Hiring the VPoP who Drives Product Strategy: MOSH’s HR Strategy Ahead of Series C

MOSH, Inc. (MOSH) runs an e-commerce platform named MOSH where creators can easily sell and manage private brands and services on the web. CEO Kazuya Yabu was pondering the best course of action right before Series C, a critical phase for the company: “Should I hire a product manager and transfer ownership?”

The answer to this was hiring of the Vice President of Product (VPoP) achieved through independent venture capital firm Global Brain (GB)’s hands-on support. MOSH’s CEO refers to this hiring as one that goes down in the startup’s history. GB Innovators Lounge (GBIL), a career consulting service run by GBHR, a subsidiary of GB specializing in recruitment support, enabled MOSH to find the ideal VPoP.

To learn about the hiring project, we interviewed MOSH’s co-founder and CEO Yabu, the newly hired VPoP Hiroaki Ohigashi, GBHR’s Kojiro Tanaka who connected the two, and GB’s venture capitalist Kazuhiko Miyama who is an outside director of MOSH, diving into the importance of hiring for growth startups and the ideal relationship between startups and venture capital firms from their perspectives.

Wondering whether to hire a product manager

──Tell us about the product-related challenges MOSH was facing before Ohigashi-san joined.

Yabu: Before, I was responsible for the business side, and my co-founder and CTO Ryosuke Murai was overseeing the product side. However, we were too hectic this past year and did not have enough resources to formulate future strategies.

Although we felt the need to welcome new talent to our team to enhance our product to the next level, we were not sure about handing over ownership of our product to a new person.

Since MOSH is a C2C business, the product we offer to our users is the core of our value proposition. While we felt that product ownership should perpetually belong to us founders, we thought we might be able to transfer ownership if we miraculously come across someone ideal.

We had not even decided whether we should create a product manager position, which is something we consulted Miyama-san frequently.

Miyama: The business phase of MOSH back then was right before Series C, moving on to a new stage. While this is the timing for many startups to step up their product development to an organizational scale, it is also true that many stumble through the structuring of this transition that also includes transfer of ownership.

Since we have observed many startups achieve growth, we had close discussions with Yabu-san based on our experience.

──I imagine Yabu-san and Miyama-san see each other at board meetings, but do you two communicate with each other frequently?

Yabu: Yes, we often communicate outside of board meetings. The agenda changes every time, and recently I consulted him about cooperation with corporate venture capital (CVC) funds and medium to long-term strategies given we had just raised from CVCs in our Series C round.

Miyama-san is very reliable, with extensive experience supporting startups that target consumers like BASE, Voicy, and BitStar, which are similar to MOSH. We sometimes discuss business, and at other times, we talk about organizational structuring as mentioned earlier.

Miyama: We often talk about organizations. Startups face various hurdles as they scale from 10 members to 30, 50, and more, and what they should be mindful of during the process can turn out to be the same for many companies. Although the founders are experiencing organizational expansion and IPOs for the first time, us VCs have gone through those phases numerous times. Therefore, I am mindful of sharing what they should pay attention to beforehand. Yabu-san and I communicate with each other two to three times per week.

The affinity identified through meetings

──Ohigashi-san, you were introduced to MOSH through the career consulting service GBIL. Tell us about how your job-hunting was going when you registered on GBIL.

Ohigashi: I was previously leading the business at a company called PLAID when I faced a turning point in my career and started looking for a new job. I had checked more than 100 job openings through agents and scouting media and had interviews going on with about 10 of them.

As I spoke with various companies, I started feeling I wanted to be involved in a service that empowers individuals. However, I had not been able to make my final pick.

That was when I got to know GBIL through GBHR Tanaka-san’s message on LinkedIn. It was new to me to have not an agent but a venture capital firm reach out, so I joined GBIL’s career consulting session.

──What did you discuss in the career consulting session?

