Partnerships @ Nift | 3X Founder (8-figures, 7-figures, and a dud) | Investor. Advisor. Bourbon Lover | Exploring the tactics and stories from the best entrepreneurs on the planet

Daily insights on business building.

Sales & Marketing Leader with 10+ years selling high-value solutions as a player/coach to meet customer needs. 

Creative and curious mindset, with a track record of leveraging problem-solving skills to uncover new revenue opportunities and drive business growth. 

Unquestioned ethics and a strong commitment to doing what is right for customers, co-workers, and the company.

EQ > IQ

Some highlight from across my career:

- Responsible for more than $100M in advertising budgets

- Scaled startups $0 to 8-figures, then again from $0 to 7-figures

- Built an outsourced SDR Team that produced 11X ROI on net new logos

- Trained more than 50 sellers to systematically attain quota through repeatable process

- Sold into and built marketing programs for some of the best companies on the planet. 

I'm excited to create something amazing with you.

💪🏻 Let's work together

Mark Borum

The expansion continues. Welcome to the team, John.

New year. New market. More thank-yous. 🇦🇺 🌏 

We’re welcoming John McNerney as General Manager, APAC, to lead our launch and growth across Australia and the broader region.

John brings deep experience across advertising, data, and commerce platforms and a shared belief that growth is strongest when it’s built on real thank-you moments.

Australia, we’re glad to be here. 💛 

//https://lnkd.in/g5VX6fHk

Open article: Nift Hires Ex-Yahoo Boss John McNerney To Lead APAC by bandt.com.au

Nift Hires Ex-Yahoo Boss John McNerney To Lead APAC

Jake Huber

Scaled 3 unicorns🦄 & teams from 0→250+ | 125+ founders read my newsletter to scale their teams smarter 📈🧠

At Uber, I scaled my team from 0→50 people <1yr.

Now I help Seed & Series A+ startup founders scale their teams. Here's how ↓

I learned how to scale teams the hard way.

At Uber, I grew our team from 0→50 in under a year. 

At Industrious, we launched 10 locations and I built a 30-person team. 

At Veho, we 4×’d headcount (70→285) and increased weekly inbound applicants +495% in 6 months. 

Those wins all had one thing in common: a great recruiter embedded with the team—and simple, repeatable systems.

Before that, my first startup failed. I didn’t know how to hire, train, or manage yet. If I could go back, I’d tell “Past Jake” to stop duct-taping recruiting and bring in real help—without signing up for agency commissions or a full-time hire too early.

That’s why I built Venture Scaler.

🚀 Venture Scaler = A Startup-Friendly Way to Hire

We place an expert, senior recruiter (ex-Uber/Dropbox/Spotify, etc.) directly on your team—fractionally. Hourly. Month-to-month. No commissions. No long-term contracts. We run the full search like your in-house recruiter so you can stay focused on building product and talking to customers.

How It Works (It’s simple on purpose):

1. Perfect-Fit Profile Guarantee: We align on 5–10 candidate profiles before outreach so we don’t waste cycles.

2. End-to-End Execution: Sourcing, screening, coordination, and candidate experience handled.

3. Tight Comms: Weekly check-ins + async updates so you always know pipeline, blockers, and next steps.

4. Flex Up/Down: Add hours when you’re sprinting; pause when you’re not hiring.

Why founders pick us:

4× Faster to Hire: UpSmith’s first sales hire closed in 5 weeks after a 5-month stall.

~90% Cost Savings vs Agencies: Honey Homes saved ~$230k in two months of hiring.

Scale at Speed: At Veho we 4×’d the team and built an engine for inbound talent.

If you’re Seed or Series A, need to make a few critical hires, and don’t want to overbuild headcount or pay 25% fees, this model was built for you.

💬 Hiring right now? DM me here or visit venturescaler.com. I’m happy to share my hiring playbooks (the same ones we used at Uber/Veho) or dig into your roles and recommend a plan.

Learn more: https://venturescaler.com

=====

P.S. Outside of work and scaling startups:
👯‍♀️ I’m a girl dad x2
🏕 A backpacker/camper
🎭 Trained at UCB in improv comedy
💍 Secretly proposed to my wife using Uber: https://youtu.be/uRi_B5CxWZ8

Startup Mentor

“Jake is an incredible sounding board that provides tactical tips, resources and introductions to help navigate crisis’ and challenges. He has an innate ability to level with you on any subject. During my three months with Jake I looked forward to every call as we hashed through 5-10 topics at a time spanning from affiliate & growth strategies to recruiting and mindset.”

~April Dominguez, CEO & Founder of Handsome

First Round Fast Track by First Round Capital matches seasoned startup leaders with early-stage founders and team members within a unique mentorship community. First Round Capital is a seed-stage venture capital firm focused on building a community of technology entrepreneurs and companies.

