#048 - Wie FOUND 2,2Mio. Fr. geraised hat | Ranjit de Sousa

Thank you very much, I'm delighted to be here. I was born in Switzerland, grew up in Zurich with roots in three different countries. I'm married with three kids, a big sports fan—both watching and playing. Football plays a big role, though unfortunately both teams I support—Arsenal London and FC Basel—are not doing very well at the moment. I've basically done three things in my career: first, building companies, which I started doing quite early; second, bringing technology into the recruiting industry and trying to transform how things work; and third, everything related to people in the workplace—corporate culture, and of course the whole topic of skills and the talent shortage.

I think when something really interests me, then I do well. When it interests me less, I don't. I went to Gymnasium in Zurich, and looking back now, at that age it wasn't really seen as a big decision—you just trusted the teachers and their judgment. I had a great time with friends and sports, and the school was fine. But then I didn't think long about what I should study. I was interested in things that weren't exactly mainstream—I considered paleontology, dinosaurs, astrophysics. But in the end, I chose something very normal: economics and political science at the University of St. Gallen. I was interested in economics, and the university had a great reputation.

Honestly, I don't think I really thought about it that much. But what I think is fantastic about the Swiss system is that you have this choice. I can already imagine with my own kids that having the freedom to choose between different educational paths is wonderful. I think this is actually one of the reasons Switzerland is so successful. I've worked in many different countries and seen how their education systems work—how very rigidly academic they are—and I believe that's one reason why in many countries, trades and craftsmanship aren't as valued or well-practiced. I think having to make decisions early is actually valuable. It's difficult when you're young, like my son who's 12 and has to make this choice, but for me it's not a final decision. The system allows you to reassess and adjust along the way.

Yes, exactly. I studied in French at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. I'd always been very interested in politics and international relations, and privately very engaged with understanding what's happening in the world—when you think about conflicts in Ukraine or the Middle East, it's helpful to have a broader perspective and understanding of those topics.

What I really liked was how practical it was. I'd say the most useful things you take from any university education aren't the specific content, but rather learning to work with other people, self-organization, and project-based work. Those are the skills that really carry you forward in your career—not necessarily the specific subject matter.

Yes, briefly. It's the relatively classic route—consulting or investment banking, which was the stereotype back then. And yes, I did that. Early on I realized it wasn't really what I loved doing. It's a very structured path with predefined steps. After a few years, a colleague and I got frustrated and decided to start our own business—to do consulting differently. The question was: how can you industrialize and scale consulting? Because the questions are always the same, and the answers are often the same too. Big consulting shows, producing lots of material, lots of PowerPoint—couldn't that be standardized? But actually, what I found most valuable wasn't what was relevant for the client. What you really get from consulting is often just security and confirmation that you're on the right track. Maybe ego—paying lots of money for a prestigious firm like BCG or McKinsey. Those are status and ego topics that you can't really scale.

I never really asked myself: what does the customer actually need? We were a typical startup—I would say almost the opposite of what happens in big companies. You create a product, the market wants it, great. But if nobody wants the product, that's the problem. It was incredibly valuable because when you start a business from scratch, you have to build everything yourself. You learn everything—you make extreme amounts of mistakes, but from every mistake you learn again. It was brutal, incredibly hard, but also incredibly fun. And it prepared me for everything I've done since. Then I went back to the corporate world, realized that didn't work for me, and eventually found my path. I've had a relatively normal corporate career, but always building new things—corporate ventures, new businesses, new initiatives. In big companies you still need to find ways to do things differently.

What I would say is that in a corporate venture, you have a lot of freedom and room to experiment and try things. When the customer buys what you've created, that's the ultimate validation. I found that to be something not typical for large enterprises. I've been lucky in my current role—I lead one of the divisions, so I really have the ability to shape things. For example, we took a very traditional coaching business—in-person, face-to-face coaching—and realized it could be revolutionized by making everything mobile. That not only improves the process but actually allows for much better coaching outcomes. Building a corporate venture means you have the freedom to do that, but you also have to be aware of the preserving forces in large companies—the people who have something to lose when you succeed. In a startup, it's completely different: you have full risk as a founder, full pressure, but full freedom. The only preserving forces might be traditional competitors. The customer and the new, better solution—that's what matters.

