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Hiring Techniques for Early Stage Startups: How to Get Your First 3 Employees

19 points by eladgil 17y ago

hga 17y ago
This guy knows what he's talking about; everything he said matches my experiences, especially his final item on how hard it is to land the first employee (I've experienced that from both sides).
jhuckestein 17y ago
Here are some other tips from our experience in no particular order: - At least in Germany, you can get amazing interns for free from the university b/c their programs often require them to do one. - Don't justify to your potential employees why you are entitled to "the best". Just ask for the brightest people around and they will come, because they know that if you were not smart, you would not want to employ extremely smart people. - Be multicultural and try to have at least one girl in your team ;) - Don't blindly hire your friends. If things don't work out it will get messy.
- tomjen2 17y ago
  >Be multicultural and try to have at least one girl in your team ;) I wish. I only know one girl taking a computer science course at my university, and she isn't fit to be in a start-up (she has just started, so this will properly change) there are a few more but sadly it is very difficult to find technically minded girls. That leaves the possibility of hiring them for some non-technical purposes, but to me it would feel as if I was just trying to perpetuate the "women aren't smart enough to work in technical fields problem".
- eladgil 17y ago
  These are really great tips! :)
kls 17y ago
I stopped reading at the Ninja reference, but as for as far as I got, I disagree with the assumption that you can not find someone through an investors network. I am good friends with principals in a few VC firms and I am most certainly the idea man when they have a new venture and need technology help. I don't like managing people, (any team I assemble are self managed individuals) but I am the kind of guy that can scale a company from the first server to Google they know it and they recommend me all the time.
- eladgil 17y ago
  I agree that there are some people well networked with VCs that are strong individual contributors. I think there are specific venture funds/investors who go out of their way to know such people (I mention two of them in the blog) but there are also many VCs that mainly know "future VP engs" - some of whom are happy to get their hands dirty, but most of whom want to manage rather then write code...

19 points by eladgil 17y ago

hga 17y ago

This guy knows what he's talking about; everything he said matches my experiences, especially his final item on how hard it is to land the first employee (I've experienced that from both sides).

jhuckestein 17y ago

Here are some other tips from our experience in no particular order: - At least in Germany, you can get amazing interns for free from the university b/c their programs often require them to do one. - Don't justify to your potential employees why you are entitled to "the best". Just ask for the brightest people around and they will come, because they know that if you were not smart, you would not want to employ extremely smart people. - Be multicultural and try to have at least one girl in your team ;) - Don't blindly hire your friends. If things don't work out it will get messy.

tomjen2 17y ago
>Be multicultural and try to have at least one girl in your team ;) I wish. I only know one girl taking a computer science course at my university, and she isn't fit to be in a start-up (she has just started, so this will properly change) there are a few more but sadly it is very difficult to find technically minded girls. That leaves the possibility of hiring them for some non-technical purposes, but to me it would feel as if I was just trying to perpetuate the "women aren't smart enough to work in technical fields problem".
eladgil 17y ago
These are really great tips! :)

kls 17y ago

I stopped reading at the Ninja reference, but as for as far as I got, I disagree with the assumption that you can not find someone through an investors network. I am good friends with principals in a few VC firms and I am most certainly the idea man when they have a new venture and need technology help. I don't like managing people, (any team I assemble are self managed individuals) but I am the kind of guy that can scale a company from the first server to Google they know it and they recommend me all the time.

eladgil 17y ago
I agree that there are some people well networked with VCs that are strong individual contributors. I think there are specific venture funds/investors who go out of their way to know such people (I mention two of them in the blog) but there are also many VCs that mainly know "future VP engs" - some of whom are happy to get their hands dirty, but most of whom want to manage rather then write code...