What we talked about
Logan Yonavjak is a 2x founder, investor, and impact finance expert with two decades of experience channeling capital into what matters. She co-founded a sell-side advisory firm, helped move hundreds of millions into impact investing, and has worked with startups, endowments, and family offices along the way. Today she leads the Founder Readiness Institute, using behavioral science and AI to measure leadership capacity before organizations hire or promote.
Show notes
Logan Yonavjak built the Founder Readiness Institute out of a frustration with how investors and hiring managers evaluate people: past performance and credentials tell you where someone has been, not whether they can handle the pressure and complexity of where they’re going. Her platform trains LLMs on adult developmental theory to assess leadership capacity from transcript data alone, no multiple choice, no self-reporting, and harder to game than anything on the market today.
What we covered
- Logan’s core insight is that most hiring focuses on past performance while the better predictor for senior roles is “developmental capacity”, the ability to think, behave, and act effectively under sustained pressure and complexity. She gives the example that a technically excellent analyst or coder who’s been successful in a functional role is not necessarily ready to lead at the level of strategy and ambiguity that comes with more senior positions.
- The assessment works by running transcript data through a six-dimensional model grounded in adult developmental theory. Candidates can be assessed from podcast appearances, Ted talks, interviews, or a structured 45-minute open-ended assessment, the AI analyzes sentence structure, what perspectives someone holds simultaneously, how they talk about their own shortcomings, and what is conspicuously absent from their answers. Logan calls the absent-content analysis “negative space analysis,” and recommends it as a practical technique anyone can apply by asking an AI to read a document and identify what wasn’t said.
- On why 65% of startups fail because of people problems, Logan argues that many founders underestimate how much the CEO role demands: tolerance for deep uncertainty, the ability to stay emotionally regulated under extreme stress, and enough self-awareness to know what you don’t know. She is direct that most people who want to start a company haven’t honestly assessed whether they have the developmental capacity to do it.
- Logan measures six core constructs for startup leadership, one of which is “purposeful agility”, how well a person pivots under pressure while keeping the original mission and goals in sight. At lower developmental levels, she says, people under stress make a lot of rash decisions and just want to make a decision rather than a strategic one. At higher levels, they can take in conflicting inputs, stay oriented to the big picture, and act with confident independence rather than reacting impulsively.
- On bias in promotion decisions, she notes that less than 1% of managers receive any coaching on how to actually manage people before being promoted into management, a stat she found striking even if imprecise. The result is that promotions get made by pattern-matching to whoever did a good technical job, which systematically underweights the capacity dimensions that actually predict success at higher levels.
- Her most practical piece of advice for founders: don’t discuss what you’re building with people who haven’t succeeded at building something themselves. In the early, tender phases, a few naysayers from familiar people who don’t understand what startup life requires can materially damage your mindset, and your mindset is the primary asset you’re betting on.
About Logan
Logan Yonavjak is co-founder and CEO of the Founder Readiness Institute, where she applies behavioral science and AI to help investors and hiring managers assess leadership capacity. She has spent two decades working at the intersection of talent, capital, and operations, including extensive work in impact investing and sustainability across agriculture, food, and natural infrastructure.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loganyonavjak
- Website: https://www.founderready.io
Episode 140 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the pre-Vered podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today I am joined by co-founder and CEO of the Founder Readiness Institute, she’s building a practical way to measure leadership readiness.
using behavioral science and people analytics. Logan sits as the intersection of talent, capital and operations. She has helped founders and teams make better people decisions from hiring to promotions with a focus on reducing bias and improving decision quality. She’s also built and worked with investor communities, impact aligned capital and led sustainability across real world operations in sectors like agriculture, food and natural infrastructure.
Logan, welcome to the show.
Logan Yonavjak (00:48) Thank you so much. It’s great to be here.
Federico Ramallo (00:52) It’s to have you here today. So for people meeting you for the first time, can you tell us a little bit more about what you do?
Logan Yonavjak (00:58) Yes, absolutely. Well, I like to say in simple terms, I solve people problems. I think we’re really not necessarily, you know, as a society, I don’t know that we’re as focused as we should be on this concept of leadership readiness or capacity. And that’s what we’re really measuring with our technology. I can get a little bit more into that. But why I’m passionate about it is we have a more complex market than ever.
Everyone’s talking about AI, everyone’s talking about what it’s going to do to the job market. I think those who have the ability to hold complexity and work under pressure are going to be those who are able to continue to evolve in this job market. And so I think our capabilities are more important than ever. And I’m just really passionate about spreading the word and talking about leadership capacity and readiness in workplaces.
Federico Ramallo (01:51) Right, right. We can get a little bit more on how AI is affecting hiring because I think it’s an important topic, but before we get into that, can you tell us a little bit more what do you mean by better hiring outcomes?
