Joanna Strober, founder and CEO of Midi Health, knew there was a business opportunity in women’s health, but it took grit and patience to help investors see it too. What started as a mission to provide digital care for menopausal women has quickly scaled into a unicorn company with big growth ambitions.
Strober sat down with editor in chief Jamie Heller at Business Insider Live’s The Long Play event in San Francisco.
The vice president of sales at a hot AI startup said he gives candidates a warning before they sign on: Prepare to work hard.
On an episode of the “20VC” podcast released on Saturday, Carles Reina, the fourth employee at AI voice cloning startup ElevenLabs, said he filters candidates by warning them about how tough the job is.
“When I make an offer, I tell every single person ElevenLabs is going to be extremely difficult,” Reina said. “We are a hard company to work for because we have extremely high expectations.”
He said that he tells them they would have to work a “huge amount of hours” and he expects “full commitment.”
While the warning keeps some candidates out, Reina said it has led to fewer staff leaving.
In a February interview, Reina talked about the sales quotas his employees are expected to hit.
“So if I pay you $100,000 a year, your quota is $2 million. That’s it. If you don’t achieve your quota, then you’re going to be out, right?” Reina said. “And we’re ruthless on that end.”
In February, ElevenLabs announced that it raised $500 million in a Series D round, bringing its valuation to $11 billion. The startup, which was founded in London, had 350 employees as of November, according to investor Andreessen Horowitz.
Reina’s team is nearly doubling its head count by hiring 120 more sales employees this year, he said.
The sales VP added he’s worried that bringing on all these people may water down the culture.
“If you’re not upfront about the expectation, I think you end up diluting because people come with different expectations, they essentially behave in a specific way that is not the way that you wanted,” he said.
Reina’s pre-offer heads-up echoes how another European-origin startup filters for top talent.
On a podcast appearance in January, the CEO of Swedish legal tech startup Legora said that he asks every candidate one question to gauge whether they are up for the challenge.
“I still interview everyone, so I ask quite brutal questions about, ‘Why take a hard job? You could go work somewhere else,'” Max Junestrand said.
“I try to create missionaries, not mercenaries,” Junestrand said, referring to an analogy coined by Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr years ago. “And I think we’ve successfully done that.”
The two names are among a short list of European startups reviving excitement in the region’s entrepreneurship and venture capital scene.
Compared to their American counterparts, European companies have traditionally faced investor skepticism for being slow, overcommitted to work-life balance, and heavily tied by tech regulation.
You might not think it possible, but waiting in line at airport security is somehow getting worse.
Thousands of travelers in the US waited up to three hours at security checkpoints on Sunday as the ongoing partial government shutdown caused staff shortages at the Transportation Security Administration.
Some stalled travelers shared photos of the winding lines and crowds on social media. A video shared on X by Aubry Killion, an anchor at WDSU, the primary NBC affiliate in New Orleans, showed a line of passengers stretching all the way out into the parking garage.
A photo shared to Reddit showed a massive crowd at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia, where wait times have reached an hour. The airport is also encouraging travelers to arrive early for their flights.
“The delays are the result of residual impacts from two ground stops issued on Friday, which created a temporary backlog in passenger volumes, combined with current TSA staffing constraints,” a Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport spokesperson told Business Insider.
Houston Airports, which operates the William P. Hobby and George Bush Intercontinental airports in Texas, warned travelers that the wait times could be hours long.
“As a result of the partial federal government shutdown, passengers at William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) should arrive at least 4 to 5 hours before their flight to allow extra time for TSA screening,” the operator said in a press release. “At times, TSA wait times at HOU may extend beyond 180 minutes.”
Houston Airports said TSA PreCheck may be unavailable at William P. Hobby Airport due to limited staffing. At George Bush Intercontinental Airport, travelers were told to allow extra time for security screening.
The Department of Homeland Security last month said it was suspending TSA Precheck and Global Entry due to the government shutdown, but later backtracked, leaving it up to individual airports.
Lauren Bis, deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, said TSA agents “received only partial paychecks earlier this month and now face their first full missed paycheck, leading to financial hardship, absences, and crippling staffing shortages.”
TSA agents are federal workers under DHS, which means they are directly affected by the partial shutdown that began in January. During the earlier 43-day government shutdown last year, TSA agents went weeks without pay. A shortage of air traffic controllers at airports in 2025 played a significant role in forcing the government to reach an agreement.
The US Congress failed to reach an agreement to fund DHS in February, in part because Democrats demanded changes to how the department enforces immigration law.
The long waits affected several major airports across the United States. The Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Louisiana also told travelers to arrive early.
“Due to impacts from the federal government’s partial shutdown, the TSA is experiencing a shortage of workers at the security checkpoint, which is causing longer-than-average lines,” the airport wrote on X. “Passengers with travel scheduled today are advised to arrive at least 3 hours before their scheduled departure to allow plenty of time to undergo security screening.”
Security checkpoints at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina are about a 50-minute wait.