Tanaka: This goes for all career consulting sessions we do at GBIL, but we first deep-dive into what exactly the person wants to achieve. GBIL is not meant to be a recruitment agency, but a career consulting service. Therefore, when speaking with Ohigashi-san, I was mindful of maintaining a neutral position to understand what he wanted to do, instead of blindly assuming he would change jobs.

Ohigashi-san has a unique career, having been an HR manager at P&G before leading the business at PLAID. I was simply interested in his experience, and asked him frankly what he wanted to do as his next step, now that he had plowed through his role at PLAID.

In our talks, he mentioned taking on a new challenge at the management level, creating enthusiasm, or supporting people who create enthusiasm. It hit me that consumer-targeting startups looking for CxOs or VPs might be a good fit, and I listed some candidates from our portfolio companies. One of them was the VPoP position at MOSH.

As Yabu-san mentioned, MOSH did not have a clear need to hire a VPoP. We created the position and negotiated with them.

──I assume you have many startups targeting consumers among your portfolio companies. Why did you decide to introduce MOSH out of all other options?

Tanaka: MOSH’s vision matched what Ohigashi-san was envisioning. MOSH offers an e-commerce platform where individual users can sell services related to what they are good at or love doing, which is connected to Ohigashi-san’s ambition of creating enthusiasm.

Another big reason is that we GBHR had good insight into MOSH’s business and recruitment status. We had been working closely with MOSH on recruitment for about two and a half years, including strategy formulation and finding CFO candidates.

It was clear that the quality of products would become even more important for MOSH. Viewing the potential of creating a role that would become key to MOSH’s growth and enable Ohigashi-san to leverage his experience, I proposed hiring a VPoP. I believe this was a perfect synergy of our firm’s two activities: hands-on support to portfolio companies and career consulting services.

──I understand recruitment agencies are also open to career consulting. What was the uniqueness of GBIL’s consulting sessions?

Ohigashi: I felt GBIL has a different level of understanding regarding the businesses and ideal candidates of companies with job-openings. I am sure recruitment agencies also have in-depth understanding of the companies looking for candidates, but VCs are in the same boat with their portfolio companies and that makes a big difference.

In the end, GBIL and an agency with extensive experience handling product manager positions supported me greatly. I felt that GBIL truly tried to understand me compared to typical agencies.

Recruitment agencies basically take pay-per-success models. One consultant supports multiple customers and introduces many positions simultaneously. Therefore, I guess it is natural they take a certain distance when supporting candidates.

But Tanaka-san was different. I remember very well how he asked me what I wanted to do next, which made me feel he was sincerely trying to understand me. This gave me an opportunity to acknowledge and articulate my own feelings.

Tanaka: Thank you. GBIL’s offerings including recruitment support are completely free of charge. We sincerely work to achieve the growth of our portfolio companies by introducing potential candidates, which I think is the reason Ohigashi-san felt that way.

A hiring that goes down in MOSH’s history

──Through Ohigashi-san’s interview process, what did Yabu-san and GB do to attract him?

Yabu: Since I felt Ohigashi-san is someone who judges from a neutral perspective, I did not try to attract him by saying impressive things, but instead shared what I needed to share with him and left it up to him to make his decision.

I especially wanted him to understand the vast business opportunities we were beginning to identify through our interactions with creators using our platform. Although we currently only offer the e-commerce platform to users, we plan to launch multiple products and services to support creators. We had not disclosed this multiproduct concept outside the company back then, but I was mindful to share it with Ohigashi-san straightforwardly.

Tanaka: I also felt it important for Ohigashi-san to think thoroughly. I recall having very frank conversations with him on what turns his career would take depending on whether he chose MOSH or a different company.

Also, through our communications, I could tell that MOSH’s HR person was very keen to hire Ohigashi-san. Eager to live up to that expectation, I set up an opportunity for GB’s Miyama who invested in MOSH to share the startup’s attraction and growth potential with Ohigashi-san.

Miyama: I was mindful of sharing with Ohigashi-san what I was thinking as an investor, rather than talking only about things beneficial for us.

