Building a Team at AI Speed | Harvey’s Maggie Landers

Maggie Landers (0:00)

Transforming the legal industry is very different than trying to transform customer support or build an AI harness or create a model. You're going to do more in a month at Harvey than you would in a quarter. Somewhere else, there's a lot of experimentation, so you're gonna fail more than you're necessarily gonna get it right. And so I think the emphasis is on both failing fast and correcting to make something or build something that has never been built before.

Katie Kirsch (0:29)

It's like nothing inspires people more than actually seeing their impact in the world and knowing that even being part of a really large organization, they still feel like everything they're doing is working towards a much bigger vision.

Maggie Landers (0:40)

The right sort of mentality for Harvey is that passion to be part of creating it.

Katie Kirsch (0:45)

What about the legal industry gets you so fired up?

Maggie Landers (0:48)

I think that...

SPEAKER_3 (0:50)

What happens when you add more than 1,000 employees in a year, but still want to operate like a startup?

A16z's Katie Kirsch sits down with Harvey VP of Talent Maggie Landers to discuss how the company is approaching hiring and culture as it scales. Maggie explains Harvey's focus on progress over perfection, giving employees the autonomy to move quickly, make mistakes, and learn. They also discuss what Harvey looks for in new hires, and why succeeding in a fast moving environment requires comfort with ambiguity and strong judgment.

Katie Kirsch (1:23)

Welcome to the a16z podcast. Today, we're joined by Maggie Landers. He's the VP of Talent at Harvey.

Maggie Landers (1:30)

I'm so excited.

Katie Kirsch (1:31)

Harvey's valuation has been skyrocketing in the past year. From 3 billion last February 2025 to 5 billion in June, 8 billion in October, 11 billion this past March of 2026

And you've been at Harvey for, you just hit your one-year mark. Is that right?

Maggie Landers (1:49)

Yes, I'm a little over one year. It's been insane, not just the valuation, but the company growth, the customer growth or our growth, I think our product growth.

But I would say that we don't take any of it for granted. I don't think there's anyone internally who feels like we've fully made it or actualized our potential. It definitely still feels like a startup. We just celebrated our fourth birthday as a company.

Katie Kirsch (2:18)

Happy birthday, Harvey.

Maggie Landers (2:19)

Yes. Happy birthday, Harvey. But yeah, I don't think there's any part of us that feels that we are anywhere close to the company we aspire to build. Yeah.

Katie Kirsch (2:29)

Are you celebrating wins in any way, or it's just hard work, pedals to the metal?

Maggie Landers (2:35)

I would say we definitely are. I think we celebrate in big ways. I think we celebrate in small ways. I think that whether it's sort of our global go-to-market company, sort of wins channel where folks are constantly sort of celebrating the accomplishments and sharing kudos, I think we come together as a company for celebrations like this anniversary product launches, milestones. But we also have a jobs not finished culture. It's one of our core values.

So I would say the celebration is always an acknowledgement of the great work that we've done. But then also, we're thinking about what we need to do next. And I think that's just a very kind of core fundamental part of what Harvey is about. I do think the team likes to have fun and there's a lot of humor in everything, kind of injected in everything that we do. But we're always thinking ahead.

Katie Kirsch (3:38)

And I think you mentioned earlier, are you employee number, is it 340?

Maggie Landers (3:44)

I'm somewhere in the 300s.

Katie Kirsch (3:46)

Yeah.

Maggie Landers (3:46)

I'm somewhere in the 300s. And yeah, we've added over a thousand employees since I've joined. And we'll likely be about 2,000 employees before the end of this calendar year, which is insane.

More than 70% of the company started after January 1st of this year.

Katie Kirsch (4:08)

Wow. What does that feel like on the inside? There's so many new faces. Are you all in person? Yeah, what's it like?

Maggie Landers (4:14)

A lot of new faces. Those onboarding classes just feel big.

Katie Kirsch (4:18)

They're growing, yeah.

Maggie Landers (4:19)

They're growing for sure. I would say it still feels like Harvey, and I can explain what that means. But I do think that we've done a good job of understanding what makes somebody successful at Harvey, and looking for a lot of those characteristics when we go to market and we bring new people on board. I also think that we have pretty good self-selection, and that I think folks know that Harvey is a really ambitious company, and that we are looking to be generational in what we build. And I think that also attracts folks who are very sort of, for the most part, intrinsically motivated, and want to do something super fulfilling.