My first call with Matt Stephenson was more than three years ago. We met over Zoom, traded notes and said “let’s keep in touch” as Matt was about to start his first role in the venture world.

And we actually did. We reached out to each other on and off over the next few years. When I kicked off the search for someone to lead our early-stage Tech Talent team, Matt’s name popped back into my head.

BCV’s Tech Talent team is designed to support our early-stage founders in building their initial technical teams. The team exists under the Platform umbrella (what we call “The Hive”) to provide accessible guidance to busy founders scaling quickly and hunting for world-class engineers across all of BCV’s domains.

We were looking for an exceptional recruiter and leader with a mix of VC and operating experience. Someone who understands what “top talent” is and has a true understanding of what it takes to build and recruit at the earliest of stages. We also needed someone who could enter a portfolio company’s world, build trust quickly and help founders hire the best people as quickly as possible.

The Hive prides itself on rolling up our sleeves and working alongside founders to set them up for success, not just providing advice. We needed someone that could not only think big, but had a bias to action and a #GSD attitude.

In essence, we set out to find a unicorn and we found Matt – who was all these things and more. He’s not only a great human, but an expert in this space. Matt learned foundational recruiting practices at Google, was the first recruiter and eventual Head of Talent at Shift and scaled Plaid beyond 1,000 employees.

Two of his references happened to be very early stage founders – exactly the type of people he’s working with today at BCV. Both recognized Matt for his ability to “get” what it’s like to build from scratch and show deep empathy for the challenges of being a founder.

Finding and bringing Matt onto the team encapsulated so many of the most common hiring adages – “Recruiting is a long game.” “Hiring managers need to own hiring – including sourcing.” “Don’t settle. Even if it takes longer, it will be worth it.” Needless to say, we’re thrilled to have Matt join our platform team to lead Tech Talent! Matt answered some questions below so you can get to know him better.

Can you share an overview of your career path and journey to BCV?

Recruiting was meant to be a quick stop in my career pivot from commercial print sales to tech sales. As more and more of my clients took their creative budgets to the internet, it was clear that tech was the future. I saw recruiting as the crash course for breaking into tech.

As fate would have it, I got started at Google and instantly fell in love with the work – connecting people with opportunities, making a meaningful impact on their lives while driving business success. At Google, I also got my first exposure to venture capital, which piqued my interest as something I wanted to explore, but not before gaining direct experience at early-stage startups.

I joined Shift as their first recruiter, then Plaid as we scaled past 1,000 employees. Each experience reinforced my belief that strong recruiting isn’t just about hiring—it’s about building the foundation for long-term growth. I got energized in environments where leadership viewed talent as a strategic priority, and I loved the challenge of scaling teams through different phases of growth.

I felt that VC pull again when I was at Plaid and reconnected with a former colleague who told me about what he was building at Human Capital. I thought, “If I don’t do this now, I don’t think it will look the same a year from now.” I joined the team at Human Capital where I spent the last three years as an Operating Partner, working with a range of portfolio companies from seed stage to hyper growth.

What I’ve come to love about venture is that there is no other place that can offer the variety of work, and the amount you can learn in a short period of time is second to none. It’s been a lot of fun unlocking hiring challenges with founders, and I am excited to continue building on this experience in my role at BCV!

What are some of your key learnings from your career in talent and recruiting for technical roles?

• Stay agile. The pace of technology is ever changing, and we’re watching it accelerate more than ever. Each year comes with a new hot technology, tool, company, fringe benefit, etc. On the contrary, we’ve seen a swath of over hyped, overvalued, and over hired companies that go through the not-so-fun times of building. This dichotomy inherently influences and informs the motivators of your candidate pool, leaving a constant need for adjusting your approach, or your strategies for retaining your top talent.

• Invest in the long game. So much of recruiting is solving an immediate pain point, but the long-term relationships are compounding factors. The community of tech talent in Silicon Valley is much smaller than it appears, and great talent is constantly connecting with great talent. Five years might feel like an eternity when in the throes of building a company, but networks will continue to expand and when you look back, it all seems to have happened in a blink. I’ve learned to make the investment in connection, even when it may not solve the immediate pain point. My first call with Leslie more than three years ago is proof of recruiting being a long game!

What had to change when you became a Talent leader?

Two big themes quickly became obvious:

• It was no longer a matter of my individual output. The focus became getting every individual to the highest-performing level, and achieving results greater than what you could have done alone. This was also a crash course in situational leadership– what worked for you won’t always work for others. My job became finding the best way to work with each person based on their style and preferences.

• Your focus shifts to looking at the entire system, with a long-term view. Talent can often feel like a fire fight of the most pressing need standing in your way. If you get sucked in here, it becomes a struggle to plan, prioritize, and understand what parts of the process may need to be ripped out, refined, or revamped as the company grows. It’s looking out for the parts of the process that won’t scale to the next phase, or looking at building in repeatability to your process to maximize the efficiency for interviewers and recruiters alike.

What attracts you to helping startups with finding tech talent?

Every company faces its own unique talent acquisition challenges, and I love helping founders piece together the puzzle. Plus, my experiences at startups, big tech and VC all confirmed: Every founder comes with a different level of recruiting experience. As a tech talent leader, I enjoy making the process not just easier but actually enjoyable—turning it from a necessary evil into a competitive advantage.

What are you hoping to accomplish in your work at BCV?

Talent is at the center of everything we do at BCV. It’s critical that we continue to invest in networks and deep relationships that can be beneficial to both the portfolio and our broader community that’s part of BCV Labs. Whether you're a founder or first recruiter, I want to help you and your team develop the skills to hire great talent. Tactically, as a Tech Talent function, we strive to be your partners when building your team and technical headcount. This can range from implementing the right systems, sharing market benchmarks and best practices, pipeline activation, warm introductions from the BCV network and much more.

What are the best ways for BCV’s founders to work with you?

I like to be tactical and solutions-oriented. I’d rather roll up my sleeves and dive in than spend too much time mapping out an elaborate strategy on a whiteboard (though, I’m happy to when needed). We have a vested interest in your success, both as a leader and as a company, and I want every conversation to drive real progress toward your goals. Sharing some context ahead of our meeting, even just a quick text, allows me to pre-process and come prepared so our time together is action-oriented. I’ll do my best to make an immediate impact and will follow up with additional insights if needed. You can reach me at matt.stephenson@baincapital.com.