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How do you guys actually hire the superstars to join your startup as the early employees/partners? And not just the typical friend you know who's "a pretty smar

How do you guys actually hire the superstars to join your startup as the early employees/partners? And not just the typical friend you know who's "a pretty smart guy" and his friend and so on

meiraleal 2y ago
You become friends with pretty smart guys that have the potential to become superstars. Which superstar will join a wannabe startup?
JonChesterfield 2y ago
Either they're the founders or friends thereof or you're struck-by-lightening lucky. Realistically tell yourself that 10x developers are a silly myth and the people you were able to hire for pennies from the local demographic are the superstars, and try not to hang your business model on them actually being the best in their field. As long as you don't fact check that against reality it'll be OK.
- hobs 2y ago
  > try not to hang your business model on them actually being the best in their field Thankfully almost no one is the best in their field :) You probably can't afford the best, you probably don't need the best, you probably can't keep the best happy, you definitely don't have problems that need the best. That being said if you pay dollars instead of pennies you can find some decent folks and maybe save some money in the long run :)
  - jll29 2y ago
    > Thankfully almost no one is the best in their field :) You probably can't afford the best, you probably don't need the best, you probably can't keep the best happy, you definitely don't have problems that need the best. You don't need the single best, you just should aspire as high a concentration of n * x for n>1 (2x, 10x, ...) as your talent to raiase funding permits. But don't forget it's not all about "best coding"; you want people best in different things (PM, UX, architecture, security, databases, algorithms, compilers, documentation, networking etc. - also depending on what the product is about) - a diverse team of rock stars.
raziel2p 2y ago
maybe the superstar idea is somewhat of an illusion, and they are actually just some pretty smart friend of the founder?
- fwip 2y ago
  Yep. Friends of the founder also get more political/social leverage in the org, so they get more resources to execute their ideas, and their results are valued more highly by leadership.
maccard 2y ago
Instead of thinking of them as some superstar, think of it like hiring an IC - you want someone who can, and will ship, especially in the face of ambiguity. If you hire a mega talented engineer who specialises in designing fault tolerant distributed systems, you’re going to build a fault tolerant distributed system. If you hire someone who ships scrappy features and doesn’t leave a giant mess behind you, you have a much better chance of success. Finding those people is the same as finding any other developer.
- yunohn 2y ago
  I felt like their question was, how to hire them to your new startup over them going to or staying at a big corp.
  - maccard 2y ago
    Those people won’t last at big corp, and won’t be interested in it. As for how you attract them - same way you attract anyone else. Give them something they want. For these people it’s agency, freedom and high level guideposts. For a productive big corp employee it’s clear guidance, timelines and a hierarchy to adhere to.
breck 2y ago
> actually hire the superstars to join your startup as the early employees/partners? You have to become a superstar first. I had the good luck of living down the street from the AirBedAndBreakfast founders in San Francisco in 2008 and we'd commute together to our Tuesday night YC dinners in Mountainview. I picked up early that Nate was already a superstar coder, Joe was a superstar designer, and Brian was a superstar designer and salesman. I knew I was not, and had to double down and practice, practice, practice. Craftsmanship comes first. It took those guys decades of practice at their crafts before they founded AirBedAndBreakfast. Think of Paul Graham. Before he created HackerNews and YC, he had already written and published a book on Lisp! A master craftsman. Craftsmanship comes first. If you are not a master at your craft, don't even waste your time trying to recruit superstars. Instead, spend your time on practice.
- detourdog 2y ago
  Don’t think of people as superstars. Think of them as individuals that are able to pay attention and consistently meet expectations. I’m starting to think paying attention to what is happening is undervalued.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    This only works up to a point, if you lack talent. AFAIK Florence Foster Jenkins spent her whole life taking singing lessons, and this was the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ubiUIxbWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ubiUIxbWE
    - detourdog 2y ago
      I might agree Florence wasn't paying attention.
  - kragen 2y ago
    'individuals who consistently meet expectations' is not only not the same thing as 'superstars', it's nearly the opposite. doing the unexpected is a defining attribute of superstars. an individual who consistently meets expectations is incapable of simultaneously being a superstar. they must exceed them, and to an astounding degree, to qualify as a 'superstar' by any normal definition of the word many superstars aren't even good at doing the expected when it would be a good idea, often because of drug addictions this happens for two reasons. one is that if you're selecting people along two axes, the more harshly you select on one axis, the less candidates remain to select along the other, unless the axes are perfectly correlated. the other is that, whether you're a candidate selecting strategies or a judge selecting candidates, two axes along which you can select are mean and variance. in any event where you take the best of multiple trials, the top performers will almost always have high variance, not just a high mean
philipwhiuk 2y ago
It's easy. They all happen to live in SF and be working on a YC start-up... /s
mattgreenrocks 2y ago
How many startups actually need superstars? Most of them are doing glorified CRUD work. There’s nothing wrong with that! But companies should be honest with themselves about what they need. Everyone still seems obsessed with being able to pretend they somehow got the absolute best deal on the employment market instead of interviewing for the position itself.

