Insights

We sat down with Gareth Thomas, CTO at PeakData and Geraldine Butler-Wright, a veteran Chief People and Culture Officer at scaleups, to dig into the key things you need to know when hiring a VP Engineering/CTO/CIO.

AI is the hot topic right now, and is only growing in popularity and potential. Promising to disrupt our relationship with work, how do companies prepare to integrate AI? What skills do they need in their workforce to make this a success? And is AI going to take all of our jobs anyway?

What are the key salary updates for 2024? What should you be paying your key talent? We've crunched the numbers for you.

Why is it that those who are slightly more mature in life and work are being overlooked, despite being highly experienced, talented and a growing proportion of the total workforce?  Let’s examine the situation, and why they should still be considered valuable assets to any company.

Discussion heats up about sales staff going back to the office 5 days a week. But is this working? And will it spread beyond sales?

With AI rapidly becoming an important part of a business’ growth strategy, we examine how installing a Head of AI helps maximize its potential, and what qualities and experiences make a good fit for the role.

A growing trend set to continue in 2024 is relocation to regions like the Middle East, as well as the US, Australia and parts of Europe. We’re also noticing a number of our UK clients opening new Dubai offices. Find out what’s driving this movement

A new book "Going Infinite" is out on Sam Bankman Fried (SBF) by Michael Lewis (author of The Big Short, Moneyball). It exposes how the lack of corporate structure led to one of the biggest startup meltdowns in history, and is a classic example of the market accepting the eccentric genius narrative.

Are you curious about what the forecast hiring/retention trends are for the year? We’ve been attending some really interesting talks and events in Jan, here are our thoughts and highlights.

Ellis appeared on the PreSeed Now podcast "How to hire (and keep) great talent" (specifically for early stage startups) to chat about hiring and retaining the talent you need to ensure growth.

We dig into one of the big questions every Founder asks themselves - “Am I underpaid?” Check out our benchmarked data and critical analysis to find your answer.

Part 2 of our Insights article series with Geraldine Butler-Wright, where we look at the issue of retention, and how to keep your all-star team intact as your grow.

The latest 2023 insights on sales (software) salaries for VC backed scale-ups in London at Late Seed, Series A and B stage. Includes benchmarked average salaries, AND live 2023 examples of recent hires.

Here are the latest insights on Marketing salaries for Late Seed, Series A and B in 2023 - benchmarked average salaries, AND live 2023 examples of recent hires.

In this 2-part series with Chief People Officer Geraldine Butler-Wright, we discuss topics within people, talent and HR that are affecting scale-ups in the tech sector right now:

• Part 1 - Hiring in a challenging market - is interim the answer?

• Part 2 - HR trends scale-ups need to know about.

Santa Monica Talent provides cost effective, on-demand access to interim talent for the world’s most ambitious challenger brands and scale-ups. We have immediate access to the skills, knowledge and market insights specific for your sector. Our market knowledge and sector specific experience have been built over 25 years within executive search in multiple locations covering Europe, Asia Pacific and North America.

A case study for a typical VC backed Series A, 100 headcount, B2B SaaS scale-up in 2023. Insightful tips on how to build a marketing team in 2023 to increase revenue, achieve product/market fit and raise brand awareness. Ellis Seder in conversation with Michael Williamson, veteran CMO with over 25 years of senior strategic technology marketing.

AI scale-ups often undervalue the need to build strong sales and marketing teams that can effectively define, communicate and sell the value of their AI solutions. Here are 6 tips to hire sales & marketing talent for AI hyper-growth scaleups.

Building and growing a winning sales team is complex and nuanced, because your business is unique. But, one thing that scale-ups ALL have in common right now is the pressure on revenue targets and the urgent need to drive sales for growth in 2023.