I would say that career success, in my experience, most often comes from not failing. And that always depends on a few things. You need luck, you need to be at the right place at the right time. And the one thing I always say is: you need the right boss. If someone asks me, I wouldn't choose a job—I would choose the right boss. That's actually the most relevant factor for your career, especially at the beginning. Because the boss is the person you learn from—not just from your team, but from your boss. If that's a good match, you develop well. The second factor is: always focus on learning. I would always choose learning opportunities—even if it means earning less initially—because then you may earn more later. Don't just try to maximize salary or chase cool titles. If you only optimize for that, you won't necessarily be successful.

Actually, Lee Harrison was a classic case for rebranding—we literally rebranded. Yes, that was the main part of my career. I did many things within that group: acquisitions, sales, project management, worked in several different countries I hadn't known before, expanded globally. I learned an incredible amount in those 12 years.

Exactly, because I always had the opportunity to do something different. If you had asked me beforehand, would I stay that long? Probably not. But I always had the chance to try something new, and to do entrepreneurial things within a larger corporation. But I always had that itch—I need to do something new again.

Yes, I was in the US during the financial crisis—right in the heart of it, in New York. I still had the last months before the crisis hit, and then the crisis itself. Seeing how it unfolded was incredibly instructive. In America especially, things move very differently than in Europe. In Europe, things move much more slowly. In America, you saw the negative effects immediately—within two or three weeks, restaurants were closing, mini-marts shutting down. Unemployment became truly visible, with homeless people on the streets. It was very, very fast. But then recovery also came very quickly. That's the dynamic of the American economy—things get destroyed quickly, but new things also get built quickly. The spirit of innovation, the courage to try new things—I really got to experience all of that in those two or three years around the financial crisis.

It was actually a similar type of company but with a different focus. The business interested me because the topics around career transitions and workforce development were very compelling. I'd worked with many companies that were restructuring, which was very interesting, especially during the financial crisis. What also intrigued me was the opportunity to work in America—LHH had its roots in America, and building something within a company with American roots and American corporate culture was fascinating. And of course, the cyclical nature of the business—growing, shrinking, entering new countries. I think what you learn in every company, and even from startups, is that sometimes you have to let go of people who don't fit anymore—not because of the person, but because of the phase. Many startups are just trying to survive, extending their runway. But you can't just exist to survive—you have to exist to do something great for your customers or users. That has to be the center of everything, every day.

The role is to lead the division—about 5,000 people worldwide. It's a lot about representing the unit, having contact with all the important clients, setting strategy for the organization. What does that mean practically? Where do we invest, which products, how much money do we commit? You're ultimately responsible for the most important decisions. That's the good part. In large companies, it also means a lot of politics—interactions with other divisions to defend your position. It's always about how much of the budget you can secure, and that's a constant battle. I find it frustrating because often people focus only on themselves rather than asking: how do we make our product or service better for our customers? That sense of purpose often gets lost in large companies. Everyone looks out for themselves rather than the bigger picture. I believe this is a fundamental difference from startups, where you're incredibly focused on what the customer needs and what they value. Every customer counts. That's how it should be in big companies too, but it often isn't.

There's a theory that once you have more than 150 people in an organization, the coordination costs—the overhead of managing the organization—become so large that a significant portion of the company's energy gets absorbed by coordination issues rather than creating value.

Yes, it's actually very similar principles to what I described. The right boss matters, and my experience with founding ventures played a role. I noticed that service companies—traditional recruiting firms in particular—are incredibly resistant to technology. It's a preserving culture. They recruit people, yes, but they do it through offices and buildings and relationships, the same way it's been done for the last 20, 30, 100, 200 years. The candidate comes in with a resume, the company has a job description, and that's just how it works. But the world has changed—a lot happens on phones and smartphones now. That's the reality, but traditional recruiters haven't adapted.

