Hiring great people is only part of building a successful company. The harder challenge is creating an organization where those people can thrive as the business grows.
That is the focus of an episode of Let’s Table That, the HR podcast from Borderless AI, featuring Krista Skalde, Chief Talent Officer and Operating Partner at Canadian venture capital firm Inovia Capital.
In the episode, titled “From Doing to Designing: Building Talent That Scales,” hosts Jazmine and Glaze sit down with Skalde to explore what separates companies that scale successfully from those that struggle to keep pace with their own growth.
Skalde brings an international perspective to the conversation, having worked across leadership development, organizational design, change management, and executive coaching in markets including North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
At Inovia Capital, she brings that experience to the venture ecosystem, where founders must make critical decisions about talent, leadership, and organizational structure long before their companies reach maturity.
The conversation challenges a familiar approach to HR: introducing more programs, policies, and perks as a company grows.
Instead, Skalde encourages people leaders to think like architects, designing the systems that allow talented employees to do their best work.
That distinction is particularly important for startups, where early hiring decisions can shape an organization’s culture for years to come. Every new employee brings different expectations, behaviours, and working styles, influencing how the company operates as it expands.
The episode also explores how founders can hire ahead of complexity without building expensive organizational structures before they are needed.
For growing technology companies, that balance can be difficult. Hiring too slowly can leave teams overwhelmed, while adding senior leadership or specialized functions too early can introduce unnecessary costs and complexity.
Skalde also highlights the importance of middle management, an organizational layer that can be overlooked as founders focus on executive hiring and individual contributors.
As companies scale, managers increasingly determine how effectively strategy translates into execution. They play a critical role in employee retention, communication, performance, and helping teams navigate change.
The conversation extends to artificial intelligence and its implications for organizational design.
As AI reshapes how work gets done, companies are being forced to reconsider traditional roles, reporting structures, and career paths. Skalde discusses the growing importance of individual-contributor careers and the possibility that advancement will no longer require following a conventional management track.
The episode also addresses the persistent problem of culture-fit bias in hiring.
While founders naturally want employees who share their company’s values, an overly narrow definition of fit can limit the diversity of perspectives and capabilities an organization needs to grow.
For Canadian technology companies navigating increasingly competitive markets, Skalde’s perspective offers a useful reminder that scaling successfully requires more than attracting talent.
It requires building an organization capable of making that talent effective.
At its core, the discussion reframes the role of HR from managing people-related activities to designing the conditions for high performance.
For founders, executives, and people leaders, the lesson is clear: the companies that scale best are not necessarily those with the most elaborate HR programs. They are the ones that build the right systems, leadership capabilities, and organizational structures at the right time.
Watch the full episode of Let’s Table That below.
Borderless AI is a sponsor of Techtalent.ca. Through its Let’s Table That series, the company is featuring conversations with leaders about work, people, and the realities of building modern teams.