organizational processes.

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Here are some key quotes and concepts from the video that capture the main ideas:

1. **Job Design Importance**:
- "Entrepreneurs design jobs, and the structures that will surround them. These designs determine what work is done, how well the work is done, and how employees behave in their jobs."

2. **Resource Constraints**:
- "It's a process that can actually be costly in terms of scarce resources of time, money, expertise, and so it's normal that they want to do whatever they can to avoid repeating the process by creating the structures that will endure."

3. **Role of Investors**:
- "Investors are a key set of actors who may be available, qualified, and willing to play this role. They are literally invested in the success of startups, and they hold many resources that are useful for designing these jobs and structures."

4. **Control and Collaboration Tensions**:
- "However, there is, there is a potential conflict, because both entrepreneurs and investors, they want to maintain control over the future of startups and how things are done, right? And so that makes the collaboration in this job design process a little bit more complicated."

5. **Long-Term Influence of Initial Job Designs**:
- "Initial jobs designs...have an outsized and consequential influence on what other jobs and routines are built, who is hired with what kind of skills, what work is done, and how well that work is done."

6. **Evolving Nature of Job Design**:
- "Managers often lack the information on how to design jobs and what they need to do moving forward. And so that means that the jobs actually can change and evolve."

7. **External Influences on Job Design**:
- "These outside forces can be sources of input into this process...but the research on this translation process or this design process is actually very limited if we go to the entrepreneurship literature."

8. **Nature of Collaboration**:
- "We are talking about a potential collaboration between these two parties...how they can overcome these challenges and how they can find a path to move forward and to move beyond these tensions."

9. **Two-Step Model of Job Design Collaborations**:
- "The first step is recognizing that there is a need to do new work and to do job design...The second step is that investors and entrepreneurs engage in two interrelated processes of determining how."

10. **Consequences of Collaboration**:
- "We believe that this collaboration process solves the immediate problem that triggered it. New jobs are designed, and in many cases, people are hired to fill in these jobs."

11. **Contribution to Literature**:
- "The main contribution of this paper is creating an understanding of how outsiders can collaborate in creating structures to have a lasting impact."

These quotes summarize key aspects of the video, including the collaborative dynamics between entrepreneurs and investors, the significance of job design in startups, and the implications of external influences on organizational structure.

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As part of their growth process,

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entrepreneurs design jobs,

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and the structures that will surround them.

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Um, these designs determine, what work is done,

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how well the work is done,

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and how employees behave in their jobs.

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And later on become the scaffolding on which later

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organizational structures are going to be built.

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Um, and it's, it's a process

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that can actually be costly in terms of scarce resources

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of time, money, expertise,

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and can actually put entrepreneurs at risk.

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Uh, and so it's normal that they want

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to do whatever they can to avoid repeating the process

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by creating the structures that we'll endure.

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And because they lack these resources that I just mentioned,

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they, they, they try to engage external

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collaborators in this process.

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People who can, who can come in and, and,

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and help them figuring out these structures

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and build them in a way that will well endure into future.

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Um, and investors are a key set of actors

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who may be available, qualified,

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and willing to play this role.

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They are literally invested in the success of startups,

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and they hold many resources that are useful for

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designing these jobs and structures.

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Um, however, there is, there is, a potential conflict,

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I would say tension inherent in this relationship

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because both entrepreneurs

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and investors, they wanna maintain control over the future

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of startups and how things are done right?

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And so that makes the collaboration in this job design

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process a little bit more complicated, right?

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And so we thought that we wanna know how investors

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and entrepreneurs actually collaborate to design jobs

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and ultimately create structures that will endure.

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And to be able to understand that,

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we drew on extensive interviews and,

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and observations in the context of startup ecosystem,

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in with the early stage, tech startups to be able

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to answer this question.

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I think the first line of literature that I need

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to mention here is, the one that shows that the,

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that the design of jobs, this process

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of allocating tasks into

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and across jobs,

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is really consequential for early stage startups.

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Um, it has been shown

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that adding the fifth job in an organization

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represent a much more substantive change than designing the

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55th or the 500th job, right?