Logan Yonavjak (02:09) Yeah, so I think what we’re trying to do is think about future probability rather than past performance. So a lot of hiring strategies focus on someone’s credentials. It starts with the resume. It could start with an intro call. Like what have you done in the past? What does that look like? Where did you go to school? What jobs have you had?
that’s not necessarily the best predictor, especially at higher levels of an organization as to whether the person’s really ready to carry more complexity or pressure. And so just because someone’s done a good job as a technical analyst or they’ve been kind of at a more technical level of their own development doesn’t mean that they’re ready to really lead in the capacity of complexity and pressure. And so what we’re trying to do is help
hiring managers better understand someone’s developmental capacity so that they can hopefully predict better future performance.
Federico Ramallo (03:10) Right, right. Yeah, I think that there is some value on checking past performance or past credentials, right? Because that’s how we’ve been doing it for many, years, right?
the way that I explain to a lot of people what’s a university degree. It’s a piece of paper that says, you achieve all the check boxes so we can say you have a degree, right? I mean, there’s value in it, but my ironic comment for that is that at the end of the day, it doesn’t prove that you have the knowledge and the abilities. It just proves that you were able to go through the circuit that they put in front of
right? ⁓
Logan Yonavjak (03:46) Yeah,
sure. And I think that people are questioning in many cases whether broad liberal arts degrees are actually as valuable as they used to be. So there’s a lot being disrupted in the traditional models of preparing people for leadership. But I think what our capabilities do and what we’re assessing people for is that developmental capacity. So their ability to think, behave and act under pressure and under complexity over time.
Federico Ramallo (04:15) Right, right. I’ve been asking around about how AI is changing hiring because I’ve seen a few things. One is that when you have a candidate, now you don’t know how much is using AI as crutches or how much is using it to augment their capacity, right? The way that I explain it is,
I can see for myself if I’m asking AI how to do something that I don’t know, right? Or if I’m leading, I know what I want to do, I have the vision, I’m driving, I’m just using the AI for the syntax or for the, you so I can put ideas, I want to write an email, I can put the ideas into it and I can tell the model, help me rewrite it in a better way, right?
instill me driving still my ideas, but it’s different if I say, hey, help me do a new email to, how should I hire, to give another example, right? And then whatever is going to give us, it’s probably not the best approach. And…
Some people told me at the end of the day that doesn’t matter because what matters is the outcome. But my concern is, yes, but how do you know what that person doesn’t know? And if they don’t have the experience of doing it themselves and they over rely on the tool, then are you hiring the agent or are you hiring the human?
Logan Yonavjak (05:39) Well, I think the expertise part is still incredibly important. Like you need someone with, you know, I’ve had this experience myself. I was using AI the other day for some marketing strategy and I am not a marketing professional by trade. And the outputs it was giving me was, were so verbose and just complicated that I was starting to feel overwhelmed because I don’t know how to evaluate.
the strategy that it’s giving me because I’m not, don’t have the pattern recognition of being a marketer. So I can only reference certain, you know, guide posts like, you know,
Michael Simmons or Alex Hormozi on the sales side. You know, I have frameworks that other people have developed. I can feed into AI, but at the end of the day, I have to make the decision on how to take that information and do something with it. So I think there’s still the technical know-how and ability to read the AI outputs and know how to talk to it. That’s an incredibly important skill set. What we’re saying is…
You also need the capacity in yourself as a leader to be able to stay centered amidst all the information and tools coming at you, to stay emotionally relational to your team, to make sure you’re having empathy for others.
to make sure that you’re coachable so that you’re taking in feedback from the market, from stakeholders. so all of these what we call constructs are still incredibly important to be able to stay centered, focused, and effective amidst this big, rapid innovation change that we’re experiencing. So I definitely want to underscore.
you know, the technical know-how is still very much required in handling AI. Like, it’s leveling the playing field, but you still need a lot of expertise to read and know how to interact with it.
Federico Ramallo (07:25) Right, I think that being able to leverage, being able to assess, to have the criteria of what’s useful, what’s not, I think that becomes important. But the paradox that I’m finding is if we over rely on the tool, then how do we gain that experience? So people that has that experience becomes much more important, right?
Logan Yonavjak (07:52) Yeah, so I think what we’re going to see and what we’re seeing in companies, some companies are taking this to the extreme and going through a huge culling process and kind of trying to make their, it’s an AI forward company with almost no human involvement. Others are, it’ll probably be a couple years before they figure out what they wanna do. But I think those who know how to handle complexity and pressure and have…
systems within themselves to enable them to operate at a high level will succeed in this upheaval that we’re experiencing. And so that’s what we’re advocating for is like, we want to be able to read the developmental capacity of those leaders that are going to stay in these companies or who are going to be hired or promoted into positions.
Federico Ramallo (08:38) Right, right. That’s very interesting. So how do you assess that with your platform?
Logan Yonavjak (08:46) Yeah, so it sounds simple, we’ve trained for months and months now, we’ve trained LLMs to be able to understand the patterns in the research that we are bringing to the table, which is a lot of developmental, adult developmental theory and understanding how people evolve under complexity over time and how they handle complexity. And so we take transcript data.
