2022 in review - happy new year from GGR!
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2022 in review - happy new year from GGR!
it’s January so I think we can still say that……? 🤷♂️
As we’ve done for the past couple years, scroll down for some fun graphics that show what our business (and the startup hiring market generally) looked like in 2022!
Before we dive in….everyone continues to ask what the job market looks like so for those interested, we’ll at least give our quick two cents.
Companies/candidates/investors all seem to still be trying to figure out which way is up and although we unfortunately continue to hear each week about new rounds of layoffs (Coinbase, StitchFix, Salesforce, even Google), there certainly remain pockets of startups that are continuing to raise new rounds of capital.
From our seats, this continues to be either
early stage business - mostly seed / series a / series b
companies that haven’t raised in a couple years and have changed the business fundamentally since then to warrant new capital for growth
Both of these situations means that startups need to grow in order to achieve the valuations (and implied revenue growth associated with those valuations) or otherwise they’ll be left in a tough situation by not having met their targets - and subsequently likely need to raise future down-rounds.
All to say, it’s definitely not sunshine 😎 and roses🌹 out there, but we’re remaining cautiously optimistic that great companies will continue to hire heading into the heart of 2023.
We’ll keep this short but wanted to send a quick “year in review” on how things went this year and some interesting observations and learnings.
❤️ Phil, Nick and the Golden Gate team
GGR year in Review!
More Women than Men: for the first time in our history, we placed almost 20% more women than men! This is driven both by our own internal tracking and push plus a larger portion of our clients prioritizing diverse candidate pools. While we’re excited by this trajectory, we acknowledge the problem is certainly nowhere near solved….
The first half of 2022 was CRAZY: it’s important to remember that although things feel a lot worse than the crazy job market of the first half of 2022, that was in fact not normal. This picture feels worths thousands (maybe even millions or billions) of words….
Entering the world of VC: although recruiting for startups continues and will always remain our focus, a larger portion of our work is helping VC funds hire business generalists primarily in roles like Chief of Staff, Portfolio Operations, Strategy, and occasionally Talent.
No corporates here: we focus on small, fast-growing companies and will hold out on working with Fortune 500s as long as humanely possible…..no offense : )
Remote First: more startups moved toward “remote-first” in 2022. That said, we’ve just started seeing that trend move in the opposite direction for the first time since COVID as more companies are prioritizing candidates who are based (or willing to be based sometime in the future) in at least one of the cities where they have an office.
Rising Stars: we continue to prioritize “rising stars,” the top 1% of candidates who are young, hungry, have incredibly high trajectory, and are vying for leadership roles well beyond their years.
Open Roles
Our company partners are continuing to hire but we’ve certainly seen a slowdown in new roles popping up. For the exciting opportunities we’re currently working on, check out on our Openings page.
Some content we’ve found interesting…
🎧 “This is What Happens to Silicon Valley in a Downturn” (Odd Lots): A historian’s take on the booms and busts of the tech industry, and how to think about the downturn we’re experiencing now.
📖 “How to Land a Good Job in a Bad Economy” (Will Robbins at Contrary Capital): A nice framework of key questions and elements to think about when joining a company, especially an early-stage one, during a downturn.
📖 “The Only Crypto Story You Need” (by Matt Levine): Long-form explanation of some of the core structures and beliefs of the crypto system. An interesting read with everything currently going on with FTX and the like.