This week on Versori Voices, Jody Sunders, Co-Founder and CEO of Atara Partners, shares how tech founders can navigate today’s toughest challenges—from sustainable growth and hiring the right leadership, to the complex realities of Fintech integrations and staying customer-focused in an evolving tech landscape.
This week we are spotlighting Jody Sunders, Co-Founder and CEOÂ at Atara Partners, executive search partners for tech startups and scale ups.
A: Right now, the biggest challenge is balancing the need to grow with the discipline to do it sustainably. Founders are under pressure to prove traction, raise capital, and build teams, all in incredibly uncertain economic times. The bar is higher than it was a few years ago, investors expect clearer paths to revenue and founders need to build operationally sound businesses much earlier. That makes hiring the right leadership talent critical. Get it wrong, and you burn both time and trust. Get it right, and you unlock real leverage.
A: I’d have to say Fintech. It’s an industry built on stitching together legacy systems, regulatory frameworks, and rapidly evolving customer expectations. Every integration, whether it’s banking infrastructure, payments, or identity verification, carries compliance risk and technical complexity. Founders often underestimate just how hard and time-consuming those integrations can be. It’s also why many Fintech’s over-hire in engineering before hiring the operational and product leaders who can help them scale cleanly.
A: We’re moving into a phase where capital efficiency and clarity of vision are valued more than ultimate headcount or product hype. Founders will need to show they’re solving real problems, not just building impressive tech. AI will continue to reshape how products are built and how teams operate, but it’s still early days in terms of real business impact. I’d advise founders to get closer to their customers than ever before. If you deeply understand the problem you're solving and stay laser-focused on execution, you'll be in a strong position regardless of the funding climate. It’s one of the many reasons we’ve built our Founders Circle Community, to allow Founders to share their learnings in our ever-changing landscape.
A: Back the people, not just the idea! You can have the smartest business model in the world, but without the right people in the right seats, it doesn’t matter. That advice shaped how we built Atara and runs through all the work we deliver for our clients. We work with founders who know that leadership is make-or-break, and we help them build teams that can truly scale with the business.
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