While I appreciate Carson's candidness in blogging how they do things, there's a couple of dangerous things in his recommendations.
"I’d recommend waiting until you’re overwhelmed with your work."
This is a bad idea. Do not. Hire when you can afford to pay close attention to what you are doing. Your first hire is crucial to your company culture and direction, so you need to be on the spot here. Packed schedule and cognitive overload do not a good hiring setup make.
Additionally, that recommendation assumes that you are hiring someone to do the stuff that you don't have the time to do. While that's certainly true and helpful in many cases, it shouldn't be the whole truth. I like the maxim "hire people smarter than yourself". Because if you do, maybe you'll see that you weren't packing your schedule with the right things after all.
"Avoid hiring a friend as a first employee."
Right, there is the fact that it potentially changes the dynamic. But not in all cases. If you, say, hire your closest friend since childhood, it's very possible that your friendship will survive anything the work life throws at you, and makes that in turn stronger. On the other hand, hiring a more 'distant' friend has the massive benefit that you not only know the person, but likely know their network, too, and there is no better filter or background check than sharing the same social circle. Carson does mention this in "ask friends for recommendations" of course.
"I’d recommend your first employee should be a designer with strong frontend dev skills."
Um. What if that's exactly what we don't need? Ok, cheap shot, but it's a bit silly to say that everyone needs a designer-dev (then again, Treehouse training does prepare people for that...).
And while he says that you should start with freelancers, he doesn't mention that the first hire can also (in most legislations) start as a contractor or on trial period, which is a safety net for both the employee and the employer.
Yeah, some of the recommendations are specific to his application and business, generalizing poorly to other startups.
For tech startups actually doing real tech development, like a new class of distributed database, the advice about (1) hiring freelancers and (2) needing front-end dev skills is obviously incorrect. Sometimes, the best first hire is a very senior software engineer that has the domain expertise and experience to lay the groundwork for a code base. The parts you can outsource effectively are the parts that are not core to your business success and you have to be able to identify which parts are which.
A first hire should be able to lead a role working on a core part of the business, whatever that business may be. The competent execution of the core part of the business will be a primary determinant of success.
there is also nothing wrong with hiring a friend in a funded tech startup (as employee #1). I'd actually recommend it, because you are still in that phase where you are looking for people to work with you and not for you. And just like when finding a co-founder, getting along with a person is very important.
I thought about this more after my comment. Yes, this is very true. Finding employee #1 is different from finding a co-founder but not by much, especially if you want them to stick around and work well with you. And founding a company with someone you are already friends with is I think much more common that founding with someone who you've just met.
Clearly you'll need both devs and designers. The theory behind hiring a good designer/frontend dev is that it'll allow you to iterate on UX much quicker, which is usually a bigger win for your customers.
Clearly this is generalized advice so take it with a grain of salt.
It might be a good idea in your blog posts to not write them as so absolute and more circumspect (for some of the points) since the devil is in the details for most things like this. And it's hard to cover all bases with the appropriate caveats in a short blog post.
Statements like this clearly indicate what has worked for you and are good "One thing that has always worked really well for me is to hire a freelance designer and developer to build the first version of the product." (helpful) while a statement like this is to absolute "I’d recommend your first employee should be a designer with strong frontend dev skills. Do not hire a customer support person." in part because there is no caveat as to which cases and types of startups this applies to. Good info though just something to think about.
"the first hire can also (in most legislations) start as a contractor or on trial period, which is a safety net for both the employee and the employer."
Great point. That's happened to us in several instances.
How do you then handle negotiations? Contracting rates are often a lot (2x-5x) higher than fulltime employment. Do you do the contracting on a really low (contracting) rate, or do you succeed in explaining they will go down 3x in salary once they get the 'real' job?
Generally people understand that contracting rates aren't applicable to full-time employment. Primarily because their time isn't 100% booked as a freelancer.
An interesting dichotomy about blog posts like this in general. They tend to benefit people who already know something and might pickup up an idea or two that they hadn't thought of. They are able to see the fit because of their past experience and can tell right from wrong if you want to call it that. But a post about something that you know nothing about can many times lead you in the wrong direction as you don't know enough to even see where the particular info fits with your situation as you have illustrated above.
Because I suck at business, I've had had to hire employee #1 way too many times. Here's what I've learned:
1) Hire someone with skills that fill in deficiencies that you have. If you hate paperwork, find someone who is diligent. If you like meeting customers, find someone who will do the heavy lifting when you've sealed the deal.
2) Don't hire a jerk, and make sure you get non-competes and non-solicitation agreements in place. Take your prospect out to lunch and watch how they interact with the waitstaff. That's a good window into their behavior, unless they are very shy.
3) Be a good example - any character flaw your employee picks up on will be parroted by them if they can get away with it.
I'd have more, but like I said, I'm not too good at this :)
I respect Ryan and usually enjoy his advice, but I must say I disagree with most that's written here.
