This is a transcript from the AI and the Future of Work podcast episode featuring Dan Turchin interviewing Jason Corsello, VC @ Acadian Ventures and WorkTech expert

Dan Turchin (00:19):
Good morning. Good afternoon. A good evening, depending on where you’re listening. Welcome back to A n the future of work. Thanks again for making this one of the most downloaded podcasts about the future of work. If you enjoy what we do, please like comment and share in your favorite podcast app, and we’ll keep sharing great conversations. I’m your host, Dan Turin advisor insight finder, the system of intelligence for it, operations and CEO of people rein the AI platform for it and HR employee service. Now a few SaaS companies have become what I’ll call household names in the future of workspace. One of them is certainly cornerstone on demand, the talent and learning management platform. We often and talk about the AI powering new employee experiences and the ethical and cultural implications of the data required to power. It we’ve spent less time discussing the actual products wrapped around that AI that deliver the employee experiences, guests like PSOs from learn worlds and Brian TBY from aura have introduced us to new ways to upskill and reskill in preparation for automation.

Dan Turchin (01:31):
But there’s also this whole ecosystem of technologies that employees interact with every day that are being reimagined by great entrepreneurs and investors who believe work is overdue for disruption. Well today’s guest has spent more than a decade defining and investing in the future of work. While at cornerstone on demand, he helped grow the business from about 40 million to over 500 million in ARR his passion for technology that helps employees let him to start. Acaia a ventures about three years back where he invests in companies that are transforming work like Gerow, Brio, HR, and oyster. Thanks to Dave Kellogg for the introduction to Jason without further ado. It’s my pleasure to welcome Jason. Corello from ACA a ventures to podcast. Jason. Good to have you here. Let’s let’s kick things off. Why don’t you share a little bit more about your, your background and how you got into this space?

Jason Corsello (02:33):
Yeah, certainly Dan thanks for having me here today. I’m, I’m certainly excited to have a fun conversation here. I’ll give you try to give you the short version of my background, which is I grew up as a, of Silicon valley back in the eighties, and this is, you know, pre what we know of Silicon valley today. You know, back then it was companies like IBM Hewlett Packard eventually Intel that were kind of defining Silicon valley at that, at that moment. But I grew up in the, in the valley that’s really, you know, from those early days of my childhood, where I fell in love with, with technology. went to school in San Diego after I graduated from San Diego. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.

Jason Corsello (03:17):
Went back to the a bay area. at that time kind of mid nineties started working for startup companies, although they weren’t necessarily defined as startup companies had a mixed bag of successes. One company went public, another company failed miserably, you know, got to wear lots of different hats. You know, one being what now we call client success, got to be a product manager at times. So really got to experience everything of, of Silicon valley back in the kinda eighties nineties. About 15 years ago, decided to get married and ended up moving back east and didn’t know what my kind of career journey. I was a little bit lost in my career at that time and got a job. But as I had a market research firm Boston, and that’s really where I kind of stumbled into this world of work tech, HR tech, what everyone likes to call future of work, and I just fell in love with it.

Jason Corsello (04:11):
And so, you know, just, at that time, it was kind of the first generation of SaaS. And decided that I wanna be the guy that kind of showed up at every event learned as my just possible about the industry itself. And, you know, that was at onset of companies like success factors in tole and ultimately Workday and eventually cornerstone where I ended up working. And so got to really embrace myself world of work tech and HR tech. And here I am now, you know, almost 20 years later and I’m, I’m still in this world. Although my, my career is, has changed more to the investor side than the operating side, but it’s a, it’s just a, it’s an industry. just, like I said, I fell in love with, I love industry. I love the pace of innovation that’s happening right now. And that’s, you know, predominantly why I’m, I’m setting all of my time on the investing side today,

Dan Turchin (04:59):
The best investors tend to have been off braiders. And in your case, you were both an operator and an analyst before becoming an investor. What did, what did those roles teach you as you invest?

Jason Corsello (05:10):
Yeah, it it’s it’s really fascinating because to me, it really, you know, at the seven years while I was at cornerstone, it was a tremendous ride. It was a tremendous experience. We had a, just a fantastic team that got to work with, including the CEO, Adam Miller. And during that time, really learned three things. learned more than three things, but three things that really kind of stick out the first is, is empathy of founders. You know, I watched Adam, Adam was founder. It took a company public and challenges that he went through on it every single day basis was just mind boggling. And so I have a lot of empathy for founders because building startups is extremely, extremely hard. It’s never up into the right every day is, is a new challenge.

