Team, Co-founders & Legal

What kind of people should my first ten hires be?

A starting point

Generalists who are fast, low-ego, and comfortable with ambiguity, your first ten hires ARE your culture, so hire for slope over intercept and values over pedigree. Avoid narrow specialists and 'big company' operators who need process to function. Every early hire should be someone you'd happily follow, not just someone who can do a task.

Go deeper

Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it's here.

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

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 →
📄 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 →

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 → 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 do I interview and evaluate candidates when I've never hired before? Skip trivia and whiteboard theatre, give a paid, real-world work sample that mirrors the actual job and watch how they think, communicate, and foll... Intermediate 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 →