Here's how this HR expert helps AI startups get their personnel operations up and running

Linda Lee's venture firm focuses on startups working on the cutting edge of technology — artificial intelligence.

But Lee's job is a bit more traditional. She helps those startups in their early days find the right people to fill their positions.

Regardless of whether a company is in the AI business or not, the search for employees is the same, Lee, a talent partner at AI Fund, told the Business Journal in a recent interview.

"You want to find people who buy into your vision and people who want to make an impact," she said. "The hard skills can be learned or taught but passion and attitude cannot."

Lee's role is to be a kind-of human resources consultant and adviser for her Palo Alto-based firm's portfolio companies. She helps those startups — particularly those in their first year or so — recruit workers, figure out their compensation practices and structure their organizations.

To assist founders, Lee talks with them about their companies' needs and challenges and about the products or services they're trying to build.

"Once I understand that, then I can advise them on the kind of talent they need at this stage in the company," she said. "A lot of times, you can hire the right person but at the wrong time, so those are the kind of things that I evaluate."

Lee frequently has new startups to work with. For much of the last year, AI Fund, which was founded in 2018 by Andrew Ng, a renowned expert in the artificial intelligence industry, has made about an investment a month in early-stage AI startups, according to PitchBook Data. Last week, for example, it announced an investment in WhyLabs Inc., which helps companies track the performance of their machine learning algorithms.

Although she's relatively new to the AI field, Lee has a deep understanding of the problems startups founders face and of their human resources challenges in particular.

Lee was a serial founder herself

Prior to joining AI Fund, she had founded three companies of her own. At four other companies, she was the first person they hired to oversee their human resources operations. As such, she was responsible for building all of their personnel-related policies, processes and programs. She had to do everything from developing performance evaluations, to sending out surveys to determine employee engagement, to overseeing compliance-related issues, to recruiting, to creating compensation structures.

She's been able to draw on those experiences in her current post at AI Fund, she said.

They help her help "our entrepreneurs avoid pitfalls and understand best practices," Lee said.

Although Lee has been in the human resources business for more than 20 years and has been in Silicon Valley for the last 9, working at a venture firm is a relatively recent move. She joined AI Fund in 2019 after heading up or holding senior roles in the human resources departments of a succession of startups and more established tech companies, including Beijing Bytedance Technology Co. Ltd., Cheetah Mobile Inc. and AgilOne Inc.

Many of those businesses were venture-backed. In her roles, Lee was able to meet the talent partners at the venture firms that had invested in her companies. Through those interactions, she became intrigued about the venture world. She was enticed by the notion it offered of being able to work with a variety of young companies rather than just one.

Startups "have their own quirks and personality," Lee said. "I don't actually ever have to change my job again, because I just work with different portfolio companies."