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> I recently received seed funding for my next startup (http://www.podaris.com/jobs.php http://www.podaris.com/jobs.php), and am finding hiring developers to be

> I recently received seed funding for my next startup (http://www.podaris.com/jobs.php http://www.podaris.com/jobs.php), and am finding hiring developers to be extremely difficult. I'm not surprised. You're trying to hire people with experience and significant skills - for which they're probably already being paid really well. Why would they quit their current projects and come work for you? Honestly, a lot of start-ups just seem to want to hire incredible valuable people and offer almost nothing in return for that value. Everyone wants experience - most commonly because they don't know enough about the project themselves to design a test that will distinguish those who know what they're doing from those who don't (which is hardly inspiring to begin with.) Why would anyone want a high-commitment, high-risk lifestyle without the probability of commensurably high returns though? You talk about high equity but equity in a failed project's not worth diddly. It's like... will you go work for this iffy guy in his shed for a couple of years on the basis of this product he's pinky-promised is awesome? You need to offer people something they can't get elsewhere if you want to hire them. And all you're offering is the chance to interact with customers and the chance to 'shape' the product. Which is just... marketing jargon. You can't trust that to mean anything. I suspect you'd be best off designing a test so that you can hire people with less experience, or just hiring one of the free lancers and accepting the uncertainty that they're going to stick around (trade on a risk for risk basis, essentially.)

nkoren 13y ago
> I'm not surprised. You're trying to hire people with experience and significant skills - for which they're probably already being paid really well. Why would they quit their current projects and come work for you? Because I'd pay them just as well, and offer them much more exciting and meaningful work, with a potentially huge equity payoff if things go really well? > Honestly, a lot of start-ups just seem to want to hire incredible valuable people and offer almost nothing in return for that value. -- Argh, stop right there. I really need to figure out how to combat this conclusion that people jump to. People see "startup" and immediately assume "slave wages". I'm equipped to pay competitive salaries PLUS significant equity. Unfortunately, nobody seems to believe that a startup will really do that, even when I say so in black-and-white. How can I improve my messaging so that people don't jump to this false conclusion? > It's like... will you go work for this iffy guy in his shed for a couple of years on the basis of this product he's pinky-promised is awesome? This "iffy guy" is actually widely recognised as the world's top expert in this particular field, who's executed over $100M in projects in the past few years, and who is getting significant backing to set up a development team in a nice office in London's Silicon Roundabout. But when I say that "I have a startup and we're hiring full-time developers", people automatically assume that I'm some dodgy character who will pay you peanuts to work out of a shed. Obviously I need to improve my message somewhat; possibly just dropping the word "startup", since this seems to cause people to jump to wildly false conclusions. See my other replies on this thread for why freelancers are not an option for me.

nkoren 13y ago

> I'm not surprised. You're trying to hire people with experience and significant skills - for which they're probably already being paid really well. Why would they quit their current projects and come work for you? Because I'd pay them just as well, and offer them much more exciting and meaningful work, with a potentially huge equity payoff if things go really well? > Honestly, a lot of start-ups just seem to want to hire incredible valuable people and offer almost nothing in return for that value. -- Argh, stop right there. I really need to figure out how to combat this conclusion that people jump to. People see "startup" and immediately assume "slave wages". I'm equipped to pay competitive salaries PLUS significant equity. Unfortunately, nobody seems to believe that a startup will really do that, even when I say so in black-and-white. How can I improve my messaging so that people don't jump to this false conclusion? > It's like... will you go work for this iffy guy in his shed for a couple of years on the basis of this product he's pinky-promised is awesome? This "iffy guy" is actually widely recognised as the world's top expert in this particular field, who's executed over $100M in projects in the past few years, and who is getting significant backing to set up a development team in a nice office in London's Silicon Roundabout. But when I say that "I have a startup and we're hiring full-time developers", people automatically assume that I'm some dodgy character who will pay you peanuts to work out of a shed. Obviously I need to improve my message somewhat; possibly just dropping the word "startup", since this seems to cause people to jump to wildly false conclusions. See my other replies on this thread for why freelancers are not an option for me.