Founder @RebelHR | Director @Windranger | Fractional CPO | Strategic HR Leader | HR Innovator in Crypto & Web3 | Scaling Company Sadist |

Hi, I’m Ian, Director at Sxaler.com and panacea.partners. 

I’ve spent the last decade helping ambitious technology companies scale: building teams, systems, and cultures that create unfair advantages. At Sxaler, we believe in impact first, partnering with founders to build category-defining companies. 

We’ve seen too many great ideas fail because they didn’t have the right people around them. Our mission is to change that by combining human experience with AI-native recruitment, and by holding ourselves (and our partners) to unreasonable standards.

Before joining Sxaler, I scaled Improbable from seed stage to over 1000+ employees as the VP of HR and Talent before founding 1% HR, and serving as Director at Windranger, where I scaled industry leading Web3 companies for 4 years. My background spans global investment banking, hyper-growth startups, and deep work in talent, HR, and automation.

I’m endlessly curious, a lifelong learner who devours a new book every week, and I’m obsessed with how AI and human judgement together will reshape how we build teams, companies, and careers.

If you’re building something big and want to scale smarter, faster, and with impact - let’s talk.
📩 DM me or visit sxaler.com

I owe Deel an apology.

A few weeks ago, I posted about a terrible experience with their AI bot.

It couldn't find my invoice. It forgot what I was asking mid-conversation. It was painfully slow.

It felt like talking to a very polite but utterly useless assistant.

I wasn't kind about it.

What happened next surprised me.

Someone at Deel saw the post.

And instead of ignoring it or getting defensive... they sent it to their Head of AI.

Who reached out to me directly.

Not with excuses. With explanations.

They walked me through exactly what went wrong. The context retention issues. The database lookup failures. The latency problems they were working to fix.

They showed me the upgrades they were already building. Changes I'd see in the product soon.

They asked what would actually be useful. And they listened.

This is what real customer service looks like.

Most companies ignore complaints. Or they send a generic "thanks for your feedback" email and move on.

Deel did the opposite.

They escalated internally. They took it seriously. They engaged directly.

And they turned a frustrated critic into someone who actually respects how they operate.

Here's the lesson for anyone building AI products:

Your bot will screw up. That's inevitable.

What matters is what happens next.

Do you hide behind automation? Or do you put a human in the loop when it matters?

Deel chose humans. And it made all the difference.

So to the Deel team (especially their Head of AI): thanks for not just reading the complaint, but actually doing something about it.

You turned a bad experience into a masterclass in accountability.

That's rare. And worth calling out.

Ian Whiteford

Architect of world-class teams and cultures for disruptive technology companies. I am passionate about people and the impact that a deliberate culture can have on the results of an organisation. I have spent time working for a Global Investment Bank and a rapidly scaling technology company that grew from 75 employees to >1000. I set up Rebel HR to help rapidly scaling companies avoid the pitfalls that come with such growth in either an advisory or embedded capacity. My primary focus has been in the cryptocurrency and Web3 space as this requires a re-design of all current people & Talent processes to give employees back ownership over their own careers. I have also advised several scaling fintech companies and a 5000 person electric mobility company. 

I am also a real HR-geek who reads at least one management, culture, or leadership book a week. Always looking for good recommendations.

Director @ Sxaler | Scaling category defining companies across Web3 and AI. x Mantle, Improbable & Goldman Sachs. Angel Investor and Venture Scout.

Been playing around with a simple automation recently that’s actually pretty useful.

I’ve set up OpenClaw to coordinate between Granola and Ashby.

The nice thing is it genuinely took about 2 minutes to set up once I had:

• the Ashby API
• the Granola MCP

Now when I want to move interview / meeting notes over, I just ask it with natural language.

No messing around with candidate IDs or meeting IDs.

It just:

• searches using the candidate’s name
• confirms it’s the right person
• uploads the notes into Ashby

Pretty simple, but really useful.

It means:

• less copy/pasting
• less admin after calls
• less chance of feedback getting lost in meeting notes
• better context sitting in the ATS where it should be

This is the kind of AI/agent workflow I’m increasingly interested in.

Not flashy “AI will replace recruiters” stuff.

Just small, practical automations that remove friction from the process.

Feels like there’s a lot of value in these lightweight internal workflows that are easy to build but save time every single week.

If anyone else is building simple automations across their recruiting stack, I’d be interested to hear what you’ve set up.

Granola

Ashby

I used Deel's customer support AI for the first time today.

I try to be patient with AI.  We’re building AI-native systems ourselves. I want it to work. But this?

⏱️ One full minute per answer.
📎 “I can’t read the files you uploaded.”
🧾 “I can’t find that invoice reference.”

It’s in the subject line. It’s in the attachment. It’s in this timeline. It’s in my soul at this point.

Halfway through the conversation it forgot what we were talking about. Which is impressive, because we’d only exchanged about six messages.

And then the interface wouldn’t let me instantly reply. So I’m stuck. Waiting. For an AI. That doesn’t know what’s going on. To finish being confused.

In the end I told it that it was useless and to put me onto a human. 

Now I’m slightly worried that in 5–10 years, when the machines are running the world, this post will resurface.

“On Feb 26 2026, you called SupportBot v3.1 ‘fucking useless.’”

Jobs are safe.
For now. 🤖

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