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

[upbeat music] 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.

Yeah.

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.

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.

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

What about the legal industry gets you so fired up?

I think that-

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.

Welcome to the a16z Podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Today, we're joined by Maggie Landers, who's the VP of Talent at Harvey.

I'm so excited.

Harvey's valuation has been skyrocketing in the past year from 3 billion last February of 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?

Yes. I'm a little over one year. It's been insane, not just the valuation, but the company growth, the customer growth, our growth, I think our product growth, but I would say that we don't take any of it for granted.

Yeah.

I don't think there's anyone internally who feels like we've fully made it or actualized our potential.

Mm-hmm.

It definitely still feels like a startup. We just celebrated our fourth birthday as a company.

Congratulations. Happy birthday, Harvey. [laughs]

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

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 job's not finished culture. It's one of our-

Mm

... core values. And 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