Startups should prioritize hiring executives based on skills and experience, focus on building a strong team with high-quality individuals, and avoid overhiring to prevent burnout and toxic culture.
Startups should avoid hiring too much too soon, as it could accelerate their death, despite the pressure to impress investors and customers.
Startups often struggle with hiring, but the advice given by YC partners is to not hire too much too soon.
Most hiring advice online is written for post-product market fit companies, but for pre-product market fit startups, applying that advice could accelerate their death.
Founders often feel the need to hire more employees as a marker of progress and to impress investors and customers, despite the potential negative impact on profitability.
Focusing on employee count can be misleading for a company's success, as founders may underestimate the difficulty of hiring and managing people, and tasks such as understanding customer needs and adjusting the product are their responsibilities.
Focusing on the number of employees as a key performance indicator can be misleading and may not accurately reflect the success of a company.
Founders often believe that they are good at hiring and managing people, but in reality, it's a skill that needs to be learned and some may make the mistake of hiring just because someone is available.
Founders often underestimate the difficulty of figuring out the first experiment to run and assume experienced professionals can handle it, but they may be lost in the early stages.
Founders can't hire for tasks such as understanding customer needs and adjusting the product accordingly, as these are their responsibilities.
Startups should prioritize hiring executives based on their skills and experience, not just personal relationships or titles, and focus on addressing both big and small issues to prevent future problems.
Startups often feel the need to hire executives due to the influence of successful companies and their emphasis on having a complete team.
Founders should not hire someone just because they have a pre-existing relationship or because they want a fancy title, especially before achieving product market fit.
Focus on the big fires in your startup, but don't ignore the small ones because some of them may turn into big fires later on.
Founders must be adaptable and pivot quickly in response to market changes, while big companies should personalize their hiring decisions based on growth rate and product market fit.
Founders need to be able to quickly adapt to changes in the market and turn their ship on a dime, especially in the early stages of their business.
Big companies have a lot of employees, but the decision to hire should be personalized based on growth rate and product market fit.
Airbnb and Stripe took their time to hire their first employees, but eventually grew their teams slowly and prioritized solving the main problem first.
Airbnb and Stripe took a considerable amount of time to hire their first employees, with Airbnb taking 18 months and Stripe having a team of 8-10 people pre-launch.
The company started with a small team and grew slowly at first, but eventually ramped up their efforts.
Hiring a specialist can save a company money, as demonstrated by the example of John who helped Justin TV and Twitch with their video infrastructure, but it's important to prioritize solving the main problem first.
As a founder, don't prioritize hiring above all else; focus on building a strong team with high-quality individuals and be mindful of burn and runway.
Successful CEOs always emphasize the importance of hiring, but as a founder, it's not the most important skill to focus on right now according to YC.
VCs with experience in post-product market fit companies may not understand the needs of pre-product market fit companies, but the smartest founders innately prefer working with a smaller group of high-quality individuals.
Hiring a first engineer has been challenging due to high standards and the company's focus on over-hiring can lead to higher burn and lower runway.
If you're pre-product market fit, double down on everything discussed and don't hire until you figure out your market fit, but if you're post-product market fit, ignore everything and go crazy with hiring.