Yes, between us we tried to understand what really makes a startup successful. I spent a long time studying startups—how they operate, how they're financed, what VCs look for in a startup. And in parallel, working with George and other co-founders, we started discussing what possibilities exist to actually solve the problems that companies still face. The problem is: companies are still trying to recruit the way they've been doing for 200 years. In English it's called 'job posting'—literally posting a job and hoping someone applies. Companies say there's a skills shortage, they can't find people—but they're doing exactly the same thing they've been doing for 200 years. We talked to many people, including talented individuals who have exactly the skills companies are looking for, and they're frustrated. They're frustrated because it's incredibly hard—you have to go on job boards, write a separate application for every single position, update your resume—why do we even have resumes? It's completely outdated. Why does one have to write that? And then it's embellished—85% of resumes are embellished. On the other side, companies write job descriptions that nobody actually reads. These are all things that could be completely different.

VCs are venture capital investors—they invest money in startups with the hope that those startups will be successful and generate a great return. But it's very risky. The statistics suggest that maybe 2 out of 20 startups succeed, though I think the exact numbers vary. But when one of those successful ones pays off, it more than makes up for everything you've invested. So it's incredibly important that this risk capital exists for startups, because a normal investor won't put money into something that risky, and often doesn't have the funds to do so. We invested our own money as well—2.2 million of our own capital, and then additional funding from VCs, family offices, and business angels. Business angels are professional individual investors who put in money and can also help because they know a lot about recruiting or about how to build and finance a startup.

Family offices are investment vehicles where there's a wealthy family behind the capital. Business angels are successful individuals or entrepreneurs who invest their own money. Ideally in our case, they're people from the recruiting or HR industry who understand what makes companies successful or not—the type who invest early when the risk is very high. The 2.2 million is split among multiple investors—each typically investing between 50,000 and 100,000. You want enough investors to get their knowledge and support, but not so many that you can't manage them. The important thing is that each investor has enough skin in the game that they're motivated to help. And you have to think about future funding rounds—you can't correct mistakes later. You need to plan this carefully.

Our goal is to completely change the recruiting market. The most important thing is what I mentioned before—resumes and job descriptions are basically garbage, and we're not going to use them. We use objective data instead. What does that mean? For talents in specific fields—product management, sales, design—we run assessments. These are mobile games that generate a lot of data: cognition, how well you solve problems, how smart you are at problem-solving, behaviors relevant to work—how you make decisions, whether you're an intuitive thinker or very process-oriented. All of this gives us data about whether someone will succeed in a particular environment. Because if you're in a startup with no established processes, you need to be very intuitive in your decisions. In larger companies, you can't be too intuitive because there are processes in place. We also assess preferences—like how much you want to earn, which is often addressed too late in the interview process. We ask: how many days a week can you work? Someone might say only two days, but we need someone who's in the office every day. These are things that are truly decisive.

The first completely different thing is: we don't care about resumes. We only care about information that's actually relevant. Second, we believe the hiring manager—the boss—is so important. In a normal application process, you meet with HR, then maybe the hiring manager, but often you never meet the person you'd actually report to. That makes no sense. The first person a candidate should meet is the hiring manager. That's why we put so much emphasis on this match. The third thing is 'hiring managers apply'—meaning the boss, the person who actually needs the hire, should be the one driving the process. Because it makes no sense if a product manager says she can't find product managers and then does the same thing as 200 years ago—writing a job description and hoping people apply. She knows she won't get the right people that way. The approach needs to be reversed so you really find the right match.

So in interviews that doesn't really happen, it's more about matching. You get candidates applying via video, kind of like a dating video. Then interviews happen and you check the chemistry, whether it feels right. Usually candidates go through maybe three interviews max, getting to know the team and the team lead. In the end there's an agreement: do we think this can work or not? And if we're honest, we can tell when someone fits the team. Even if the person has the right skills but can't connect with the team, that doesn't work.