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So actually in one of the conseque, conceptual,

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papers that I wrote with my co-authors recently,

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we argued that these initial jobs

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are the scaffolding on which organizational,

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designs are based on

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and ha they have an outsize

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and consequential influence on what other jobs

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and routines are built, who is hired with what kind

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of skills, what work is done,

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and how well that work is done,

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and what relationships are, are created as a result

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of these structures, within

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and outside the organizations.

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And there is a good literature on imprinting.

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Um, and this literature imprinting shows that as startups,

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mature and grow,

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their initial structures actually become entrenched

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and shape what jobs are later are put in place, who is hired

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and what resources become available.

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So initial jobs are important.

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They also become entrenched in the organizations.

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These are two important part of the literature.

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Despite the importance of job, there is little knowledge

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of the process of the design in any organization,

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let alone startups.

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Um, and again, what we have in the literature

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around the job design tend to focus on very internal

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and, intentional process of job design.

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What it means is that we are talking about job design

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as a deliberate process where well-informed managers

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allocate tasks to meet managerial admin technical needs.

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In one of my previous, related, research projects,

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that is kind of based on the same data set as this one,

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my co-author

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and I, we showed that, one problem

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with this perspective is that

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actually managers often lack the information on how

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to design jobs and what they need to do moving forward.

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And so that means that the jobs actually can change

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and evolve, between a time a manager decides

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to hire someone to the time they actually hire

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someone into a job.

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Because through these interactions and,

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and conversations that they have with other people,

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they get a better understanding of what the job needs to be.

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Uh, and so, what these outside forces can be sources

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of input into this process, they are mostly

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considered passively providing work demands, right?

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Um, that form the mandates of what work should be done,

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and how these jobs should be created.

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Um, and these mandates, again, in the literature are,

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are mostly ambiguous,

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and they require a lot of translation

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to become actual job design.

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Um, but the, the research on this, translation process

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or this design process is actually very limited if we go

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to the entrepreneurship literature.

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Um, the focus of much of this, research on job design

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and organizations are around the role of founders as either,

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either themselves having designed blueprints,

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or as the funnels through which

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outside ideas into enter into the job design process.

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Um, but the literature speaks little to the process

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through which these ideas funneled through founders come

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to directly influence structures.

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One way for the entrepreneurs

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or founders to overcome these liabilities of newness and,

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and, and challenges with respect to job design would be

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to engage outsiders who might know more

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or who might know someone who might know more, right?

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And who would bring these, really,

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valuable resources to these collaborations.

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Going back to the entrepreneurship literature,

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investors are one set of actors who can offer a lot

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of resources, both financial and social.

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Um, and the evidence suggests

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that they do much more than that.

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They bring advice,

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and some of that advice is specifically around hiring,

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and it goes beyond the top management teams.

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Um, however, they do not offer these advices for free.

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Um, they often want control

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and the desire, to basically know what is going

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to happen in future.

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Uh, and that may threaten entrepreneurs' desire

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to be independent.

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Um, and, and they're consistent with this.

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There is this popular image on social media and,

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and popular media that as well as academic literature that,

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this investor, entrepreneur, relationship,

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is, is sometimes

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has a lot of tensions in it

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and is not easy to navigate for either of the parties.

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And, this project, I think,

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is an answer to that.

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Um, we are talking about

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a potential collaboration between these two parties

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that goes beyond these, popular image of,

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them always fighting together to, to maintain control.

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Um, because past reach research provides less clarity of

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how they, they can overcome these challenges

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and how they can find a, a path to move forward and,

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and to move beyond these tensions,

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in this crucial process of, job design

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In, in, in a way that kind of supports creating structures

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that endure into the future

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and helps the startups grow and survive.

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We thought that here we can examine this

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and find out, basically about the details

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of this process and what goes on

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and what are the consequences,

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because the question that we had was exploratory in nature.

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Um, we thought that qualitative methods were appropriate

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because we, this is an unknown territory, so we need

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to first know about what is going on.

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And qualitative methods, would allow us

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to learn about the phenomenon of interest as

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in a situated manner, right?

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Um, they would provide information about how

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and when startups and, and,

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and investors collaborate around hiring and job design

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and how these collaboration unfolds

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and what are the implications.

