#134 - Sarah Nahm and Holly Liu

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#134 - Sarah Nahm and Holly Liu

Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Sarah Nahm is the CEO and cofounder of Lever . Lever builds modern recruiting software for teams to source, interview, and hire top talent. They were in the Summer 2012 batch of YC. You can try Lever out at Lever.co . Holly Liu is a Visiting Partner at YC. Before that she cofounded the gaming company Kabam. You can find Sarah on Twitter @srhnhm and Holly is @hollyhli u. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon . Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year. Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ *** Topics 00:00 - Intro 00:41 - Did Sarah grow up thinking she'd be a founder? 8:01 - Why did she decide to leave Google and start Lever? 13:56 - Thinking about product in the early days of Lever 15:51 - Fundraising and figuring out the team 24:06 - How do you figure out someone's career motivations? 27:26 - Getting concrete when interviewing 29:31 - Hiring remote employees 32:11 - Writing job descriptions around impact 37:41 - Eva Zhang asks - What's the biggest roadblock you faced in trying to make hiring more inclusive to diverse candidates? 42:06 - What does thinking about inclusion mean at a small company? 47:21 - Not buying into technical and nontechnical people 50:26 - Setting up a culture that allows for conversations about diversity and inclusion