SPEAKER_01 0:00

The first thing I would do is build. I would just immediately start focusing on how do I build a portfolio of projects that help me think about the problems I want to solve, think about the data patterns I need to deal with, how do you route the right models to the right solutions in your product that you're trying to build so that you can manage the costs? You have to be hands-on with this tech today, or you're going to get passed by because it changes so quickly.

Hitesh Chudasama 0:27

Hello everyone. Today's guest is Chet Garcia, partner at Reviewer Partners, one of the leading executive search firms working with venture-backed startups and some of the most innovative technology companies in the world. Chet specializes in helping startups hire technical leaders across engineering, product, AI, and design, particularly in areas like developer tooling, fintech, health tech, and vertical AI. Over the past 8 years, he has worked closely with founders and investors to build leadership teams during some of the most important moments in a company's journey. But what makes Chet's story especially interesting is that this wasn't his first career or even his second. Before executive search, he was a math teacher in Philadelphia, teaching algebra 2 and pre-calculus. Before that, he worked in construction management, leading office and clean room bill out, including projects tied to Lockheed Morning. So this is someone who has gone from construction sites to classrooms to boardrooms with founders building the feature of AI. And throughout all of that, there's been a common thread about learning, adaptability, communication, and understanding people deeply. Outside of work, Chad is also an improv performer, former rugby player, and a coach, a father, and someone who genuinely seems to energize by helping others grow. In today's conversation, we're going to dive into Chet's journey to his executive search role. What startup hiring really looks like in the AI era. What professionals can do to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world. Welcome to the show. Really great to have you here. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Ted, I have known you for over six years now, and I recently learned about your career journey and wanted to share it with the audience how nonlinear it is, especially it's non-typical of Silicon Valley story. You've been in construction management to teaching, now I'm in executive recruiting. Before we gu dive into your career journey, I would love to understand a little bit more about as you were growing up, what are some of the things you wanted to do?

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Question. Funny enough, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a lawyer because I thought I would be able to argue really well. I always caught myself arguing and debating people, and uh, I guess speaking professionally was something early that I wanted to do until I learned what lawyers really spend their time doing, which is steep in massive books and writing hundred-page briefs and whatnot. But that was kind of my early goals. And then when I was it was time to pick a major, I knew I was good at math and science, and so I picked engineering because I figured it would be applying those skill sets. But I kind of had a warped view of what an engineer gets to do. And in my head, I was going to be able to build a construction company, do the engineering for the structural drawings, stamp those drawings, be a one-stop shop. But then you get in and you start learning what the industry is really like and how b vast it is and how specialized certain things can be. And that is definitely not the case. And so my general engineering degree that I started at Cal Poly became very much a starter major for me, as it were.

Hitesh Chudasama 3:48

So from that point on, once you were done with college, you started on the construction management side?

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yeah. After my first year in general engineering, I went and got my construction management degree. So I switched majors because I went to Cal Poly slow, and you have to pick a major there. There's no undecided. And so general engineering was as close as I got. And so I went into construction management, got a degree in that. I actually went abroad for a year playing rugby. And when I came back, I got a job building facilities mostly out at Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale. And so our company was doing a lot of tenant improvement and clean room builds and vacuums and the like. And so I was a project engineer, technically, which is basically a project manager, and did that for a few years. And then essentially the market started to downturn with the 08 housing crisis. I was getting a little frustrated with the industry as a whole. There's a lot of arguing between uh contractors and subcontractors or clients and contention and a lot of nitpicking at what is in the drawings and what isn't and all that stuff. I did a good job, I would say, for a few years, and I learned a ton of great skills around communication and scheduling things and moving it forward. And actually, there's now that I'm in this industry, there's a ton of parallels between building something physical and building software that helped me learn a lot in this business. But uh it just ultimately wasn't the industry for me. And I had always wanted to teach. And so that kind of drew me to get my math credential at Santa Clara. And I was living with my mom at the time, as any 20-somethings do, and I was able to go back to school, get my teaching credential, and then make the transition.

Hitesh Chudasama 5:25

Nice. How's that transition? So you went to Santa Clara, you got your degree credentials from there. So did you start off teaching?