“Oh no... We don’t even have 23 good candidates in our pipeline!”

~founder friend of mine

They said this to me after I shared data showing you need to talk to 23 candidates to hire 1 great one.

They also said they didn’t have the time to screen that many candidates.

“Many early-stage teams underestimate how many candidates they need to speak to to make one hire. In our data we also saw that only 13% of inbound applicants even make it to the first screen. You will either need a lot of inbound, or more likely, you will have to fill the funnel with sourced candidates and referrals.” 

—Benji Encz, CEO of Ashby

Hard Truth: Recruiting at your startup is a numbers game. 

You need volume to find the right candidate.

For most startups, this means you’ll need to do your own outbound sourcing. 

At Venture Scaler we’ve helped startups like Pepper, Veho, Honey Homes and UpSmith with sourcing and making great hires. 

👉Need help with hiring at your startup? Send me a DM! Or check out 𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗦𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗥 in my bio to learn more.

Scaled teams from 0→250+ at 3 unicorns🦄 | Early Uber | Startup Founder & Operator

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Hot take: if you’re leading recruiting as a founder, you’re paying for every hire with your best hours.

Most Seed and Series A founders don’t fail at hiring because they can’t spot talent.

They fail because founder led recruiting turns into a daily game of whack a mole:

Inbound comes in.

You skim resumes between meetings.

A great candidate waits 6 days for a reply.

Someone “owns scheduling” until they don’t.

Pipeline notes live in 4 places.

Then the search “mysteriously” drags for 10 to 14 weeks.

Here’s the real issue: nobody owns the hiring engine end to end.

So it runs... whenever the founder has free time.

If you want hiring to stop stealing your best hours, you need one clear owner for:

1. Sourcing
2. Screening
3. Scheduling and follow ups
4. Pipeline hygiene and weekly reporting
5. Offer process and close plan

That’s exactly where a fractional recruiter shines.

Not a full time headcount.

Not a big fee agency.

Just an experienced operator who drops in, runs the machine, and keeps momentum week to week.

Pro Tip: Before you post the job or message a single candidate, calibrate with 5 to 10 real profiles.

If you can’t agree on what “great” looks like in a stack of actual people, the rest of the process is just expensive guessing.

That’s also why at Venture Scaler we start with a quick alignment sprint, then move fast with a tight weekly cadence.
_____

What’s the part of hiring that’s draining you the most right now: sourcing, scheduling, or decision making?

If you want a fractional recruiter to take the wheel, DM me and I’ll send a simple overview of how we plug in.

In 2 months my rent-a-recruiter service saved our client over $230k 🤯 Here’s how ↓

We sourced, screened, interviewed & hired 13 new employees:

→ 2 senior ops managers @ $110k
→ 9 operations managers @ $75k
→ 2 CS coordinators @ $50k

If our client (Series A startup) was working with a traditional recruiting agency, they would have paid 25% commissions on first-year salaries, totaling $250,000 😱

But by working with Venture Scaler on our flexible hourly plans, they saved over 90% (not a typo).

And by saving them $230k, they effectively hired 3 ops managers for “free.”

That also means we helped them avoid $100k+ of monthly burn.

Imagine what you could do at your startup with an extra $230,000. 

That’s a pre-seed round for a lot of startups!

👉 If you're thinking about (or already started) working with a traditional firm, let's chat. DM me or check out 𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗦𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗥 in my bio to learn more.

“I haven’t talked to this many high-quality candidates before. It’s a little overwhelming!” - Ryan, Founder at Nurseio

I remember Ryan telling me that on one of our weekly calls.

He was now had the “good problem” of having too many high-fit candidates to choose from.

But that wasn’t the case when he initially reached out to me...

Ryan needed help finding his startup's next sale leader.

They didn't have a recruiter on their team and couldn't justify bringing someone on full time.

So the heavy lift of sourcing and interviewing landed on Ryan and his team.

And that's where Venture Scaler came in...

We built a pipeline of sales executive talent and closed a key sales hire in 6 weeks.

___

👉 Need help with hiring? Let's chat! DM me or check out 𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗦𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗥 in my bio to learn more.

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Your network is great. It’s just not built to hire niche roles.

Founders tell me this all the time:

“We posted the role.”

“We asked for referrals.”

“We’re getting people.”

But the shortlist is... weird.

Lots of smart resumes.

Lots of “maybe.”

Very few “hell yeahs.”

That’s the niche role trap.

Specialized roles don’t get filled by hoping the right person wanders into your inbound.

They get filled by proactively hunting a specific profile, then running a tight calibration loop so you stop wasting time on almost right candidates.

