In this episode of the Nobel Podcast, we sat down with Lotte, CEO and Founder of The Selection Lab and a Top 3 finalist for CEO/Founder of the Year at this year’s SaaS Awards. She shared how she and her husband built an AI-driven recruitment platform from zero, why stakeholder management made or broke their move into enterprise, and what she’d tell any founder trying to hold onto great people while scaling fast.
Watch the video below:
A pivot that wasn’t really a pivot
The Selection Lab started out with one assessment, one size fits all, before the market started asking for something more tailored. As demand grew for different kinds of assessments across different roles, from customer-facing teams to executive hires, the company expanded its offering. When AI started reshaping what was possible, they leaned further into automating the entire selection process, from intake through scheduling. As Lotte put it, “that wasn’t a big pivot for us, but it was to the outside world.” Their whole platform had already been built in a way that was ready for it.
Running a company (and a family) with your co-founder
Lotte runs The Selection Lab alongside her husband, who serves as COO. She’s candid that there’s no secret formula to juggling founder life and motherhood, just figuring out what matters most at each stage and tuning out the judgment that comes with trying to be both ambitious and present. On the leadership team, she’s clear that titles only tell half the story: what matters more is understanding what energizes each person and building responsibilities around that. Their CTO brings structure and process optimisation, their partnerships lead brings energy and networking instinct, and her husband shapes vision, strategy, and creative direction.
Retention comes from treating everyone differently
With team members who’ve stayed five-plus years, some starting as interns and growing into senior roles, Lotte credits retention to individualised management rather than a single playbook. “We’re different managers for every single one of our employees,” she said. For hiring, they map out the specific talents a role needs before opening it, and increasingly they’re finding those traits already growing inside the company as people mature into new positions.
Moving into enterprise: stakeholder management is the whole game
After successfully landing enterprise logos like KPN and FrieslandCampina, Lotte’s biggest lesson was how differently enterprise deals move compared to SMB. Where an SMB deal might involve one to five decision-makers, an enterprise deal can involve fifteen to twenty, each with different needs, different problems, and different definitions of ROI. Her advice: keep coming back to one question in every conversation, is the person I’m talking to actually the one who can make this happen with me?
Partnerships built on a shared goal, not a shared deal
The Selection Lab’s partnership strategy leans on aligning with other vendors, like ATS providers, around a shared outcome: usually, making the end-to-end candidate experience feel seamless. Her advice for building this kind of function: find the clients you already have in common first, then use that shared context to make the case for closer integration.
Hiring for flexibility over specialisation
Reflecting on hiring The Selection Lab’s first senior marketing lead, Lotte’s biggest regret was simple, they should have made the hire sooner. Beyond that, the key lesson was about profile: they deliberately looked for someone flexible and willing to learn broadly, rather than someone fixated on one narrow marketing discipline.
The long game
Looking back over eight years, Lotte pointed to last year as a high point, not because of one deal or milestone, but because the team, product, and culture all clicked into place at once. Her advice for anyone still early in the grind: it’s okay to be naive about how long it’ll take, as long as you keep going.
Follow Lotte on LinkedIn. Watch this episode on YouTube.