SPEAKER_01 5:32

I'm fortunate that I was able to do that because it was a one-year deal. Most people who are working have to do night classes and spend a good two to three years to get their credential and then they move in. So I just ripped the band-aid off. I quit my job and went and got it and got a math teaching credential for high school. I got hired at Archbishop MIDI in San Jose, and I was teaching algebra two and pre-calculus, which was super fun. It's mostly sophomores and juniors and a couple of seniors. And then I also coached the freshman football team and then helped out with anything else that was going on around campus.

Hitesh Chudasama 6:06

I did not know you were a football coach as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yeah, football, and then uh eventually rugby. Yeah, until we moved back east, I coached uh all the time, but then you have kids and your time goes away.

Hitesh Chudasama 6:17

So that's awesome. So it seems like you were teaching for quite some time. And then how did the whole transition to executive recruiting come about?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

I got married and we were living in San Francisco, and one of my good friends and coaches and former teammates had started a firm called Arite Partners. And so there was a time period where we're trying to figure out how do we get ahead in the Bay Area as a teacher. My wife was a nurse at One Medical, and we're sitting there saying, okay, we could rent this two-bedroom, one-bathroom, no parking house for the next 30 years and do all right. Or we could figure out a way to try to buy something and get ahead, do the American dream thing. And essentially I was like, I don't want to move out of the Bay Area. That was my goal from the start. But I also still want to be of service to people. That was my mission for teaching, and how can I help as many people as possible? And so I actually went and got hired by the Campbell Police Department in uh the South Bay. And uh, policemen in the Bay Area make quite good wages. And with overtime, you can make double what a teacher makes. And so in my head, I still get to help people, I still get to serve my community and stay in the Bay Area where my family is and where I'm from originally. And so I went into the academy and loved the training, I love the guys, but ultimately really wasn't a fit. They politely showed me the door about halfway through. I think I'm just not an order taker. I questioned too many orders. That's the only thing I can really put my finger on. I also had some injuries, so I don't know if they were concerned about my longevity in the industry. But either way, it was honestly a relief. I just was uh when I got done and I handed in the equipment, the gun and badge and ballistic vest, it was like a weight off my shoulders. But the next question is what do we do? So I moved we we ended up moving cross country to Philadelphia where we had some family and we were able to buy a home. I got a teaching job there. A couple years in, Owen calls me up. Well, we're actually hanging out, and he's like, You'd be good at this. You'd be good at this recruiting thing. You know patterns, you know people and how to assess them. You understand how to learn and how to help people learn and speak well. And you should, you should try it out. We're hiring remotely. And I was like, I just started this new charter school in South Philly, and I was super pumped. It was about as pinnacle of a mission as he could get. Of course, that was October of 2016. And by February, I called him exhausted. I was just like, I need a change. And so talked to him. He's like, Well, you're not gonna leave right now, right? Like you're gonna finish the school year out. I'm like, yeah, of course. So that summer we got together, we talked about just what recruiting is, which is helping people understand the opportunities in front of them, helping them with their career guidance, helping founders and other hiring managers to build out their teams and their companies. And in my head, it was something that I thought I'd be good at and would also serve me well if I wanted to go and take a mission of my own and maybe be a founder one day to have my own network of people who know how to do this tech building stuff and have influence in the market. And I had been kind of curious about tech forever. I'd never learned to code or any of those things, which is odd to say for a kid born and raised in Silicon Valley, but I just said, let's give it a try. And so he hired me in August of 2017, and I've been there ever since. Nice.

Hitesh Chudasama 9:31

What are some of the uh skill set that kind of have transferred over, especially with your current role?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Yeah, I would say the number one thing has always been curiosity and ability and like growth mindset, just always wanting to learn. So whether it's construction and you're doing a new project and you're trying to understand what are the specs, what's being built, how much do they cost, why do they cost that much, how long does something take, all those things are sub-specialties uh that I had no background in reality, very high level. So you have to dive in and learn about them, get curious with your, you know, partners on the job, and then become an expert in them. And so that transitioned well to teaching, which is where you're helping people learn how to learn more than anything else in our in our market. And so you also then are creating presentations, you're educating people on a subject that can be technically complex. You're trying to make a difficult story very simple and engaging and fun. And then you're trying to assess whether the person is understanding it, interested in it, excited about it, or struggling with it. And from there, then you have to craft a plan and attack, right? So all of that, as a teacher, you're doing on your feet day in and day out. And then you add in the 10 to 12 hours of grading each day on the weekends, and you know what it's like to source because you're just constantly doing something over and over and over and over again. And so there's there's creativity, there's communication, there's learning, there's presentation, there's assessment. All of these things really do coalesce into recruiting, along with running a good project and making sure people are doing what they say they're gonna do and that you're accomplishing things on a on a schedule and moving the ball forward. And so that it was honestly a great two careers to bring together into one, uh, which is the exec search world.

