1/ Recently been speaking to some early stage founders and realised that most folks go through same hiring & talent challenges. Here are some reflections and learnings:
2/ Before we started hiring at SocialCops, every book we read said "hire people better than you" - and we took it at face value. So we called all the smart ppl we know and convinced them to join us. ALL of them said NO!
3/ This is when it got tempting to compromise and easy to become desperate. We thought - we have so much work to do & this person interviewing with us might not be perfect but isn't THAT bad!
4/ In retrospect, there are a few things that one should never compromise: Raw intelligence, learning potential, perseverance, hard work, ambition and genuineness/straightforwardness.
5/ The cost of a bad hire in early days is catastrophic and could almost kill your company. Yes, (1) it costs money, (2) wastes time but less documented are 3) effect on culture and the (4) cost of your time as a founder
6/ The effect on culture- Imagine a scenario where the company has 2 founders and next 3 employees don’t have a founder mindset? Normally, people adapt to the culture that they see around them. High chances that 4th hire will behave just like the first 3.
7/ The cost of a founders time - In a small team, you as a founder will directly work along with the early team. This creates an unparalleled opportunity to transfer value systems, ethos & create a shared way of doing things.
8/ Early hires also have an amazing opportunity to grow incredibly fast (honestly, just cos there really isn't any other choice! If you make good early hires & they grow to their potential, they can become inspiring team leads - “pillars” of the company for the future!
8/ So remember, while its always easy to think you can "hire now, fire later", in the long term every early hire that doesn’t turn into a “pillar” for the company is a lost opportunity… Think twice before making that hire out of desperation!
9/ A little-known fact was that after @ycombinator, @Airbnb founders took 6 months to hire their first engineer. I wish I’d known that before making my first hires - I’d have been more patient & waited for the right folks.
10/ Also, don’t hire just cos you raised some money & feel the pressure to prove something to your investors. Hire when 1) you REALLY need someone in that role and 2) you find someone you are genuinely excited to work with and who’s going to add a lot of value from day 1!
11/ In India, people have a weird way of measuring growth - they ask you “how big is the team?” This is inverse of what I’ve seen in the Valley/ Singapore and developed countries where teams try and stay as small & nimble as possible for as long as they can.
12/ This one's hard cos' many of us are all mentally trained to find some metric to compete with others on - don't measure yourself by the size of your team! Having a small, smart, high performing team can be better than having a larger, inefficient, lower performing team.
13/ I now realise I misunderstood the statement "hire ppl better than you" - instead of looking for ppl who are better than you on all fronts, find ppl who can do that one key thing better than you can. Eg. are they write better/ project manage better/ sell better...
14/ In early days, I was once complaining to a founder that I was finding it extremely hard to hire great talent. He said, "how many interviews did you do last week?" I said "two".He said "You're clearly not serious about hiring. I interview 4 people a day!"
15/ Another little-known fact: CEOs spent 30-50% of their time hiring. You can't outsource hiring. It is possibly the most important thing you'll do with the highest ROI on your time spend (after you find product market fit and make sure you don't run out of money!)
16/ Also, just because you hired your first recruiter, doesn't mean that hiring isn't your job anymore! Expecting them to magically help fix your talent gaps is just absurd.
17/ In summary, What I'd tell my older self: Yeah, I know hiring is hard. Harder than selling your product. Or building the product. Or raising money. But YOU chose to start a company, so stop complaining, suck it up and go do your job!
