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

Nate Sokolić started and sold companies in college, spent three years in executive search at Russell Reynolds, then led the firm's AI strategy, where he brought Findem in and rolled it out globally. He now works at Findem, helping HR leaders and talent teams adopt AI. Shane Driggers has spent close to 30 years in human resources, starting in Bay Area startups during the dot-com boom and most recently serving as Chief Talent Officer at T-Mobile. He now advises growth-stage companies.

Most companies are already using AI. Employees report that they feel more productive, and budgets for tools and tokens keep climbing. Yet very few leaders can point to the result in product innovation or revenue. Nate and Shane argue that the problem is rarely the technology. Companies are adding AI on top of workflows and org structures that were designed for a different era, and they are letting the tools set the strategy instead of starting with the problem they want to solve.

In this episode, Jessica sits down with both of them to talk about what it takes to make AI deliver measurable outcomes, why the people function has one of the biggest opportunities in the business right now, and how recruiting is changing from searching keyword profiles to getting verified, finished work back from AI agents.

In this conversation, Jessica, Nate and Shane discuss topics such as:
◼️ Why "tech wags the tail of strategy" and how that derails AI programs
◼️ Why employees feel more productive while the business sees no gain
◼️ How to redesign work from a blank page instead of rebuilding the past
◼️ Why AI is creating a new wave of tech debt inside large companies
◼️ How to decide which work should be human-led and which should be AI-led
◼️ Why HR leaders must be human thinkers, business thinkers and systems thinkers at once
◼️ How the CHRO role quietly became the company's chief AI strategist
◼️ Why the best AI adoption starts small, proves ROI, then expands year by year
◼️ How recruiters can search for real experience, like a CFO who has taken a company public
◼️ Why shifting from SaaS tools to AI agents changes how companies buy and use software
◼️ How Findem Studio produces market maps, succession plans and talent inflow/outflow reports
◼️ Why every AI output needs to show its work before a leader can trust it
◼️ Why transparency is the most valuable currency a leader has in an anxious workplace

This episode is sponsored by Findem. Findem is the AI infrastructure for people decisions. Its People Intelligence platform turns fragmented people data into context teams and AI can reason over, and act on. The 3D People Graph connects billions of data points across individuals, companies, and time. Expert labeling translates that data into consistent, evidence-backed signals about experience, capabilities, and relationships, with explainability behind every insight so teams can act with confidence. Findem's agents and enterprise applications run on this foundation, and partners can build on this infrastructure and bring the same intelligence into their own products. Findem is trusted by FedEx, Intuit, Nutanix, and Emirates.

Learn more about Findem: https://www.findem.ai/platform
Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, bringing honest conversations with the leaders shaping the future of work.

Max Junestrand, co-founder and CEO of Legora, explains how Legora became the fastest company in history to grow from $1M to over $100M in annual recurring revenue (ARR), in 21 months. He joins Truth Works hosts Jessica Neal and Peter Clark live from Legora's office.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

WHO IS MAX JUNESTRAND?

Max Junestrand is the 27-year-old Swedish co-founder and CEO of Legora, an AI platform for lawyers, law firms and in-house legal teams. He studied computer science and business, worked at two Y Combinator startups, and is not a lawyer.

WHAT IS LEGORA?

Legora is a legal AI company founded in Stockholm, Sweden and backed by Y Combinator. It helps lawyers review contracts, research case law and draft legal work. Legora serves some of the largest legal institutions in the world across Europe, the UK and the US, employs 900 people, and acquired five companies in 2026.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

HOW LEGORA STARTED

- Founded in 2020 by a psychologist, an engineer, a physicist and a lawyer
- Max joined in 2023, after the release of ChatGPT
- Started with €50,000 in angel funding before Y Combinator
- Rejected by Y Combinator once, accepted on the second application
- Built inside Mannheimer Swartling, the largest law firm in the Nordics, for nine months

Before Legora, Max applied to 400 jobs and got two interviews. Both rejected him.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

HOW LEGORA HIRES AND SCALES

- Headcount grew from 250 to 900 people in one year
- 0.3% of applicants receive an offer
- Max personally interviews every director-level hire
- Recruiting is treated as a privilege, not an obligation
- Performance reviews use a 1–5 scale with direct feedback
- The company is office-first with almost no remote work

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

KEY FACTS FROM THIS EPISODE

- $1M to $100M+ ARR in 21 months
- A contract review estimated at $44M was completed in 4 days
- A third-party study found Legora helps lawyers catch missed errors in 71% of cases
- Legora builds for where AI models will be in 3–6 months

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE

→ How did Legora grow so fast?
→ Why did Legora's team move into a law firm?
→ How do you hire at scale without lowering the bar?
→ How do you give hard feedback in a culture that avoids it?
→ How do you build one culture across Stockholm, London and New York?
→ Why is it becoming unethical not to use AI in legal work?
→ How will AI change the work of lawyers in the next two years?
→ Can legal AI improve access to justice?