Hitesh Chudasama 11:19

So as you went through the different progressions, what were some of the moments that you kind of either doubted or you felt like, can I do this? How were you able to like manage as you went through these different kinds of transitions?

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Well, imposter syndrome was like the first five years of my recruiting career, I feel like. You come out outside of tech, no recruiting experience whatsoever, and all of a sudden you are asking VPs of engineering why they did certain things, how they do certain things. You feel like you're picking apart someone's livelihood in a way, and you are, you're judging them and trying to figure out whether they're a fit for your role, but it feels like you're almost criticizing them in a way. The and so it it takes a good while, but a constant commitment to being curious about the person and committed to making sure they're the right fit. So I always said that if I was going to do this, I want to help you get the right role. And if it's not, I'm gonna help you understand why it's not the right role for you and make sure that I find something else that is if I can't. And so focusing on being helpful, focusing on learning the industry and the different layers of the tech stack and all the things that I needed to be assessing, the more I more I learned that stuff, the less and less I felt the imposter syndrome. But honestly, it took forever. I mean, it really did. It took a long, long time. After we had been acquired by Riviera, you're just constantly wondering it could someone do it better? Would someone do it differently? And at one point you just start saying, look, I've seen enough of this story. I know a great process, particularly here, like there's a lot of tech and a lot of people to support me who give me the best practices. And as long as you focus on process, then the outcome doesn't stress you out as much. And you can say, all right, I gave a world-class process, I put the work in, I keep learning, I don't rest on my laurels, and then you gradually over time feel less and less of that imposter syndrome. But it there's almost like an element of having to tell yourself to care less a little bit. And what I mean by that is you have to care less about the actual outcome because the outcome is often not something you can fully control. And if you focus on your inputs and process and you know, yourself and growing yourself and constantly working hard and being consistent, the good outcomes will come consistently. You just don't have to worry about them and or take them so personal when they don't, and then they'll be more rare. So that's been that's been the thing that I've constantly had to build towards.

Hitesh Chudasama 13:38

So at this particular point, you're at a really great intersection where you're working with startups, founders, executives, and then with the different trends that are happening, like what are some of the things that you're seeing that most people outside of VC and startup worlds completely misunderstand when it comes to AI and the current uh job market?

SPEAKER_01 14:04

I think the big thing to me, the biggest thing that is misconstrued is that the problems that a lot of these AI startups are trying to solve when they're coming to us they sound very, very similar to all the problems that had been coming for the reasons they would come to do a head of engineering or head of product or head of AI search. Um now, there may not have been heads of AI searches prior to a couple years ago that were happening at these stages, but the overall problems around distributed systems and infrastructure scaling and accuracy of the outputs on the product, those issues have only essentially been condensed. And they're the same issues that everyone had been dealing with prior to Gen AI. Um now the expectations are just higher on what people can do, and then the headcounts are just lower because more people can do more with all these different tools that exist today. But the need for great infrastructure scaling, the need for great team scaling and recruiting, the need for great ability to solve technical problems and also build a great culture, those are all very common and similar issues that come up on every search that I do these days and had done for the last 10 years.

Hitesh Chudasama 15:16

I do see the fact that, especially even with AI, I think uh the role that you have, especially the level of roles that you place are VPs and executives where they're managing people. So, from your perspective, leadership and hiring, do you see that changing since you joined or in the last five years?

