Scaling Your Team at an Early Stage Startup

Scaling an early team is simultaneously one of the most important and difficult tasks a startup has to accomplish. Particularly in the early stages, a startup’s ability to raise capital and execute on a business plan is tied more to the potential of the team, than the existing product. The cost of hiring the wrong person is far greater early on, when time and money are more scarce. Hopefully, the following tips will be helpful in hiring a rockstar team! 

First, attract the right talent. Angellist is the best resource for hiring at a startup. Job seekers on Angellist are looking for startup jobs - they know and want the startup grind. Depending on how early-stage you are, you probably won’t receive a ton of high-quality inbound applications at first. Try beefing up your company’s Angellist, Linkedin, and Glassdoor profile with the team’s past accomplishments and the company’s vision to build legitimacy on sites where candidates do their research. 

Consider a referral program - you’ve already teamed up with smart people (your colleagues and advisors). Smart people know smart people. A small incentive to post on their social channels will go a long way, especially in comparison to using a recruiting agency, many of which will run you 20% of the hire’s first-year base salary.

Now that you’ve got candidates in your pipeline, let’s talk about interviewing. When you don’t have a lot of time to spend on 30-minute introductory calls, consider an activity-based interview that is reflective of what the hire will actually be doing on the job. It will give you a tangible example of the candidate’s work, while also weeding out candidates that aren’t interested enough to be a part of the critical early team. Someone who won’t spend an hour on this step of the interview process probably doesn’t realize the importance of the problem you’re trying to solve and you don’t want this candidate on your founding team. 

When assessing “culture fit”, beware of unconscious bias. Only consider “culture fit” at the highest level. Do you want to foster a respectful, productive, inclusive culture? Awesome! Look for red flags from candidates such as: not taking/implementing feedback well in an activity based interview, speaking over or dismissing the interviewer, etc. Don’t worry about whether you see yourself grabbing drinks with the candidate after work. That’s what friends/family/significant others are for and won’t bring you the best suited candidates to get the job done. 

Make sure candidate-company expectations are aligned before investing too much of your own, and the candidate’s time. Working at an early stage startup is not for everyone. People usually weigh work/life balance and cash compensation with equity options and ownership of their work. Set expectations around compensation and hours, while also selling on career growth and the company’s potential as early on as possible. Nothing hurts worse than finding out at the offer-stage that your expectations are misaligned with your dream candidate’s. 

Lastly, when you find the right candidate, move quickly and be as flexible as you can be. Your founding team will sacrifice personal and family time to help you launch this rocketship. Show good faith by allowing them to negotiate for what’s most important to them.  

Now you’re ready to explore talent retention - but we’ll get to that in a future post!