Jason Corsello (05:55):
You know, one of bigger around empathy was, you know, at cornerstone, we had, I think we had, it was either 12 or 14 quarters of beaten rays. You know, this is back in 2011, through 2000 14 wall street really loved us. We were growing at 70% quarter over quarter, which, you know, at the time was pretty phenomenal for those first generation SA companies. And we had a couple of MIS quarters and all of a sudden wall street hated us. And we had activist shareholders that came into mix. And, oh my gosh, I mean, the distractions that they presented them, the company itself. So, you know, really got to learn, you know, getting, getting beat up by by shareholders really gives different perspective on being more empathetic to, to founders and founding teams companies really doing the hard work.

Jason Corsello (06:43):
Two other things really quickly and maybe there’s somewhat interrelated is prioritization and focus. As you’re growing, you know, again, you have many decisions that you have to make, and often it comes down to focusing on where you’re gonna get the most value of those of those decision and those priorities. And so prioritization is hugely important. And I certainly learned that at cornerstone. And the last that goes along with that is, is focus, right. And this is where I think we probably made a little bit of a misstep at, at, at cornerstone is we were growing very rapidly and we kind of thought we could do everything. And we started doing everything and all of a sudden we found, wow, we’re, we’re trying to do too much. We’re built too much. We’re trying to grow into too many geographies in terms of the go to market. And it, and it really, really hurt us. And so focus, you know, whether you’re big or whether you’re small is extremely, extremely important.

Dan Turchin (07:30):
What’s the most recent deal that you announced. And what got you so excited about the team in the product?

Jason Corsello (07:35):
Yeah. Dan, I’ll give you three. So the one that one of the ones we, we most recently announced announced was a company called compa where we co-invested with with base 10 partners crosscut ventures out of LA it’s an LA based company. And the way I like to describe compa is it’s steel desk for talent acquisition. And what I mean by that is, you know, we all know in sales, especially with larger sales organizations, they have a deal desk, right? So the deal, the deal goes to the deal desk and they make sure pricing is right. Terms are right. You know, any sort of things that you need provide a lot of intelligence. Most of it is manual intelligence, but lot of intelligence around how do you wanna shape that deal? In talent acquisition, and particularly in recruiting, we don’t have any intelligence on why make hires, how much we should pay them.

Jason Corsello (08:22):
Are they gonna accept the offer or not? And so comp’s really trying to, to solve that problem, which is let’s be smarter with what we think we should be offering in terms of compensation, and even use some intelligence to determine, Hey, if we offer 10% more, do we have a 95% higher likelihood of winning the candidates? So they’re putting a lot more intelligence around that talent acquisition process, particularly as it relates to, to compensation. Two other ones really, really quickly one that we haven’t necessarily formerly announced, but it’s a company called assembly, which is also ironically based in Los Angeles and assembly is really, you know following this concept of no code software, it’s an area that I’ve gotten super fascinated with. You know, we’ve seen successes with companies like air table and notion particularly around productivity, but I think, you know, and you know, this Dan with all the complexities related to HR, HR processes and workflows, I have a belief that, you know, no code can solve a big, big problem.

Jason Corsello (09:19):
And I think more, if you look at kind of the generations of software, you know, generation, one of, kind of the on-premise world was customizing the heck out of software to ACC, to, to deliver what exactly the customer needed. You know, the SAS world moved to from customization to figure, right. Let’s, you know, use the software and SA to really configure implementation of the deployment of the technology. And I think we’re going into this third generation, which is ironically not customized configured it’s assembled ironically assembly, where you can take the building blocks the pieces, the templates, the APIs, allow someone with somewhat noncoding non-development expertise to be able to, to do that work themselves. And then we’ll ask one, you know, it’s actually a company we’re gonna announce next week. So it’s a little bit of a teaser.