SPEAKER_01 15:35

So I think one is that the team sizes that are going to be built at each stage are just generally smaller. So that means then the technical expertise and abilities of the head of engineering or CTO or VP have gone up. So the need to be able to look at code and understand its quality, to handle pull requests when your team is handling something else that's time sensitive, to build your own pipeline because your team needs to ship this feature for a client, right? And so those kind of things are very real and even more there's more expectation around that today. We're rarely seeing someone to come in and say, all right, I need you to go from 10 or 20 to 50 or 100 engineers like we used to do when things were hyperscaling. Now, hyperscaling is we need to get to 30 engineers in the next 18 months, but we're gonna be doing $100 million in revenue or something to that effect by that point. And so that has changed quite a bit. There's also just an element of this desire for builder mentalities more than manager mentalities. And what I mean by that is a perfect example, client asked a candidate, how are you gonna ramp up in our industry if you aren't familiar with it? And historically, the way you do that had been to come in curious, ask questions, shadow the team, spend the first 30, 60, 90 days ramping up into the industry and learning about it, and then starting to make assessments and whatnot from there. And the idea today with Gen AI and agentic coding and everything is that's too long, right? And so his goal is to get someone who's like, I I'll build your product, rebuild it over the weekend, and see what I can do from the inside out and what I can learn about the challenges and where it's gonna get stuck and where it could break and where the regulations come in, those kind of things, right? And so that tone and that attitude is very much the forefront of the industry right now.

Hitesh Chudasama 17:29

The executive suite, uh, the roles itself, it seems like some of them will be converging. So there's you have the CPTO role, and now there's a marketing role kind of combines some of those things together. Are you seeing more of the convergence across the executive roles?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Certainly on the engineering side, we're seeing them take over product operations, the day-to-day of how product gets shipped far more at the earlier stages, where you leave the founders as the visionaries and the strategists about the product themselves itself. But then your and your head of engineering CTO might have some junior PMs reporting to them to help with alignment. Or you might even just have engineers play that role as the PM to help with prioritization. But I haven't seen too many pitches for heads of product at seed series A, Series B, and that used to be half my work lately. So a lot of it is folding into the engine leader, or vice versa. Sometimes the product leader can has managed engineering before, and so they'll come in and do that. But I would say it's far more the other way around, a CTO or head of engine taking on product and the operations around it.

Hitesh Chudasama 18:36

So if you had to give advice to somebody who's been in technology or in product for five to ten years and they're transitioning or trying to figure out their next steps, what are some of the things that you're seeing that they could look into or certain things that they should explore?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

I mean, the first thing I would do is build. I would just immediately start focusing on how do I build a portfolio of projects that help me uh think about the problems I want to solve, think about the data patterns I need to deal with, how do you route the right models to the right solutions in your product that you're trying to build so that you can manage the costs? You know, you have to be hands-on with this tech today, uh, or you're gonna get passed by because it changes so quickly. And I think gone are the days of, well, I built teams of 50, 100, 200 people, and that being the most important thing in every interview. And while that's still important and those are good skills to have had, um, the ability to say, here's a portfolio of projects and software that I've built myself on the side to learn about X, Y, and Z, I think that is what the future of resumes are gonna look like. I think if I'm coming out of college, I'm building stuff all day. That's all I'm doing is just trying things out, talking to different customers, trying to solve different problems for them, seeing if I can launch it. To me, that is that is where you need to start from and then work backwards. Yeah.

Hitesh Chudasama 19:54

I totally agree. I mean, barriers to building nowadays is so much lower than what it used to be. And even for especially a technologist, uh, they for them to be able to build using the latest technology or at least being aware and being able to leverage it on a regular basis makes a huge difference. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So go going back to like the transitions that you've had, as people are going through changing up careers, are there certain things that you would like them to be able to, especially when they're like hitting the ground where things are not working out for them? What are some of the things that you would advise them on? If they're trying to figure out, okay, should I stay in my current role versus changing it?

SPEAKER_01 20:29

I would probably try to talk with some peers and try to understand parallel issues. And what I mean by that is are there structural things that are part of this industry that are never gonna change and thus it's something you either get used to or get out of? Or is it specific to the culture and the structure of your own place? Like if it's very, very different, right? You could see if you have to deal with FDA clearances, right? There's a whole host of writing and documentation that has to be done at every step of the way that is far exceeds most software engineering documentation requirements. And so are you comfortable slowing down to speed up in that scenario and figuring out how to do that? And that's something you need to be eyes wide open when you go in. So if you go in and those are the things that are driving you nuts and make you want to change your career, then probably pick the wrong domain and you want to go somewhere else. But if it's tied to the company, then I would start figuring out who's been successful at the company and start to just meant like get mentored by them in some capacity, even if they're not more senior to you. Maybe just start understanding what works, what doesn't a little more because it could be that you're trying to put too much of what your past is into a scenario that isn't the same, right? And so again, it's going back to curiosity and trying to know what's working, what doesn't within the company so that you can adapt and be the version of yourself in that space. You don't have to change who you are, but we all can adapt ourselves to a scenario. But you have to be willing and open to doing. That.

