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Founders cannot outsource recruiting. “Recruiting is the most important thing because you need creativity; you need motivated people. Ideally, the early people are all geniuses. They’re self-managing, low-ego, hardworking, highly competent, builders, technical—maybe one or two sellers—but you can’t watch everything. You can’t micromanage everything. The early people are... show more
223,051 görüntüleme • 10 ay önce •via X (Twitter)
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Full episode:
The early member of any startup should be a believer, not an employee... This simple thing can make things very easy
Relatedly, I sold my startup to a top 10 Fortune 100 company, walked away, and they promptly ran it into the ground.
Early hires set the tone… it's like planting the seed of the whole culture.
A very underrated aspect to determine if a company will be successful. Not only if they possess the talent, but if they possess the means to attract other talent.
Facts. If you outsource the foundation, the house won't hold. Early hires aren't just staff; they are the DNA of the company. You need "default-alive" builders who can execute without a manual.
A founder’s leverage comes from the people they choose, not the tasks they delegate. The bar only stays high when the founder holds it.
my thoughts on who to hire at startups: antifragile people
The best minds seek not just opportunity, but a tribe of equals, where every interaction sparks growth, not drag. Remember, the company you build is but a reflection of the people you choose to walk beside you. Choose wisely, for they are the architects of your legacy.
I've burned through 40+ developers in four years trying to build Uniflow. The ones who stayed and delivered weren't the most credentialed or expensive. They were the ones I personally vetted and felt a genuine connection with. The moment I let someone else filter candidates, the quality dropped instantly. Nobody else has the same skin in the game or gut feel for culture fit.
True that early hires shape the whole spirit of a company. But total control can slow growth if the founder becomes a bottleneck. The hard part is knowing when to keep the wheel and when to hand off a bit.
Delegating early hiring is like asking someone else to assemble a "perfect human" for you. You end up with a Frankenstein's monster: it functions, but it's a complete misfit of a chicken leg, gecko palm, wood, etc. Build the right thing from scratch!
As a founder I’ve learned that the hardest part about recruiting isn’t finding the right profiles, it’s getting them interested. This is our answer to any founder who struggles hiring engineers:
Fundraising gets headlines; recruiting decides if the story continues. Early hires become the product’s DNA and the culture that ships it. You can delegate sourcing, never the judgment. That “walk into the room and pick one” test is brutal—and exactly right.
The first 10 hires are the company.
@naval is my best friend who i never met. this is how i listen to everything you say. it feels great!
The first people you hire don’t just build the product — they become the product.
Number one skill for startup founders. Not two or three. Number one. Who will come help you rob the bank.
Day-55 a new fresh start try to cover yesterday's work and today's work also,, it takes some extra efforts but try to do so... Stay Hard💪🏻
@piyush100x
This is non-negotiable. Outsourcing early hiring is outsourcing your company’s soul. The moment you stop being the chief recruiter is the moment your vision gets diluted. Agree #startup #founders #recruiting #leadership #hr #tech #entrepreneur
Hire slow, fire fast. Prioritize cultural fit and adaptability.
This perfectly articulates why founder-led recruiting is non-negotiable in the early stages. It's not just about finding talent; it's about shaping the company's foundational culture and capabilities. Every early hire is an extension of the founder's vision and values. Outsourcing this critical function introduces a layer of abstraction that inevitably dilutes quality and alignment.
love it. your assets are your people
early recruiting is brutal. hands-on or bust
Good points made...
Founders outsourcing recruiting is like a chef hiring someone else to taste the soup; if you don’t pick your team, don’t be shocked when the kitchen’s on fire.
Otherwise like the ship of Theseus, the company will morph into something else...
Yup stay with another founder/ early employee not at your level for long enough and it will sap your energy
goooddddd takeeeeeeee🙏
“This is true. I noticed most people fail not because of income, but because they delay investing for years.” Thank you 🙏
In my book I wrote about how the people who walk with you in the tough moments shape everything that comes after. Hiring early is exactly that. You are choosing who will walk with you when the lights go out.
