Team, Co-founders & Legal
Hiring your first employees
Your first ten hires are your culture.
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 ...
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...
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...
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 ...
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. ...
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...