Hitesh Chudasama 22:00

I've actually talked to different people from different kinds of uh industries and they're trying to figure out different transitions, especially from season one. There's people who reached out and they've had challenges as they're going through different kinds of transitions. So this is definitely helpful, chat. Yeah. I know that you kind of moved away from education, but then I there's another way that you're contributing to this. And this is like you've been part of the Grande uh Center for Education and Community Engagement. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Absolutely. So the Grande Center uh is a nonprofit uh that I've been a part of since the very beginning, about four years now. And the mission is to provide opportunity and education for the people of El Salvador, particularly rural sectors of El Salvador. So a lot of the needs are in the areas outside of San Salvador. And the idea is that all the people that do come, say, to the US or to other countries from there, generally speaking, are trying to find a job, trying to find ways to make money to send back home. And if we can provide them with opportunities to stay where they are and make a decent wage, they will. And there's a huge opportunity with hardworking folks who are brilliant. And so what we did was we said, okay, we're going to build a school, K-12, be in the community, and also try to support the adults in the community as well. And so help train them to work at tech companies, whether it's in data labeling, whether it's in vert as a virtual assistant. These days, AI implementation is becoming a specialty because some of these AI assistants are quite powerful. And so we're adapting to the market there. There's also social media campaigns and website building and all the rest that the Grande Services, which is a for-profit arm, does. And then the profit from the Grande Services goes back and feeds the schooling and the training facility. And so it becomes this flywheel where it's going to be self-sustaining over time. We all we still do fundraising and all those things, but the idea is let's get as many jobs in the region, well-paying jobs that people are learning and growing and can upskill into. And then over time, you build a tech ecosystem in a community that hasn't had one in a time zone that works really well with American companies with a population that like to work hard and add value to a great ecosystem. And so it's been super rewarding. We now have, I think it's six classrooms on a beautiful plot of land, about a hundred kids in K through four. And then we have, I want to say it's 30 employees in the Grande Center, including my EA and several here at Riviera. And then we have websites and social media that are being built. And then we have a team of about 25 data labelers that are doing mostly computer vision-based data labeling as well. And we're continuing to try to grow that. And if we can we have enough space for like around 800, 900 kids and about six to seven hundred adults at one point. And if we can get to a point where there's no more room, that'd be a great problem to have. But yeah, it's been it's been super exciting. Our board is US based, but we have an ops team in El Salvador, and I I've been down to visit them.

Hitesh Chudasama 25:09

It's been an amazing It seems like you're not just helping the kids, but also the parents and the adult community there as well. So nice.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yeah, that was the thing. I just I felt like, you know, the person, Joe, who came to me, wanted to build this school, and I said, that's great. He wanted to do that to give them education, give them opportunities, help them stay in their community and and thrive. And I said, fantastic. But what about their parents for the next decade or so or the adults in the region? How do we help them now? And so that's what sort of built the Grande Services idea.

Hitesh Chudasama 25:41

So let's just say if companies want to use some of the services that are being provided, how would they go about doing that?

SPEAKER_01 25:46

So grandecenter.org is the website. And uh you can also just reach out to me on LinkedIn and I can hook you up with the team. To be honest, we're think of us like a BPO where we can figure out a pro you know, any sort of project for you. One of the things we're building right now is education around how to adopt AI and use a lot of these agentic tools like Notebook LM and others, and having these folks be the experts in that space so that they can provide value to whoever your key sort of go-to-market folks are or your key executors of business, right? And so it really comes down to is there a task or a project that you need help on that you want to pay affordable rates, uh, like very affordable rates, and help this mission, right? We can craft a pro program and train folks specifically to your project. But some of the key ones are, like I said, data labeling is huge. That's where we started. Virtual assistant or EAs that are based in El Salvador are great. We also have social media marketing, campaign management, website building, design of those kinds of mobile apps, things like that. And even started to build chatbots for nonprofits and other small businesses like dentists and things like that, schools as well, so that we can take your handbook and put it into an LLM, and then you have a nice little chat. So honestly, anything in there, we can probably help.

Hitesh Chudasama 27:10

Chad, I really enjoyed the conversation. It was really thoughtful. Thanks once again. I was glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

I appreciate you inviting me.