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Um, for this particular paper,

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our data came from two distinct,

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but complementary, data sets.

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And across the two startup settings, we included multi

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early stage startup, interviews.

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Um, they were mostly tech, tech enabled startups

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because in that way we could basically keep some aspects

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constant, but to still see a broader range of activities

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and, and to understand more about

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how different organizational

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and contextual conditions would play in this process.

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The first project, which actually we, we,

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we wrote a paper based on the, this first dataset,

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previously is a study of unintended consequences

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of hiring in entrepreneurial firms,

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primarily using interviews

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and less observations, between 2014

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and 2021,

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because the job design is very much linked

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to hiring the data

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provided us with information on job design.

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Um, based on our initial learning about role of

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external actors in general, and investors as a powerful

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and influential, group of outside actors,

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we strategically chose the context of our second project,

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which was accelerators.

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Um, because we thought that it would give us opportunity

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to look more closely at the influence

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of investors on startups.

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A project came from an ethnographic study,

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including new interviews

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and observations conducted between 2021

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and 2022, which startup teams

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and investors at a FinTech accelerator, based in Canada.

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And across these two project, we conducted,

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semi-structured interviews,

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with more than 100 individuals in more than 100 startups

213
00:11:55.205 --> 00:11:56.885
and associated organizations.

214
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Um, we interview different types of informants,

215
00:12:01.115 --> 00:12:05.565
including investors, angel investors, VCs,

216
00:12:05.565 --> 00:12:10.215
accelerators, entrepreneurs, including founders,

217
00:12:10.795 --> 00:12:13.055
hiring managers, those who were working

218
00:12:13.195 --> 00:12:15.015
for different startups, those

219
00:12:15.015 --> 00:12:16.935
who were seeking jobs in startups

220
00:12:16.935 --> 00:12:20.495
and ex experts in the, in the startup ecosystem.

221
00:12:21.115 --> 00:12:25.575
We also did more than 250 hours of observations,

222
00:12:25.675 --> 00:12:27.175
across these two projects.

223
00:12:27.355 --> 00:12:31.655
Um, in the first one, more than one 50, hours,

224
00:12:32.395 --> 00:12:37.055
were made mostly during startup events and fairs and,

225
00:12:37.155 --> 00:12:40.455
and university fairs and, and all of that in the,

226
00:12:40.475 --> 00:12:43.935
and, in the second one, the observations were mainly

227
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during the weekly sessions between startup teams

228
00:12:47.715 --> 00:12:50.775
and investors were basically, they would get,

229
00:12:51.165 --> 00:12:54.655
they would talk about all, all of, the, the progress

230
00:12:54.655 --> 00:12:57.775
that ha they have been experiencing, the,

231
00:12:58.075 --> 00:13:01.455
the relationships that they have built, the, the feedback

232
00:13:01.455 --> 00:13:03.495
that they got, in that week.

233
00:13:03.495 --> 00:13:05.935
And then investors would basically provide

234
00:13:05.935 --> 00:13:07.055
them with some feedback.

235
00:13:07.755 --> 00:13:09.535
Um, and at the last step,

236
00:13:09.555 --> 00:13:11.535
we gathered information on the startups,

237
00:13:11.595 --> 00:13:13.775
and they're structured from LinkedIn

238
00:13:14.235 --> 00:13:17.615
and their company websites, over three years

239
00:13:17.705 --> 00:13:21.575
after they graduated from those accelerators to learn about

240
00:13:21.675 --> 00:13:24.895
how the jobs and incumbents stayed in place

241
00:13:25.035 --> 00:13:28.375
and whether they, they they dissolved or expanded,

242
00:13:29.195 --> 00:13:32.095
and, how many people were hired afterwards,

243
00:13:32.155 --> 00:13:33.175
and so on and so forth.

244
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We developed a two step model

245
00:13:36.355 --> 00:13:38.575
of job design collaborations.

246
00:13:38.715 --> 00:13:43.535
That's our main model and main finding, in this model.

247
00:13:43.875 --> 00:13:45.375
Um, we have two steps.