It can be through a conversation we’re having. can be you presenting on a podcast or you doing an interview, you doing a Ted talk, and then we can take those transcripts and basically run a six dimensional assessment. We look at six different constructs and we provide everyone with an output. It gives like kind of three core areas to focus on and that’s just an immediate output you get from using our tool.
sit down and take an assessment which takes about 45 minutes.
Federico Ramallo (09:40) Right. And the… go ahead.
Logan Yonavjak (09:42) But
at the core, we’re looking at how people construct sentences and how they speak about themselves from different perspectives and vantage points. And the types of examples they’re bringing in from the open ended questions, at least on the assessment side, we’re evaluating the complexity of their thinking and their ability to hold a lot of different perspectives at once.
Federico Ramallo (10:05) Right, so with the assessment, do you also provide coaching on how to help executives to do better?
Logan Yonavjak (10:15) Yes, we have a coaching report that comes with the assessment and groups can hire us to continue to evolve that individual. also working with some AI automated coaching groups just to figure out what some tools that people can just leverage on their own. So it depends on how people want to engage with us, but we have a number of vertical development coaches on staff to support companies.
Federico Ramallo (10:41) I think that’s amazing because now with that you give people a more clear path on how they need to improve and what are the necessary steps they need to do to upskill and do better.
Logan Yonavjak (10:51) Yeah, and why is this different? mean, a lot of people have asked me, well, there’s a lot of personality assessments and tools out there. Well, most of those are dealing with your personality, which is your preferences, and they’re often self-reported. So it’s you doing a multiple choice or a fixed choice response. And this is a third party assessment. And so it’s coming from
as objective as we can make AI, an objective standpoint. And it’s open-ended in that we’re not asking specific, you know, like forced choice or multiple choice. So it’s hard to game.
And at the end of the day, you get an outcomes-based report that’s very actionable instead of just a PDF you download and say, okay, so your communication style is this, or you’re very conscientious as a person, or you’re more of an extrovert. Like, there’s really no developmental roadmap associated with a lot of those assessment tools.
Federico Ramallo (11:45) I used to read about people doing ABC, ABC, ABC, ABC on multiple choice and it’s good enough, right? It usually works, right? Yeah.
Logan Yonavjak (11:51) yeah.
I wouldn’t, yeah, it depends. I guess if you’re doing it for work, I wouldn’t
want to confuse my colleagues too much, but that’s funny. Yes, I’ve heard that approach for multiple choice, like in growing up and stuff for multiple choice tests.
Federico Ramallo (12:10) Right.
Yeah, and I understand where it comes from, but it’s an imperfect evaluation tool, So I’m interested to hear that now with AI we can build a more thorough evaluation tool. Well, you can build a more thorough evaluation tool. And it’s not only about, you know.
We have 100 % of this score, which percentage you are, what you can provide is more of a, know, exploration where there’s no definitive limits on, you know, how much you can improve. Right.
Logan Yonavjak (12:39) Yeah, it’s a starting point for a developmental journey. It’s really exciting. I feel like it’s
a roadmap for how do you, more structured roadmap for how do you grow as a person? And so we’re pinpointing markers and skills. There’s also skills associated with each level of development. Which skills do you need to be an effective leader, you know, at these different levels? And what does it take to get to the next level? It kind of, I mean, we humans like, we’re hierarchical, you know, we like to pinpoint ourselves against our peers and whatnot. creates more of,
Federico Ramallo (13:07) you
Logan Yonavjak (13:07) a system
we can look to to actually grow rather than just compare ourselves with communication styles, etc. And something else I think is really valuable to bring up because it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot is unbiased decision making. How can AI augment human decision making, which has its biases.
Federico Ramallo (13:15) Right.
Logan Yonavjak (13:26) You know, we all carry patterns from our past or preferences that we have about people. often there’s many research studies on this, but how people tend to feel more alignment with people who are more like them. You know, this goes back to like tribal, you know, in our prehistory of humans. So I’m not saying anything controversial here, but I think that the there’s different parts of us that weigh in on deciding whether someone’s a good fit for our team.
And with AI, we can help mitigate some of those biases and help show and showcase someone’s developmental capacity in a more neutral way and say, okay, listen, this person might not have gone to the best school, but they overcame a lot of adversity and they’re very coachable.
or this person’s really good at pivoting under pressure, or this person’s great at building teams. Like you might not have known that just out of the gate talking to them in a cursory interview, but we’re showing you the developmental patterns that show up in our assessment. And just because they talk fast and they’re charismatic doesn’t mean they’re going to be a good leader. You know, there’s all these factors that I think hopefully we’re hoping to advance the way that teams are built and have a more unbiased way of constructing teams.
teams and leadership.
Federico Ramallo (14:46) Right, right, the bias whether they are.
intention or not, it happens, right? And it’s a biological, historical fact that we’ve been carrying in our, I don’t know if they’re in our genes, it’s, yes, there are some of that, right? And it’s hard to be conscious about that. Even if we are, it’s hard to not be biased.
