Call —
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0:00 Caller: Hey, Jedd.
0:00 You: This call will be recorded.
0:12 You: Hello, Leonard.
0:14 Caller: Hey, how are you? I was literally just typing your number.
0:16 You: Okay, well, I'm glad I got you then.
0:20 Caller: Yeah, exactly. How's everything? How's the week going?
0:20 You: I'm looking forward to the rain only because it won't be as hot.
0:27 Caller: Yeah, no, I hear you. No, but I appreciate the quick response and, you know, getting on, you know, setting up this call as quickly as you did.
0:36 Caller: So, you know, obviously wanted to chat with you a bit about the role and, you know, see what.
0:40 Caller: you might be looking for here so i know you know i initially reached out but are you pretty active
0:40 You: I am.
0:46 Caller: right now or what's what's that look like gotcha okay
0:47 You: That's partly why I responded quickly, because I'm already in advanced rounds, like third, fourth, plus with other firms.
0:56 You: So I anticipate offers within the next two weeks.
1:00 Caller: Gotcha.
1:00 You: tight I don't know if your client can move that quickly but that's where I stand today.
1:04 Caller: I mean, we'll see.
1:05 Caller: I mean, I know these guys are busy.
1:06 Caller: I think I put in the message that they're higher on like four or five people right now.
1:09 Caller: But I will say that, you know, from the last time around when we staffed the first person on this team, you know, a month ago,
1:15 Caller: they were able to move really quickly to fit his schedule.
1:18 Caller: So, you know.
1:20 Caller: There's no guarantee, but like I'll do whatever I can, obviously, to push things along quickly and see if we can, you know, consolidate some of these processes or interviews to help streamline it.
1:20 You: that's fine i have resources that might that might be attractive to your client that i can share with you after this call and in addition to my resume
1:30 Caller: So worth a shot.
1:35 Caller: Okay.
1:38 Caller: Yeah.
1:40 Caller: sure so what's um like what's the reason that's got you looking from you're still at row
1:40 You: I am still at Roe.
1:47 You: How long has it been now?
1:48 Caller: okay
1:49 You: Almost a month now.
1:51 You: A founder reached out to me, called to my GitHub,
1:56 You: suggesting I interview for their firm.
1:58 You: So that's currently in flight.
2:00 Caller: Yeah.
2:00 You: see where it lands.
2:02 Caller: Gotcha.
2:02 You: So I figured, where else, who else would value,
2:04 Caller: Yeah, no, I mean, for sure.
2:05 You: or how else would the market value might combine
2:07 You: or accumulated skills, knowledge, and experience,
2:10 You: especially in this agentic AI or AI engineering field?
2:17 Caller: Basically, like you said, I mean, kind of weren't really looking.
2:20 Caller: and somebody reached out and you said, hey, you might as well, you know, see what else is out there, get a feel for it.
2:20 You: It's a pull more than a push.
2:25 Caller: So there's really, there's nothing going on at your current company that's, like, pushing you out, like layoffs or anything like that.
2:29 Caller: It's really just seamless out there.
2:34 Caller: Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, it's a good way to put it, to be honest. I've never really thought about it that way.
2:40 Caller: So the role of working on, I mean, obviously give your, I send you over the company website
2:40 You: You hadn't.
2:45 Caller: and everything, and then we can chat about, like, how, you know, like how your experience
2:49 Caller: kind of lines up here.
2:50 Caller: But the company is called Veritas Capital.
2:53 Caller: I don't know if I mentioned that or if you've heard of that by any chance.
2:57 You: And the clues I had.
2:59 Caller: Okay.
3:00 Caller: Yeah, very tough.
3:00 You: discounted Apollo KKR and the other big ones, so Veritas.
3:05 Caller: They're more of, I would say, like a smaller mid-size.
3:08 Caller: I mean, they're about four or five hundred employees in total.
3:11 Caller: We've worked with them for a few years now, and they've actually really started growing
3:15 Caller: out this AI Solutions group.
3:17 Caller: It's very similar to almost like a forward-deploying.
3:20 Caller: type of model engineering team so like i mentioned we just actually staffed the first person on this
3:20 You: We're going to be.
