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How to communicate why your startup is worth joining

• twalla 4y ago
  I'd be curious to see the results of A/B'ing doing all the stuff in this article vs just advertising (competitive) pay upfront.
  • flreln 4y ago
    A YC founder I’m in the same WhatsApp group with said "I've seen roughly 10x the volume of high quality senior+ applications after doing this a few times now"
    • twalla 4y ago
      Advertising pay up front or doing candidate outreach as outlined in this blog post?
      • flreln 4y ago
        Doing candidate outreach as outlined in the post vs traditional recruiting methods
  • indymike 4y ago
    HR Tech company founder here. When you advertise a competitive salary in your job, you can expet 18% more people to apply for that job. This is across all job boards we've tried. Research is across 450,000 job applicants for 13,200 jobs: Top 3 things you can do to get more/better candidates: 1. Include salary in job ads (and make sure it's competitive) 18% more applies. 2. Talk to every applicant as quickly as you can and certainly before resume screening 14.4% of resumes we checked had an inaccuracy that would have resulted in a screenout. By talking first, you can find and fix these problems and keep some very good talent in the pipe. 3. Remove unnecessary qualifications and preferences. Removing "degree perferred" where it doesn't matter can get 8% more applies. Removing bad technical requirements can make a huge difference, too. No one has 20 years of Docker expeirence.
    • matijash 4y ago
      awesome insights, thank you!
    • thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
      >3. Remove unnecessary qualifications and preferences. Removing "degree perferred" where it doesn't matter can get 8% more applies. Removing bad technical requirements can make a huge difference, too. No one has 20 years of Docker expeirence. Does this have a disproportionate effect along gender lines?
      • indymike 4y ago
        > Does this have a disproportionate effect along gender lines? No, it just turns off the best candidates quickly.
    • robocat 4y ago
      > 18% more applies What do you use as a proxy metric for the quality of applicants? 18% more great applicants is a world of difference from 18% more shit applicants.
      • indymike 4y ago
        % qualified... which goes up, but is inside the margin of error.
• ednevsky 4y ago
  Wish more startups would do this.
• kradeelav 4y ago
  A bit amusing to see the article and think "they really could have summed it up as "show, don't tell", aka the old sage writer's advice. :) Some very good points made in the article, glad I read. I admit the personal instagram would be a huge turnoff for me since it shows ("shows") that there's not an expectation for work sphere and personal life sphere to be airgapped. Then again maybe that's the kind of person they're trying to filter out.
  • solarmist 4y ago
    Sure, but it's embracing that by showing and not telling, then giving tips and examples of how to do it effectively.
• echelon 4y ago
  Speaking personally - if you have a fun product and a Discord, hiring is a breeze. Talent finds you.
• f311a 4y ago
  A very well written article. I liked the writing style.
• henning 4y ago
  At some point, it became acceptable to post hand-drawn diagrams with illegible handwriting. If you don't care about presenting information clearly, I don't care about what you have to say.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    It, like everything else outlined in that blog, is designed to make you look fun and quirky.
• neilv 4y ago
  > “If I haven’t responded to something that you’ve sent me, that’s probably because I’ve read it and don’t feel particularly strongly - so just make a call on what to do if you don’t hear back in a reasonable time frame.” Surely there's a more effective protocol that works for an exec? Even make a macro button for the exec that responds "dfps", so that: 1. sender is immediately unblocked and empowered when they get the "dfps", and 2. avoid accidents in which the exec would need to say something but didn't get the message, but sender assumed an "implicit dfps".
  • scrumbledober 4y ago
    yeah this sounds horrible. The primary role of a manager in the manager/managee relationship should be unblocking the managee.
  • hammock 4y ago
    dfps?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • __derek__ 4y ago
      I assume "don't feel particularly strongly" based on the blurb, but new abbreviations really should be defined.
  • __derek__ 4y ago
    From what I hear, this is common behavior for partners at law firms (i.e. the folks that own the client relationship, much like the CEO owns the decisions made), and it's absolutely bizarre.
• alex_zhezherov 4y ago
  reminds me of what Thiel in 0->1 was referring to when talking about company culture / mission.
• wnolens 4y ago
  Doing a job hunt right now and im trying to assess "what's my day to day like" and it comes down to two factors: what are the people like, and what is the actual work. I want to really like the people, as I've discovered my life is way more boring otherwise. I spend 8-10h/day working, I need to be able to laugh and make other people laugh and have interesting conversations. I'd love to make friends out of it. People often tell me don't rely on work for that, but the time investment is too steep not to use it as a social outlet. I also want to know the actual work. Not the buzzwords, or the product name, or fast paced industry, but the actual initiatives for the next year. Crank out new features for mobile app? Not my skill set. Typical oncall rotation? Nah. I'm shocked how many companies are willing to start the interview process immediately. I decline until I have at least an hour convo with who would be my manager. As per the article, yes more blogging helps but how do I know it's genuine and not marketing bs? I don't.
  • q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
    I feel like this archetype (wanting to have fun, make friends, etc) is actually very common, at least around SF/SV. I bet you'll find it soon enough. If I can be candid (and hopefully still amicable) behind my random-string username, I do have to say: I don't get the approach, though. Can you help me understand? Why does it really matter if you can share dank memes with your coworkers or have fun little in-jokes? Isn't it far, far more important to find out things like: How do people communicate? How do people disagree with each other? Are people able to separate emotions and ego from the team's work output and outcomes? What values does each person want to embody in the work that they produce? Are people willing to sacrifice momentary comfort for genuine personal growth? Maybe I'm a grumpy old man. Maybe I've just been burned too many times by companies promising a "fun" work environment where "everyone is friends" -- only to discover what they actually mean is an environment where harmony and comfort are valued above all else. The net result (in my anecdotal experience) is an atmosphere of passive-aggressive collaboration and mediocre work, because even the slightest hint of disagreement is shut down brutally instead of being talked through and genuinely resolved. I'm not really disagreeing with you, because, like I said, I've seen so many people who want what you describe. I only wonder: How does it work? What happens when a colleague treats you unprofessionally? What happens when one person is dragging down the team? In your live/love/laugh philosophy, how do you have meaningful, uncomfortable, worthwhile conversations that result in a genuine, deep relationship forged through facing hard truths together?
