Gary Calega, founder and co-CEO of RevelOne, joined the Range Ventures Podcast to share what he's learned building the country's largest go-to-market retained search firm. RevelOne's unique approach to marketing recruitment stems from its founders being marketers, not recruiters. Gary comes from senior marketing roles at eBay, Coupons.com, Craftsy, and Agilone. He joined eBay when it had fewer than 500 people and watched it balloon to 13,000, running the consumer electronics business through all that growth.

When he talks about Denver's tech scene, he compares it to early Silicon Valley culture. Denver still has an atmosphere where people actually want to build things and support each other. The ecosystem's gotten much stronger with Oracle and Google opening offices, Palantir moving there, and local companies growing up. The recruitment landscape has completely changed. Joining a startup was once risky since failure meant limited options for what to do next. Now there are options.

Culture beats strategy every time. That's Gary's main point, and he learned it the hard way. Early in his career, he thought having product-market fit, smart people, and enough money was enough to succeed. His experience at eBay showed him that the same product can produce completely different outcomes depending on the team culture and leadership. Good culture means more than an enjoyable workplace, it means people knew their roles, trusted each other, and worked toward the same goals. Results were strong. Startups feel this more because innovation needs people willing to take risks and be vulnerable.

RevelOne built everything around this insight.

• They'll take someone with 70% of the technical skills who's a perfect culture fit over someone who's technically flawless but won't gel with the team.
• Their interviews use actual project work to test fit on both sides.
• They're upfront about their values, which attracts the right candidates and filters out poor fits.
• They run quarterly gatherings, do performance reviews in Lattice that include values assessment, and conduct employee surveys where people call out who embodies their values.
• They've even built roles that don't exist at traditional firms, like ex-CMOs working as executive recruiters while handling some marketing work on the side.

‍Listen to the full episode here, and explore more from Range Ventures Podcast.

‍About RevelOne
RevelOne is a leading go-to-market advisory and recruiting firm. We help hundreds of VC/PE-backed companies each year leverage the right resources to achieve more profitable growth. We do 250+ retained searches a year in Marketing and Sales roles from C-level on down for some of the most recognized names in tech. In addition to our Search Practice, our Interim Expert Network includes 250+ vetted expert contractors – executive-level leaders and head-of/director-level functional experts – available for interim or fractional engagements. For help in any of these areas, contact us.

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