248
00:13:45.795 --> 00:13:50.175
Um, the first step is recognizing that there is a need

249
00:13:50.675 --> 00:13:54.255
to do new work and to do job design.

250
00:13:55.035 --> 00:13:57.455
And this is triggered in discussions

251
00:13:57.475 --> 00:14:00.775
of the problem in three different areas, discussions

252
00:14:00.775 --> 00:14:02.415
between founders and investors.

253
00:14:03.395 --> 00:14:06.255
One area is founders doing too much work,

254
00:14:07.555 --> 00:14:10.895
one area is having a vacant job,

255
00:14:11.435 --> 00:14:15.815
and the third area is various forms of expansions in, in,

256
00:14:15.835 --> 00:14:17.215
in whatever they were doing.

257
00:14:18.035 --> 00:14:20.775
The second step is that investors

258
00:14:21.035 --> 00:14:23.735
and entrepreneurs, they engaged in an,

259
00:14:23.795 --> 00:14:28.415
in two interrelated processes of determining how

260
00:14:28.795 --> 00:14:33.495
to allocate those tasks, across new and existing jobs.

261
00:14:35.575 --> 00:14:39.515
And so first, when investors have relevant expertise,

262
00:14:40.105 --> 00:14:43.035
they work together with entrepreneurs to design jobs

263
00:14:43.295 --> 00:14:47.875
by offering very detailed advice on what jobs are needed

264
00:14:48.135 --> 00:14:50.515
and how they should be structured, how

265
00:14:50.515 --> 00:14:53.645
to write job description, where to post, how

266
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to do interviews, how to evaluate, and so forth.

267
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Second is the case where investors actually do not have

268
00:15:01.645 --> 00:15:03.845
that expertise themselves, right?

269
00:15:04.225 --> 00:15:08.405
And so investors in those cases act as a brokers

270
00:15:08.755 --> 00:15:10.205
between entrepreneurs

271
00:15:11.225 --> 00:15:15.125
and either people who can serve as living templates

272
00:15:15.225 --> 00:15:20.165
for the job design, or who can help them build job designs

273
00:15:20.425 --> 00:15:24.605
or provide links to still more people who can serve

274
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as living templates.

275
00:15:27.305 --> 00:15:31.205
And these two allocation processes are basically the

276
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backbones of two pathways that we call building

277
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and brokering, to collaborative job design.

278
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And its multiple consequences.

279
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Um, we believe that this collaboration process

280
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solves the immediate problem that triggered it.

281
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Uh, new jobs are designed,

282
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and in many cases, people are hired to fill in these jobs.

283
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Entrepreneurs learn a general framework of how

284
00:16:00.545 --> 00:16:05.505
to do the job design and how to hire that they can, they can

285
00:16:05.645 --> 00:16:07.425
and actually do apply in future.

286
00:16:08.405 --> 00:16:12.965
And so what we see is that these jobs

287
00:16:13.105 --> 00:16:17.805
and processes endure, even as startups face other changes

288
00:16:17.945 --> 00:16:20.365
and other challenges in their growth

289
00:16:20.985 --> 00:16:23.485
and in their, journey, forward.

290
00:16:24.065 --> 00:16:27.685
The main contribution of this paper is

291
00:16:28.365 --> 00:16:29.685
creating an understanding of

292
00:16:29.785 --> 00:16:34.645
how outsiders can collaborate in creating structures to have

293
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a lasting impact.

294
00:16:36.825 --> 00:16:38.685
And, and more specifically about

295
00:16:38.745 --> 00:16:43.365
how job design process happens, our description

296
00:16:43.525 --> 00:16:47.245
of this collaborative job design process,

297
00:16:48.085 --> 00:16:51.285
I think arguments are knowledge of the transfer

298
00:16:51.305 --> 00:16:55.885
and translation of, of elements of job design from

299
00:16:55.995 --> 00:16:57.965
outside organizational boundaries.

