Nate Sokolić started and sold companies in college, spent three years in executive search at Russell Reynolds, then led the firm's AI strategy, where he brought Findem in and rolled it out globally. He now works at Findem, helping HR leaders and talent teams adopt AI. Shane Driggers has spent close to 30 years in human resources, starting in Bay Area startups during the dot-com boom and most recently serving as Chief Talent Officer at T-Mobile. He now advises growth-stage companies.

Most companies are already using AI. Employees report that they feel more productive, and budgets for tools and tokens keep climbing. Yet very few leaders can point to the result in product innovation or revenue. Nate and Shane argue that the problem is rarely the technology. Companies are adding AI on top of workflows and org structures that were designed for a different era, and they are letting the tools set the strategy instead of starting with the problem they want to solve.

In this episode, Jessica sits down with both of them to talk about what it takes to make AI deliver measurable outcomes, why the people function has one of the biggest opportunities in the business right now, and how recruiting is changing from searching keyword profiles to getting verified, finished work back from AI agents.

In this conversation, Jessica, Nate and Shane discuss topics such as:
◼️ Why "tech wags the tail of strategy" and how that derails AI programs
◼️ Why employees feel more productive while the business sees no gain
◼️ How to redesign work from a blank page instead of rebuilding the past
◼️ Why AI is creating a new wave of tech debt inside large companies
◼️ How to decide which work should be human-led and which should be AI-led
◼️ Why HR leaders must be human thinkers, business thinkers and systems thinkers at once
◼️ How the CHRO role quietly became the company's chief AI strategist
◼️ Why the best AI adoption starts small, proves ROI, then expands year by year
◼️ How recruiters can search for real experience, like a CFO who has taken a company public
◼️ Why shifting from SaaS tools to AI agents changes how companies buy and use software
◼️ How Findem Studio produces market maps, succession plans and talent inflow/outflow reports
◼️ Why every AI output needs to show its work before a leader can trust it
◼️ Why transparency is the most valuable currency a leader has in an anxious workplace

This episode is sponsored by Findem. Findem is the AI infrastructure for people decisions. Its People Intelligence platform turns fragmented people data into context teams and AI can reason over, and act on. The 3D People Graph connects billions of data points across individuals, companies, and time. Expert labeling translates that data into consistent, evidence-backed signals about experience, capabilities, and relationships, with explainability behind every insight so teams can act with confidence. Findem's agents and enterprise applications run on this foundation, and partners can build on this infrastructure and bring the same intelligence into their own products. Findem is trusted by FedEx, Intuit, Nutanix, and Emirates.

Learn more about Findem: https://www.findem.ai/platform
Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, bringing honest conversations with the leaders shaping the future of work.

Max Junestrand, co-founder and CEO of Legora, explains how Legora became the fastest company in history to grow from $1M to over $100M in annual recurring revenue (ARR), in 21 months. He joins Truth Works hosts Jessica Neal and Peter Clark live from Legora's office.

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WHO IS MAX JUNESTRAND?

Max Junestrand is the 27-year-old Swedish co-founder and CEO of Legora, an AI platform for lawyers, law firms and in-house legal teams. He studied computer science and business, worked at two Y Combinator startups, and is not a lawyer.

WHAT IS LEGORA?

Legora is a legal AI company founded in Stockholm, Sweden and backed by Y Combinator. It helps lawyers review contracts, research case law and draft legal work. Legora serves some of the largest legal institutions in the world across Europe, the UK and the US, employs 900 people, and acquired five companies in 2026.

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HOW LEGORA STARTED

- Founded in 2020 by a psychologist, an engineer, a physicist and a lawyer
- Max joined in 2023, after the release of ChatGPT
- Started with €50,000 in angel funding before Y Combinator
- Rejected by Y Combinator once, accepted on the second application
- Built inside Mannheimer Swartling, the largest law firm in the Nordics, for nine months

Before Legora, Max applied to 400 jobs and got two interviews. Both rejected him.

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HOW LEGORA HIRES AND SCALES

- Headcount grew from 250 to 900 people in one year
- 0.3% of applicants receive an offer
- Max personally interviews every director-level hire
- Recruiting is treated as a privilege, not an obligation
- Performance reviews use a 1–5 scale with direct feedback
- The company is office-first with almost no remote work

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KEY FACTS FROM THIS EPISODE

- $1M to $100M+ ARR in 21 months
- A contract review estimated at $44M was completed in 4 days
- A third-party study found Legora helps lawyers catch missed errors in 71% of cases
- Legora builds for where AI models will be in 3–6 months

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QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE

→ How did Legora grow so fast?
→ Why did Legora's team move into a law firm?
→ How do you hire at scale without lowering the bar?
→ How do you give hard feedback in a culture that avoids it?
→ How do you build one culture across Stockholm, London and New York?
→ Why is it becoming unethical not to use AI in legal work?
→ How will AI change the work of lawyers in the next two years?
→ Can legal AI improve access to justice?

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"You can just do things. You can be a little bit unreasonable in your ambitions." — Max Junestrand, CEO of Legora

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ABOUT TRUTH WORKS

Truth Works is a podcast about building companies and the people behind them. Hosted by Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, and co-host Peter Clark.

Legora: legora.com
Legora careers: legora.com/careers

Sponsored by Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration law firm.

#Legora #MaxJunestrand #LegalAI #AIforLawyers #YCombinator #StartupGrowth #Hiring #TruthWorks #JessicaNeal

Marcus Buckingham has spent more than 25 years studying what makes people extraordinary at work, and his newest research points to a word most businesses are too nervous to use: love.

In this episode of Truth Works, host Jessica Neal sits down with the co-creator of StrengthsFinder and author of First, Break All the Rules to talk about why Net Promoter Score barely predicts anything, why not one of the world's top business schools teaches the most powerful force in business, and how even a Netflix-level performance culture can accidentally train its best people to feel afraid.

Marcus traces his own fascination with talent back to a UK brewery with two thousand pubs, the unlikely origin of Gallup's decades of research into what separates great performers from everyone else. He walks through the "five feelings," control, harmony, significance, warmth of others, and growth, that decide whether a customer or an employee ever ends up loving a company, and why skipping the order backfires every time.

The conversation also gets personal: what Marcus calls "red threads," the parts of a job someone loves for no explainable reason, why no one else can spot yours for you, and what happens when AI starts writing your performance review before you have said a word to it. Marcus closes with the idea he calls mover and maker, that every person is, whether they notice it or not, making an experience for someone else in every single interaction.

Guest: Marcus Buckingham, researcher and author of First, Break All the Rules, Nine Lies About Work, and Love + Work
Host: Jessica Neal

Subscribe to Truth Works for more conversations on leadership, culture, and what actually makes people great at work.

#TruthWorks #MarcusBuckingham #Leadership #Netflix #WorkCulture