Hiring the best talent is an important factor to the success of any company
Founding employee is like backbone to company they set the early vision and culture of a company
![Sam Altman on the biggest mistake startup CEOs make when scaling a company “When you’re a Seed or Series A company, you spend a huge amount of effort recruiting, but almost no effort retaining talent — and that is [the right strategy] at the beginning. But if you don’t shift to viewing retaining talent as much of your job as recruiting talent, you eventually have some level of a disaster on your hands.” Sam recalls Mark Zuckerberg speaking at Y Combinator and saying he only hires people he’d report to if the roles were reversed. Sam reflects on this: “If you’re hiring people that are that good — which you should be doing — they have as many opportunities as you do… And so if you don’t make the role good enough that you yourself would stay in it, then you have a hard time retaining your best people for a long period of time.” Sam gives three pieces of tactical advice for CEOs who want to retain their best people: 1. Spend one-on-one time with your best people “The thing that your best 5-10 people crave the most is time with you, the CEO. And that is something that as people get busier, they spend less and less time on. Some of the best CEOs in our portfolio, every month they will take out for a one-on-one dinner or drinks or something each of their best 10 people. This is a huge time commitment. If you think about it, you only get 30 dinner slots in a month. It’s a really big thing to do. But I think it actually works because that is the thing these people really crave… They want you to ask them what you think they should be doing and listen to them and have a personal connection. That’s super important.” 2. Continually give them more responsibility “I think if you stop giving people more responsibility, they will eventually leave. If they get to take on new tasks every year or additional tasks every year, they’re happier.” 3. Proactively re-up their compensation “I think most founders are very bad about proactively re-upping — to the level that they should — their top 5-10 lieutenants.” Video source: Khosla Ventures (2016)](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1861754348096938405/ext_tw_video_thumb/1861727747984490496/pu/img/s1k5zehxSNRkrz7g.jpg)
![Naval Ravikant’s checklist for starting a company “The most important thing is there are no formulas. At the end of the day, you have to do what you love, and you have to do it even though people tell you it’ll never work. But that being said, if there was a formula [for starting a company], I would put it something like this.” Naval started seven companies before AngelList and this is the checklist he recommends running through before starting a startup: 1. Pick a great cofounder. This is most important: “You can do a company on your own, but it’s like you can raise a child on your own, but you probably shouldn’t. You need someone who’s going to be there with you.” This has it’s own checklist. Your cofounder should be: a. Very high intelligence (”hopefully they make you feel dumb, or they’re not smart enough”) b. Very high energy (”They should be extremely hardworking. A founder is someone who never has to be motivated. You should not have to be telling them to do their job.”) c. Very high integrity. (”a smart, hardworking crook who’s going to cheat you is the worst kind of person to be paired up with.”) 2. Pick a very large market. “Notice I don’t talk about the idea. I think ideas are almost irrelevant… The more important thing is that you pick a large space that you’re knowledgeable and passionate about. And then you will figure out what the right thing to do within that space is.” You want to be able to say to investors: “This is a space where there’s a huge market. I’m really knowledgeable and passionate about it. Here’s the great person that I have doing it with me. And here’s the minimum viable product that we have built. That will show that we can test in the marketplace… You iterate until you get to product/market fit… And then you go and you raise money from people you trust. And you use that money to scale.”](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1930592783535874225/amplify_video_thumb/1930575280118091776/img/tckUZIL13jo_NRF_.jpg)
![Ben Horowitz advice to CEOs “You want to be liked and respected in the long-run. Not the short-run.” “You have to be able to tell [your team] the truth in a way that you probably don’t tell most of your friends the truth,” the a16z co-founder explains. “Anthropologically, we want people to like us so we tell them what they want to hear. But on a company level or if your on the board of somebody’s company, you have to be able to tell them what they don’t want to hear. That’s the most important thing you’re going to say. And yes, they’re not going to like it when you say, but over time it can save the company.” Ben continues: “That’s what leadership is about. If everybody agrees with the decision, then you didn’t add any value, because they would’ve done that without you. The only value you ever add is when you make a decision that most people don’t like, and that’s where leadership comes in… That’s the thing that takes practice.” He gives Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as an example: “When Jensen talks about how you have to get to near-death to get yourself to do that, I think that’s true. It’s hard to build that [muscle of telling people what they don’t want to hear] if everything is going great.” Source: Lenny Rachitsky (Sep 2025)](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2065884409849635028/amplify_video_thumb/2065770442451722240/img/gqab7xxYRKcXdGjd.jpg)
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