Here’s the playbook I use for roles like first AE, product leader, platform engineer, data, security, growth, you name it:

1. Write a role scorecard, not a job description: The scorecard is outcomes. The JD is chores.

2. Build a target list of 30 to 50 companies where your ideal hire is already doing the job: Competitors. Adjacent industries. Same stage companies.

3. Calibrate with 5 to 10 real profiles before you run full outbound: This is the move most teams skip.

Pro Tip: If you can’t look at 10 real people and agree on what “great” is, you’re not ready to interview.

You’re ready to waste 3 weeks.

Only then: Scale sourcing, tighten screens, and run the pipeline with weekly cadence.

Fast follow ups. Clear feedback. No ghosting.

This is where a fractional recruiter from Venture Scaler pays for themselves.

We come in, run the hunt, and keep the process tight so you’re not stuck in endless “interesting” conversations.

What’s the hardest role to hire at your company right now?

If you want help calibrating and building a real target list, DM me.

Recruiting commission fees are a stealth tax on your runway.

Most founders don’t feel it until it’s too late.

You finally find the right candidate.

You’re celebrating.

Then you do the math and realize you just paid the equivalent of a senior engineer’s monthly burn for one hire.

And if you need 3 hires this quarter?

Congrats, you just funded someone else’s growth.

Traditional recruiting is built for big companies.

Big budgets.
Big margins.
Big hiring volume.

Early stage startups are the opposite.

Every dollar has a job.

So here’s the question founders should be asking:

"Do I want to pay for outcomes theater?"

"Or pay for execution?"

Because most of what gets a role filled is boring, repeatable work:

Sourcing
Outbound messaging
Screening
Scheduling
Follow ups
Pipeline triage
Weekly reporting
Offer coordination

That’s why I’m bullish on fractional recruiting.

You rent an experienced recruiter who runs the engine without the long term commitment, the giant contingency fee, or the “we’ll get back to you” agency black box.

Pro Tip: The cheapest hire is not the lowest salary.

It’s the hire you make fast, with a tight process, before the role creates more drag across your team.

At Venture Scaler, founders use us to keep recruiting costs predictable and their momentum high while they stay focused on product, revenue, and fundraising.

What’s your take: would you rather pay a huge fee per hire with a "guarantee", or pay for a recruiting engine you can scale up and down?

DM me if you want a simple breakdown of the fractional model.

You don’t need a full time recruiter. You need a recruiting burst that matches your hiring wave.

Most Seed and Series A teams hire like this:

- 2 to 4 roles hit at once.
- Everything becomes “urgent.”
- Then two months later... you’re back to zero hiring.

So founders do one of two things:

Option A: DIY recruiting and slowly bleed calendar time.

Option B: panic hire a full-time recruiter too early, then scramble to keep them busy later (or worse, lay them off).

There’s a third option that fits how startups actually operate.

A fractional recruiter.

Think: recruiting capacity you can turn up during a sprint, and turn down (or pause) when the sprint is over.

Here’s the playbook I use with founders:

Week 1 alignment sprint: role scorecard, must haves, target list, outreach angles

Week 2 pipeline build: outbound sourcing, screens, scheduling, funnel tracking

Weeks 3 to 6 close mode: weekly shortlist, tight feedback loops, offer plan, reference checks

Pro Tip: The fastest way to speed up hiring is not more interviews.

It’s fewer steps, clearer “yes/no” criteria, and one person owning the entire process end to end.

That’s what a fractional recruiter does at Venture Scaler.

We plug in, run the machine, and keep momentum while you stay focused on product, revenue, and fundraising.

If you could snap your fingers and get 10 hours back each week, where would you put it?

DM me if you want to discuss a “burst recruiting” plan.

If your hiring “takes forever,” it’s probably because nobody owns the calendar.

Here’s what I see at Seed and Series A companies:

- You finally get a few great candidates into process.
- Then the interview loop becomes a group project.
- One person is traveling.
- Another person is “swamped this week.”
- Debriefs happen... eventually.
- And scheduling turns into 37 Slack messages and a prayer.

Meanwhile the candidate is watching the clock.

Because they have other processes moving.

And they assume your slowness means one of two things:

1. You’re not that excited about them.
2. Your company is chaotic.

Both are deal killers.

The fix is not “everyone try harder.”

The fix is one clear owner driving cadence.

Here’s the simple operating system:

1. Every candidate gets a close plan with dates before the first interview.

2. Every interviewer has a 24 hour feedback deadline.

3. Debriefs get scheduled at the same time as the interviews.

4. One person chases calendars, follows up, and removes blockers daily.

Pro Tip: Cycle time is a recruiting superpower.

A fast, decisive process will beat a better brand with a slower process more often than founders want to admit.

This is one of the highest leverage uses of a fractional recruiter.

At Venture Scaler, we plug in and run the interview machine end to end so founders stop playing scheduler and start building the business.