Logan Yonavjak (14:56) It happens.
And especially as people get busy, they just kind of divert to what’s easier. It’s easier, this person feels more like me, there’s more familiarity here. Let me just go ahead and bring them on because…
Federico Ramallo (15:22) So.
Logan Yonavjak (15:34) that just feels like a simpler path to take, you know? And so a lot of these are logical decisions, I would say. I wouldn’t say that people are even, there’s no, lot of people aren’t thinking maliciously when they’re like making these determinations. It’s just more kind of patterns and behaviors they’re used to. And so one of the things we do with just an assessment, for instance, we do a one-way video interview. So,
One bias that we’re mitigating out of the gate is mirroring. So some people are very good at mirroring other people’s emotions. So they’re able to sort of match the tone of the person they’re talking to and that makes the other person feel more comfortable. With this video interview, we scrape that out because they’re not talking to anyone and then we just take the transcript data.
Federico Ramallo (16:23) And the transcript data doesn’t have emotions in it.
Logan Yonavjak (16:27) We could add that eventually, but right now it’s just the sentence structure and what’s showing up in the way they talk.
Federico Ramallo (16:34) Right, right. Yeah, I’ve done multiple experiments on recruiting and hiring and selecting people. One of the experiments I did was to run a process where we would ask the candidates not to turn on the camera.
Logan Yonavjak (16:51) Yeah, nice.
Federico Ramallo (16:52) the interviewers not to review their, we would put the information without pictures, so that way it was just a voice, right? And see how much that would change their biases, right? Because kind of like a blind interview, right, of sorts, right?
Logan Yonavjak (17:08) Yes, you’re already thinking that way. That’s great. That’s great, you know.
Federico Ramallo (17:12) Eventually we went back to video because we wanted to gauge empathy and quality of communication. one of the things that I learned on that process is that at the end of the day, we can do many checks, but at the end of the day, we want to work with that. We want to simulate the working environment as closely as possible.
So by the time we get our technical interviewers, we evaluate mostly technical people, right? So by the time we get to the technical interviewers, they are just sharing a screen and they’re talking about the code, right? So we have that blind bias on that step, right? And we try to reduce as much context as possible that we…
sent through the stages because I’ve seen that happen as well where the notes of the first interviewer affect the second one and the third and so on, right? So. ⁓
Logan Yonavjak (18:02) Yeah, wow, no, you’ve
seen this firsthand how the cascade of bias can happen. And I mean, something I’ll say about, you don’t have to be at a high level of development. Like in fact, at the higher levels of development, there’s less people, right? It’s not…
It’s not an equal distribution. tends to level off in terms of the general population at about like, well, I would say the highest levels five and six, you see almost like five to maybe 10 % of the population. So it doesn’t.
mean that you have to be at a high level of development to be effective in a role. It’s just that with roles of higher complexity, you want people of higher levels of development. And so we’re not saying it’s bad if you, know, in one of the markers or one of the constructs you’re low. It just means here’s some areas for growth and you, as a leader or hiring agent, hiring manager, you have to determine if that’s okay in the role and the context you’re in.
Federico Ramallo (18:58) Right, it depends a lot on the requirements of the role.
Logan Yonavjak (19:02) Yeah,
yeah, but I think people don’t think about, especially with startup founders, where we…
when we started our company was to assist venture capitalists and early stage investors in making decisions about who to deploy capital to. One of the things we noticed is, you I’ve noticed in my career is so many people want to start a company. You know, they think, and especially now it’s like, I’m just gonna, I’m sick of working for people. I’m going to start my own company. But the role of CEO or founder of a startup is really complex. Like you have to have so much tolerance for uncertainty.
you have to really know how to manage yourself under extreme stress, especially if you bring on outside capital or if you’re putting in your own money and sales aren’t happening. There’s so many things that can go wrong. I often think people don’t know themselves well enough or they haven’t thought about their developmental capacity in the context of doing something risky like that.
65 % of startups are failing because of people problems. That’s a lot to do with people, I think, not knowing themselves enough to really do well starting a company. There’s other factors, market factors, product market fit, timing, of course, but I think the people side is higher than we recognize.
Federico Ramallo (20:17) Right, right, and it’s easy, it’s greener on the other side of the fence, right? So it’s easy on a corporate job to say, I wanna build a store, but then they don’t realize how much complexity there is on that other side, right? Yeah, and the, I realize after many years that there is a, that you need an emotional detachment to a certain level to, you know.
My startup is bootstrap, so I need to be able to see the company as if it wasn’t mine, right? Because that way you can, right? Because that way, right, right. Because if you’re too much emotionally involved, it’s your baby, your, know, it’s part of your identity. So whatever happens to the company, it’s, you know, it becomes too personal, right? So.
Logan Yonavjak (20:53) Yeah, that detachment, yeah. It’s like you want to be enthusiastic but detached.
