Co-founders, team & legal

Hiring your first employees

Your first ten hires are your culture.

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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 → 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 → Where do I actually source candidates for my first hires without a recruiter budget? Your network is your best channel, but it runs dry fast, so treat sourcing as active outbound, not posting-and-praying. Mine LinkedIn, GitHub, and ... Intermediate 3 resources → How do I make a compelling offer and close a candidate who has a competing offer from a big company? You will lose on cash and brand, so don't compete there. Sell ownership, speed of learning, and proximity to the founders, and make the candidate f... Intermediate 3 resources → How do I structure and pass a candidate's probation period so I don't get stuck with a bad hire? Set a 3 to 6 month probation with written, specific milestones on day one, not a vague 'let's see how it goes.' Under Indian employment norms, a pr... Intermediate 3 resources → Should my first hires be generalists or specialists, and how do I tell the difference in an interview? Hire generalists for your first handful of seats. Early on the work shifts weekly, and a narrow specialist who only does one thing well will be idl... Intermediate 3 resources → How do I hire when I can't match market salaries and my runway is tight? Be honest about the gap and make the tradeoff explicit: below-market cash, meaningful equity, and a front-row seat to building something. Don't qui... Intermediate 3 resources → When and how do I make my first non-engineering hire (ops, marketing, or a founder's associate)? Make it the moment you, the founder, are the bottleneck on non-core work: when hours vanish into scheduling, vendor chasing, and inbox triage inste... Intermediate 3 resources →

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