When you’re building something genuinely new, you learn fast that a resume tells you only a fraction of the story. My advice is to hire for patience. Skill matters, of course. But the thing I value even more is patience. It’s the willingness to sit in ambiguity, to watch a plan fall apart and rebuild it, and to stay steady when the answer isn’t obvious yet.
You Will Make Mistakes (And That’s Okay)
Here’s the truth nobody tells you when you start hiring: you will make mistakes. You’ll bring on people who looked perfect on paper and weren’t the right fit, and you’ll pass on someone who would have been brilliant. That’s part of the process. The goal isn’t to hire perfectly; it’s to learn fast and keep refining your instincts. When you hire for patience, those instincts get sharper over time.
Here’s what I keep coming back to. I’d take a patient builder over a brilliant sprinter almost every time. The people who thrive early understand that the vision will shift and the work will get messy. Being patient with what you’re building, and with each other, matters more than raw skill. Skills can be taught. Temperament is much harder to install.
Hire for Patience, Then Hire for Passion
There’s something else I look for, and it might come first: passion. I’d rather have someone who genuinely cares about what we’re building than someone with a perfect resume who’s just there for a paycheck. Passion keeps people patient when the work gets hard. It keeps them curious when the answer isn’t obvious, and committed when quitting would be easier. What makes this team special is that they bring both. Every one of them is deeply passionate, and every one is exceptional at what they do.
Meet the Team Building SPREEAI
That belief is exactly why I’m so proud of the team at SPREEAI. So let me introduce a few of the people who make it work.
The Product, Design, and Partnership Leads
Banu Jafarli, Head of Product, keeps the bigger picture in focus while everyone else is heads-down in the details. She makes sure what we build is as easy for retailers to deploy as it is for shoppers to use. She joined us from Amazon, where she was Senior Technical Product Manager for 3D avatar and AR try-on. Before that came a role as Senior Product Manager at Microsoft on Defender for Identity. She holds a BS in Business & Engineering from Drexel. Banu has the patience to push for the right answer over the fast one.
Chelsea Suitos, Head of Partnerships & Business Development, closes the deals, manages our partner relationships, and drives revenue. She knows how fashion moves at scale. She built TikTok Shop’s Global Key Accounts, grew Instagram Checkout at Meta, and led North America go-to-market for baseball and softball at Nike. That experience helps her put SPREEAI in front of the brands that matter, balancing ambition with real empathy.
Nicole Pritchard, Head of Design, leads all of our design and makes sure partners and consumers alike have the best possible experience. She brings 15+ years in design and research. She was VP of Experience Design & Strategy at Gap Inc., spanning Gap, Old Navy, Athleta, and Banana Republic. Earlier roles include Head of Design & Research at Amazon and Product Design Director at Instagram. She holds an MA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. For Nicole, how something feels is what makes it work, and she’ll iterate until it’s genuinely good.
The People, Engineering, and Privacy Leads
Dr. Nils Sundin, Head of People and Talent, makes the whole “hire for patience” philosophy real, and he owns our culture. That matters just as much as bringing in the right people. He brings 12+ years turning early-stage HR functions into real operational engines. He has led recruiting and operations at Google, global HR operations at RE Partners, and work across higher education. On the academic side, he holds an EdD in Innovation & Leadership and an MA in Higher Education from NYU.
Mrinal Shukla, Head of Engineering, combines deep technical rigor with real curiosity. He leads engineering across SPREEAI, from our core try-on and sizing systems to everything else we’re building. He brings engineering experience from Google Gemini, AWS, and Netflix. At Netflix, he was recognized as a subject-matter expert in Android engineering and automation. He stays patient through the hard problems in a way that raises the bar for everyone around him.
Devan Brua, Head of Privacy, makes sure trust is built into everything we do. For Devan, compliance isn’t box-checking. Done right, it becomes a competitive advantage that unlocks scale. She was a Compliance Manager at TikTok (USDS), meeting U.S. government requirements. Before that she was VP of Compliance and Risk at Spinnaker Support and an International Tax Manager at Deloitte. She holds a Juris Doctor from Marquette and is CIPP/US certified. She helps us navigate privacy and AI governance with programs built to scale.
What ties them together isn’t just talent, though there’s plenty of that. Each of them is patient about what we’re building, which is exactly why I hire for patience in the first place. They know meaningful things take time, that the road will twist, and that the team you build it with matters as much as the thing itself.
Hire for Patience, Hire for Passion
If you’re hiring for your own venture, my advice is simple: hire for patience first. Find people who are patient about the mission and stay curious when it’s hard, the ones you genuinely want in the room when things get uncertain. You can read more about how we think about team and culture on the SPREEAI blog, and the research backs this up too: studies on team performance from Harvard Business Review point to the same thing. The skills will follow. The temperament, and the passion, are the real find.