How They Hire

For this episode, we sat down with Salar al Khafaji, founder and CEO of Monumental.

In 2009, Salar founded Silk, a data visualisation startup that Palantir acquired in 2016. He then spent two years on Palantir’s commercial side, where its software ran inside companies like Airbus. That’s where he realised he wanted to work on something physical.

In his view, construction is the bottleneck for housing, energy, climate and infrastructure. The work itself is dangerous and physically hard, and many people don’t want to do it anymore.

In 2021, he founded Monumental with Sebastiaan Visser, whom he first worked with at Silk. Monumental builds autonomous bricklaying robots and runs as a construction subcontractor: contractors hire it and pay per finished wall. Its fleet of 150+ robots has built over 100 homes, a school, a hotel and canal walls across the Netherlands and the UK.

In July 2026, Monumental raised a $32M Series B led by Khosla Ventures, with Plural and Hummingbird returning. The round funds a larger fleet, a bigger engineering team, and a US launch.

Across Silk, Palantir, and Monumental, Salar has made around 250 to 300 hires. We talked about what Palantir taught him about culture, why every Monumental candidate spends one to two days on site before an offer, why one of the founders still joins every final interview, and the two reference-check questions he relies on most.

Enjoy the episode!The Big Search conducted the interview: ⁠https://www.thebigsearch.com/⁠Research powered by Topliner, our talent intelligence platform: ⁠https://topliner.app/

For this episode, we sat down with Paul Heiden, CEO of Optics11.

Optics11 builds fibre optic sensing technology for early warning systems. The company operates out of the Netherlands, and its mission is to protect sea lanes, offshore infrastructure, and energy supply from disruption before it happens.

Paul was Chief Product Officer at Bynder, later acquired by THL, and held the same role at Ultimaker, where he helped the company become a leader in 3D printing. Before that, he founded BHOLD and sold it to Microsoft. He also spent 30+ years as a Captain in the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps, including multiple deployments to the Arctic Circle to guard the northern seaways. In 2024, we partnered with Optics11 to place him as CEO.

That background shapes how he talks about Optics11’s mission. The pitch is about winning the high ground and knowing about a threat before anyone else does, because Optics11’s sensors pick up signals long before a problem becomes visible. The company works across two markets. Underwater, where Paul describes the entire space as a black hole and where Optics11 is the only company shedding any light on it. And energy, where the goal is to make our energy provision more reliable.

Throughout the interview, we talked about Optics11's talent culture and where the company is headed next. Paul also walked us through how his time in the Marine Corps and years in DeepTech now shape his vision of talent.

The Big Search conducted the interview: https://www.thebigsearch.com/Research powered by Topliner, our talent intelligence platform: https://topliner.app/

For this episode, we sat down with Joe Wilson, Chief Evangelist at bunq and former COO and Board Member.

Joe began his career building and leading startups before spending a decade in leadership roles at Microsoft. He later ran his own fund backing Series A sustainability companies across Europe.

In the course of that, he joined bunq’s Supervisory Board first, then stepped in as COO during the company’s growth phase, overseeing Marketing, Adoption, Finance, and People. He was also part of the team that drove bunq’s US expansion. He left in 2024, returned in 2025, and now serves as Chief Evangelist.

Founded in 2012 by Ali Niknam, bunq is a European neobank headquartered in Amsterdam. It operates across 30 European countries and targets digital nomads, freelancers, and travellers. In 2021, it raised €193M in what was then the largest Series A in European fintech history, reaching unicorn status. By the end of 2022, it became the first EU neobank to achieve structural profitability.

Across his career, Joe has hired and led teams across geographies, business models, and every stage of company growth. We wanted to understand how bunq approaches hiring, what makes their culture so distinct, and what Joe has learned along the way.

Enjoy the episode!

The Big Search conducted the interview: https://www.thebigsearch.com/

Research powered by Topliner, our talent intelligence platform: https://topliner.app/

For this episode, we sat down with Albert Malikov, CEO and founder of Stacks.