Jason Corsello (10:08):
But it’s this idea around kind of performance and engagement, whereas it’s kind of flipping the script on a performance engage, which is much more designed for the employee. So it’s not just looking at what your path performance or how you engage employees. It’s actually kind of looking at work and life and now wellness all collectively in kind of one application. And I think the last two years has kind of helped reinforce this, that we just don’t go to work to earn a paycheck, right. And we’re now balancing all these demands of work life and now, you know, our own wellbeing. So that’s one that, that we, we got involved very, very early in fact, helped incubate the company. And those are just three, three of, of a few examples, but, you know, somewhat different , in sis. But you know, more broadly with kind of what we talked about at the beginning is this whole new kind of transformation that’s happening in work today.

Dan Turchin (11:03):
You’re talking to many work tech entrepreneurs. Tell us a little bit more about Acadian size of fun stage fit feces beyond. I mean, obviously you mentioned three great examples, but a little more about the fun.

Jason Corsello (11:15):
Yeah. Dan, a little bit of backdrop, you know, my career in venture. So at, when I was at cornerstone, we would launch a corporate venture fund. This is back in 2014 and I like to say I made all the mistakes of venture, but I also learned all of the constraints of, of corporate venture, where we would love a company. In fact, there’s been many successes of in our, what I call our anti-portfolio or seal the best term of the anti-portfolio or we, we found companies that ultimately became successful, but we couldn’t invest them cuz of the constraints of either the competitive threat or risks what have you. One thing is I was, was doing corporate venture. You know, we would meet with hundred entrepreneurs entrepreneurs like yourselves that we would always get the question of like, who are the VCs that really understand this world of kinda work tech and HR tech.

Jason Corsello (11:57):
And I would always scratch my head and I could never think of either like a person or a firm and that that’s not to say that aren’t great venture investors out there, but that, what, what that told me is I thought there was an interesting opportunity kind of create a specialized fund in work tech or HR tech. And so in 2018 I was kind of socializing the idea and I decided 2019 I was just gonna do it on my own. So 2019 I launched what many call now, solo GP fund which is essentially myself as the only investing partner. We predominantly focus on seed stage investing, typically write checks upwards of a million dollars. So between a half nd we typically come in at, at the seed stage. So relatively early on, you know, maybe, maybe companies do have product market fit maybe we just see an opportunity for new category creation. Today we have 18 portfolio companies in the fund. We started investing. So we’ve been investing for about two and a half years. We are slowly winding down with fund two and hope to have an announcement around or so solely finishing fund one and hope to have an announcement around fun too shortly.

Dan Turchin (13:00):
You told us about three deals, you said yes to tell us the most common reason why you say no,

Jason Corsello (13:07):
Man, that’s a great question. I’m not sure it’s ever a singular reason why it’s no, I mean, part of venture besting, it’s almost one, one of my LPs who was a, was a reporter many years back for the New York times kind of equated reporting with venture investing, which is like, you’re, you’re doing an investigation, right? You’re trying to uncover the pieces to the puzzle. And that, to me, think that’s a pretty good analogy. In fact, that’s why you see a lot of venture investors that were reporters that were researchers because it’s, it’s kind of piecing this, this puzzle together together. So the, it, it’s never one singular thing. I try, you know, really care about the teams and you hear that all too out there and it’s always about the teams and it, it really is because, you know, the hardest thing to assess and venture investing is, is stamina.

Jason Corsello (14:00):
Does the team have the stamina to get, you know, knocked down every day or, you know, every couple of days get back up, you know, when we make an investment, we try to look at the opportunity is one, is this a hundred million dollar revenue opportunity, right? So is this a big enough opportunity to grow business at scale? And two, does the team have that stamina to endure the challenges to get to that, that milestone, if you will. And it’s hard to, it’s really hard to determine hard to figure that out, but those are really way I try to look at at the world is, is the opportunity and do, do the founders really have that, that Tamina because it’s, it’s fully not easy.

Dan Turchin (14:43):
So the work tech space as you, and I know is quite crowded and yet there’s exciting white space for innovation, what’s one pitch or product that if you saw it come across your inbox, you’d fund today,

Jason Corsello (15:00):
Let, maybe I’ll tell a couple that we missed because maybe we just didn’t see, but there’s couple really interesting ideas. More recently, there’s a merge that I ran and it really solves this pain that we had at cornerstone was the integration pain, right? the world of HR tech and for large organizations, they’re never usually just using a singular application or solution, right? In fact, many times they’re using upwards of a hundred different SaaS based applications. But constant challenge is always trying to figure out how to integrate them back and forth. Now, APIs have made it much more easier, you know, most recent years, but merges as a company, that’s really trying to automate that whole integration process through API. It was unfortunate cuz I, you know, I stumbled upon them way later than I probably would’ve would’ve preferred.

