Team Quotes - Page 151

One of the pieces of advice that we give at YC is: try to work together on a project rather than just doing an interview.

Employees will only add more value over time.

Most of the best hires that I've made in my entire life have never done that thing before.

Companies that I've been very involved with, that have had a very bad first hire in the first 3 or so employees never recover from it.

... you can think about that for everyone you hire: will I bet the future of this company on this single hire? And that's a tough bar.

In YC experience, 2 or 3 co-founders seems to be about perfect.

If someone is choosing between joining McKinsey or your startup it's very unlikely they're going to work out at the startup.

You have to let your team get all the credit for all the good stuff that happens, and you take responsibility for the bad stuff.

We talk to a team they've gotten new things done, that's the best predictor we have that a company will be successful.

If you compromise and hire someone mediocre you will always regret it.

... if you talk to say any of the first 40 or 50 employees, they all feel like they were a part of the founding of the company.

... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.

... you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small numbers of employees.

In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.

The second part of how to hire: try not to.

Investors will sort of like write the check and then, despite a lot of promises, don't usually do that much; sometimes they do.

For most of the early hires you make in a startup, experience doesn't matter very much, and you should go for aptitude.

You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.

The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad.

You should be able to describe any employee as an animal at what they do.

... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.

Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.

A lot of people treat choosing their cofounder with even less importance than they put on hiring. Don't do this.

To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone.

Later, you should learn to hire fast and scale up the company, but in the early days the goal should be not to hire. Not to hire.