Having freelancers who have 0 emotional attachment to your vision build the first version of your product and then replace them with someone else is a really bad idea in my experience. Your #1 employee should be someone who is almost as excited about the product as you. Furthermore, they should ideally have substantial skills and experience and complement you and the rest of the founders well. Most important: they should be a culture fit. Competitive salary and benefits shouldn't be cruical for the first employee. Vision and stock options should. Trying to save money by hiring someone less experienced or indifferent to your vision does not pay in the long run.
Ryan's advice is more about economics, but I feel that, since we're talking about hiring the first person, it should have been about vision and personality.
Fair comment. I think most people get too mired down in hiring that first person, instead of getting to MVP. Better to crank it out, get traction, and then build the proper team. Sure, it'd be better to hire the perfect person first, but this isn't always an option.
I couldn't agree more, hiring from the hip just to ship something just screams red flag.
As an employee, I want to come into a business knowing that each of my team members is as dedicated to the project as I am or is able to get me amped up for it. Knowing that one of them is only temporary (especially if they're one of the first employees) makes me question how serious the company actually is to make a quality product as opposed to trying to get dollars in the door as soon as they can. It also makes me question whether my employment is seen as just a stepping-stone as well.
Don't forget that when you get to the point of Hiring Employee #1, tell them that you may have to fire them or that they may be let go through not fault of their own if the revenue and expenses don't line up the right way.
I have had that conversation with each of my new hires (we're at 10 people). I want them to know up front that they're taking on some risk and that there's no free pass in a small company in the same way that there is in a big company.
That all may seem obvious to anyone reading here. It may seem to be an implied part of joining a small company (or any company). But that part of the conversation is important. It also reminds people that their work has actual value.
> tell them that you may have to fire them or that they may be let go through not fault of their own
This is really great advice. If there's one thing almost as good as being in rock-solid employment, it's having a clear and accurate view on what the stability of your employment position is.
"Be generous with benefits" seems like a good policy in general, but should be optimized for employee #1 (and the next few).
I wouldn't feel a need to get excellent healthcare for my first few employees if they have existing good insurance on their own (I plan to keep my $100/mo HSA plan indefinitely), but I value a $10k equipment budget and basically unlimited Amazon book ordering more than they cost to provide, I'd value a place to receive packages during the day, including cases of ammo, far more than the cost to provide that. If you are a tiny startup, don't just do cookie cutter benefits, pick benefits your current and prospective employees would particularly value.
I'm not sure about spending a marginal dollar on benefits vs salary.
Well you dont have to worry about heathcare as the NHS takes care of that.
Incorporating is quick. Taxes are simpler than the states theres only one sales tax, one income tax and none of this complex mixture of 52 state taxes.
BUPA is pretty cheap (maybe 1/5 of a US health policy if healthy and young down to 1/25 or less if you have pre-existing conditions) because it's just an add-on to NHS.
But not in the context of a startup which is the context I was talking about your right a lot of the big firms on the FTSE will offer BUPA or somthing similar.
I had tweeted Ryan the suggestion of writing this post yesterday and am delighted that he's published it already. I was considering hiring employee #1 for WP App Store and this post has given me some extra confidence that the time is right. Thanks again Ryan. I'd love to hear experience and advice from HN'ers on this topic as well. Fred Wilson, perhaps a post of your own?
I haven't drafted the job posting yet, but if you're interested, sign up to the email newsletter at http://wpappstore.com and I'll send out an email in the next couple of days.
"I’d recommend waiting until you’re overwhelmed with your work." This is a bad idea. Do not. Hire when you can afford to pay close attention to what you are doing. Your first hire is crucial to your company culture and direction, so you need to be on the spot here. Packed schedule and cognitive overload do not a good hiring setup make.
Additionally, that recommendation assumes that you are hiring someone to do the stuff that you don't have the time to do. While that's certainly true and helpful in many cases, it shouldn't be the whole truth. I like the maxim "hire people smarter than yourself". Because if you do, maybe you'll see that you weren't packing your schedule with the right things after all.
"Avoid hiring a friend as a first employee." Right, there is the fact that it potentially changes the dynamic. But not in all cases. If you, say, hire your closest friend since childhood, it's very possible that your friendship will survive anything the work life throws at you, and makes that in turn stronger. On the other hand, hiring a more 'distant' friend has the massive benefit that you not only know the person, but likely know their network, too, and there is no better filter or background check than sharing the same social circle. Carson does mention this in "ask friends for recommendations" of course.
"I’d recommend your first employee should be a designer with strong frontend dev skills." Um. What if that's exactly what we don't need? Ok, cheap shot, but it's a bit silly to say that everyone needs a designer-dev (then again, Treehouse training does prepare people for that...).
And while he says that you should start with freelancers, he doesn't mention that the first hire can also (in most legislations) start as a contractor or on trial period, which is a safety net for both the employee and the employer.