Jason Corsello (15:49):
And they already, you know, I raised lots of, of money from really good investors, but that’s one we missed that’s a real life case of like solving a big pain today, a pain that I experience while being an operator. And I haven’t seen anyone do it elegantly just yet. Let me flip the other, let me try to answer the question another different way, which is where I think there’s opportunities for disruption. And I think a one is , and this, isn’t probably gonna answer a question, but I’ll, I’ll say it anyways, which is I think there’s an opportunity to disrupt LinkedIn. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what it looks like. What’s fascinating to me is LinkedIn, you know, just reported two days ago, LinkedIn is still growing at 37% phenomenally. It, it, it’s just amazing how well they’re they’re, they’re still growing, but they have this kind of closed wall, closed garden, whatever you wanna call it of their data.

Jason Corsello (16:37):
And I think there’s an interesting future opportunity, which is how can you do this? Maybe it’s through web three and blockchain and decentralization, but an opportunity to, to disrupt link date because you know, they, they aren’t necessarily open, they’re difficult to partner with and you know, in this new world order, it’s all about, you know, openness community. And so that’s one, t, it probably didn’t answer your question, but I think an opportunity for disruption, I also think, and this is probably a very progeny answer, but there’s an opportunity to disrupt payroll. Because the way I think about it is, and there’s been a little bit disruption, it’s mostly been the incumbents using with now, they call earned wage access EWA, but like we’ve been hardwired to expect that we’re gonna get a paycheck every two weeks for every four weeks. Right. the payroll companies make a lot of money in the float in between that time.

Jason Corsello (17:28):
Right. And then this kind of Bezos mentality of your margin is my opportunity. I think there’s an interesting opportunity in payroll. part of that is, is to give individuals, employees greater access to, to their pay more real time access to their pay. I think secondarily to that is this kind of intersection of payroll and or work tech, HR tech and FinTech, which is, you know, payroll data is hugely valuable, right? Companies are making billions and trillions of dollars of decisions on who gets a loan, who gets a mortgage. And so how can you actually use that data and how can I own that data as an employee, as a person to, to, you know, get greater access to capital, to get greater access to things. When people know that I have a certain income and that, you know, I have a certain credibility because of that income. So probably didn’t specifically answer your question, but you know, those are two kind of standing markets today that I think are, are ready disruption in part, because the incumbents have, have just created this, this fascinating margin that can be disrupted.

Dan Turchin (18:37):
We use Gusto at people, rain, and I’ve used rippling in some of the other modern entrants and can’t believe how easy it was to disrupt ADP as we see that trend continue. You do you, you mentioned, you know, the disruption of payroll, where else do we go? Like you said, EWA, but it seems like the incumbents are in the process of being disrupted. Are you envisioning a time when Gusto rippling new entrants are disrupted themselves?

Jason Corsello (19:08):
It, it could be. I mean what’s fascinating about ADP don’t quote me on these numbers, but I heard a couple of years ago, ADP loses a billion dollars of revenue every year from just churn, right. Customers that are losing at ADP to go to Gusto somewhere else. Right. So they’re not gonna be disrupted overnight. But you know, I do think there’s certainly opportunity for, for the go, you know, Gusto and rips are certainly, you know, have been innovative companies, but they’ve only focused on a kind of small portion of, of the market. I just think there’s opportunities and maybe they are y continue to be the disrupters, but I think there’s this interesting opportunity as we move towards this, I don’t wanna call the freelance economy, but this idea that we’re gonna work for multiple employees. And then it’s not just easy to verify income by calling your, your, your, your employer, because maybe you don’t have a central employer.

Jason Corsello (20:01):
Maybe you have four different employers, maybe you’re 10 99, like it’s gonna be harder. It already is harder for, for those types of employees to get access to capital, to go off and get, get a more. And so there, the disruption is there. I don’t necessarily know what it looks like if I did, I’d probably start a company. Although I don’t know if I had this Tamina start a company, ‘m much rather invested the company than start it, but I do think there’s a, there’s an interesting opportunity there. , you know, the successes of the ADP and pay, tell it’s a huge market, right? Globally, it’s a huge market, lots of opportunity there, for sure.

