What does it take to hire, lead and keep the best engineers in the world while your company grows faster than you planned? Bryce Strauss, co-founder of Nominal, went from flying NASA's Juno spacecraft at Jupiter and working on the InSight Mars lander at Lockheed Martin to building the testing software behind rockets, aircraft and energy systems.

Nominal has raised $182.5M from Sequoia, Founders Fund, General Catalyst and Lux, and reached a $1B valuation in 2026. Host Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, asks him how he hires, how he leads, why he turned down a near-perfect hire after one dinner, and why he tells every candidate the risks of joining.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• The leadership rule a Sequoia partner gave him: be the most demanding and the most supportive leader people have worked for
• Why "talent arbitrage" is the way Nominal plans to win
• The hire he turned down after one dinner, and why it mattered
• Why he asks every final candidate to stack-rank the risks of joining
• Call signs and bomber jackets: celebrating a year at the company
• Holding the bar: performance reviews built on values and tempo
• Why big institutions now trust a vendor, not the AI labs, to bring them AI
• Why the next ten years belong to mechanical, electrical and aerospace engineers

CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold open
0:57 Welcome to Truth Works
1:35 Introducing Bryce Strauss
3:36 From rural Texas to aerospace engineering
4:39 Lockheed Martin, Juno at Jupiter and InSight on Mars
6:42 Nights and weekends: the seed of Nominal
7:18 Harvard Business School and building a company from scratch
8:00 Why mechanical engineers have been underserved
8:45 $180M raised and a $1B valuation
10:06 The Reed Hastings parallel
11:41 What's hard about building and scaling
13:46 The talent arbitrage machine
15:03 Sponsor: Manifest Law
16:40 The hire he had to turn down
20:59 Putting engineers in front of customers
23:04 People systems are products too
25:15 Leading as an engineer
26:07 Most demanding, most supportive: the Sequoia lesson
29:11 Ground truth
32:19 Honest interviews: "we're getting a C in this"
34:27 Stack-ranking the risks of joining
35:14 Rituals: lunch, call signs and bomber jackets
38:52 Celebrating people, not tenure
41:04 Holding the bar
45:51 The hardest problem right now: the AI moment
50:11 Something inspiring for the week

ABOUT THE GUEST
Bryce Strauss is co-founder of Nominal, which builds software for testing and operating hardware, used by aerospace, defense, energy and industrial teams and by the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School. Before Nominal he spent seven years at Lockheed Martin Space on NASA's Juno and InSight missions.

ABOUT THE SHOW
Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal. Each episode is an honest conversation about why work is hard and how leaders can make it better.

This episode is sponsored by Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration law firm.

#TruthWorks #Leadership #Hiring #Startups #Engineering #Sequoia #Nominal #Aerospace

Why do so many executive hires fail, and how do you spot a bad hire before you make the offer? Brad Stadler, co-founder of True Search, has spent 25 years in executive search placing CEOs, CFOs and leadership teams at venture-backed and growth companies, and in this episode he explains what is broken in executive recruiting and how founders, CEOs and boards should hire leaders today.

Brad started as an auditor at Arthur Andersen, went on only two job interviews in his life, and moved into executive search at Howard Fischer Associates and Heidrick & Struggles, where Netflix was one of his clients. He then co-founded True Search, an executive search firm and talent platform. Host Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix and an expert in culture and talent strategy, asks him how search firms really work, how True pays its people differently, why he stopped doing searches himself, and how AI is changing what makes a great executive.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• How an accountant who never planned it ended up in executive search
• Why executive search felt superficial for so long, and what True set out to change
• How compensation inside search firms really works, and why True made it transparent
• What you can't fix when you hire someone: the baggage they bring
• Why the "three-time CFO who took a company public" is often the wrong hire
• How True uses data from the last 20 similar hires to set realistic expectations
• Why founders who don't make recruiting their top priority lose
• The signs in an offer process that say you should walk away
• Why "there's no opportunity in certainty"

CHAPTERS
0:00 Trailer
0:42 Truth Works intro
1:30 Welcome and introduction
3:39 From Arthur Andersen auditor to executive search
6:54 Two interviews in a whole career
8:39 Leaving to build a firm
12:24 What was broken in executive search
14:19 Netflix: the client who got it
16:24 How superficial the industry was
20:19 Starting True Search
22:09 How compensation really works in search firms
24:14 The baggage new hires bring
26:24 Building True differently
29:39 Why he stopped doing searches
30:54 What makes a great executive is changing
33:14 Hiring with data, not anecdotes
36:54 Recruiting must be the founder's top priority
40:44 Hiring CEOs: beyond checking boxes
42:54 When to walk away from a candidate
48:24 There's no opportunity in certainty

ABOUT THE GUEST
Brad Stadler is co-founder of True Search, an executive search firm and talent platform working with venture-backed and growth companies. He previously worked at Heidrick & Struggles and Howard Fischer Associates, and began his career at Arthur Andersen.

ABOUT THE SHOW
Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal. Each episode is an honest conversation about why work is hard and how leaders can make it better.

#TruthWorks #ExecutiveSearch #Hiring #Leadership #Recruiting #Founders #Netflix #TalentStrategy

Why do we keep sitting in meetings we know are a waste of time? And why do 75% of employees say AI makes them more productive while only 13% say their company sees real value?

Dr. Rebecca Hinds has studied both. She leads the Work AI Institute at Glean, holds a PhD from Stanford, and wrote the USA TODAY bestseller Your Best Meeting Ever. In this episode of Truth Works, host Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, asks her what actually fixes meetings, why AI is not showing up in company results, and what leaders should do about both.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Why a packed calendar became a status symbol
• The 4D CEO test for deciding if a meeting should exist
• Why there is no conclusive evidence that agendas improve meetings
• The 27-minute meeting and the calendar cleanse
• Why two productive people with AI can make the whole system worse
• "Botsitting": the 6.5 hours a week workers spend supervising AI
• Why copying NVIDIA's management style is dangerous
• What the best CHROs are doing first on AI

CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold open
0:27 Welcome to Truth Works
1:06 Introducing Dr. Rebecca Hinds
2:36 From Stanford swimmer to studying how organizations work
5:38 Why we can't stop having bad meetings
7:25 Meetings as a status symbol
9:24 What Netflix tried
10:39 Treat meetings like a product
13:10 The 4D CEO test
15:43 The truth about agendas
18:25 Parkinson's Law and the 27-minute meeting
21:09 What to do tomorrow: the calendar cleanse
23:57 If you don't own the meeting
27:23 The AI productivity gap
29:42 The hamster wheel of AI slop
31:22 Redesign the work, don't layer AI on top
35:52 Everyone is a manager now: delegating to agents
38:18 Good friction and where not to use AI
40:44 Flattening, layoffs and regret
45:15 Why what works for NVIDIA won't work for you
46:14 Advice for the CHRO
49:59 One thing to take into your week

ABOUT THE GUEST
Dr. Rebecca Hinds leads the Work AI Institute at Glean and previously founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana. She is the author of Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done.

ABOUT THE SHOW
Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal. Each episode is an honest conversation about why work is hard and how leaders can make it better.

#TruthWorks #Leadership #Meetings #FutureOfWork #AI #CHRO