300
00:16:58.785 --> 00:17:03.125
And, even though there is considerable evidence

301
00:17:03.125 --> 00:17:07.805
that the forces of, let's say technology, social movements,

302
00:17:08.515 --> 00:17:12.885
regulations, new regulations, unexpected exogenous events

303
00:17:13.585 --> 00:17:15.885
create new work tasks to be done

304
00:17:16.745 --> 00:17:21.365
and probably need, alteration of existing jobs,

305
00:17:21.935 --> 00:17:26.085
there is less known, about how

306
00:17:26.605 --> 00:17:31.365
external actors become active contributors in this process.

307
00:17:32.465 --> 00:17:36.045
And we provide evidence for one set of external actors,

308
00:17:36.315 --> 00:17:40.885
investors and, and how they engaged in this process

309
00:17:41.545 --> 00:17:44.365
and in the details of the job design process,

310
00:17:44.575 --> 00:17:47.325
which we already talked about,

311
00:17:47.505 --> 00:17:51.165
but how, how consequential for the survival

312
00:17:51.345 --> 00:17:52.845
of startups it can be.

313
00:17:53.345 --> 00:17:56.565
And we believe that similar phenomena of

314
00:17:57.075 --> 00:18:01.565
outsiders collaborating in the job design would be seen even

315
00:18:02.465 --> 00:18:06.165
in the established firms and in the established jobs.

316
00:18:07.345 --> 00:18:11.895
Um, most probably in, in more established firms.

317
00:18:12.625 --> 00:18:15.135
Other type of investors might, might,

318
00:18:15.135 --> 00:18:16.895
might get engaged in this process.

319
00:18:17.235 --> 00:18:21.535
So for instance, institutional investors,

320
00:18:21.535 --> 00:18:25.775
board members, some representatives of bigger investors

321
00:18:26.715 --> 00:18:27.975
and so on and so forth.

322
00:18:28.195 --> 00:18:32.095
But we think that we might also see other types of experts

323
00:18:32.155 --> 00:18:35.215
and external actors influencing the hiring

324
00:18:35.435 --> 00:18:38.055
and job design process for both new

325
00:18:38.275 --> 00:18:39.815
and established organizations.

326
00:18:40.595 --> 00:18:43.125
And, and basically,

327
00:18:43.415 --> 00:18:47.885
these actors can become partners in designing the jobs,

328
00:18:48.585 --> 00:18:52.765
that, that, the work is assembled into.

329
00:18:52.905 --> 00:18:56.125
And, and, and people will, will hire into

330
00:18:56.145 --> 00:18:58.285
and perform, their jobs

331
00:18:58.545 --> 00:19:01.765
and get engaged in the routines of startups and

332
00:19:01.865 --> 00:19:03.365
or established organizations.

Collaborative Job Design in Startups

00:00:00 - As part of their growth process, entrepreneurs design jobs, and the structures that will surround them. these designs determine, what work is done, how well the work is done, and how employees behave in their jobs. And later on become the scaffolding on which later organizational structures are going to be built. and it's, it's a process that can actually be costly in terms of scarce resources of time, money, expertise,

00:00:35 - and so it's normal that they want to do whatever they can to avoid repeating the process by creating the structures that we'll endure. And because they lack these resources that I just mentioned, they, they, they try to engage external collaborators in this process. People who can, who can come in and, and, and help them figuring out these structures

00:01:10 - and investors are a key set of actors who may be available, qualified, and willing to play this role. They are literally invested in the success of startups, and they hold many resources that are useful for designing these jobs and structures. however, there is, there is, a potential conflict,

Collaborative Job Design in Startups: Navigating Control Between Entrepreneurs and Investors

00:01:38 - because both entrepreneurs and investors, they wanna maintain control over the future of startups and how things are done right? And so that makes the collaboration in this job design process a little bit more complicated, right? And so we thought that we wanna know how investors and entrepreneurs actually collaborate to design jobs and ultimately create structures that will endure. And to be able to understand that,

00:02:11 - and observations in the context of startup ecosystem, in with the early stage, tech startups to be able to answer this question. I think the first line of literature that I need to mention here is, the one that shows that the, that the design of jobs, this process of allocating tasks into and across jobs,

00:02:43 - it has been shown that adding the fifth job in an organization represent a much more substantive change than designing the 55th or the 500th job, right? So actually in one of the conseque, conceptual, papers that I wrote with my co-authors recently, we argued that these initial jobs

Impact of Initial Job Design on Startups' Organizational Structure

00:03:12 - designs are based on and ha they have an outsize and consequential influence on what other jobs and routines are built, who is hired with what kind of skills, what work is done, and how well that work is done, and what relationships are, are created as a result of these structures, within and outside the organizations.

