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Connor Fee.
COO · Fathom.ai
Connor serves as a fractional Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and Advisor for multiple B2B SaaS startups that are looking to scale up their Go-To-Market teams, processes, and maturity. He has helped grow sales teams and their revenues, level-up leadership teams and the culture they want to create, and coach founders in the execution of difficult but critical strategic decisions. Previously, Connor was the CRO at Shortcut helping build Sales, Customer Success, Customer Support and Operations teams. He hired the key players, setting processes and defining goals so that the go-to-market teams could do what they do best - drive the company forward every day. Before Shortcut, Connor served as the CRO of Clearbit, leading the GTM teams. Under his leadership revenue more than tripled and logo churn decreased by 25% due to a clear focus on the target prospects. Previously, Connor was a partner at Winning by Design where he worked with high-growth SaaS and other B2B companies to assess, design, and implement revenue growth strategies with a science-driven approach to sales and customer success. Successful clients included Shape Security, Clearbit, Dexterity Robotics and Mavenlink. Prior to Winning by Design, Connor was the COO at UserVoice where he built the business line focused on product management by growing top-line revenue, ASP and customers. Overseeing the marketing, sales, customer success, and BizOps teams, his metric-driven mindset shaped the culture and helped UserVoice hire an incredibly strong team from executives to the front line.
Guest
Connor Fee
COO
Company:
Fathom.ai
Location:
San Francisco
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In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Connor Fee, COO at Fathom.ai, about his systematic approach to scaling operations across revenue, data, and finance functions at a 100-person company. Drawing from his leadership experience at UserVoice, Clearbit, Shortcut, and Winning by Design, Connor reveals how he transformed a company lacking leadership culture into an aligned executive team and shares his counterintuitive hiring methodologies. His insights demonstrate how AI-powered interview analysis can eliminate traditional hiring blind spots while accelerating senior talent evaluation.

Topics discussed:

ABOUT YOUR HOST: 

Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating. 

Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com

Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Five takeaways from this conversation.

Actionable for Whispered Hiring founders

  1. Force Executive Alignment Before You Post Any Senior Role
    Connor uses the WHO method scorecard to define four specific outcomes a hire must accomplish in six months, not years of experience or qualifications. His team required five iterations to agree on what their head of data would actually deliver. Without this upfront alignment, you're essentially hiring different people for the same role title.
  2. Use the "Top 10 Strengths" Phone Screen to Reveal Self-Awareness
    Connor pushes candidates beyond their rehearsed top three strengths, waiting through awkward pauses until they identify all ten. He uses prompts like "What would your boss say?" to help them continue. Candidates who handle this discomfort and dig deeper typically succeed throughout his entire hiring process.
  3. Eliminate Reference Check Positivity Bias with Temporal Distance
    Instead of asking about current challenges, Connor asks references: "What was their biggest challenge way back when you worked with them?" He then follows with: "This person told me you'd say their challenge was X - would you agree?" This gives references explicit permission to be honest about known weaknesses.
  4. Interview 10-15 People Before Hiring Your First Unfamiliar Role
    When hiring his first finance leader, Connor conducted discovery interviews with finance heads across PLG and traditional companies, then used Fathom's AI to extract common hiring mistakes. This systematic learning approach helps you ask better questions for functions outside your expertise.
  5. Implement Daily 30-Minute Check-ins for Senior Hire Onboarding
    Connor schedules daily touchpoints with new senior hires for three weeks, using shared Asana boards for non-urgent questions. This ensures executives are never more than eight hours away from getting unstuck while maintaining availability for immediate issues.

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