How do you guys actually hire the superstars to join your startup as the early employees/partners? And not just the typical friend you know who's "a pretty smart guy" and his friend and so on

meiraleal 2y ago

You become friends with pretty smart guys that have the potential to become superstars. Which superstar will join a wannabe startup?

JonChesterfield 2y ago

Either they're the founders or friends thereof or you're struck-by-lightening lucky. Realistically tell yourself that 10x developers are a silly myth and the people you were able to hire for pennies from the local demographic are the superstars, and try not to hang your business model on them actually being the best in their field. As long as you don't fact check that against reality it'll be OK.

hobs 2y ago
> try not to hang your business model on them actually being the best in their field Thankfully almost no one is the best in their field :) You probably can't afford the best, you probably don't need the best, you probably can't keep the best happy, you definitely don't have problems that need the best. That being said if you pay dollars instead of pennies you can find some decent folks and maybe save some money in the long run :)
- jll29 2y ago
  > Thankfully almost no one is the best in their field :) You probably can't afford the best, you probably don't need the best, you probably can't keep the best happy, you definitely don't have problems that need the best. You don't need the single best, you just should aspire as high a concentration of n * x for n>1 (2x, 10x, ...) as your talent to raiase funding permits. But don't forget it's not all about "best coding"; you want people best in different things (PM, UX, architecture, security, databases, algorithms, compilers, documentation, networking etc. - also depending on what the product is about) - a diverse team of rock stars.

raziel2p 2y ago

maybe the superstar idea is somewhat of an illusion, and they are actually just some pretty smart friend of the founder?

fwip 2y ago
Yep. Friends of the founder also get more political/social leverage in the org, so they get more resources to execute their ideas, and their results are valued more highly by leadership.

maccard 2y ago

Instead of thinking of them as some superstar, think of it like hiring an IC - you want someone who can, and will ship, especially in the face of ambiguity. If you hire a mega talented engineer who specialises in designing fault tolerant distributed systems, you’re going to build a fault tolerant distributed system. If you hire someone who ships scrappy features and doesn’t leave a giant mess behind you, you have a much better chance of success. Finding those people is the same as finding any other developer.

yunohn 2y ago
I felt like their question was, how to hire them to your new startup over them going to or staying at a big corp.
- maccard 2y ago
  Those people won’t last at big corp, and won’t be interested in it. As for how you attract them - same way you attract anyone else. Give them something they want. For these people it’s agency, freedom and high level guideposts. For a productive big corp employee it’s clear guidance, timelines and a hierarchy to adhere to.

breck 2y ago

> actually hire the superstars to join your startup as the early employees/partners? You have to become a superstar first. I had the good luck of living down the street from the AirBedAndBreakfast founders in San Francisco in 2008 and we'd commute together to our Tuesday night YC dinners in Mountainview. I picked up early that Nate was already a superstar coder, Joe was a superstar designer, and Brian was a superstar designer and salesman. I knew I was not, and had to double down and practice, practice, practice. Craftsmanship comes first. It took those guys decades of practice at their crafts before they founded AirBedAndBreakfast. Think of Paul Graham. Before he created HackerNews and YC, he had already written and published a book on Lisp! A master craftsman. Craftsmanship comes first. If you are not a master at your craft, don't even waste your time trying to recruit superstars. Instead, spend your time on practice.

detourdog 2y ago
Don’t think of people as superstars. Think of them as individuals that are able to pay attention and consistently meet expectations. I’m starting to think paying attention to what is happening is undervalued.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  This only works up to a point, if you lack talent. AFAIK Florence Foster Jenkins spent her whole life taking singing lessons, and this was the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ubiUIxbWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ubiUIxbWE
  - detourdog 2y ago
    I might agree Florence wasn't paying attention.
- kragen 2y ago
  'individuals who consistently meet expectations' is not only not the same thing as 'superstars', it's nearly the opposite. doing the unexpected is a defining attribute of superstars. an individual who consistently meets expectations is incapable of simultaneously being a superstar. they must exceed them, and to an astounding degree, to qualify as a 'superstar' by any normal definition of the word many superstars aren't even good at doing the expected when it would be a good idea, often because of drug addictions this happens for two reasons. one is that if you're selecting people along two axes, the more harshly you select on one axis, the less candidates remain to select along the other, unless the axes are perfectly correlated. the other is that, whether you're a candidate selecting strategies or a judge selecting candidates, two axes along which you can select are mean and variance. in any event where you take the best of multiple trials, the top performers will almost always have high variance, not just a high mean

philipwhiuk 2y ago

It's easy. They all happen to live in SF and be working on a YC start-up... /s

mattgreenrocks 2y ago

How many startups actually need superstars? Most of them are doing glorified CRUD work. There’s nothing wrong with that! But companies should be honest with themselves about what they need. Everyone still seems obsessed with being able to pretend they somehow got the absolute best deal on the employment market instead of interviewing for the position itself.