Recruiting top talent is a sales process. We were setting up an on-site for a candidate when he mentioned his wife. I heard it the way I’d hear it on a sales call: there’s another stakeholder. So I told James, our recruiter, to fly her out with him and bring her to dinner with us. James pushed back and said hiring isn’t a deal. It’s 100% a deal. There’s an offer on the table. There’s pricing and a negotiation. And there’s someone who will never sit in an interview but has a say in whether he signs. If she doesn’t want to move to San Francisco, he won’t take the offer, no matter how well the on-site goes. A stakeholder who hasn’t bought into Artie yet stalls deals the same way. The head of data signs off after the POC. Then someone from security or procurement or another executive shows up late, nobody has briefed them, and the deal sits for weeks. Hiring is like working a deal. You lose the candidate the moment you ignore the stakeholder who isn’t in the room.