Who Should You Hire for an Early-Stage Startup?

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One question can make or break you as your startup grows. What are the building blocks of your company’s DNA?

This question won’t be answered by a “brand guide” or “mission statement.” Your DNA as a company has one ingredient: the people you hire.

In the early days of a startup, it’s all too easy to make hiring mistakes. You hire too quickly because you’re ambitious and eager to scale and just need to get warm bodies in seats. But just as good hires can reshape your destiny, bad hires can sink you.

The truth is: If you hire the wrong people, your startup is probably going to fail. That sounds dramatic until you consider your business is not the product you sell or the sales process you design—it’s the people you hire.

As a startup, you don’t have the luxury of making too many afghanistan telegram data hiring mistakes. The progress you make each month matters more than it would for a more established company.

Here are a few thoughts on finding the right people to give your startup the strength it needs to succeed in the long run.

The first hires in your startup aren’t going to be specialists. There is no Senior Vice President of Strategic Analysis and Future Planning. If your company has ten people, a single hire is ten percent of your company. You can’t afford specialists at this stage.

My suggestion? Hire generalists instead. Find the people who can wear multiple hats—because they will likely have to get comfortable with those hats before you start scaling.