We started just a few months ago, so we don't have the data yet, but that's exactly what interests us. After people are in their roles for a few months, we want to see: does it work with the manager, with the team? Those are exactly the topics where we can improve our matching algorithm. That's what interests us long-term, and it will likely allow us to do even better hiring. There's probably a lot of data about which data points matter and which don't. I think it's much broader than we realize—what actually works and what doesn't. Experimentation is absolutely central to that.

We're constantly experimenting with ideas that might work, then testing them. What does the data show us? What do our platform behaviors reveal? That's the advantage of a platform—it lets us see across the board what works and what doesn't, but you only know through experimentation and testing.

Basically two things. First, the team that develops our product—various roles, the most important being software development and coding, but also all the design work. We place a lot of emphasis on great UX/UI. Then the other side is going to customers, which also costs money. We have what you'd call product-led growth—it's somewhat self-automated, organic. But then there's more sales, which costs money too. And that's fine, because it's an investment in product development and bringing more customers onto the platform.

Yes, we bring talent into our community. The community has a few things going on: we connect individual talents with each other so they can support one another. Every talent in the Found community also has a career coach, because it's about figuring out what the right next step is for their career. And then on the customer side, we have startups, scale-ups, and corporate ventures as clients. We bring them talent specifically in areas like founders, chief product officers, product heads, VP of sales, chief sales officers, and people roles.

It's more support for permanent positions, not temporary or contract work. It's not a temp agency or something like that—just permanent placement.

It's not simple at all. Three things about it. First, getting the initial money is incredibly difficult. Once you have your first investors, the second round gets easier. But at the very beginning, you don't have much product to show and you can't tell investors to talk to others who've already invested, because those connections don't exist yet. So the first funding is incredibly hard. For us it was a combination of luck and hard work. We managed to get great investors at the start who helped us a lot with their networks and experience.

As a startup founder, you need to understand that fundraising is a sales process. You need to think about how much you're raising, who you're approaching, what to say. Raising money is one of the biggest decisions you make as a founder—it's not something you do quickly. You can't just walk into a store and buy yogurt with the money you want. You need to build trust, build relationships, understand what's important to the investor. It doesn't always fit either. Some things that matter are whether you bring the right background as a founder, whether you can sell yourself as a startup, and whether the investor sees potential in your team.

You need to convince investors they're not just giving money—they're investing in your team and your idea. That's the sales process, and we went through it multiple times. Then once you close a round, like in football when the game is still going, you need to think about the next round. Who should be in it? Even if they don't invest much money, some investors are strategically important for venture capital firms. They help you grow and become more valuable themselves. I think that's something we did well, and in the current market environment, many founders could learn from it.

It's a learning process, and we're still improving. Our pitch is now in version two. You never really get it perfect—you get feedback, you iterate, and there are always things you can do differently or better. One thing I've learned is that you really need to be able to express your idea concisely. When you're talking to an investor for the first time and you're under pressure—that's when it matters most. How do you distill the idea into something tight: here's how we, as founders, are going to change the entire recruiting market with objective data and a focus on talent. Being able to say that clearly is super important, especially early on when you don't have much data, customers, or revenue yet. The investors need to believe in the founders and see a strong team.

George and I met seven years ago while working together, and that's important—we know how each other ticks. We know each other's strengths and weaknesses, and that's super helpful. It lets us move faster because I know where I can completely trust George and where I can rely on him. With our third co-founder Niklas, we met through our network. He joined us as CTO, has a lot of startup experience, founded several startups in fintech and HR tech, and led large engineering teams at companies like Audi. That experience is incredibly valuable—not that we know exactly what we're doing, but we know what not to do. That proven track record makes a huge difference.

You have to think carefully about who you spend your time with day to day, because you become the average of the five people you're most around. That changes over phases of life, but it's important to be intentional about it. And third, just have fun. Be aware that you have limited time on this world, so make the most of it. That's what I'd tell my 20-year-old self.