Dan Turchin (20:38):
We can’t talk about the future of work without talking about AI. And we can’t talk about AI without talking about the impact that it might have on jobs as more processes are automated. How threatened should HR teams feel by the incursion of AI?

Jason Corsello (20:55):
Well, it, it’s such a good question and I, you know, while they shouldn’t be threatened, they are certainly I know, you know, I’ve worked with my fair share of, of HR departments to know that anything new, anything disruptive is, is certainly threatening, right. Especially if you’re talking about HR being risk averse, and for a lot of HR departments, it’s a lot easier to say no than it’s to say, yes, let’s try it. You know, even though there’s some sensitivity involved. So I think re’s certainly a lot of threat it because, you know, HR departments, by the nature of, of the jobs they serve the roles they play have access to a tremendous amount of highly sensitive data, right. PII data that you know, we’ve seen cases where, where companies have been hacked and, you know, you never wanna be on the, on the front page of the wall street journal.

Jason Corsello (21:48):
So, so they’re certainly threatening. I say that when I was at cornerstone, I would talk to customers all the time and I would tell them they should be carving out some budget for experimentation, whether that’s experimentation on AI or new tools using AI. So it’s a difficult question, Dan, because I think most HR departments know that they can and should be using AI, you know, some use cases of AI and HR. Haven’t gone so successfully, right. Using facial recognition to make hiring decisions and things like that. So they, you know, they’ve pulled back a little bit, but the way I like to think about it, Dan is we, we have tremendous amounts of data I HR, right? 10,000 person organization has huge value in that HR data. Right. We know we should know skills, we know pay progression, we know experiences.

Jason Corsello (22:39):
We know what people have learned and what training they’ve completed. Like, and we know, you know, beyond just that demographic data, we know some of the behavioral data, like how long it took from go to one job to another. I dunno if you can say that behavior today, but we have a tremendous amount of data that just goes unused today. So why aren’t we using it more, more innovatively and attempting to use AI more progressively. So I think it’s happening out there in pockets. It’s certainly not happening out, out there at scale, but I think, you know, what you’re doing at people re and what others are, are doing. I think we’re, we’re, we’re making progress. We’re probably not making progress as fast as I would like to see, but I think you know, as we start to see some of the successes of, oh yeah, we can use this data and we’re having great success.

Jason Corsello (23:28):
And not only is it saving money, but it’s helping us accelerate our business. That’s, that’s what we need. it’s it, like I said, it’s probably going slower than I would certainly like to see, but it’s, it’s inevitably gonna happen. You know, to me, as I, as I kinda wrote this in our annual letter recently is the next 10 years who wins the next 10 years are gonna be the companies that figure out how to build their talent factories. Right. Cause it’s all about talent and it’s not just like finding the smartest people in the room. It’s also building the culture. It’s engaging in them. It’s keeping them, you know, involved than tied to the business. So long response to your question, Dan, but think we’re still early days and still a tremendous amount of opportunity to leverage AI.

Dan Turchin (24:14):
I talked to me intro about the need for reskilling and upskilling. And one of the things I’ve shared openly on this show in the past is if you’re are in a job that is easily enough automated by a machine, it’s a really good time to think about what’s a career that’s not easily automated because AI and AI driven automation will be a net creator of many more jobs than it eliminate to firmly believe that I’ve also said frequently in the past, anything that can be predicted is better left to machines, but anything that requires rational thinking or empathy or creativity is better left to humans. So yes, this is me on a soapbox, but I firmly believe that it’s a really good opportunity, like a wake up call opportunity for anyone who’s in a job. That’s, that’s that that’s that easily automated. Does that resonate with pitches that you see and with your thesis?

Jason Corsello (25:19):
Absolutely. You know, as part of our, our fun thesis, we don’t look at automatization robot X as an example, you know, where we invest it’s just outside of our kind of domain. But to your point, I absolutely agree that you know, many low wage jobs are, are gonna be automated away. We’re already seeing it. And frankly, I think, you know, what’s happened over the last even 18 months where we have, you know, this huge gap between hires in and positions open and just this, this disconnect in the economy and the jobs economy right now, it’s gonna force companies to automate because you can’t find people to, to fill the jobs that they need today. So this divide is gonna get, I think even even harder, that doesn’t mean, you know, it’s gonna kill all these jobs. I completely agree with you. It’s gonna be a net job creator over time.

