The Grove Conference

Table of Contents

1. Sequoia's The Grove Conference 2024: San Francisco

2. Stifel Venture Bank LA Ecosystem Event

3. ASO vs. PEO?

4. What I'm Listening, Reading, Watching and Playing

🌲 Sequoia’s The Grove Conference 2024: San Francisco

Sequoia’s The Grove Conference was back, live and in-person, for the first time since 2019 this week in San Francisco. The nostalgia trip was in full effect. Pounding the pavement in the FiDi, the never uneventful trip up & down Market St. to get to the office, heading towards the ballpark to find a rooftop happy hour for the team, and most importantly: office snacks.

But the best part about the trip was reconnecting with clients and peers in an energizing setting. It really did feel like “San Francisco is back” (the data doesn’t lie!). To name just one of many examples, after years of remote work, I was able to finally meet the first people leader hire of one of my earliest clients in-person, who so thoughtfully gifted me a piece of her company swag. A gesture I sincerely, sincerely appreciated.

I caught second time founders chatting with VCs that had invested in their last startup that they hadn’t seen in a long time. Heard conversations that controllers were having with CFOs after a panel asking for advice. Witnessed “aha moments” from people leaders when a CHRO explained how they implemented performance-based comp when they weren’t able to pay top-end salaries at such an early stage. It was awesome.

The conference opened up with keynote speaker, Keith Ferrazzi. Keith Ferrazzi is a renowned American author, entrepreneur, and global thought leader in relational and collaborative sciences. He is the founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a research and consulting firm based in Los Angeles. Keith is best known for his New York Times bestselling books, “Never Eat Alone” and "Who’s Got Your Back?"

In his speech, he spoke about the shift from “Leadership” to “Teamship,” meaning the hierarchy of org charts needed to be re-engineered into a better, more efficient, and collaborative process. Rather than the traditional “leader” being the sole individual responsible for giving the feedback, establishing the direction, and uplifting the team; the onus shifts to the team members themselves. With this “peer-to-peer” approach, it’s up to the teams to “co-elevate” each other, holding themselves accountable, and never allowing each other to fail. This, he argues, is what leads to scalability.

After the keynote, we broke out into three distinct tracks of breakouts:

• Compensation Strategies

• Benefits & Compliance Strategies

• CxO Conversations

I attended the session under the Compensation Strategy track entitled “Scaling Executive Compensation” which was a panel led by Victoria Treyger, GP of Felicis Ventures, Shannon Nash, Board Member of SoFi & Netscout, and Kyle Holm, VP of Comp Advisory at Sequoia.

All panelists were extremely impressive, and two points stuck made by Victoria & Shannon stuck out in my mind:

1. Startups need to invest in a Chief People Officer earlier in their lifecycle than they think. Establishing culture, a scalable hiring practice, and engagement/retention approach is one of the most critical aspects of the business. Victoria mentioned that this is something they look for in their founders: how much do they care about their people?

2. Compensation is not set-it-and-forget-it. Shannon shared that successful executives understand the limits from a cash perspective as a startup, and must approach their comp philosophy as an everchanging thing. The founder’s executive team notices, their employees notice, and a lack of thoughtfulness can breed resentment from within the org.

The next session was titled “CFO as Chief Storyteller” led by Bryan Morris, CFO of Demand Base; Amanda Vinson, Corp Dev & Ventures of ServiceNow; Bill Shope, CFO of Humane; and Jim Cook, former Netflix Executive & current Founder of Benchboard.

CFOs have to be more than just accurate forecasters - they need to tell a compelling story of the company. And the story has to be different for each audience. The way you share this trajectory with investors will be very different from the way you approach an all-hands meeting with employees. By providing a clear picture of how the company’s resources are being utilized to drive growth and innovation (and hit the key metrics investors care about), CFOs can inspire confidence & trust among their audience.

Ultimately, these events are more about the people than the fanfare. To hear clients share how genuinely happy they were to have partnered with us, to thank us for coming through for them, to boasting how this was actually their 4th company to have used Sequoia… it was really rewarding.

The heartfelt thanks and candid feedback expressed by those I’ve worked with reaffirms that our efforts are meaningful and impactful. It makes everything we do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis feel worthwhile and validates the value of what we’re achieving together. Ideas are the starting line, founders fire the gun, but its people who run the race.

The Grove Conference travels to NY next week with Mark Cuban as the featured speaker! In the area? Register here:

🏦Stifel Venture Bank LA Event

Honored to continue a partnership with Stifel Venture Banking, as they proudly and actively fuel the Innovation Ecosystem in Los Angeles. 

They hosted a great evening of networking, antique cars, great food, and community. 

Shout out to Al Guerrero, Greg Singer, and Sam Wogan for hosting!

🗣️ ASO vs. PEO?

Understanding the key differences in each service model should help you answer that question.

ASO (Administrative Services Organization) is a great fit for startups that have established their end-to-end people, HR, payroll, and compliance functions in-house, and have a preferred open-market benefits provider. ASO products will help the administration of:
✔ HR - onboarding, offboarding, organizational management.
✔ Benefits - if linked to a healthcare insurance vendor/broker portal, can integrate and support open enrollment.
✔ Payroll - on & off-cycle, PTO tracking, deductions.
✔ Compliance - guidance around new laws, answering questions on multi-state regulations.

PEO (Professional Employer Organization) is the right choice if the company is prefers outsourcing these functions to a certified partner & expert. In addition to the services listed above, the advantages of a PEO are:
✔ Shared risk & liability - as the administrative employer of record, the PEO is responsible for compliance & tax-liability. On an ASO model, the company retains this responsibility on their own.
✔ Large-group benefits - pooling PEO clients allows small-group companies to access enterprise style benefits, with typically richer plan designs than available to them in the open market.
✔ All-in-one - bundling payroll, HR, benefits, & compliance into one provider can be advantageous to startups looking to streamline their processes.

Not all ASO or PEO solutions are created equal. Stack rank these aspects when considering what's most important to your company:
❓ Reactive or Proactive support
❓ Call center or Assigned team model
❓ Self-service or Collaboration
❓ Guidance around compliance or Shared-liability
❓ Small-group or Large-group benefits & wellbeing
❓ Flexible or Turnkey technology
❓ Cost or Time

& plenty more to consider!

Read more from Marie Ellis, Director of Payroll Services at Sequoia One, on the Sequoia blog:

🎧️ What I’m Listening to:

📖 What I’m Reading:

📺️ What I’m Watching:

👾 What I’m Playing:

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