Federico Ramallo (21:12) being able to detach yourself so that way you can see it in a much more objective way, it becomes more important.
Logan Yonavjak (21:20) Well, and it’s be interesting, like, don’t know you very well, but it’s interesting to think about your best day and worst day.
Like most days you’re probably good at that, right? You can probably, okay, I’m stay objective, but say you’re going after a big client and you’ve been talking to them for months and then they just, say, no, actually we don’t, we want to go a different direction. You might be having a bad day. You’re one of your bad days and it’s harder like you, so you fall back to a different developmental level. So we’re measuring kind of the range of someone’s capacity. We’re not saying you’re the same every day, but just to know the general band you sit in, like how, how,
extreme are those some of those differences in your own behavior and how you show up. So I know for me, I’m mostly good at saying objective, but there have been some times in this journey where, you know, my husband especially has heard me like very in a low point and I surely don’t come across as like a very evolved version of myself, you know, so.
Federico Ramallo (22:18) Right, right. We’re kind of diverting a little bit here, but I think it’s an interesting conversation that you also talk about this idea of having an emotional support as a founder or a leader and executive, because you need that emotional support to be able to be emotionally strong.
throughout the uncertainty, throughout the different situations that happens when you’re whether managing a company or managing a team, right? So I think that becomes much more important.
Logan Yonavjak (22:49) Well, something I like to talk about is physiological dysregulation. So when we’re in a sympathetic nervous system state, it’s very difficult to make executive function decisions. So if we’re in a fight or flight or freeze, I think there’s other terminology people use. if you’re kind of, if your nervous system is starting to become dysregulated, then you’re going to make worse decisions if you don’t know how to stop that.
that kind of fear-based decision-making process from happening. You’re likely going to send a negative email or you’re going to lash out at someone. There might be other things that happen. So a lot of what we’re talking about is on the emotion, the resilience piece is something we measure is how do you create systems for yourself to get re-regulated after you get dysregulated? So.
I think people overlook these things, but breathing, calling someone you care about who can talk you off the ledge, just simple walking, just creating habits for yourself that really enable you to stay in that, to get back in your parasympathetic nervous system state. But this is physiological stuff. People think of it as soft skills, but these are like core…
self-management techniques that we all should employ more, especially if gonna be, if you’re taking outside capital, people are investing in you. And there’s a risk associated with you and you falling apart.
Federico Ramallo (24:16) Right, right, and the more the higher the stakes, the more the emotions are on the edge, Sometimes I think about these things as, I was watching a movie about, I don’t remember the movie, but it was about an addict, a gambling addict, right? And how much those emotions were getting him into, I gamble more, I gamble more, and then he gets into a lot of debt, right?
Logan Yonavjak (24:25) Yeah.
yeah.
Federico Ramallo (24:46) And you can see how the emotions go to more and more extremes until everything blows up. So I understand it’s a different situation, but it’s the same that the stakes get higher. It doesn’t matter which stage you are on, whether it’s a corporation, whether it’s a small or big startup, whether it’s a startup that is going smaller or going bigger, either.
you get a lot of emotional, problems are going to come in faster than you can handle them. So can you handle that stress? That becomes the issue. And being able to make the right decisions. So I think that I have my wife co-founder, she’s my rock, she’s amazing. And a lot of the times when I have these stressful situations, I kind of.
go with her and she helps me process my emotions, right?
Logan Yonavjak (25:35) Yeah. No, it’s good to have somebody
in your life that can, you know, for me, my husband and then my co founder, because he’s in it with me and understands the business through and through. So just being able to talk. That’s why I think co founders, it’s actually really beneficial to have a co founder as a when you’re doing a startup. I think the solar founder kudos to people who do it. I think it’s one of the hardest things you can do alone. So
I just have been really blessed with an amazing co-founder.
Federico Ramallo (26:03) Right, right, because then you can be, you can lash out, you can be emotional, you can be whatever, you know, within that inner circle and then you act gracefully throughout those situations, right? Right, right. So let’s talk a little bit about promotions. What do you think are the biggest biases you’ve seen on promotion and performance reviews?
Logan Yonavjak (26:15) Yeah, yeah, that’s the goal.
Yeah, without making it too complicated, I think we’re still seeing some of the same issues of the past performance. Someone thinks, this person’s been really successful in a sales role or they’ve been a good coder. Maybe they’ll be a good manager. And I heard a stat recently, a contact of mine started a coaching company and he said that he’s targeting managers at corporate in corporate environments who
have less than 1 % of managers receive some sort of coaching to be a manager, like to actually manage people. And that’s, mean, I don’t know where he’s getting that stat from, but it was very striking to me, even if it’s 10%. I think that not equipping people with an understanding of how to manage other people, because that’s what you do as you move up the ranks often. So I think a lot of hiring or promotion decisions are
sort of there’s a risk there of like making this leap of this person’s really good technically or they played a functional role, they’re gonna be a great manager and great strategist and great leader. And again, you’re starting to see that if you’re gonna be a great strategist, you’re probably better with complexity and seeing the big picture and managing a lot of multiple inputs and staying objective. And so that’s where you start to see the need for something like what we have. And then I think, you know, with
the context of depending on the role, think promotional decision making is…
Sometimes it’s 360 reviews are relied on in order to get insight from team members about an individual’s performance. But those are often very biased and people don’t feel comfortable giving like their true feedback on a person. So I think a lot of the times the way that managers or people promoting get information about whether someone’s going to be a good fit, it’s just missing a lot of the of the capacity dimension that we mentioned.