I talked about the attraction of the e-commerce market for services that MOSH is embarking on and the startup’s business phase. With e-commerce for services, the scope of things to consider regarding what needs to be done and how to move forward is broad and therefore very difficult. Products must be designed meticulously. MOSH is attractive and interesting because it is building this difficult product by themselves and expanding an unestablished market without limits.

And now, we have just started seeing the potential of the market. Unlike in the Seed stage where the future is completely unpredictable, MOSH is gradually gathering what it needs to have to find its way forward. With that in mind, working at MOSH will give you challenging experiences while getting a handle on things.

I invested in MOSH eager to tackle this challenging market with Yabu-san. After sharing everything with Ohigashi-san including my passion, I asked him to make his own decision.

──What left an impression in your communications with Yabu-san and Miyama-san? What ultimately led to your decision to join MOSH?.

Ohigashi: I recall very well Miyama-san’s words that he believes in the potential of C2C business. His passion and commitment were very attractive.

As for my decision to join MOSH, I had two decisive factors. One is the startup’s mission to create an economy of passion. This appealed to me strongly as it matched my personal goal of creating enthusiasm.

The other factor is the fun of not knowing what will happen. As Miyama-san mentioned, C2C businesses, especially e-commerce for services, have their unique difficulty. The definition of creators is going through rapid change. I was drawn to this very fact that no one can predict the future.

On top of that, when I asked Yabu-san and Murai-san about the challenges inherent in C2C businesses and the core competencies of their product during the interview process, I had the impression that they were both always very open to having discussions. This also encouraged me to make my decision.

Yabu: The hiring of Ohigashi-san goes down in MOSH’s history. Even though I was not confident about hiring a product manager, I felt Ohigashi-san is someone I can rely on. I cannot imagine what our company would have been like if I had not met him.

VPoP hired, fund raised—what’s next?

──What is your overall feedback on GB’s hands-on support including the recruitment support you received this time?

Yabu: There are almost no other VCs in Japan that support portfolio companies to this extent. GB’s hands-on support is clearly different from others not only for recruitment, but also for Series B to C and processes prior to IPO.

Doing value-up and hands-on support is easier said than done, but GB truly follows through. I hope GB will continue to communicate these initiatives more broadly and put pressure on other VCs. I strongly recommend GB to other startup founders.

Miyama: Thank you. I feel we have to continue making more efforts.

──Lastly, now that you have hired Ohigashi-san and closed the funding round, tell us about your future visions for MOSH’s business and product.

Yabu: Upon closing our Series C funding round, we have clarified our vision of creating an ecosystem that empowers unique and diverse economic players to enable individuals to directly choose or commission specific creators in everyday life.

Empowerment of individuals is an area that large corporations have not been able to cover so far. We are eager to enter this market with our MOSH ecosystem and support creators.

Although we currently offer a platform for individuals and creators to sell their skills, we need other products to support their activities besides sales to further backup their activities. Going forward, we plan to execute a multiproduct strategy to address this and expand our business.

Since global expansion was in our scope from the stages of our company, we will aim to achieve medium to long-term growth viewing global expansion on the horizon.

Ohigashi: We cannot ignore GenAI as we think about our future business and products. GenAI significantly impacts the creators we serve and can transform the context of MOSH as a product company.

As the hurdle for development activities becomes lower, we must proactively and freely decide what kind of products we want to build and how we are going to structure the AI-driven organization. That said, I feel I am in an exciting environment where I can tackle the rapidly changing creator space.

Also, we need to support the creators’ workflows of selling skills and experience and also consider different ways of assisting them.

For example, how to give credibility to the services and brands the creators offer online is one key point. How can we support them so that the users will recognize the value and significance of the creators? This is what I am hoping to work on through our product and as a company-wide initiative.

Note: The names of roles and affiliations may have changed after the interview.

(Interviewed and written by the Universe Editorial Team)