"No one understands just how much a bad hire costs…"
5️⃣ of the biggest takeaways from our Founders Common fireside chat with Agni Ghosh last week on 10x team building:
1. Hire slow, fire fast. Bad early hires (whether co-founders or teammates) are the leading cause of startup death. Nailing early hires is important, yes. Cutting bad early hires is critical. Dragging a bad early hire around is a death sentence.
2. Your best hire is already hired...somewhere else. Avoid public job listings & open applications because the person you're *really* looking for is already working somewhere else. Do the hard work by identifying your top would-be hires and networking your way to them. It’ll pay off.
3. Hit pause on sales. You don't need that early sales hire. Make sure you're nailing founder-led sales first–and everything else that goes around it (like marketing)–before thinking about that first sales hire. Garbage sales strategy + 10x sales hire = garbage sales.
4. Index heavily on the proactive, creative & different. No matter the role, your perfect early hire will complement the existing team and proactively work to fill gaps in novel ways. Take special note of potential hires (or applicants) who unapologetically push barriers.
5. Become a 10x magnet through content. Hiring is competitive and selling your startup to 10x talent is an uphill battle. Work to differentiate yourself and help that 10x talent find you by being hyper-active in the channels they live in–whether that's social media, Reddit threads, blogs, YT videos or something else.
P.S. Make sure to catch our next chat this Friday. Details in the comments! 👇🏽