00:03:43 - and this literature imprinting shows that as startups, mature and grow, their initial structures actually become entrenched and shape what jobs are later are put in place, who is hired and what resources become available. So initial jobs are important. They also become entrenched in the organizations. These are two important part of the literature. Despite the importance of job, there is little knowledge

00:04:16 - let alone startups. and again, what we have in the literature around the job design tend to focus on very internal and, intentional process of job design. What it means is that we are talking about job design as a deliberate process where well-informed managers allocate tasks to meet managerial admin technical needs.

The Challenges of Job Design in Managerial Decision-Making

00:04:48 - that is kind of based on the same data set as this one, my co-author and I, we showed that, one problem with this perspective is that actually managers often lack the information on how to design jobs and what they need to do moving forward. And so that means that the jobs actually can change and evolve, between a time a manager decides to hire someone to the time they actually hire

00:05:16 - Because through these interactions and, and conversations that they have with other people, they get a better understanding of what the job needs to be. and so, what these outside forces can be sources of input into this process, they are mostly considered passively providing work demands, right? that form the mandates of what work should be done, and how these jobs should be created.

00:05:50 - are mostly ambiguous, and they require a lot of translation to become actual job design. but the, the research on this, translation process or this design process is actually very limited if we go to the entrepreneurship literature. the focus of much of this, research on job design and organizations are around the role of founders as either, either themselves having designed blueprints,

Collaborative Dynamics in Job Design: The Role of External Actors

00:06:23 - outside ideas into enter into the job design process. but the literature speaks little to the process through which these ideas funneled through founders come to directly influence structures. One way for the entrepreneurs or founders to overcome these liabilities of newness and, and, and challenges with respect to job design would be to engage outsiders who might know more or who might know someone who might know more, right?

00:06:58 - valuable resources to these collaborations. Going back to the entrepreneurship literature, investors are one set of actors who can offer a lot of resources, both financial and social. and the evidence suggests that they do much more than that. They bring advice, and some of that advice is specifically around hiring, and it goes beyond the top management teams. however, they do not offer these advices for free.

00:07:29 - and the desire, to basically know what is going to happen in future. and that may threaten entrepreneurs' desire to be independent. and, and they're consistent with this. There is this popular image on social media and, and popular media that as well as academic literature that, this investor, entrepreneur, relationship, is, is sometimes

Navigating Collaboration: Overcoming Tensions Between Entrepreneurs and Investors

00:08:03 - and is not easy to navigate for either of the parties. And, this project, I think, is an answer to that. we are talking about a potential collaboration between these two parties that goes beyond these, popular image of, them always fighting together to, to maintain control.

00:08:40 - how they, they can overcome these challenges and how they can find a, a path to move forward and, and to move beyond these tensions, in this crucial process of, job design In, in, in a way that kind of supports creating structures that endure into the future and helps the startups grow and survive. We thought that here we can examine this

00:09:10 - of this process and what goes on and what are the consequences, because the question that we had was exploratory in nature. we thought that qualitative methods were appropriate because we, this is an unknown territory, so we need to first know about what is going on. And qualitative methods, would allow us to learn about the phenomenon of interest as in a situated manner, right?

Collaborative Dynamics in Startup Job Design

00:09:42 - and when startups and, and, and investors collaborate around hiring and job design and how these collaboration unfolds and what are the implications. for this particular paper, our data came from two distinct, but complementary, data sets. And across the two startup settings, we included multi early stage startup, interviews.

