Kristina Lilleõis is new to the VC world – she joined Blossom Capital, Europe’s largest dedicated Series A fund, just 10 months ago.

But she brings such a wealth of experience in the world of tech and business; she’s been a Co-Founder, COO, CMO and CPO in previous roles.

Kristina Lilleõis, Talent Partner, Blossom Capital.

So, “when Blossom reached out, it made perfect sense to put my experience across every stage of the company building journey into use for the benefit of our portfolio companies”, Lilleõis tells UNLEASH in an exclusive interview.

She now serves as Talent Partner at Blossom (so named because “we’re here to help the boldest founders blossom and build globally significant companies”).

Blossom only invests in five to six companies a year – examples in the HR tech space include Localyze, Kadmos and Collective – and has a “relentless commitment” to helping portfolio companies grow.

In her role, Lilleõis specifically supports founders in the first 18 months following Blossom’s investment – this is often helping them “build out a people function and company building that’s divided into three parts: hiring, enhancing the existing teams, and forming company processes”.

UNLEASH is thrilled to welcome Lilleõis as our June ‘VC Voice’ – this is our 11^th interview in the series, and she follows in the footsteps of Thomas Otter from Acadian Ventures, Eight Roads’ Lucy O’Brien and Katelin Holloway of 776.

Let’s find out her advice to startups on building out their people function, and her top tips for HR leaders figuring out what HR tech tools to invest in.

Allie Nawrat: What gets you up in the morning, and what keeps you up at night? 

Kristina Lilleõis: I think the answer to both is the same – the very exciting yet challenging problems we’re solving together with our portfolio teams.

When building or supporting fast-growing companies, it’s vital that you understand it’s meant to be hard at times. If it wasn’t, everyone could do it.

AN: In your experience, what makes a great founder?

KL: You need to have a relentless drive to build the best product, and to get it in front of your customers.

You also need clear vision and stamina, while being open to advice. The best founders understand that they don’t need to reinvent every process for their company.

There are ways of doing things, such as driving a sales process, that have been tried and tested. You can save a lot of time by leaning on these best practices instead of trying to do everything from scratch.

AN: Beyond the founder, what makes a company stand out in the over-crowded HR tech market? What are the common traits of the most successful companies you’ve worked with? 

KL: From an organizational perspective, hiring strong leaders, keeping them informed about what is happening in the company and then letting them do their best work is a common trait in successful teams.

Keeping internal communication front of mind at all times and explaining the “why” behind company decisions and results, is another.

As is being conscious about hiring, not scaling prematurely, but also not hindering growth by scaling the team too late.

Balance is key here and this is where I try to help our portfolio.

AN: What are the common challenges and themes you see when founders are building their teams? 

KL: I am biased, of course, but one common theme is not investing in a strong People Leader and Recruiter early on.

Having a strong Head of People who is aligned and working closely with the founders from the early days can free up a lot of the founder’s time.

Not to mention it can help build a solid foundation for the team and the company’s culture.

If you do plan to scale your team, it makes sense to get a strong recruiter on board who is an expert either in tech or commercial hiring, whichever the company is struggling the most with.

AN: Our audience, HR leaders, are the key customers of HR and work tech. As a former CPO and founder yourself, what is your advice on what leaders should look out for when buying tech?

KL: When you’re a smaller team and growing, particularly when your team grows to around 40-50 people, it’s important to figure out what your HR tech needs are, in three key areas:

• Hiring
• Record keeping, remote hiring and payroll (HRIS)
• Engagement and performance

Once you’ve established these, look for mid-market solutions.

You don’t want, and rarely need, to look for full enterprise offerings at this stage as these are usually cumbersome, expensive and you’re probably not ready for the complexity.

That said, you don’t want to end up with 15 different tools for different things, so a middle ground is probably best.

A solution that’s robust enough that it can scale with you, up to 500 people, and which integrates with your other solutions to keep workflows efficient.

As a HR tech enthusiast I’ve seen how well the right solutions can free up time and help manage the hundreds of different details that need to be kept track of.

As a result, I believe leaders should swap spreadsheets and email vacation requests for best-in-class tools as early as possible.

AN: What are the most exciting innovations on the horizon in the future of work?

KL: AI is going to make everything easier. It will become such an integral part of our workflows by integrating seamlessly with our tools, that we’re not even going to realize they’re being driven by AI.

As the shift occurs, it will be interesting to see if the People Business Partner role will be ‘outsourced’ to AI partners who will help teams with coaching, conflict mediation and more.

However, I believe adoption of this, if or when it happens, will take many years, if not decades.

There is still very much a need to talk to actual people with actual life experiences that offer real human connection that AI can’t yet replace.