Aequitas: Virtue Talent Partnership
Partnering Together to Help Our Founders Build A+ Teams
Hiring is hard.
It is well known that the current hiring market is extremely competitive. Yet, it is nearly always the case that the quality of your initial 5-10 hires determine future success and often these founding team members remain the heartbeat of your company for many years thereafter.
In digital health, startups today are scaling faster than ever before. These teams often require hybrid roles early on across clinical, product, operations, commercial, and data science that might not have even existed two years ago but are now the backbone of the highest performing digital health startups.
How to win talent within this highly competitive market requires more than just offering an attractive compensation package. Amongst other factors, winning top talent requires the ability to architect the right job descriptions; cultivating a rich talent pipeline; delivering a phenomenal hiring experience to candidates given many have multiple options; an ability to quickly assess optimal talent within a compressed timeline (goes back to having an A+ hiring process!); educating candidates how to understand the value of their equity; and lastly, precisely knowing the exact candidate phenotype given your specific needs within the bounds of budget requirements.
It is the core job of any founder to deliver on the “3 Cs”: Culture (team), Capital and Customers. Building the right culture in the early formative stage absolutely improves the odds of success at attracting future capital and customers. And, that can be a lot of pressure!
So how does a resource constrained pre-seed / seed healthcare startup compete?
We are thrilled to announce a strategic partnership with Aequitas Partners as the formal Talent Partner to Virtue and all of our portfolio companies.
Aequitas, a boutique healthcare executive search and talent firm, is widely recognized as one of the very best in our industry. For nearly a decade, Aequitas Partners has been partnering with the most exciting startups in digital health on the strategic construction of their leadership teams. Aequitas has completed hundreds of searches and placed everyone from VPs of Engineering to C-Suite and Board members that have been instrumental in guiding clients through the challenges of building companies that scale.
Along the way, the Aequitas team has counseled countless management teams on all manner of talent issues, and are considered a trusted thought partner to them along their company journey. The Aequitas team is led by Tim Gordon and Polina Hanin, whom we have had the privilege of working closely with for several years.
So, what exactly does this talent partnership entail? Here is a high-level snippet of the scope of services that Aequitas currently provides to Virtue portfolio companies:
Design A+ Teams Early. Aequitas directly supports our portfolio companies by advising on intelligent organizational chart design tailored to exact company needs. Specifically, you can access expert input towards building your foundational team (~5-10 hires and/or while pre-Series A) and the process to close your dream candidates. Our companies will work with Aequitas to design and hire for scale that includes but is not limited to: consulting with you on how to map organizational charts to company needs in order to attract top tier talent, consulting on best practices to execute competitive hiring strategies, identifying relevant job specifications per role, and direct coaching on interview best practices and potential question sets (e.g. competency, technical, behavioral, etc.);
Recurring Expert Engagement. Regularly engage with Aequitas leadership, including an initial onboarding call (within initial 90 days of investment) and a minimum of bi-annual 'talent check-ins';
Access to Aequitas Talent Database & Hiring Channels. Access to the proprietary Aequitas job board to make your role openings publicly available in an exclusive digital health setting;
Competitive Healthcare Industry Compensation Data. Evaluate digital health compensation data specific to the roles you are hiring for and your company stage (you can get early access to their 2nd annual Digital Health Executive Compensation Study here!); and
Discounted Rates. Receive discounted rates on any special projects or specific hiring engagements that go beyond the scope of the above services.
We are thrilled to partner with Aequitas and help our founders build the best teams possible!