Check the books Traction and Who, you could make a score card for each position based on your business goals.
Ask HN: As a first-time solopreneur how would you go about hiring the first team
11–20 of 103 posts
Re: Ask HN: As a first-time solopreneur how would you go about hiring the first team
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a good guide on how to "try doing marketing yourself for a month"? To me this shit is so alien, I can't imagine I'll even scratch the surface in a month.
That's probably the whole point of the exercise. :-) How will you be able to discern a charlatan from a good fit to your company, if what they're supposed to be at at is totally alien to you?! Go to the library, ask around, google. Even if you completely fail at marketing, you've learned something about the skills you're missing. Which your company is missing.
But doesn't doing X for 1 month make you a charlatan? For example, consider you only did frontend/ui/ux for one month. How much rubbish you would pick up over that time by googling for tutorials or watching youtube videos to get you started; and how alien a real front-end veteran would look to you.
Re: Ask HN: As a first-time solopreneur how would you go about hiring the first team
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's probably the whole point of the exercise. :-) How will you be able to discern a charlatan from a good fit to your company, if what they're supposed to be at at is totally alien to you?! Go to the library, ask around, google. Even if you completely fail at marketing, you've learned something about the skills you're missing. Which your company is missing.
But doesn't doing X for 1 month make you a charlatan? For example, consider you only did frontend/ui/ux for one month. How much rubbish you would pick up over that time by googling for tutorials or watching youtube videos to get you started; and how alien a real front-end veteran would look to you.
That's the point. You can at least filter out the rif-raf because you'll recognize yourself in those people quickly.
Re: Ask HN: As a first-time solopreneur how would you go about hiring the first team
#14Can't speak from experience, but my recommendation would be to never hire someone to do work you've not done yourself. (I believe Joel Spolsky mentions this.) So for instance try doing marketing yourself for a month. One benefit: you may discover you're good at it and don't need to hire someone, or hire someone freelance or part-time. The more important benefit: when you're interviewing a candidate, you know what you…
> So for instance try doing marketing yourself for a month.
People who try coding for a month and based on that try to hire a programmer make terrible clients/managers. I am not sure this advice would apply to anything that has even a little depth/nuance.
Re: Ask HN: As a first-time solopreneur how would you go about hiring the first team
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's probably the whole point of the exercise. :-) How will you be able to discern a charlatan from a good fit to your company, if what they're supposed to be at at is totally alien to you?! Go to the library, ask around, google. Even if you completely fail at marketing, you've learned something about the skills you're missing. Which your company is missing.
But doesn't doing X for 1 month make you a charlatan? For example, consider you only did frontend/ui/ux for one month. How much rubbish you would pick up over that time by googling for tutorials or watching youtube videos to get you started; and how alien a real front-end veteran would look to you.
You’re a charlatan if you I think that after a month you’re an expert. As long as you’re honest with yourself it can’t hurt to have some direct experience for the role you’re hiring for. A lot of people applying for the job won’t even have that month.
Re: Ask HN: As a first-time solopreneur how would you go about hiring the first team
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's probably the whole point of the exercise. :-) How will you be able to discern a charlatan from a good fit to your company, if what they're supposed to be at at is totally alien to you?! Go to the library, ask around, google. Even if you completely fail at marketing, you've learned something about the skills you're missing. Which your company is missing.
But doesn't doing X for 1 month make you a charlatan? For example, consider you only did frontend/ui/ux for one month. How much rubbish you would pick up over that time by googling for tutorials or watching youtube videos to get you started; and how alien a real front-end veteran would look to you.
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Re: Ask HN: As a first-time solopreneur how would you go about hiring the first team
#17If you really don't know anything about the skillets, maybe a consultant specialized in standing up startup teams would be a good start. After that, look for people genuinely interested in the problem domain or in their specific craft.
Re: Ask HN: As a first-time solopreneur how would you go about hiring the first team
#18Can't speak from experience, but my recommendation would be to never hire someone to do work you've not done yourself. (I believe Joel Spolsky mentions this.) So for instance try doing marketing yourself for a month. One benefit: you may discover you're good at it and don't need to hire someone, or hire someone freelance or part-time. The more important benefit: when you're interviewing a candidate, you know what you…
> So for instance try doing marketing yourself for a month. People who try coding for a month and based on that try to hire a programmer make terrible clients/managers. I am not sure this advice would apply to anything that has even a little depth/nuance.
Fair enough, let's add some nuance. Learn about the subject, but stay humble — with a month of trying (failures & success) you're equipped with very modest experience, there is far more you don't know, obviously.
Re: Ask HN: As a first-time solopreneur how would you go about hiring the first team
#19There's too little context to give meaningful advice here. What stage is your business? Pre-rev, rev, profitable? What business are you in? What part of the world are you located? Are you looking too go remote, hybrid or Co located? Really you need an advisor if I take these questions at face value. If you have funds to be able to hire a team (esp cyber security), then you've likely raised money or made money. If you…
> Really you need an advisor (…)
> (…) you should just interview (…)
But how would they go about doing that? Where does one find an advisor or the people to interview for those positions as a solo founder without experience in the matter? Feels like that is a big part of the question:
> (…) how does one start? (…) where to look for the talent?
Re: Ask HN: As a first-time solopreneur how would you go about hiring the first team
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's probably the whole point of the exercise. :-) How will you be able to discern a charlatan from a good fit to your company, if what they're supposed to be at at is totally alien to you?! Go to the library, ask around, google. Even if you completely fail at marketing, you've learned something about the skills you're missing. Which your company is missing.
But doesn't doing X for 1 month make you a charlatan? For example, consider you only did frontend/ui/ux for one month. How much rubbish you would pick up over that time by googling for tutorials or watching youtube videos to get you started; and how alien a real front-end veteran would look to you.
Yeah, the whole quote is one of those things that sounds like sage wisdom until you consider it for 30 seconds.
Even if startup founders had time to spare spending a month learning how to doing each and every task they needed to hire for (and trading money they have for time they don't is the whole point of hiring) they'd (i) have no time left to focus on the core business (ii) do a really bad job and (iii) having barely understood the basics, run exactly the same risk of hiring good interviewees with the right credentials that were actually bad at their jobs. Maybe they'd even be more sympathetic to the bad hire because well, he's better than I was