00:10:15 - because in that way we could basically keep some aspects constant, but to still see a broader range of activities and, and to understand more about how different organizational and contextual conditions would play in this process. The first project, which actually we, we, we wrote a paper based on the, this first dataset, previously is a study of unintended consequences

00:10:45 - primarily using interviews and less observations, between 2014 and 2021, because the job design is very much linked to hiring the data provided us with information on job design. based on our initial learning about role of external actors in general, and investors as a powerful and influential, group of outside actors,

Investigating Investor Influence in Startup Accelerators

00:11:16 - which was accelerators. because we thought that it would give us opportunity to look more closely at the influence of investors on startups. A project came from an ethnographic study, including new interviews and observations conducted between 2021 and 2022, which startup teams and investors at a FinTech accelerator, based in Canada.

00:11:48 - semi-structured interviews, with more than 100 individuals in more than 100 startups and associated organizations. we interview different types of informants, including investors, angel investors, VCs, accelerators, entrepreneurs, including founders, hiring managers, those who were working for different startups, those

00:12:16 - and ex experts in the, in the startup ecosystem. We also did more than 250 hours of observations, across these two projects. in the first one, more than one 50, hours, were made mostly during startup events and fairs and, and university fairs and, and all of that in the, and, in the second one, the observations were mainly during the weekly sessions between startup teams

Collaborative Job Design in Startups: Progress and Feedback Mechanisms

00:12:51 - they would talk about all, all of, the, the progress that ha they have been experiencing, the, the relationships that they have built, the, the feedback that they got, in that week. And then investors would basically provide them with some feedback. and at the last step, we gathered information on the startups, and they're structured from LinkedIn and their company websites, over three years after they graduated from those accelerators to learn about

00:13:25 - and whether they, they they dissolved or expanded, and, how many people were hired afterwards, and so on and so forth. We developed a two step model of job design collaborations. That's our main model and main finding, in this model. we have two steps. the first step is recognizing that there is a need to do new work and to do job design.

00:13:57 - of the problem in three different areas, discussions between founders and investors. One area is founders doing too much work, one area is having a vacant job, and the third area is various forms of expansions in, in, in whatever they were doing. The second step is that investors and entrepreneurs, they engaged in an, in two interrelated processes of determining how

Collaborative Job Design: Investor and Entrepreneur Synergy

00:14:35 - And so first, when investors have relevant expertise, they work together with entrepreneurs to design jobs by offering very detailed advice on what jobs are needed and how they should be structured, how to write job description, where to post, how to do interviews, how to evaluate, and so forth. Second is the case where investors actually do not have

00:15:04 - And so investors in those cases act as a brokers between entrepreneurs and either people who can serve as living templates for the job design, or who can help them build job designs or provide links to still more people who can serve as living templates. And these two allocation processes are basically the backbones of two pathways that we call building

00:15:39 - And its multiple consequences. we believe that this collaboration process solves the immediate problem that triggered it. new jobs are designed, and in many cases, people are hired to fill in these jobs. Entrepreneurs learn a general framework of how to do the job design and how to hire that they can, they can

Collaborative Job Design: The Role of External Actors in Startups

00:16:08 - And so what we see is that these jobs and processes endure, even as startups face other changes and other challenges in their growth and in their, journey, forward. The main contribution of this paper is creating an understanding of how outsiders can collaborate in creating structures to have a lasting impact.

00:16:38 - how job design process happens, our description of this collaborative job design process, I think arguments are knowledge of the transfer and translation of, of elements of job design from outside organizational boundaries. And, even though there is considerable evidence that the forces of, let's say technology, social movements,

00:17:13 - create new work tasks to be done and probably need, alteration of existing jobs, there is less known, about how external actors become active contributors in this process. And we provide evidence for one set of external actors, investors and, and how they engaged in this process

Collaborative Job Design: Impact on Startups and Beyond

00:17:44 - which we already talked about, but how, how consequential for the survival of startups it can be. And we believe that similar phenomena of outsiders collaborating in the job design would be seen even in the established firms and in the established jobs. most probably in, in more established firms.

00:18:15 - might get engaged in this process. So for instance, institutional investors, board members, some representatives of bigger investors and so on and so forth. But we think that we might also see other types of experts and external actors influencing the hiring and job design process for both new and established organizations. And, and basically,

00:19:01 - that, that, the work is assembled into. And, and, and people will, will hire into and perform, their jobs and get engaged in the routines of startups and or established organizations.

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