Employee Spotlight #17: Jaysi Jorgensen, Operations Lead at Continuum

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Jaysi Jorgensen leads operations and is employee #1 at Continuum - a talent marketplace for executives. Before Continuum, Jaysi was the 6th employee at Aboveboard, and prior to that, did sales at Carta.

Continuum Operations Lead Jaysi Jorgensen.

Frederick Daso: What was your journey to becoming a founding team member and working as the Operations Lead at Continuum?

Jaysi Jorgensen: I met Nolan, the co-founder and CEO of Continuum, during my time at Carta, a then series D (now series G) fintech startup that manages equity. He was the only executive in my office and quickly became a mentor to me. We had monthly 1:1’s where I’d show up with a list of endless questions trying to pick his brain. I left Carta in the fall of 2020 to join a small startup as the 6th employee (Aboveboard ). Around the same time, Nolan left Carta to co-found Continuum. Four months later, when I had no intention of leaving AboveBoard, he convinced me to join Continuum as the first employee.?

Daso: There’s a lot of conventional career advice about being a successful Operations professional, but are there any unorthodox lessons that you’ve learned through experience or been taught through mentorship that more of your fellow Operators should know?

Jorgensen: Fantastic question. I could give lots of advice, but I’ll start with something simple.

It all begins with you as the operator. Manage your psychology and calendar, have an outlet for stress and always remember to be growth-minded and adaptable.?As an operator, your job is to identify opportunities, create leverage and constantly solve problems. Most people tend to stop too soon when trying to solve a problem because they overcomplicate things or don’t take the time to discover the root cause. Don’t boil the ocean when trying to find solutions. Often, the simplest and cleverest ways to solve problems are 10X better than the fully baked, perfectionist plan. Startups move incredibly fast, so don’t forget to keep it simple and remember that almost every problem you’re dealing with has likely been solved before. Spend an hour a month with an operator who’s a size/stage beyond where you’re at, and remember, a quick google search can work wonders in helping unf**k your brain and get you moving quickly.??

Daso: What’s the toughest project (professionally or personally) that you worked on in Operations or in general? What were the most important lessons you learned from that project?

Jorgensen: Building a marketplace from zero to one is extremely difficult for any early-stage startup. You’re navigating the chicken-egg problem, building processes from nothing (more about this below), and teetering between product market fit and “do we need to pivot?”??

The most important lessons I’ve learned from successfully making it to the 1+ phase are:?

Do things that don’t scale. Early-stage startups have limited hiring and engineering resources, so you need conviction that the product you build will be used and add value to your customers. In the early days, think about this as proving/validating product/feature fit before having your engineers spend weeks building something. You can accomplish this by creating simple MVPs before productizing a flow. An example of this is Continuum’s engagement tracking. After we matched a company and an executive, we needed our execs to track their deliverables, rates, and time spent with companies. Our v1 engagement tracking was an excel sheet for every executive. Our v2 was a personal Airtable and Typeform sheet. After figuring out what feature sets, edge cases, and pricing models needed to be accounted for, we started building this in the product. Doing it manually first gave us the flexibility to test new things and determine what needed to be built.?

Daso: Who are some of the most inspirational people you’ve gotten to work with during your career in tech??

Jorgensen: Continuum's leadership team and specifically these individuals:

• Nolan Church ?- (CEO at Continuum). Nolan is one of the rare people you come across every few years. He’s intentionally designed every aspect of his life (& Continuum) to live in the beautiful dichotomy of logic and emotion, balance and hustle, hard work and fun. I will owe most of my future success to Nolan and have yet to come across a better leader.??
• Danielle Poreh ?(Employee #1 and Head of Ops at Better Health) - Danielle is my Continuum coach. She’s solved problems a size/stage beyond Continuum and is the person I call for help. She points out my blind spots, helps me see around corners, and importantly, is a tier 1 operator who’s done the job. I (& Continuum) would not be where we are?today?without Danielle.
• Armand Farrokh ?(VP Sales at Pave). Armand was the first person who took a shot at me right out of college. He’s in the 99% percentile of inspiring leaders and could sell sand in the Sahara. He believes in his team when his team needs it most, and I’m utterly impressed with what I’ve seen him do. I’d bet a year of my salary he’ll be on 40 under 40 in the next decade.?
• Lucinda Duncalfe? (CEO at AboveBoard) - Lucinda is a serial entrepreneur and is one of the wisest, inspiring, and charismatic leaders I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Lucinda has a passion that’s hard to replicate, and she leads with authenticity, authority, intelligence, and compassion. I learned years worth of lessons from her in the short four months I spent at AboveBoard. She’s a phenomenal CEO and leader.

Daso: How would you define your company’s culture, and how does it create an environment where you can do your best work?

Jorgensen: Good talent is real, and it’s hard to find. Luckily, Continuum’s culture is built on recruiting A players driven by a growth mindset, who want autonomy and flexibility to build great products and want to blast while doing it. Our three main cultural tenets are:

• We are adults (act like owners, intentional communication, idea meritocracy, etc.)
• We move the needle (think from first principles, outcomes > activity, stunning is our bar, crawl - walk - run - sprint)?
• We are human (have a growth mindset, diversity makes us better, we’re apolitical, we’re in this together)

We must build a world-class team and culture to achieve our mission. These are the traits of people who will thrive at Continuum.

1. Our three main values
2. Continuum’s culture is made up of top talent, who are A players, driven by the idea of endless possibilities.?

Daso: What’s one interesting thing (non-work related) that more people should know about you?

Jorgensen: I was raised in an unorthodox Mormon family with very devout parents. I had an intense faith crisis in college that drove a wedge between me and most people I grew up with. I’ve since left the church and have nothing but love for its members, but personally, I know how difficult leaving the faith is. For anyone who’s navigating something similar, needs a resource, or wants to chat, please don’t hesitate to reach out.?

Daso: What’s something you want to accomplish in your career that you haven’t yet? What motivates you to get there?

Jorgensen: Be the CEO and co-founder of a unicorn. I have a founder mentality and view my time at Continuum as preparation for being a future founder/CEO. What motivates me to get there? Many things: a chip on my shoulder, an obsession for company building, a desire to be surrounded by top talent who want to have fun building things together.??

Are you a founder looking to learn from other founders on how to build your startup? Are you someone interested in joining a startup as an early-stage employee? Subscribe?to my mailing list, Founder to Founder (F2F):?f2f.substack.com .?

• Startup Spotlights are a high-level overview of a company that comes out once a week every Monday for free subscribers.
• Case Studies are in-depth research profiles on startups for paid subscribers. A paid subscription is?7$/month or $60/year. Highly recommended if you're looking to join an early-stage startup that you want more information on.

Check out my latest F2F stories:?

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