Building a Team at AI Speed | Harvey’s Maggie Landers
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What is Harvey’s rapid growth story and why is it described as “AI speed”?
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 going to fail more than you're necessarily going to get it right. 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.
16z podcast 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 three billion last february of 2025 to five billion in june eight 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. I don't think there's anyone internally who feels like we've fully made it or actualized our potential, it definitely still feels like a startup. We just celebrated our fourth birthday as a company.
Congratulations. Happy birthday, Harvey.
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 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 jobs not finished culture. It's one of our core values. And so I would say the celebration is always about 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 is about.
I do think the team likes to have fun and there's a lot of humor in everything, kind of injected in everything that we do, but we're always thinking ahead.
Yeah.
And I think you mentioned earlier, so are you employee number, is it 340? I'm somewhere
in the 300s. Yeah. I'm somewhere in the 300s. And yeah, we've added over 1,000 employees since I've joined. And we'll likely be about 2,000 employees before the end of this calendar year, which is insane. More than 70% of the company started after January 1st of this year.
Wow. What does that feel like on the inside? There's so many new faces. Are you all in person? Yeah, what's
it like? A
lot of new faces.
How does Harvey add more than 1,000 employees in a year while keeping a startup mindset?
Those onboarding
classes just feel big. They're growing, yeah. They're growing for sure. I would say it still feels like Harvey and I can explain what that means. But I do think that we've done a good job of understanding kind of what makes somebody successful at Harvey and looking for a lot of those sort of characteristics when we go to market and we bring new people on board.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Harvey’s rapid growth story and why is it described as “AI speed”?
0:00–4:15
2
How does Harvey add more than 1,000 employees in a year while keeping a startup mindset?
4:15–9:31
3
What are Harvey’s core values (simplicity, decisiveness, “jobs not finished”) and how do they shape daily work?
9:31–14:32
4
How does Harvey identify and hire people who thrive in a fast‑moving, ambiguous environment?
14:32–19:07
5
What does the interview process look like across different teams and locations?
19:07–24:16
6
How do Harvey’s global offices differ and what is the culture like in each region?
24:16–28:51
7
Why is trust and autonomy critical for Harvey’s rapid experimentation and scaling?
28:51–34:18
8
What advice does Maggie give to candidates about fitting into Harvey’s “teenage‑company” phase?
34:18–48:03
Speakers
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