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.
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.