Albert founded Stacks in 2024 after a decade building fintech products. He worked at Plaid (US banking infrastructure) and at Uber, where he was part of the Uber Money team.

Stacks works with enterprise companies on their monthly financial close, helping them close their books faster, more efficiently, and with fewer errors. The product is purpose-built AI for enterprise accounting. It automates the most manual and error-prone finance workflows so teams can close faster and focus on high-impact work.

Albert has personally hired every person at Stacks. He was also involved in the hiring process at Plaid and Uber. We asked him to reveal his hiring secrets and unpack Stacks’ talent approach.

Enjoy the episode.

The Big Search conducted the interview: https://www.thebigsearch.com/

Research powered by Topliner, our talent intelligence platform: https://topliner.app/

For this episode, we sat down with Max Linden, CEO & Founder of lemon.markets. Max founded lemon.markets in 2020 at 19 years old, while studying economics at the University of Münster.

lemon.markets operates as a Brokerage-as-a-Service platform that offers Banks, Asset Managers and Fintechs simple digital access to capital markets through a single API. With a mission to grow investing opportunities for all European customers and businesses, providing seamless access to capital markets, lemon.markets is already working with leading Fintechs such as Holvi, Optio, and Tomorrow.

Under his leadership, lemon.markets raised from top-tier investors including Lakestar, Creandum, and Lightspeed, before being acquired by the dwpbank Group in 2025.

We asked him how a first-time founder convinced top-tier operators to join the company.

Enjoy the episode.

The Big Search conducted the interview: https://www.thebigsearch.com/

Research powered by Topliner, our talent intelligence platform: https://topliner.app/

For our second episode, we met Julian Teicke.

He started at Groupon/Rocket Internet, where he helped launch multiple countries across Europe. His first company was DeinDeal, which he scaled as COO to €100M+ ARR before exiting in 2015.

After that, he founded The Delta as a launchpad for new ventures. wefox, an insurtech, was the first one. He grew it as CEO to €800M+ ARR and a $4.5B valuation, then exited in 2024.

Today, Julian co-founds and backs companies through The Delta as a founding investor, including luca, Kenjo, handly, and hallo theo, among others. Together, his companies have raised more than $1.5B.

The Delta builds campuses designed to turn ideas into high-impact companies. Each one is a curated environment that gives founders end-to-end support, from resources and infrastructure to the community around them. The goal is to make sure founders have everything they need to succeed, all in one place.

Throughout his career, Julian has built, scaled, and hired at different stages. We wanted to understand his hiring playbook, the mistakes he made, and how he thinks about hiring in 2026.

Enjoy the episode!

The Big Search conducted the interview: https://www.thebigsearch.com/

Research powered by Topliner, our talent intelligence platform: https://topliner.app/

Max began his career in finance, spending a few years in investment banks, before joining Rocket Internet. In 2015, he founded Foodfox – a food delivery platform – which was later acquired by Yandex. He stayed on as CEO of Yandex.Eats, formerly Foodfox, and scaled it to become the market leader – grew the team to 1,000 employees and expanded to +100 cities across three countries.

In 2021, he co-founded Accel Club. That same year, the company raised $170M in a Series A round backed by Northwall Capital, Redseed and Flyer One Ventures.

Accel Club operates in the global e-commerce market, aiming to be the next generation of Unilever/P&G – a global product powerhouse serving people with everyday essentials. Their strategy is to dominate digital shelves on Amazon by acquiring a category leader, scaling that product further, and building long-term moats using their proprietary data and tools.

Throughout his career, Max has built, scaled, and hired at different stages. We wanted to understand his hiring playbook, the mistakes he has made, and his take on hiring in 2026.Enjoy the episode!

The Big Search conducted the interview: https://www.thebigsearch.com/

Research powered by Topliner, our talent intelligence platform: https://topliner.app/