3:25 Caller: team so they've had an AI you know manager director there for about a year now who's kind of gotten
3:31 Caller: everything up and running and then the person we just placed there he started about like three weeks
3:36 Caller: ago and they told us they were going to grow the team out we weren't sure exactly out quick
3:40 Caller: but, you know, it was a very fast turnaround because end of last week they reached out like, hey, you know, we're probably going to bring on four or five more people onto this group. And, you know, Veritas being a smaller kind of company internally, you know, compared to some of the bigger, you know, firms out there. They have about, I want to say, 20, 25 companies in their portfolio.
3:40 You: We're going to be.
3:42 You: Thank you.
4:00 Caller: most of which, a majority of which are fairly large organizations, you know, 8,000, 5,000 plus employees, some 15.
4:00 You: We're going to be able to be.
4:08 Caller: So, you know, it fluctuates.
4:10 Caller: And they're also, you know, not a private equity group that's, like, isolated to one particular industry or market.
4:16 Caller: They have a pretty wide range.
4:17 Caller: It's something pharmaceutical.
4:18 Caller: They have, like, health care.
4:20 Caller: They have a real estate company, you know, they kind of run the gambit there.
4:20 You: I'm
4:23 Caller: So, you know, a lot of people come from, like, consulting or, like, big tech that ends up joining them.
4:29 Caller: And, you know, I don't know the full roadmap and, like, the specific types of projects that this team is going to be working on,
4:35 Caller: but from a bigger scope picture, what they're looking to do is...
4:40 Caller: roll out, you know, AI solutions in, or help roll out AI solutions into their portfolio
4:40 You: We're going to be
4:45 You: I'm
4:45 Caller: companies primarily to start, focused around like improving operations, which will then in turn,
4:51 Caller: you know, obviously increase the ROI for, for Veritas as a whole. So that's kind of the plan.
4:57 Caller: And from a technology standpoint, they're very,
5:00 Caller: flexible on the specific tools and you know technology type of environments people are coming
5:00 You: Thank you.
5:04 Caller: out of because you know as you would assume a lot of these clients might be working with
5:08 Caller: you know some different technologies in there and so I know the role kind of reads more like
5:14 Caller: machine learning data you know cloud infrastructure but they are very open and to be honest
5:20 Caller: especially even with now that they're bringing on four to five people.
5:20 You: Thank you.
5:22 Caller: It seems like trying to find the right fit, you know, for some of their, you know, kind of, like, strategy here.
5:29 Caller: I know the higher matter did mention there's probably, like, two primary functions that these teams are going to sit under.
5:36 Caller: One would be like the CFO function, the other one's like the CRO function.
5:40 Caller: So he didn't really go into like a ton of specifics as to like the difference of those,
5:40 You: Thank you.
5:45 Caller: but I'm assuming the financial part of it is, you know, building deploying tools that's
5:49 Caller: going to serve more of their like financial workflows, modeling, portfolio analytics, you
5:54 Caller: know, cash flow, things like that.
5:56 Caller: And then I think the revenue like almost like kind of look at it as like a
6:00 Caller: business development function, you know, deal sourcing, pipeline intelligence, investor relations,
6:00 You: I'm going to be.
6:05 Caller: types of tools, things along those lines that they're going to look to, you know, start to
6:09 Caller: implement into these companies. And, you know, it's not, I guess, like, these, the clients of theirs
6:15 Caller: or the companies under their portfolio, like, they have very robust internal engineering teams.
6:20 Caller: they're not looking for this like you know six-seven person team to go in there and roll this all
6:20 You: So.
6:21 You: Okay.
6:22 You: Thank you.
6:23 You: I'm
6:24 Caller: out on their own you know it's kind of like working with these development groups and being
6:25 You: I'm going to
6:27 You: I'm going to
6:28 Caller: and helping on the strategy side and then you know working closely with predeep who's like the head
6:29 You: I'm
6:32 Caller: of AI there and also uh their heads well their cio charade they're the two guys that are
6:37 Caller: pretty much spearheading this whole thing
6:40 Caller: Okay.
