CTO Hire Guides Divinia.ai in Transforming E-Commerce Search
Ji Fang, a former Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) researcher with a Ph.D. in natural language processing (NLP), founded Divinia.ai in 2020 with a mission to transform e-commerce searches on the internet.
“Search is broken for consumers, marketers, and e-commerce sites,” Ji said. “Divinia was built to fix that.”
While Ji and her initial startup team had the expertise to build data science models and prototypes of their NLP-based e-commerce search engine, they reached a point where they needed to hire a Chief Technical Officer (CTO) able to build a scalable system.
“Our dream is big—we want to become the next-generation e-commerce search standard—and we needed someone with the technical expertise to help us achieve that dream,” she said.
Ji Fang
After meeting Kristin Speer, Managing Director of the Technology Practice at Westwood & Wilshire, Ji decided to retain the executive search firm to find a CTO for Divinia.ai.
“I was impressed with Kris from the outset. We just clicked,” Ji said. “When I asked for references, she sent us a set of three immediately, which was very powerful. I talked to each of them, and they gave very positive feedback on Westwood & Wilshire in general, and on Technology Practice Director and Executive Recruiter Andrea Tegstam in particular.”
Divinia Impressed With the Westwood & Wilshire Process
“I had a very good experience with the Westwood & Wilshire process,” Ji said. “They were methodical and the communication was excellent. Andrea was responsive with updates and timely information. It seems she was always online!”
Westwood & Wilshire’s use of calibration profiles enabled Ji and Andrea to get more precise about the characteristics that represented a perfect fit for the CTO position. Andrea would send a profile, usually gleaned from LinkedIn, and she and Ji would discuss it together. It allowed them to quickly reach a common understanding of the ideal candidate.
“I was impressed with the quality of the leads they provided,” Ji said. “I also appreciated Andrea’s advice and insights. Sometimes I looked at a resume and wasn’t sure it was 100% relevant, and Andrea pointed out a qualification I hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t thought was so important. She acted as a real advisor to me throughout the process.”
Manifesting the Art of Executive Search
Because Divinia is an early-stage startup, they had financial constraints on the salary they could offer for the CTO position. These constraints added a significant challenge to the search process, but one that Andrea and the team have navigated before.
“Andrea provided some market research and counseled me on what would be reasonable to offer a CTO candidate given that we’re a pre-Series A startup,” Ji said. “I actually discovered that this whole conversation also helped me understand that how we structured the offer would help distill which candidates possessed the right motivation for working here. It’s important to me that the Divinia CTO sees higher equity, meaning a real commitment to the company’s future, as an advantage over higher immediate salary.”
When asked what she would say about Westwood & Wilshire to a colleague or friend, Ji offered the following:
Westwood & Wilshire were able to bring very high-quality leads.
Their use of calibration profiles makes it easy to quickly figure out the right profile for a position.
They really work with you as expert advisors and counselors.
They’re relentless and don’t give up until they find the right person for the position.
They help you to close on a candidate, providing insightful information about how to structure a competitive offer package—something that’s hard for a startup founder like me to do on my own.
The Westwood & Wilshire team is extremely pleasant and easy to work with. They never got frustrated or disappointed, even when promising candidates didn’t work out for some reason.
Bottom line: They get the results you want to move your company forward.
In the end, Divinia.ai hired seasoned engineering and product leader Timothy Lyons as their CTO. Timothy created and led international enterprise platform teams at AltaVista, Cisco, Compaq, Gateway, ConsumerInfo.com, and GreenWave Systems. these platforms include the world’s first search engine e-commerce site for AltaVista Shopping.
“Timothy’s extensive engineering background aligns with Divinia’s goal of connecting people with the information they want, and helping businesses connect with consumers they care about,” said Ji. “I’m confident that, with Westwood & Wilshire’s help, Timothy is the right person to help Divinia achieve our big dreams.”
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