When hiring a manager a lot of companies go wrong in thinking that that person needs to be _senior_ (hence bosses and TPS reports). You can hire someone junior

When hiring a manager a lot of companies go wrong in thinking that that person needs to be _senior_ (hence bosses and TPS reports). You can hire someone junior to add 'professional management' - by which I mean reporting, analysis, forecasting, planning and investment appraisal. They then feed these things into the senior decision makers in the same way as technical or design staff do. These people are normally called 'management accountants' or 'project managers' or something similar. For a startup hiring someone with an accounting degree and two or three years experience offers you the chance to: - Get hold of someone bright who is disaffected with working for a big firm and driven to do something new, and do it well. - Won't believe they have a god given right to tell you how to run your business, but _will_ have a solid understanding of the basic business techniques that offer a big return on investment. - Can be given the opportunity to grow into a senior member of staff that really understands the business you are in. That way you can treat it like hiring a designer. Hiring a (senior) manager is more like hiring a CTO - something to do only when you _want_ a more radical direction change.