6:40 You: Understood. So the good news is that two of my processes are already following a similar playbook as Veritas in the sense that these are PE funds who are using AI deployed engineers to help increase the multiple of their port codes. As for me, what...
6:47 Caller: Okay.
6:49 Caller: Perfect.
6:50 Caller: Yeah.
6:55 Caller: Perfect. Yeah, so.
7:00 Caller: Oh, yeah, I was going to say.
7:00 You: So what I do is I automate work.
7:03 Caller: Mm-hmm.
7:03 You: I've been doing this prior to the advent of LLMs,
7:06 You: and I still end up doing this since the inventive LLMs.
7:10 Caller: Mm-hmm.
7:10 You: Most of my solutions are in the document processing, reconciliation,
7:14 Caller: Okay.
7:15 You: and, of course, the coding and agending engineering spaces.
7:19 You: So I imagine...
7:20 Caller: Mm-hmm.
7:20 You: Those are all relatively universal problems across any company that processes documents or writes code or handles reconciliations of their finances.
7:22 Caller: Mm-hmm.
7:23 Caller: Mm-hmm.
7:31 You: So I'm not as concerned about being able to solve those problems.
7:37 You: What's unclear at the moment is that that's the kind of problem.
7:40 Caller: yeah I got what you're saying and like that's where really what I'm trying to do at the end of the day because there is kind of like you know I don't want to say a lot of moving pieces for this but you know there is a bigger kind of picture and roadmap and strategy and like what their initial projects are going to look like
7:40 You: problem that they're hoping to solve.
8:00 Caller: What I would want to do is if it seems like a good fit and like a good, you know, a company you're interested in talking to, basically the first round of the process is either going to be with the head of AI or the CIO. They're kind of like flip-flopping on who's ever available, you know, to take those on. And they're only like 30, 45 minutes. They're very conversational. It's not like a technical interview.
8:00 You: Thank you.
8:20 Caller: It's more of like, hey, you know, what type of environment, what kind of work we've been doing?
8:20 You: Thank you.
8:22 You: Thank you.
8:23 Caller: What have you been building?
8:25 Caller: And then they kind of give you, like, the overall rundown of, like, what to expect in this type of role.
8:30 Caller: And then typically after the first round, like, people have a good understanding of that.
8:33 Caller: And, you know, if they're like, oh, this seems like a really exciting opportunity or think, hey, maybe what they're doing isn't exactly what I'm looking to get in.
8:40 Caller: too. So that's kind of like the goal from this call is to, you know, see how things lined up
8:40 You: Well, the total comp figure you listed was, at least within range.
8:45 Caller: and if it sounds like something that you're open to and obviously make sure like the compensation
8:48 Caller: kind of aligns. Okay.
8:56 You: What I want to know is this is how it's broken down.
9:00 Caller: Yeah, so it's a combination, well, so the total comp that I shared with you is basically
9:00 You: carry is that base plus bonus is there some other structure to it
9:09 Caller: just based in annual bonus.
9:11 Caller: I would say their base range is probably going to fall between like 250 to 350.
9:16 Caller: You know, they may have a little bit of flex on that, but I think where they're going to end up flexing if they
9:20 Caller: need to with people is right now it stands the minimum annual bonus will be 100 percent so i think
9:20 You: Thank you.
9:26 Caller: they can flex on that percentage a little bit if they need to to get somebody higher on a total
9:30 Caller: comp cash basis and then they do have a carry as well that's not incorporated into that so that's
9:35 Caller: like additional and you know with the other hires we've worked with them
9:40 Caller: in the past that was never part of any type of offer it was with the last at like the
9:40 You: We're going to be.
9:46 Caller: AI platform person that we staffed there and it will be for these but I think they kind of like
9:50 Caller: work that out as you get towards the tail end but there that is a part of it and then you know
9:56 Caller: the other piece too I think I put the message that these guys do work on site
10:00 Caller: in that office in midtown it's you know a couple of blocks south of central park and then they
10:00 You: Thank you.
10:06 Caller: also they cover all commuting costs and they also pay for 100% of benefits so there's there's
10:12 Caller: more that goes into it than just that but um in a nutshell that's kind of how it's structured it's
10:16 Caller: base and bonus and then they have the carry as an additional
10:20 Caller: piece of the total comp that's not included with the number that i sent yeah
10:20 You: Understood.
