Presented @ TechStars FounderCon 2015 in Boulder
Learn how to do hiring right as an early stage startup. It's all about the people but processes & structure helps.
The 4 Ps of Sustained Agency Growth and Profitability
Hiring - Your single most important skill as a founder
1. Hiring - Your single
most important skill
as a founder
@moritzplassnig - ceo/founder - @codeship
2. Startups are simple
1. Hire great people
2. Form an amazing team
3. Build a valuable product
4. Acquire customers
5. Repeat
GREAT
PEOPLE
VALUABLE
PRODUCT
SUCCESSFUL
COMPANY
HAPPY
CUSTOMERS
3. It’s all about the people
* Yes, we’ve a diversity problem
4. I’m biased
• SaaS product selling to software engineers/teams (B2B)
• Headquartered in Boston/MA, another office in Vienna/
Austria and several remote employees
• Paying customers in 70+ countries
• Raised $2.9M in venture capital
• Building a company, not an exit
9. How Codeship found
full time team members
30%
45%
10%
15%
Inbound Events Network/Referrals Outbound
10. Focus on what you can control
• Inbound won’t work without a great, well-known brand
• Focus on Outbound but delegate (your time is too valuable)
• Hire a full time in-house recruiter
• It’s cheaper than external recruiters (x hires with 20% cut vs. 1 FTE)
• Better quality because in-house, better understanding of culture
• Solely working for you
Hiring History
FullTimeTeamMembers
-4
0
4
8
12
16
20
24
Q3'12 Q4'12 Q1'13 Q2'13 Q3'13 Q4'13 Q1'14 Q2'14 Q3'14 Q4'14 Q1'15 Q2'15 Q3'15
Team Members Total Team Members Added Team Members Lost
Hired an in-house
full time recruiter
11. Data-driven hiring
• It’s a funnel
• Sourcing = Sales funnel
• X calls/emails per day
• Result in Y opportunities
• And Z hires
• Track, track, track
• Every single funnel stage
• Velocity
• Conversion rates
• Everything per role
• Ideally per channel
12. A few more tips
• Understand which channel works for different audiences
• Executive hires (VP/CXO)
• Engineers vs. Business hires
• Seniors vs. Juniors vs. Interns
• Channels work differently for different locations
• Use proper tooling
• Google Docs, Trello, etc. is a good first step
• Purchase an Applicant Tracking System like Greenhouse asap
15. – RANDOM SUPER SMART PERSON
“Hire people who are smarter than
you are.”
16. Great people have a lot of
great opportunities
• Sell first, convince them why it’s worth to go through your
hiring process => they have to want the job
• Afterwards focus on evaluating (only works if you source the
right people)
• Understand your talent pool
• You have to sell harder for a CXO/VP hire than an intern
• Make sure you have choice (hint: it’s like fundraising)
18. Evaluate candidates fast
• Define a process that allows you to move candidates through
your hiring funnel fast: Don’t waste their or your time
• Understand what you don’t know and where you need help of
other people (from your team or externally)
• Deal with different audiences differently (intern vs. senior
executive)
• Follow the process
20. Perfect depends on a
thousand things
• Personal fit (yes, you have to like your hires)
• Phase of your company (1st hire vs. post Series C)
• Location (San Francisco/Valley vs. overseas)
• Role (Executive vs. Intern)
• Culture (remote vs. one office)
• Diversity (focus on it early on or you will fail)
• Team fit (great individual maybe won’t play well with your team)
22. Be ready to make an offer
• Make sure you have the budget
• Define compensation ranges (look at formulas from
companies like Buffer)
• Understand market rates for your location
• Make sure your investors / cofounders / team is on board
24. Hiring doesn’t end with a
signed offer
• You won’t know whether somebody is a great fit until you have
worked with that person for a while
• This goes both ways, maybe you are not a great fit for the new
hire
• Constantly be hiring and ready to back-fill positions
• Onboarding is crucial for Employee Happiness & Retention
and therefore for Referrals
27. Hiring is a team effort
• Great people want to work with other great people
• Invest in your team
• Work hard on your culture
• Update the whole team about your open positions constantly
• Make sure they understand the profile extremely well
• Give them helpful feedback regarding their referrals
28. The faster and better you hire, the
faster you build a great company
29. Candidates
(3) Evaluation
(4) Offer/Closing
(5) Onboarding
(2) Selling
Happy team members
(6) Referrals(1) Sourcing
Take it seriously
• Hiring is your life blood -
always be hiring
• Your hiring process should
be an unfair advantage
• Speed is key, both for hiring
& firing
30. Hiring - Your single most
important skill as a founder
and startup