Team, Co-founders & Legal

How do I interview and evaluate candidates when I've never hired before?

A starting point

Skip trivia and whiteboard theatre, give a paid, real-world work sample that mirrors the actual job and watch how they think, communicate, and follow through. Always do reference checks and ask past managers the blunt question: would you hire them again? Hire slow and fire fast; a wrong early hire is disproportionately damaging in a tiny team.

Go deeper

Listen

🎧 Podcast
India Free Intermediate

The Neon Show, Indian Founders on Pricing, Sales & Building

On neon.fund by Siddhartha Ahluwalia podcast series (200+ episodes)

Why we picked it

The Neon Show (formerly 100x Entrepreneur) is one of India's deepest founder-and-investor interview podcasts, covering pricing, SaaS, and go-to-market from operators who've built for both India and global markets. Real, unfiltered lessons for Indian founders.

  • Indian SaaS founders often price for global markets to capture higher willingness to pay
  • Localized entry tiers and annual plans work better for price-sensitive Indian buyers
  • Learn pricing and GTM from Indian founders who've actually done it, not theory
Open neon.fund →

Read

📄 Article
Free Intermediate

How to hire your first engineer (YC Startup Library)

From YC Startup Library by Y Combinator (Greg Brockman, Harj Taggar) Essay

Why we picked it

Battle-tested YC advice on landing your critical first engineering hire, from founders who've done it at scale. It reframes hiring as a founder-led sales and persistence problem.

  • Treat hiring like fundraising: personalized outreach and relentless follow-up
  • Leverage your personal network before generic job posts
  • Generate inbound with content and a crisp mission
Open ycombinator.com →
📄 Article
Free Intermediate

Hiring & Recruiting (YC Startup Library collection)

From YC Startup Library by Y Combinator Curated essays + talks

Why we picked it

YC's full curated body of hiring wisdom, from when to hire to how to close and evaluate early employees. The best free, high-signal resource for founders hiring for the first time.

  • Wait longer than feels comfortable to make your first hires
  • Hire generalists with high slope, low ego, and comfort with ambiguity
  • Use paid work samples and honest reference checks over trivia interviews
Open ycombinator.com →

People also ask

When should I make my first hire? Hire later than feels comfortable, the best YC companies wait, because employees add cost, complexity, and communication overhead you can't easily ... Beginner 2 resources → How do I hire my first engineer when nobody's heard of my startup? Treat hiring exactly like fundraising: personalized outreach, a compelling pitch, and relentless persistence, no one great responds to a generic jo... Intermediate 2 resources → What kind of people should my first ten hires be? Generalists who are fast, low-ego, and comfortable with ambiguity, your first ten hires ARE your culture, so hire for slope over intercept and valu... Intermediate 3 resources → Should I hire full-time employees, contractors, or an agency first? For core product and anything that IS your business, hire people who own it, contractors and agencies are great for well-scoped, non-core work but ... Beginner 2 resources → How do I compensate early employees with salary and equity in India? Pay a fair, honest salary you can sustain plus meaningful ESOPs from your option pool, early employees take real risk and should share the upside. ... Advanced 3 resources → How should I price for the Indian market versus global customers? Don't just convert dollars to rupees, India is price-sensitive, so localize with lower entry tiers, annual plans, and UPI-friendly billing, then ch... Intermediate 3 resources →