The CEO of Swedish legal AI startup Legora says he personally grills every candidate to ensure they're ready for the intense, high-stakes environment of a rapidly growing $2 billion company.

Brutal Interview Question Reveals Grit

On Monday, the "20VC" podcast, Max Junestrand shared the question he asks all prospective employees: "Why take a hard job? You could go work somewhere else."

He said the goal is to identify candidates willing to commit fully to the company's mission.

Mission-Driven Culture

"I try to create missionaries, not mercenaries," Junestrand said, referencing a concept popularized by venture capitalist John Doerr. "And I think we've successfully done that."

He explained that mercenaries work primarily for personal gain, while missionaries focus on the team and long-term goals.

Junestrand, who cofounded Legora in 2023, described the company's culture as intense and demanding, with employees regularly working late hours and even signing deals on holidays.

"We had the big sales dashboard in front of us at the wine thing, and everybody kept looking at it, because everybody wants momentum," he said, referring to the company's Christmas dinner.

Legora currently employs 300 people and plans to double its staff in the first half of this year, reflecting rapid expansion in the European startup scene.

AI Workforce, Model Competition Intensify

Earlier, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said advances in AI had enabled companies to increase output with smaller teams, leading OpenAI to slow its hiring pace while continuing to add workers at a more measured rate to avoid future layoffs.

Invisible Technologies CEO Matt Fitzpatrick said humans would remain essential to AI training for decades, pushing back on industry claims that synthetic data could soon replace human input.

He said AI models continued to struggle with complex tasks involving language, culture and legal reasoning, making human feedback critical.

Meanwhile, French startup Mistral launched a 10-model suite called Mistral 3, positioning the open-weight release as a direct challenge to rivals OpenAI, Google and DeepSeek.

The launch was seen as easing concerns that Europe was falling behind the US and China in AI development, as competition in the sector continued to intensify.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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