Federico Ramallo (28:25) Right, I’ve seen different approaches to performance reviews and promotions. One of the most common arguments for promotions that I’ve seen is, particularly in Latin America, and I heard there’s something similar happening in Philippines, where the culture is about tenure, right? Every year they expect a salary raise, right?
because I’ve been here another year, right? initially, we kind of bought that idea of, yeah, you’ve been another year, that means that you gain experience, right? Even though I know that time on the job, it doesn’t necessarily equate to experience, right? But it was good enough.
Logan Yonavjak (28:48) yeah, okay.
Federico Ramallo (29:13) And then the other thing I found is that people, managers would reiterate the same things. So this person is learning English. And then the next year, this person keeps learning English. So does that mean that they improved? Maybe, maybe not.
Logan Yonavjak (29:26) Yeah, there weren’t like good workers of development.
Thanks
Federico Ramallo (29:34) we start changing how we evaluate on what we do instead of activities and effort. know, like, I’m trying this, I’m trying this, I’m trying this, right? We turn it into responsibilities, right? So.
Logan Yonavjak (29:47) Yeah, think that’s
in and of itself is really important.
Federico Ramallo (29:52) Right, right. Because we had people that would say, well, I want to raise because I went to five conferences this year. And we had to split up of, OK, that’s great. But that was an activity. It was a task. You finish it. Right. Right. So how does that turn into a new responsibility? Right. Which is an ongoing activity that you take ownership and you’re accountable for the output. Right. Then that can.
Logan Yonavjak (30:04) An output, not an outcome. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (30:18) they can earn a raise based on that. I’m trying to paraphrase 20 years of experience hiring people, right? It’s hard, yeah.
Logan Yonavjak (30:25) I know it’s hard. I know it’s hard on these conversations. I’m like,
you know, something that might, it might be illuminating for people is, you know, this is something my dad actually taught me when I was much younger, but I’ve, I’ve thought about it a lot in the context of what we’ve built, because one of the things we look for is what wasn’t said.
So there’s a lot in what someone says and there’s a lot of what is absent in what they say. And so the AI is able to pick out a lot and do like a neg, it’s called a negative space analysis. And I actually use this when I talk to AI a lot, I’ll say, read this report or this email and tell me what wasn’t said. And so I think that
concept of like a negative space analysis is really powerful. Like when you have a conversation with someone, sometimes you’ll leave thinking, that was nice. They said X, Y, and Z. But then you’re like, wait, they didn’t say this, this, and this. Or maybe it’s they withheld it. Maybe they forgot. Maybe it’s just not something they were thinking about. And it doesn’t mean you know the intent of why they didn’t say it. But you can at least mark it as a flag of like, you know, I’d like to know more about why this wasn’t present.
in how this person described building a team or when they talked about customers, they didn’t say anything about being empathetic or listening or these things. And so that is a really salient, if anyone, I think that’s a really important thing just to underscore.
Federico Ramallo (31:46) That’s interesting. I haven’t thought about it that way. I think it makes complete sense. I’ve non-compliant answers. I don’t know if that’s the right way to express it, but it’s this idea of somebody asks a question, and then the answer doesn’t answer the question. But on the conversation, we move forward. We think that the person answered the question.
Logan Yonavjak (32:04) Great.
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (32:15) Being able to pick up on that might be important on the interviews.
Logan Yonavjak (32:18) Yeah, so I mean, it’s a tip that you can just use in your own conversations with AI. found it really helpful in digesting emails or just a Menus article, like what wasn’t talked about here. And so and also just I think there’s just different ways to frame in conversations, like what what someone’s speaking about and how they speak about it is
a pattern in their own mind and so how reflective are they of their own shortcomings and strengths in their own conversations? Like how much do they talk about their own self-awareness? I think those are important markers. Some people never talk about their growth or things that have challenged them or they just they talk about you know the facts or they talk about very concrete experiences they’ve had but I think that self-reflectiveness is also really valuable to tune into.
Federico Ramallo (33:09) Right.