Jason Corsello (26:13):
And it, it is, we see it because a lot of these highly skilled jobs, we can’t fill fast enough either. Right? I mean, look across our portfolio companies and it it’s a small subset, right? We’ve got just under 20 portfolio companies, every single one of them needs to hire engineers and they can’t find them right now. Right. And this is just, you know, if you think about not just software companies, tech companies, but traditional industrial companies that need to hire engineers that are, that are, you know, moving towards automation there is a huge demand. And, you know, I like to say a lot of, you know, companies in the work tech area are helping bridge this divide, right? It’s not, like I said, it’s not gonna happen overnight, but through training, through upskilling through reskilling there’s lots of different ways now.

Jason Corsello (26:56):
I’m not a believer that you can expect that, you know, many low skill workers are gonna become high skill workers, right. You know, because you also have to match the desire and the ambitions of, of individuals. And sometimes the gap is too large that you can’t expect. Someone’s gonna, you know, become , a software developer overnight, but we’re certainly gonna shrink that gap. So it doesn’t take, you know, four years, five years, 10 years, it can take one year or two year. So I’m certainly optimistic. I certainly am a believer of, of what you stated, which is you know, their automization is gonna force us to, to do a lot of things much better. And you know, this disruption will be, will look back in 10 years and say, know, this is a, it’s a completely different world.

Dan Turchin (27:48):
You mentioned winners will be the ones who best build talent factories. And I love that image. And you know, you alluded to the fact that access to data, that’s where the lifeblood of the, of the talent factory on this show. We talk a lot about the ethics of your data and how it can be used, and when it’s used, how much should you know about how it’s used and if an automated decision is made on your behalf, is it the obligation of the software, the vendor the community to let you know about the data that fed that decision. So against that backdrop, to what extent do you think access to data and regulatory issues around data access will constrain the innovation that’s required to make it easier to create those talent factories?

Jason Corsello (28:39):
It’s, like I said, we have a lot of access to data. There are a lot of constraints. Right. concerns to me, it, it really comes down to whether you’re a software, you know, company, or whether you’re, you know general electric that, that could probably turn your IBM. Right. Is the transparency and the optin of, of how that data is being used. Right. So as an individual, I should be able to have control over my data to say, yeah, I want my company to have access to, into, you know, certain aspects of how I use the software or certain, you know, things that they know about me, my skills, you know, whatever it may be my compensation. So there is a bit of, of disconnect. And I think there’s still a lot of exploration. I mean, obviously GDPR is, has changed a lot of things.

Jason Corsello (29:26):
You know, how we manage privacy kind of ever evolving securities is ever evolving, but I think that the net net is I’m optimistic that we’ll, you know, companies are, are, you know, net good in that, you know, they just don’t wanna take individual data and use it for ill intended reasons. You know, we’ve made one company, I didn’t mention, we, we invested in the companies, it was fairly early on in the company that is actually using, looking through your messaging applications, right? So your slack, your E, and it can almost predict your burnout. Are you burnt out your wellness? Are you redlining? And it’s interesting because they’re tapping into, into systems getting insight using linguistics technology to, to make those determinations. Now, you know, me as an employee, I have access and I own that data. Now, the question is, do I give that access to my employer or even my manager?

Jason Corsello (30:26):
And so there’s a lot of rules and constraints that you have to build into that, you know, into that workflow, if you will. It’s super early , you know, maybe one of these companies that, that might be even too early, but what I would suggest Dan is like, we have all this data, we, you know, using AI linguistics, whatever, like we can get a lot of inference and insight into that data. It really comes down to how we wanna use it and how progressive we want to be. Because, you know, when I was a cornerstone, I’d certainly like to know three months or six months in advance of if I had employed, that was redlining. And sometimes you just don’t know. Right. You just can’t tell, but certainly you can tell through the data. So I dunno if that answered your, your question, but AI has been a fascinating topic as you know, in the HR world. And we probably, you know, got a little bit ahead of our skis five years ago when we saw, started talking, talking about how I can be hugely impactful. And I think we’ve scratched the surface a little bit. I think there’s still a long way to go.

