Hiring For Your Start-Up

At the Bootstrappers’ Breakfast in San Francisco, the topic of hiring is brought up quite often. Below is a brief of some points that came up as well as my own thoughts.

Hiring the wrong person can be detrimental to your start-up

  • Entrepreneurs need to spend adequate time to hire the right person. A lot of time can be lost rectifying mistakes of an unqualified person.  
  •  Your first employee can be 25% to 30 % of your work force.
  • They are often the face of your start-up and their ability to make customers happy and prospects eager to do business with you matters.

How do you find the right people

  • Instead of spending a lot of time going out and finding the perfect person, let the perfect person find you
  • Due to high unemployment at present, there is plenty of good talent available.
  • Have a working interview, probationary period
  • When people were hired for the start-up and given a little equity, their mentality towards the business and their performance was way better.
  • You should consider putting the equity on hold during the probationary period (e.g. a vesting cliff) so that you don’t end up with a lot of ex-employees with equity.
  • When hiring people, some scrutinize resumes, others feel that more than the resume, the thought process that people follow is very important. A lot of things can be learned on the job. Also essential is passion for your idea and for solving the problem.

1 thought on “Hiring For Your Start-Up”

  1. It’s never easy trying to figure this stuff out. We’re in start-up mode now and are at a point where we need to be creative with pay incentives to keep and hire new employee. We’re flirting with equity but just can’t decide on the correct amount.

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