On the big things—company culture, long-term vision—we're aligned as a team, including the broader team. But on day-to-day execution, I might see things very differently. I might think something's realistic while someone else says no, that's not possible. George focuses on what's financially feasible, Niklas looks at what's technically possible and what works for customers, and I have my own perspective. We each bring different viewpoints, and we debate through the trade-offs. We have a product and tech cycle every two weeks as a company, so we can discuss what the data is telling us and what different perspectives suggest. We deliberately maintain different viewpoints so we can properly discuss and weigh important decisions.

Having multiple founders is definitely an advantage. Personally, I think I'd feel quite lonely if I were a solo founder, and I really admire people who do it alone. For us, having different perspectives is a huge plus. We can also divide responsibilities. Fundraising is incredibly intensive—it might take 60, 70, even 100% of your time. That's very hard as a solo founder. In our setup it's manageable. Right now, after we close our round, it'll be different, but there will be another point in time where I'm again 60-70-100% focused on fundraising.

For us, the most important thing is experimentation. We constantly have hypotheses we test and see what the data tells us—what's called discovery. Understanding user behavior: why do they do what they do? Really grasping the problem you're trying to solve. I think a key phrase for this phase is 'strong beliefs, loosely held.' You need strong conviction about what you're building, but when the data contradicts you, you need to say: okay, I was wrong, and get better. That means you can't have an ego about your idea. You need to be constantly open for feedback—daily, hourly. I think that's the most important thing. But you also can't lose sight of your vision amidst all the experimentation.

US directly is the priority. Europe is incredibly complicated—very many rules, very much regulation, like in France, Italy, Spain. It's difficult because of the many different languages, and also there's less openness to new things and technology-based solutions in our area. In the US, in our sector, it's not that heavily regulated, it's much more technology-oriented, and there's much more willingness to try things and experiment. That's the opposite of Europe. From there you can grow quickly. So the next step will be the US, focusing on the right target groups on both the talent and customer side. Long-term, our goal is to really change how the job market works—moving away from resumes, from job descriptions, to using relevant data. That's the ultimate vision.

I sit on the board of two companies. One is a startup that's really cool—the founders built a software platform that I think has the potential to change the world. It allows you to digitize all the data from buildings. There are so many buildings globally—it's actually the largest asset class—but the data from those buildings is rarely captured properly. This software becomes the single source of truth for building data, enabling things like smarter heating and ventilation—connecting sensors so heating doesn't run when rooms are empty, or room booking for companies. Buildings are extremely poorly utilized and emit a lot of CO2. There's huge potential for improvement. It's a brilliant team and product with a lot of momentum. I hope to help them along the way.

Absolutely. The board roles are helpful for getting different perspectives. In your daily work at your own company, it's easy to stay in your silo and never look outside. These board roles help with that, but they also require a lot of time and commitment. Reflecting on other companies and thinking about how their situations are relevant to us—what would we do differently in their position—that's super helpful. Yeah, it definitely helps.

I have an eclectic reading taste—I read very different things. If you ask me the same question next year, my three recommendations will probably be completely different. But right now, first: Barça by Simon Kuper, about how FC Barcelona built their dynasty through La Masia, the youth academy, with Johan Cruyff's philosophy, Dutch football, and Pep Guardiola as coach with Messi as the centerpiece. It goes beyond football—I'm a big football fan, but it's really about building the perfect team, respecting each other, communicating well. Those principles made Barcelona's success possible. Second: a book called Congo by David Van Reybrouck. It's about the history of the Congo, and two reasons it's relevant: most people don't realize how important Congo is—it holds about 80% of the world's cobalt, which is essential for every phone, laptop, and tablet. And also, Congo is where the most people have died from war in recent history, which you rarely see in the news. Very eye-opening. Third: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Much of what we do with our applications ties into the science he developed—how human behavior and intuition work, why certain things like Netflix are so effective. It's a fascinating book.

Three things. First, spend a lot of time with yourself—make time to think independently, not just thinking what others think. Most people don't spend enough time with their own thoughts. Second, think carefully about who you interact with daily, because you become the average of the five people you're around most. It's important to be intentional about that. Third, just have fun—and be aware that you have limited time on this planet, so make the most of it and live with joy. Thank you for the conversation, it was really fun.