Dan Turchin (31:26):
So think about some of moonshot pitches that you’ve heard and Polish your crystal ball, let’s say, you know, in 10, 15, maybe even 20 years, we’re having a version of this conversation. What’s one behavior that will be commonplace at work then that today, you know, would seem like Jetson style science fiction,

Jason Corsello (31:48):
Not a believer yet. And maybe I won’t ever be in this idea of the metaverse right. Or the metaverses that applies to work. And maybe it’s just cuz I’m I’m curmudgeony and you know I’m no longer, you know, 20 years old or 21 years old. And I didn’t, you know, although I grew up playing video games, I certainly don’t play them as much today, but you know, I’m a bit, so, so I’m gonna I’m gonna tell you what I don’t believe in, which is ‘m not hugely bullish on this idea of the fer, so I’m not least convinced yet. Right. I’m watching what a lot of folks are doing. And there’s a lot of interesting startups, but that whole jet and style of the world I’m not bought into w I’ll answer a question a little bit differently, which is, I think what technology is enabling us and where I expect to see the world in 10 years.

Jason Corsello (32:36):
And this probably this probably isn’t usually provocative, so I’ll apologize, but it’s this idea that we’re, we’re, we’re tied to a single employer. I don’t think in 10 years, you know, most individuals are gonna be tied, tethered to a single employer. We’re already seeing it today. I see it every day where friends, neighbors, colleagues, you know, are doing side hustles or doing, you know, and have decided they don’t wanna work for their company. They’ve worked for for 10 years. And maybe they go into a consulting role because they have five other or three other, two other aspirations or things that they wanna chase because they they’ve thought about them for a very long time. So I guess my big prediction, which is probably not a big prediction is in 10 years, we’re not gonna be tied to a single employer. We’re gonna be doing 2, 3, 4 jobs. I’m, you know, for me, my full-time job is being an investor, but I have a weekend hustle where I do volunteer ski patrol. And it’s just something that I absolutely enjoy. And then I, you know, help do some advisory work for a private equity firm. So that’s my big, but not big prediction. I guess, if that answers your question.

Dan Turchin (33:44):
Few months ago, we had a fascinating conversation with a guy named Gary Bowles who wrote a book called the next rules of work. He’s multi multi-book published author. He’s the head of future of work at singularity university. I would to Ray Kewell founded. And he talks about the future of work is each employee will have a WorkNet. And the WorkNet is kind of this fabric, kind of this loosely knit fabric of, of jobs or gigs stitched together to make a career. And to your point, it’s not about, you know, being married to a single employer, it’s about pursuing a bunch of things that make up who you are, and that that’s the way to build a career around the whole self. What do you think about that idea?

Jason Corsello (34:29):
agree. And, you know, I look at the technology of evolution in the last 10 years have made it even possible to do that. Right. I’ll give you a very simple example, like Shopify, like Shopify’s opened up this whole entrepreneurial community to go open a business, right. That you couldn’t do even five years ago. You know, we have these entrepreneurs that are coming out of the woodwork because of the advances of technology for, you know, what’s seems to be simple things like, you know, e-commerce that Shopify is doing. So that’s a, that’s a very simple example, but you know, it’s something that, you know, I get excited about. I mean, you know, my, my children one that’s, my middle child is, is 13. My youngest is 11 and they look forward to watching sh shark tank every week. Right.

Jason Corsello (35:24):
it’s funny, like they even now can, can look at and think about valuations and maybe I’ve I’ve damaged them a little bit, but, you know, we talk as we, as we watch shark tank, we talk about, is that a good valuation or not a good valuation? And we talk about the market opportunity. And so all of these things collectively, you know, have opened up this entrepreneurial world that allows and will allow my kids to be able to chase things do multiple jobs and have interesting opportunities while, you know, not having to be forced to go into the same nine to five job that maybe our parents went to that didn’t necessarily enjoy. So it’s certainly, I think it’s super exciting

Dan Turchin (36:09):
Was the favorite shark in the Corello household.

Jason Corsello (36:12):
Oh boy. I think universally it’s mark Cuban. Yeah. Maybe it’s,

Dan Turchin (36:19):
It’s an easy answer. Silicon valley roots.