Logan Yonavjak (33:09) I learned from this, this happened and I changed this, you
Federico Ramallo (33:15) Yeah, when we interview, we ask a lot of behavioral questions to try to pick up on that. know, lessons learned, because usually people present their best profile, but we also want to dig on what mistakes and what insights they learn, because that’s part of the experience, right? And then the other thing we do on our interviews,
is we do a back channel reputation check. In Latin America, you don’t have this work history, complete work history of people as you would in the US, So, I mean, you can run a background check in the US. There is no…
official background check process in Latin America. You can check if a person has a criminal record, but that’s about it.
Logan Yonavjak (33:53) really? Okay.
Wow, well these are important
cultural understandings and insights and differences, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (34:05) So, with the with the, I call it back-channel reputation check, which is basically going through people that know people that, you eventually we know somebody that knows that person. Because that reputation check becomes much more important than what we see on the CV, on the behavior side, right? We can understand. So we dodge some…
Logan Yonavjak (34:15) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (34:31) bullets with amazing talents that are technically sound, they’re amazing technically, but on the emotional side or the cultural feed or ethical side, we’ve seen some holes that we’d rather not move forward with the hire.
Logan Yonavjak (34:50) Yeah, no, of course. I mean, there’s tools coming out to do aggregate reference checks. And I mean, there’s all sorts of, we’re in this age of like, you know, information transparency is becoming more prevalent. So I think that’s a good thing for situations like that where you just really, you might have a hunch some things off, but then you just can’t find anybody to speak to this, you know, we’re, I think.
It’s a good thing that we’re getting more transparency, at the same time, the volume of information and are we asking the right questions? It’s like, that’s I think where.
Federico Ramallo (35:22) Right, right. So can you tell us a little bit more about what signals can tell if somebody can execute under pressure?
Logan Yonavjak (35:31) Yeah, I mean, in terms of the purposeful agility.
That’s one of the, yeah, we have six, so we measure six kind of core constructs. There’s other things we can measure, but that’s what we saw in the research had a positive correlation with startup outcomes. So that’s where we started is, you know, high pressure situations and complex situations. But one of the constructs we measure is purposeful agility. And so it shows like, how well are you at pivoting under pressure while keeping the mission and goals in mind?
Federico Ramallo (35:37) in terms of.
Logan Yonavjak (36:04) So a lot of how we get at that is we ask people questions that will get them to speak about past experiences or how they would likely pivot if a certain scenario came up or, you know, if something changed quickly what they would do. And we could just glean a lot of information about how they construct those responses that lead us to understand their developmental level. And often at lower levels of development you’re seeing somebody who,
just makes a lot of kind of rash decisions without.
a strategy and as the stress mounts, just continue to kind of flail around and make a bunch of, they just want to make a decision rather than a strategic one. And so as someone evolves developmentally, they’re able to remember, you know, this is the strategy where we’re headed. This is the big picture. Here’s what’s on the horizon. And I’m going to like, take in this feedback, but then I’m going to, I have the confidence to make the decision myself and not just kind of,
So it sounds like, how do you measure that from someone talking for 10 minutes? You’d be surprised. And that’s the magic of what we’re evaluating.
Federico Ramallo (37:12) And how can you tell the difference between confidence and real capacity?
Logan Yonavjak (37:17) Well, yeah, that’s a very good question. I think my, I feel like my co-founder would have a much better response to this, but I think confidence shows up in often people making decisive decisions. You know, someone who,
is confident in themselves and feels good about the way that they’ve made decisions in the past. That’s not necessarily that they made the right decisions or that people agreed with them or whatever, but there can be a confidence to a person. But I think real capacity is…
One of the markers is whether you’re taking in other people’s feedback. Whether or not you use it is one thing, but if someone cites that they’re listening to the market or customers or stakeholders, I think that’s a really good sign that they are, their capacity is gonna be able to increase rather than just competence.
Federico Ramallo (38:09) As a founder, it’s a hard situation because you need to be stubborn enough to ignore the signals of the world, but then sensitive enough to pick and choose the ones that make sense for you. Because if you want to build something that wasn’t built before, you have a vision, that dream.
Ignoring the people that says, you cannot make it, or this is going to fail, or things like that. And then being able to figure out what actually works. Beyond the lean startup method that says validate, there is also a little bit of pushing forward. There’s a leap of faith when you’re building.
Logan Yonavjak (38:49) Well, I think sometimes too people cling to what they think is, I think this happens with customer discovery. The idea of a product versus what customer pain points you’re actually solving. And once you talk to customers, they say, is or is not my pain point. People who stay stuck to their original vision, that’s a marker of the lower stage of development where it’s like, no, no, no, this is what I’m solving for. And they’re not really taking in.
what the market’s saying. And so you can sort of pick that up on a defensiveness basis. It’s like, how much did you stick to the original plan versus letting the outside world, letting that infuse your process and how people describe how they made a decision and why tells you a lot about where they are.
Federico Ramallo (39:34) Right, right. And I remember the author of the Linster, but he talks about this idea that the smarter the people are, the horror is for them to validate their assumptions. So I think that what he’s talking about is on the intellectual level.
and what we’re learning from you is that we also have to assess our emotional development which becomes a much more accurate metric to evaluate how people will behave when building a startup.