• Terretta 4y ago
  We see what you did there.
• indymike 4y ago
  We've had really good luck just telling the truth. I'm 2 for 2 on targeted hires (where we found them and landed them) this year. Being radically honest really pays off when it comes to talent. (you do have to have a good story and good place to work)
• lkrubner 4y ago
  I notice that, nowadays, startups are emphasizing "work/life balance" much more than they used to. I'm sure part of that is because of the pandemic, which created strange new realities, where companies that had previously been workaholic and office-centric were forced to change by the historic events of the last 2 years. But also, I think the trend had started before the pandemic. They heyday of valorizing a workaholic, 24/7 lifestyle was awhile ago, in the years after the 2008 crisis, when young people were trying to start their careers in very difficult economic conditions. As one data point, which I think suggests the change, I've noticed how the comments have been changing, in regards to my book "How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps" which describes events that happened in 2015. When the book first came out, some people said "Lawrence should not have stayed so long at such a dysfunctional startup" but everyone who read the book seem to know about such workaholic startups. But lately the comments have been more doubtful. A recent comment on Amazon: "Working regularly till 2-3AM? I've never seen that even among startups in co-working spaces. The boss screaming at employees at video calls, yet everyone just takes it and nobody immediately quits?" I don't know who wrote that, but if they've truly never seen such things, that suggests to me that they've been working at places that have a healthy work/life balance, and I think such places (in the startup world) are more common now than 7 years ago. I created the first rough draft of the book simply by copying-and-pasting text from Slack messages and email. Even after editing, 80% of the final copy was based on text written at the time of the incidents. There are no exaggerations in the book. And yet I think the culture I describe is fading away (which is probably a good thing). The last few startups I've consulted with have all emphasized work/life balance, and I'd like to think that startups in general are moving towards supporting a more sustainable lifestyle for their employees. Having said that, I recognize, the world will always have ambitious people who work 100 hours a week because they are trying to get ahead. The question, always, is whether such people have a right to ask others to also work 100 hours a week.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    Startups now are competing against Google et al who will pay you ungodly sums to not work 24/7. And everyone knows startup equity is worthless so they have to compete elsewhere.
  • 4y ago
• stevebmark 4y ago
  It's weird, this is an advertisement for these companies, but I would only mainly care about point 4 ("the business"), and company values. The rest seem immature, like from the perspective of someone just leaving college looking for a job that really "vibes" with them, but don't know how to evaluate companies for real substance. How "fun" / "x" a founder is likely won't correlate with the success of the business, in fact could be a negative. Teams change frequently from turnover especially in the bay area and especially in startups, so "the team" and these detailed team bios will quickly become stale. Same for the "culture" built on that team.
• Brajeshwar 4y ago
  Offtopic: I have seen quite a few similar documentation design such as this website. What is powering this? Thanks.
  • Brajeshwar 4y ago
    Answering myself -- https://docusaurus.io https://docusaurus.io
• motohagiography 4y ago
  Two points: first, I look at their t-shirt statement about what they do and decide on the spot whether I am interested. Like a pitch deck. I don't even care what the job is, I'm just interested in the statement, "making X for Y's," and maaabeeey "with Z." That's 98% of what I need to know. Second, advice to a startup about how to attract you is like asking fish how to catch them, and they always say, "send more worms!" If I'm hiring for a startup, I need to find believers in my mission (or me) with a positive attitude and the minimum viable skills to execute on it - or people cheap enough I can afford to pay a second set of hires to finish what the first ones screw up. If you will work for a fridge full of kombucha and some lottery tickets because your boss tolerates your alarming haircut, that's really amazing, but it seems like succeeding against a fabricated constraint. What do you win? You are basically haircut-rich, meaning a person who does surprisingly better than anyone observing their most apparent life choices would expect. I say this from some pretty cringey personal youthful experience. Growth is attractive, you can't fake it, there is no substitute for it, money can't buy it, and everybody knows it when they see it. These tips are nice, but taken together, they're bike shedding.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Raziarazzi 4y ago
  Your peer group return on investment is one of the strongest measures you can use to show value generation. Although most investors are familiar with this calculation, businesses that don't encounter it frequently could find it to be more complicated. The numbers and concepts of investing math are straightforward, but getting there needs extensive analysis, to reiterate. Use the procedure outlined below to demonstrate to investors that you are adding value, whether you are assessing these indicators on your own or with the help of outside counsel.
• devoutsalsa 4y ago
  When I ran my bootstrapped company, I had lots of equity and little money. I couldn’t get people interested in the equity. They didn’t understand it & they certainly didn’t want it. I certainly couldn’t afford to pay market rates. Two things worked for me. The first being I was hiring in 2010, and a lot of people where looking for meaningful opportunities that weren’t dead end minimum wage jobs. Honestly, this was probably the biggest factor. The second thing was I offered training, health insurance, and sold the vision of how working for me was a great way to break into the industry & better paying jobs, which was true. I told people up front that we’d charge clients $100/hour & pay them $20/hour. I let them work at home with flexible hours, didn’t demand any sort of loyalty, and I generally left them alone if they were getting the work done. This type of opportunity was quite appealing to people who were the job-primary income earners & they were looking for a chance to start a new career. Several people who worked for me went on to work in the field themselves, and I was happy for them.