Jason Corsello (36:22):
Yeah. I think you’re right. I think it’s an easy answer,

Dan Turchin (36:25):
Jason. gotta get you off the hot seat, but one question I wanna get your take on before I can let you go. So splashed across the headlines almost daily is something about quote, great resignation. What’s your perspective on that? Is it, is it real? Is it overblown? And to the extent it’s real, what should employers be doing to kind of stem this rising tide and keep employees, and maybe even use it as an opportunity to poach talent that’s leaving their competitors?

Jason Corsello (36:56):
Short term is absolutely real long term. I think it’s somewhat unknown, but I do think, you know, , we put together what we call our state of work report, which, you know, in that I look at all kinds of different data, you know, macro data, like, you know, all kinds of, of data and, you know, this whole disconnect of, of jobs and opportunities and is very real. And so, you know, I, this is probably longer discussion than we have right now. But think, you know, without getting into kind of trying to avoid politics, I mean, the stimulus obviously did a lot of good things, but it created a lot of damage along the way. I think one thing in between is that people realize they don’t wanna work for jerks anymore. Right. And they wanna work for, they don’t wanna just go to work to earn an income and people have taken big risks to say, you know what, I’m out they don’t have jobs anymore.

Jason Corsello (37:53):
Now maybe they have belief that the economy is strong enough that when they do wanna go back and read into the workforce, they’re gonna be, you know, arms are gonna be wide wide open for companies to take them back in. And that probably is, is somewhat true. But I guess what I’m getting at is think re the great resignation is certainly real, but I think it should be eyeopening for every company, big, small, and in between, which is back to this idea of, of talent factories. Building a factory is very, very complex, because that means you have the muscle to recruit at scale and recruit companies that would be a good fit for the, your organization. It means you’re building a culture that people can embrace and people want to go and work for. It means that you’re, you’re, you’re creating an environment for people to wanna stay.

Jason Corsello (38:42):
Maybe that’s because you’re developing them, you’re training them. You’re giving them additional skills. Maybe it’s, you’re paying them more. So this idea of building a talent factory, isn’t just the silver bullet of, we’re just gonna pay everyone more. We’re gonna pay them 24% more, and everyone’s gonna be happier. It’s, it’s very, very comprehensive and you have to build muscle on the skills development side. You have to build a muscle on keeping employees engaged and building a unique culture. You need to build muscle around recruiting because recruiting is more important than ever. So that’s where I think, as I said earlier, you know, the companies that are leading markets in the tech next 10 years are gonna be the ones that build, build those talent factories. And I think we, we see some of that today, right? People wanna go work for Airbnb. People wanna go work in some cases for Tesla and not to say Tesla is a perfect organization, but people know what they they’re gonna get when they go and work there.

Jason Corsello (39:40):
And so I think it, in all of this, Dan, I think it’s, you know, companies need to be very, very intentional of what that talent strategy needs to be and building all functions around that. And I firmly believe companies will be investing a lot more in technology in this area, in HR technology, in technology, maybe they’re, they’re building themselves in some cases, cuz you know, some of these solutions aren’t necessarily in market today, but you know, there’s so much opportunity here. So much ability to leverage data. And you know, in my personal, you know, based technologies HR and work tech are still relatively affordable, inexpensive that, you know, there’s, there’s just a huge opportunity ahead.

Dan Turchin (40:30):
Where can our listeners go to get that state of work report?

Jason Corsello (40:32):
Yeah. So you can find it. I just took it down from our, our website today actually, cause I publish our you report. So ‘ll put it up. We have an insight section on our, on our website, Acadian ventures.com that I’ll put up today certainly people can, can get access to. We also have a blog, a medium blog called Acadian insights where you can find it there as well.

Dan Turchin (40:54):
Lincoln I’ll include it in the show.

Jason Corsello (40:56):
Yeah, you bet.

Dan Turchin (40:58):
Excellent. Gosh, Jason, the time flew by so much more that we had planned to get to, but this has been a great conversation. Thanks for hanging out.

Jason Corsello (41:05):
Yeah, this is awesome. Dan really enjoyed it. And thanks for having

Dan Turchin (41:08):
Me. You bet. That’s the great Jason Corello from ACA and ventures. Follow him at J Corello on Twitter and gosh, that’s a wrap for this week. This is your host, Andrew urchin from A n the future of work signing off, but we’re back next week with another fascinating guest.