Startup Hiring

Hiring in the early stage of a startup is not a straightforward activity and is a tough job by any standard. Most founders approach early stage hiring based on their personality and gut and they often go wrong on this. The initial few hires will set the culture of the organisation and are extremely critical to the success of the org in the initial months and years. A few wrong hires will guarantee startup failure but it’s not always apparent to the founder that it is what is the root cause.

Hiring in the early stage is also very tough. You don’t have any brand recognition. And the risk is significantly high for anyone joining you as the company can shut down anytime and the person doesn’t know when he or she will be out of the job. Attracting the right employees to this high risk environment is difficult because people prefer to be in a safe zone. And you as a founder are now fighting against the brand of FAANG companies as well as all the established and late stage startups in the region.

I have seen many startup founders focus on hiring rockstars, thinking they are needed for the success of a startup. My advice is generally the opposite. Unless you are a second time founder or a seasoned exec with a large network, don’t try to hire rockstars unless you have some trust established with them already. Instead, hire and bet on people who will grow and become rock stars along with you. Just like angels/VCs search for unproven founders with vision and chutzpah whom they want to back, founders and leaders should scout and back people who are hungry for growth but are unproven. A lot of talent around the world is hidden, waiting to be discovered and you should build your own capabilities and networks to unearth them. Many of these folks are not from Ivy League in the States or IITs/IIMs in India or working in top pedigree companies. However, dozens of founders, leaders and recruiters still reach out to the same set of candidate pool everyday and fail to elicit responses or match their comps. This further contributes to the echo about the tough hiring market and the salaries going sky high.

At Razorpay we have created many such rockstars over time. And we will create more of them in future. Hiring people ahead of their growth curve and giving them freedom and space to fail has helped us continue scaling at every stage. Many of our best people be it engineering, product or sales are not from the top colleges and many have very unconventional paths in life but they ended up finding a home with us.

Also, during the early stage, it’s immensely better to hire generalists rather than specialists. Unless you are building something on the cutting edge where you need folks with a lot of depth in certain technologies, it’s better to hire people with a high degree of ownership and ability to work in an ambiguous work environment. Many folks trapped in the corporate systems itch for a work environment like a startup. A lot of people also do much better as a generalist rather than a specialist. However, you need to develop your own intuition on filtering for such traits and people who will thrive in this kind of environment. Failed entrepreneurs are usually a great fit having seen the grind of an early stage startup before and learning a lot from the failure. People who like creating or hacking together something new in their free time are passionate about technology and find it enjoyable to work without structures. They are also more suited to thriving in ambiguous work settings In your network, you will know of friends or people who have a knack of getting things done, and people who are trustworthy. These traits along with ability to execute make for great attributes for early hires. Last but not the least, hiring will continue to be a tough problem despite a lot of effort and you will get many rejections from good candidates even at the last minute. Don’t give up or get turned off if you are not able to hire on the first try. Keep developing relationships with the potential people over months or years. The longest I have taken to hire someone is about 5 years. Even now I focus on building relationships with people who I believe are trustworthy and whom I admire because I will learn a lot working with them. Oftentimes, many good candidates need to be courted and nurtured for some time so that they can build trust on you before they can commit to work for you.

There is a belief that hiring the next two engineers will greatly accelerate product velocity and increase the chances of reaching PMF or the next milestone. But hiring any engineer in the early stages is difficult and if you are not able to close it soon, then it becomes very frustrating. A common mistake that founders make in this situation is to lower the hiring bar when they can’t find candidates with the desired traits. Once lowered, it’s extremely difficult to raise the hiring bar again. As Steve Jobs said, A players hire A players, B players hire C players. This is true in more ways than one. And there is so much to do in early stage startups that you absolutely do not want the additional complexity of dealing with people who are not aligned to the organisation and don’t have the capability to get things done independently. Any advantage you may feel you gain by hiring quickly will be lost in the overhead of getting work done.