Logan Yonavjak (40:02) Yeah,
yeah, yeah. mean, I think that how people learn from their mistakes too, like when you ask them questions about to tell you how they learn from something that says a lot about, you know, where they are in their own development, how objective they are, how…
how coachable, things like that. So there’s a lot you can learn in just asking a few simple questions from people. But what we’re doing is looking at bigger patterns. We’re looking at a volume of data that gives you a more accurate representation of the person rather than just a few kind of individual questions.
Federico Ramallo (40:35) Right, right. And what advice would you give to founders that are looking to start hiring? I mean, the first one is to go through your platform, right?
Logan Yonavjak (40:45) Yeah, I mean, I think it’s good to look at your own. I would advise, you know, taking our assessment or using our tools and platform to assess transcript data, to learn about your own strengths and weaknesses so that you know what to bring on from, you know, a team member. I know for me, I think.
I mean, there’s many things about my co-founder that I appreciate, but he has, you know, I would say that he’s a lot more grounded in his…
He’s a bit more of a perfectionist and he tends to wait longer to release something or to want to test it out. Whereas I’m much more, let’s pivot, let’s throw some spaghetti at the wall. So I’m a better person to be out there talking to customers and iterating rather than building the products because he’ll kind of go and make it perfect. And so we have this dynamic where I get him to move and he gets to slow me down and say, hey, what about this legal issue? You know, we need to pay attention to
this particular bit of things and so the detail orientation also. But yeah, think knowing yourself first is you’re gonna make better hiring decisions when you know your own strengths and weaknesses.
Federico Ramallo (41:55) We do a similar dynamic with my wife and co-founder where I’m more of a dreamer and she’s more of a, she’s the CFO so she does the finance so if sometimes we have to make a decision, the way I it is on the finance side we’re never going to take any risks, right? So.
if we go in the dreamer side, we’re going to take too many risks and either is not good. So we balance each other. yeah, and we were able to, I think we were able to make better decisions when we took it from these two perspectives. And it’s hard because it’s so close to our egos. So being able to have that level of vulnerability and openness.
Logan Yonavjak (42:30) Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you’ve been very thoughtful about your own team development and hiring processes and tried a lot of experiments and it’s good. It’s, think I wouldn’t, I don’t come across a lot of people who’ve been that thoughtful about their own process. So it shows you’re highly coachable.
Federico Ramallo (42:58) Thank you. Thank you.
I appreciate the compliment. ⁓ it’s all things that we’re talking about. It’s easy to say in retrospect after you’ve been through that many experiences, right? But it’s hard to actually get to that level of insights, right? So I truly appreciate the compliment.
Logan Yonavjak (43:01) Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (43:20) Are there any habits that founders should follow in order to become better leaders?
Logan Yonavjak (43:27) Any habits? Well, I just highly recommend developing systems to handle stress. mean, that sounds, everyone talks about stress and everyone’s stressed. I mean, it’s kind of a cliche, but I think the more you can train your nervous system to take pauses before making rash decisions or thinking.
Like if you’re starting to feel like negative thoughts are coming in, just having a process to step back, do some breathing exercises and see it as a risk management.
Capability like a system that you need to put in place to manage your own personal risk I think I just want people to take that more seriously, you know, like I do a lot days on my best days I get up at 530 and I have some time to myself I have a small small daughter and I find that that just sets the tone for the entire day if I’m able to just take some breathing room for myself
So I think personal habits and who you surround yourself with is incredibly important. I think it’s really good. This is just a kind of a random suggestion, but I wouldn’t talk to people about things you’re building who haven’t been successful in doing it themselves. I think sometimes when we talk to familiar people in our lives and they may maybe not have done.
a startup or they don’t know how to do sales or so their advice is only as good as their perspective and I like if you’re building something and it’s tender it’s in that beginning phases you want to make sure you’re surrounding yourself with people who know what they’re talking about so you don’t just get a bunch of naysayers because that can really influence your mindset and your mindset is what you’re betting on.
and being able to grow your business. that’s just something I’ve learned over the years. I really try not to share difficult moments with people who don’t understand what I’m building.
Federico Ramallo (45:07) you
Yeah, I think that becomes important if you’re talking to the wrong people. Well, not wrong, but they’re talking out. Your drinking buddies don’t have the experience of building a company, right? So, yeah. You can talk about other stuff, but not that.
Logan Yonavjak (45:31) Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (45:34) Logan, we’re running out of time. I truly appreciate you being here today. We learned a lot. Any final remarks before we wrap it up?
Logan Yonavjak (45:42) Thank you for your interest. I think this is a very important topic and so timely. I think AI is just such an exciting time, but we all have to stay grounded and centered and remember that leadership capacity and readiness are factors in the equations.
Federico Ramallo (45:57) Amazing, Looking forward, what would you take the platform next? Yeah, thank you for being here today.
Logan Yonavjak (46:02) Thank you so much.
All right.