Startup hiring. First, get this right.

There’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for quite a while and that topic is startup hiring. Yesterday, I decided to write this post after reading a post by one of the people’s who’s thinking I thoroughly respect on startups.  I’m talking about Hunter Walk’s post a few days ago on Hiring Momentum.  It’s hard to overstate the importance of this activity when building a successful company.

People who have built successful startups and those who have invested in these companies talk about a number of factors that contribute to startup success. The fact of the matter is that research has shown that product/market fit is the top determinant of success.  Just to drive the point home, no less of a figure than Marc Andreessen famously wrote on the subject a number of years back.  At the Founder Institute, we spend quite a bit of time analyzing (along with experienced startup CEOs) each entrepreneur’s idea and getting them to validate some of their key assumptions. Thanks to this effort, the results in Colombia have been pretty phenomenal.

That said, one area where startups can help or hurt their cause is in who and how they hire.  Startups that do a good job of hiring talented people and getting them all rowing in the same direction (hopefully, a stimulating direction as well), are probably increasing their chances of success tremendously.  Depending on what stage the company is in, what’s on the line could be survival, improving efficiency, or igniting or not igniting increased growth.

Startups have a unique opportunity to attract extremely talented and motivated individuals given that about 13% of employees are actually engaged at work.  This is a topic which is close to my heart and, although I haven’t founded a successful startup, I have worked at Silicon Valley startups and have used hiring to my advantage at other companies where I have worked.  Also, aside from hearing top notch Silicon Valley startup CEOs (Founder Institute mentors) espouse about their experiences in hiring top talent, I have been able to put my own ideas to the test at the startup where I am currently working (Tappsi) where I have run workshops and, along with the team, helped define the company’s culture.

Building a company involves finding the right talent, hiring, integrating them into the team and retaining them.  So where do we start? I actually believe that the only place to start is at the end (e.g., retaining them).  How do you retain top quality people?  It’s tough to answer this question without going deeper into why you are doing what you are doing.  In the words of Simon Sinek, you start with why.

The first time I truly started to understand the importance of establishing an explicit purpose was after reading Peter Drucker’s 2001 book, Management Challenges for the 21st Century.  I had just finished a four year stint as manager of a twenty person team where, without knowing it at the time, I had used some of the principals espoused by the author and, in the process, had achieved some pretty amazing results.

Today, many in the startup world talk about the importance of culture in executing on a number of key activities with one of these being hiring and retaining the right people.  I’m sure there are many ways to define ones culture.  The classical approach (and the one I recently helped out with) is defining the company’s view of the future (vision), what the get’s everybody excited to go to work every morning (mission) and what we, as a group of people, value (values).

It’s great to have these things clearly and explicitly called out, but if the organization is nothing like the words which have been chosen to describe it, these words become hollow and ineffective.  The second part of this, which is actually the most important, is how the organization and, especially the leaders adhere to said description.  I know there are startups with a strong culture that only later decided to try to put said culture, explicitly, into words.   That being said, the combination of coherent actions in synch with a explicitly defined culture is tough to beat in terms of having collaborators who are clear on what’s expected of them and inspired by a common vision.

I’m sure there are a lot of successful startups that got this right without overthinking it as much as I’m doing here.  However, I can think of a number of startups I know that would benefit greatly from taking  a break from doing “real” work and putting some thought into the aforementioned topic.  I know that every time I’ve needed to accomplish some incredibly challenging tasks, taking time to set a vision for my specific task helped tremendously in getting the internal and, sometimes, external teams charged up and achieving more than any of us thought was possible.  In fact, I’m achieving the exact same thing right now with a semi-inspiring vision (I think I could have done a bit better in the inspiration department, but it’s working all the same).  

With respect to the other topics, there are excellent tactical articles on finding great talent, hiring these people as well as great interviewing tools and other useful tips.  As I wrote at the beginning of this post, if you’re in the wrong market or haven’t built something that people actually want, you’ve got bigger problems.  However, thinking about why you’re doing what you’re doing and why others should be incredibly enthusiastic about joining the cause will pay dividends even though it doesn’t seem like real work.

Much more talented and experienced entrepreneurs than myself have talked about exactly this topic: company culture.  Most notably, Sam Altman’s series of videos on how to start a startup with the founders of AirBnB and other superstar entrepreneurs has great insights into the importance of culture.  I’ve seen, first hand, how much more effective and successful the hiring process can by thinking about and defining the “why”.   Once  you’re clear on this, I’d bet your hiring process will benefit greatly.