Where does your process break most often: scheduling, feedback, or decision making?

DM me if you want to develop your own “tight loop” interview cadence.

8 new hires in 6 months! I love getting these reactions from our clients.

Maybe you're in a similar situation as Geoff?

Geoff was launching his first markets and needed to build out his team, and fast.

He needed help hiring his sales and operations team from the ground up.

They didn't have a recruiter on their team and couldn't justify bringing someone on full time.

So the heavy lift of sourcing and interviewing landed on Geoff, but he had a business to run.

And that's where Venture Scaler came in...

We built their sales and operations teams from scratch and added 8 new hires in 6 months.

___

👉 Need help with hiring? Let's chat! DM me or check out 𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗦𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗥 in my bio to learn more.

If you have to “figure out comp later,” you’re not ready to hire.

Here’s the pattern I see at Seed and Series A:

You run a solid process.

You find a finalist you love.

Then the offer turns into a late night group chat with your cofounder and an open tab of random salary sites.

You guess.
You send something.
The candidate asks for more.

Now you’re negotiating with zero confidence and no clear boundaries.

Worst case: you lose them.

Second worst: you overpay, create internal comp chaos, and lock in a precedent you hate.

This is what the comp problem really is:

Uncertainty.

And candidates can smell it.

Here’s a simple fix founders can implement fast:

1. Pick a level and define the scope: What job are they actually doing in the first 6 months?

2. Set a range with a walk away number: Write it down before you meet the finalist.

3. Build a close plan: What do they care about: cash, equity, title, team, flexibility, mission?

4. Run the offer like a process, not a moment: Timeline, touchpoints, decision deadline, reference checks, signing plan.

This is where a fractional recruiter is clutch.

At Venture Scaler, we plug in, help you set ranges, coach the close plan, and run the offer process so you stop winging it and start closing.

What’s harder for you right now: setting the range, negotiating, or defending comp internally?

DM me if you're hiring and want to talk through your negotiation/closing plan.

If a role has been open for 90+ days, you’re not “still searching.” You're stuck.

You’re stuck in a broken hiring loop.

Here’s what usually happens at Seed and Series A:

- You post the job.
- You wait for inbound.
- You ask your network.
- You run a few interviews.
- You get busy.
- The candidates wait.
- The momentum dies.

Then you tell yourself: “The market is tough right now.”

Maybe.

But most “stalled searches” stall because nobody owns the engine.

So the process runs... whenever the founder has oxygen.

A quick reset that works shockingly well:

1. Recut the profile

Stop debating hypotheticals. Define the must haves, the dealbreakers, and what success in 90 days looks like.

2. Rebuild the target list

List 25 companies and 50 titles you actually want. Stop hoping the right person randomly applies.

3. Relaunch outbound

Send tight, specific outreach. Not “excited to connect,” but “here’s the problem you’d own.”

4. Tighten the cycle time

Screen to first interview in 72 hours.

No exceptions.

Run weekly pipeline reviews

15 minutes. Same day. Same time. Decisions get made or the search dies.

Pro Tip: If you can’t produce 10 qualified conversations in 10 business days, the problem isn’t volume. It’s targeting, messaging, or speed.

This is exactly where a fractional recruiter from Venture Scaler is a cheat code.

We step in, rebuild the machine, and run cadence so founders can get back to product, sales, and fundraising.

Be honest: what’s causing your longest open role right now: weak pipeline, slow response time, or unclear profile?

DM me and I’ll send a simple “stalled search reset” checklist we use with founders.

Your best candidates keep disappearing after round one. Why?

One pattern I've seen: Your hiring manager is bad at "selling."

Early stage hiring has a weird rule:

Every interviewer is a closer.

Most founders miss this, then blame the market when candidates go cold.

Here’s what candidates are actually hearing on your first call:

A vague role.
A list of tasks.
A meandering company story.
No clear reason this job is career defining.

So the candidate thinks: “Cool people. Unclear opportunity.”

And they move on.

Fix it with a simple pitch system:

1. Start with the mission in one sentence: Not the product, the problem you exist to solve.

2. Paint the 6 month win: What does “crushing it” look like, with specifics?

3. Define what you are not: Who will hate this job, and why?

4. Connect the dots to their story: Why them, why now, why this role is a step up.

Pro Tip: Flip the script: Spend the first 5 minutes selling the opportunity with confidence, get them excited, then run your interview.

This is one of the sneakiest places a fractional recruiter helps.

At Venture Scaler, we help build the pitch, coach hiring managers, and keep the process tight so every interviewer tells the same compelling story.

Be honest: do your interviewers sound like recruiters, or like they’re reading a job description out loud?

DM me if you want my hiring manager playbook.

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The Battle

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Jake Huber

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Mark Borum's LinkedIn Performance

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