Our Mission

Help early-stage startups grow, recruit, hire, build teams, and stay true to their values and culture. Provide timely information and resources that help founders, CEOs, and hiring teams hire the best people and save valuable money and time.

Maximize Your Hiring Efforts

Develop your staffing plan

Even though you need to make a critical hire right away, start with your staffing plan. This plan will ensure you hire the right roles now and in the future, AND build your team within budget for the long term. You can hire those critical roles in parallel with building your plan if time is critical, but be sure to do both.

• Identify and prioritize your startup’s skills gaps versus your plan. Which missing skills most jeopardize your ability to perform?

• Can you meet your goals through contractors or outsourcing? This may also give you the most flexibility.

• Be critical about the level of people you hire (see Sam Altman’s quote below). Hire too high and you may not get the hands-on people you need and it will cost you so much more.

• Develop a written staffing plan for the next 3, 6 and 12 months. Will things change in 12 months? Yes, but a roadmap is important. Include all expenses involved in hiring; recruiting costs, equipment, payroll, travel, taxes and benefits, and of course salary, bonus, and equity.

1. Examine your skills gaps and innovation gaps before you hire.

   • Can you or your team learn these skills in time instead of hiring?

   • How long will you need these skills?

   • Would a contractor or outsourcing get you through for now?

2. If you are hiring for a position in which you are not an expert (technical founder hiring sales roles or non-technical founder hiring Engineers…).

   • Work with a person that has hired people with these skills before to help write descriptions and interview candidates.

   • Your network and investors may know people that can help.

3. Lean in on your Mission, Vision, Values and Culture to make sure you hire people that will help drive success and fit with your team.

   • People with the “right” skills but do not “fit in” is a “pass” every time for long-term work.

Help is Out There

4 resources to help develop compelling job descriptions

1. LinkedIn - Search LinkedIn for similar roles for similar companies. Feel free to use these as guides. Be sure to make it work for you.

2. Gen AI - Use ChatGPT (or other Gen AI) to write a few versions of the job description. Gen AI does a good job including format and flow.

3. Your network - Ask people in your network if they have samples for specific roles.

4. Your Mission, Vision, Values, Culture - start each job description with these. It will give you a repeatable and valuable way to start.

Startup News

Highly recommend following Peter Walker with Carta on LinkedIn. His stats, facts, and news are well worth it.

Peter’s recent report on startup team size over the past 3 years shows teams are getting smaller.

Click on the image below to see the report.

Recommended Reading

“The Startup Playbook” by Will Herman and Rajat Bhargava provides excellent first-hand knowledge across many aspects of starting and building your startup. This includes how to build culture, bring in your co-founders, and hire your first employees. Excellent reading from two successful founders.

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Parting Thought

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