Podcast · 1 hr 15 min

Kailash Nadh on Building the Tech Team at Zerodha

Software Misadventures Free Intermediate India

The companion conversation, focused on how Zerodha actually built its engineering team in the Indian market, from first hires to culture. It is grounded in the same hiring realities you face here, including finding good engineers without big brand pull. A useful India specific counterweight to the mostly US framed hiring advice.

  • A strong small in house team can be built deliberately in India
  • Autonomy and low process attract and keep good early engineers
  • Hiring for judgment and long horizons beats hiring for immediate output
Open on softwaremisadventures.com ↗

It answers 3 questions

  1. When should I stop using an agency and hire my first in-house developer?
  2. How do I hire a developer without a warm network or startup connections?
  3. How should our shipping process change once we hire our first engineer and it is no longer just me pushing to production?

Read with it

  1. Battle-tested YC advice on landing your critical first engineering hire, from founders who've done it at scale. It reframes... YC Startup Library Article · Essay How to hire your first engineer (YC Startup Library) Y Combinator (Greg Brockman, Harj Taggar)
  2. Once no-code has carried you to traction, this is a grounded guide to building the early team you eventually need, including... Lenny's Newsletter Article Hiring your early team Lenny Rachitsky
  3. A deep, practitioner heavy set of guides from operators who built strong technical teams from scratch, useful once you commit... First Round Review Article · long read Hiring engineers First Round Review
  4. Finding a great engineer is only half the battle when everyone is competing for them, and this piece is about the other half:... Y Combinator Startup Library Article · Medium read Convincing engineers to join your team Y Combinator
  5. Video · 35 min The Startup Playbook for Hiring Your First Engineers and AEs Y Combinator
  6. A high-signal, battle-tested framework for evaluating engineering talent from a leader who's done it hundreds of times.... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read My Lessons from Interviewing 400+ Engineers Over Three Startups Marco Rogers
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