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"You can just do things. You can be a little bit unreasonable in your ambitions." — Max Junestrand, CEO of Legora

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ABOUT TRUTH WORKS

Truth Works is a podcast about building companies and the people behind them. Hosted by Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, and co-host Peter Clark.

Legora: legora.com
Legora careers: legora.com/careers

Sponsored by Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration law firm.

#Legora #MaxJunestrand #LegalAI #AIforLawyers #YCombinator #StartupGrowth #Hiring #TruthWorks #JessicaNeal

Marcus Buckingham has spent more than 25 years studying what makes people extraordinary at work, and his newest research points to a word most businesses are too nervous to use: love.

In this episode of Truth Works, host Jessica Neal sits down with the co-creator of StrengthsFinder and author of First, Break All the Rules to talk about why Net Promoter Score barely predicts anything, why not one of the world's top business schools teaches the most powerful force in business, and how even a Netflix-level performance culture can accidentally train its best people to feel afraid.

Marcus traces his own fascination with talent back to a UK brewery with two thousand pubs, the unlikely origin of Gallup's decades of research into what separates great performers from everyone else. He walks through the "five feelings," control, harmony, significance, warmth of others, and growth, that decide whether a customer or an employee ever ends up loving a company, and why skipping the order backfires every time.

The conversation also gets personal: what Marcus calls "red threads," the parts of a job someone loves for no explainable reason, why no one else can spot yours for you, and what happens when AI starts writing your performance review before you have said a word to it. Marcus closes with the idea he calls mover and maker, that every person is, whether they notice it or not, making an experience for someone else in every single interaction.

Guest: Marcus Buckingham, researcher and author of First, Break All the Rules, Nine Lies About Work, and Love + Work
Host: Jessica Neal

Subscribe to Truth Works for more conversations on leadership, culture, and what actually makes people great at work.

#TruthWorks #MarcusBuckingham #Leadership #Netflix #WorkCulture

Alix and Marta were the people who had to make Netflix's culture work outside America. Alix moved from the US to build the Amsterdam office and Netflix's European headquarters from a handful of desks; Marta, a Venezuelan-born recruiter who had just scaled Booking.com from 5,000 to 15,000 people, read the Netflix culture deck and assumed it was "American BS" until she flew in to interview and find out. Together they built the HR function for EMEA during the company's fastest international expansion.

In this episode of Truth Works, Jessica Neal and Patty McCord sit down with both of them to talk about what happened when a Silicon Valley operating system met European labor law, "work to live" and a workforce that expected HR to keep the peace.

We get into:

- Why the culture deck was never a values poster: it was the practical rulebook for how you behaved or got fired
- The first time "adequate performance gets a generous severance" was said out loud in Europe, and the reaction it got
- Alix's first real piece of constructive feedback, delivered to a senior male executive with Patty sitting in the room
- Being "too American": the well-intended US executives who piled onto EMEA and stalled local agency for years
- Why the fix was slowing down and explaining behaviour with examples rather than pushing harder
- Same destination, different path: how Amsterdam, Tokyo, India, Silicon Valley and Hollywood each got there differently
- The people who wanted Netflix to admit the culture didn't scale, and why it did
- Whether European regulation is holding back the continent's startup ecosystem, and why Spotify is the exception
- Why culture change fails unless the founder or CEO personally drives it
- Their consulting firm, two years in, and why they refuse to sell the beautiful transformation deck
- Why every consultant is now an "AI transformation expert" and nobody knows the future of work

Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix.

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

Eric Partaker built Skype's early business team into a multi-billion-dollar exit — then had a heart attack at 35,000 feet from years of 80-100 hour weeks. He rebuilt his entire approach to work around one method, and now coaches CEOs on it worldwide.

In this episode, Jessica Neal talks to Eric about his new book Ultra Productive and the science behind doing more by doing less.

In this episode:
1. The heart attack at 35,000 feet and the days leading up to it
2. Building Skype's business team from the ground up
3. The 90-minute method behind 2-10x productivity gains
4. Why the average leader only focuses 23 minutes a day
5. The sleep science behind deep work and recovery
6. Digital sunset and shutdown rituals for better sleep
7. Using the 80/20 rule to filter signal from noise as a CEO
8. Why "what to stop doing" matters more than what to start
9. Growing a LinkedIn following past a million by simplifying complex ideas

Chapters:
1. Introduction
2. Eric's path: McKenzie to Skype to founding a restaurant chain
3. The heart attack story
4. Matching energy to your most important work
5. Becoming a CEO coach
6. The 90-minute method: focus, sleep, stress
7. Sleep science and the digital sunset
8. Eating close to bedtime and sleep quality
9. Helping CEOs cut noise and find leverage
10. Ultra Productive book and preorder bonuses
11. Closing advice

Eric Partaker's book Ultra Productive is available for preorder now at ultraproductive.com — preorder bonuses include a free 5-week Ultra Productive Accelerator with Eric and co-author Christian Poensgen.

This episode is sponsored by Manifest Law — the AI-native immigration law firm handling filings across 40+ countries.

Subscribe to Truth Works for more conversations with founders, CEOs, and leaders on building without burning out.