10:23 You: So you have my, I guess, what would the next steps be?
10:28 You: You have my resume.
10:29 You: On it are linked to my GitHub and my personal website with a portfolio of publicly available
10:33 You: projects.
10:35 You: So those projects present the floor of my capability.
10:39 You: And then
10:40 Caller: Yeah. Yeah, so what, no, for sure, I get that. So like, what I'll do is I'll shoot you, I'll shoot over, I'll send you an email right now with the company website just so you have it and can stay on top of that. I'll forward your resume over to the, to the team this afternoon. And then I'll let them know, like, I know they're trying.
10:40 You: There are many more private ones that I don't publish.
11:00 Caller: to move quickly right at the same time they have four or five jobs open so they've they've
11:00 You: Thank you.
11:03 Caller: gotten a influx of resumes and they're trying to work through them quickly with that said
11:08 Caller: i'll let them know that you have things in later stages probably have a two to three week window here
11:13 Caller: where you're going to have to make a decision so i'll push yours to the top of the list and hopefully
11:18 Caller: you know if they're
11:20 Caller: interested in setting up a call like i will give you a buzz back we'll figure out what time works
11:20 You: Would it be too presumptive to give you some time slots now, so that can only get locked in early?
11:24 Caller: and then we'll we'll kind of go from there no i mean a hundred percent if you can that'd be great
11:36 You: So for a 45-minute call, Tuesday, June 23.
11:40 Caller: Okay.
11:40 You: between 11 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. Eastern time or between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Wednesday?
11:41 Caller: Okay, 11 to 12 or 2 to 4, you said, sorry.
11:52 You: Correct. Would it be easy if I just responded to your email with the Windows? May that's faster.
11:53 Caller: Okay.
11:54 Caller: Okay.
11:55 Caller: Yeah, that might be
12:00 Caller: it a little bit easier otherwise i'm been messed up a date in time or something so yeah i'll
12:00 You: Okay, I'll do that then.
12:03 You: Problem.
12:04 Caller: have that piece to the email and then respond back i'll call my colleague now and get your resume
12:09 Caller: over to these guys and then we will go from there all right all right awesome i appreciate i'll talk
12:13 You: Excellent.
12:13 You: Thank you very much.
12:17 Caller: to you soon well actually also too real quick you're okay you're okay you're
12:20 Caller: okay with something that's on site. I know that I don't know what your current like
12:20 You: So I have no, so to go over all of those questions, I have no trouble with being on site.
12:23 Caller: work structure is and how much work from home there is. Yeah. Yeah, that's totally fine.
12:29 You: The only thing I ask for is flexibility to attend to my, to support my disabled life
12:33 You: and our autistic son if an emergency comes up.
12:35 You: So it's only been a problem in one instance, but everyone else, it's
12:40 Caller: Yeah, no, that's not an issue.
12:40 You: everyone else has been okay, at least will have to accommodate.
12:43 You: I'm a U.S. citizen, so no...
12:45 Caller: Yeah.
12:45 You: Okay, cool.
12:46 Caller: Yeah.
12:46 You: I'm a U.S. citizen, so no visa transfer problems.
12:47 Caller: Okay.
12:48 You: And then any move I anticipate
12:51 You: would take four to six weeks,
12:53 You: mainly because I support quite literally
12:55 You: every leader at row.
12:56 Caller: Okay.
12:56 You: They all consume my automations.
12:58 You: So migration...
13:00 Caller: yeah no that's fine no that's fine no that's not that should yeah that shouldn't be a problem
13:00 You: by bringing it to their respective team will take a lot longer than two weeks.
13:04 You: So as long as they're willing to get up that transition,
13:07 You: a lot of concern and then everything else.
13:10 Caller: with any of that stuff so good to go there I appreciate you giving me the rundown so I'll
13:13 You: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much.
13:14 Caller: get you over the email a little bit here and then we'll go from there all right
13:20 Caller: Yeah, thanks a lot.
13:20 You: Thank you.
13:20 Caller: Take care.
13:22 Caller: Bye-bye.