Specializing in Enterprise Software, the firm focuses on backing Late Seed and Series A startups that enhance productivity and information security. As a growing VC entity, Walter Ventures aims to invest in high-impact companies while maintaining lean, efficient operations to maximize their influence in the startup ecosystem.
The Challenge
As Walter Ventures expanded its portfolio and operations across Europe (mainly Germany, France and Spain), the founding team faced significant hurdles in scaling their team while maintaining high quality standards when hiring niche talent . With a lean team, they struggled to find the balance in developing their hiring process, between agility and operational efficiency . Reliance on external recruitment agencies added costs and complexity, limiting their ability to build a high-performing team with speed, quality and efficiency. Our task was to boost hiring capacity without compromising quality or increasing overhead, allowing the firm to allocate more resources and attention on their core business activities .
Our Approach
VEDA Works stepped in as a fractional COO, acting as a temporary management team extension to remove bottlenecks from the company’s people operations. Leveraging our expertise in supporting innovative companies with 20 to 200+ people, we delivered a tailored solution to optimize their hiring operations:
Gap Analysis: We conducted a comprehensive Gap Analysis to identigy efficiency killers within their current processes, uncovering hidden roadblocks in workflow, resource allocation, and decision-making that were slowing their growth and impacting their hiring quality in a negative way. The analysis included research and recommendations of recruitment tools, as well as tactical roadmap, recruitment stack and employer branding assets improvement recommendation checklist.
Hiring System Development: We designed and implemented a custom Hiring System aimed at maximizing ROI from every human hour invested in recruitment. This included streamlined workflows, tools integration and setup, creation of protocols and templates, guidelines towards best practices and specific instructions for efficient operation of the custom-made system, to make hiring more data-driven, efficient, and scalable.
Team Onboarding and Training: We onboarded the Walter Ventures team onto the new Hiring System through hands-on workshops and continuous mentorship, ensuring seamless adoption. This empowered them to handle recruitment internally, eliminating the need for costly external agencies, as well as delays and hiring mistakes.
We successfully enabled Walter Ventures to achieve their objectives in a matter of weeks by applying an adoption-oriented custom approach while following our proven frameworks and experience-backed methodologies.
Results and Impact
The collaboration transformed Walter Ventures’ hiring capabilities, enabling the founding team to operate with greater agility and independence. Key outcomes included:
- Unlocking 10 leadership hours per week by analysing and optimising the hiring process;
- Increasing 5X their candidate processing capacity through custom hiring system;
- 700+ candidates pipeline engaged and processed with ¼ headcount resource;
- 2X Quality hires of extremely specific and niche expert talents in matter of weeks;
- Damage-free endurance of an unexpected operational headcount loss during the hiring campaign;
Enhanced Efficiency: The Gap Analysis revealed and resolved key bottlenecks, reducing time wasted on inefficient processes and freeing up resources for high-value activities like deal sourcing and founder support.
Cost Savings and ROI Optimization: The new Hiring System maximized the return on time spent on recruitment, leading to faster, higher-quality hires without external dependencies and with increased control over unexpected situations as well as timelines and milestones.
Self-Sufficiency: By fully onboarding the team, Walter Ventures gained the system and the confidence to manage hiring fully in-house, cutting agency fees and building long-term internal expertise and employer branding assets.
The Ripple Effects
This partnership not only accelerated Walter Ventures’ growth, but also positioned them to better support startups transforming productivity and information security—aligning perfectly with their mission to drive industry-wide impact.
Why VEDA Works?
For innovative firms like Walter Ventures, VEDA Works provides the strategic operational (temporary) support needed to unlock scaling without the overhead risks of full-time hires. Our COO as a Service model delivers immediate, actionable assets and results, helping your teams to focus on what they do best: inventing the future. If your company is facing these or other operational challenges, contact us to explore how we can extend your management team and unlock your potential.
