Gizmodo Brasil. Creating an operating plan for 2010. Whom Should You Hire at a Startup? (Attitude Over Aptitude) This post originally ran on TechCrunch.
Startups.We know the mantra: Team matters. Is this philosophy exaggerated? Overrated? Cliché? No. Whatever you’re working on now, the half-life of innovation is so rapid now that your product will soon be out-of-date. Some thoughts on recruitment – instinct over CV. Having the right team is crucial for a startup and keeping the team right as a company develops is a critical discipline.
I think this is one of the areas where a good investor director can add the most value: by leveraging experience across many startups to advise entrepreneurs on the likely impact on team requirements of growth and the other twists and turns of startup life by leveraging their network to find good candidates and recommend good headhunters (and leverage their reputation to make sure the headhunters deliver to the best of their ability) by leveraging their experience of working with many different types of manager and entrepreneur in many different situations to advise on the strength of individual candidates In other words helping our portfolio with recruitment is an important part of the VC job description. I am a big believer in the power of instinct in recruitment, and I have made many more mistakes ignoring gut feel than I have going with it. - This is going to be BIG! - Startup Recruiting Hacks.
Yesterday, First Round had its annual CEO Summit.
One of the cool things about being a fund that works with so many early stage companies is that bringing the whole portfolio together in one place results in a lot of collaborative learning opportunities. One of the topics that was discussed in a breakout session was recruiting. From what I've seen, most companies simply don't get enough people in the top of the funnel.
Finding the right person is hard, but it also starts with being a volume game. The more candidates you reach and evaluate, the better the idea you have of who you are looking for and the more you get the word on the street that you are hiring. Actually, startups tend to drop the ball on recruiting the same way they mess up in PR.
Events Events are the single easiest way to get a bunch of hiring leads in and to inform them about what you're up to. Ten Rules for Web Startups. #1: Be NarrowFocus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful.
Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do. Small things, like a microscopic world, almost always turn out to be bigger than you think when you zoom in. You can much more easily position and market yourself when more focused. And when it comes to partnering, or being acquired, there's less chance for conflict.
. #2: Be DifferentIdeas are in the air. . #3: Be CasualWe're moving into what I call the era of the "Casual Web" (and casual content creation) . #4: Be PickyAnother perennial business rule, and it applies to everything you do: features, employees, investors, partners, press opportunities. . #5: Be User-CentricUser experience is everything. . #7: Be GreedyIt's always good to have options.
. #11 (bonus!) How A Startup Named Hipster Got 10K Signups In Two Days, Without Revealing What It Does. By now you might be familiar with the startup with the funny name, as its very existence made news outlets as diverse as the Washington Post, Portfolio.com and Hipster Runoff.
And while Hipster CEO Doug Ludlow still refuses on the record to say what the site is about, at this point we’ve heard the words Yelp, Quora and location-based Q&A site being tossed around by sundry reporters, savvy Googlers and one ambitious tipster who sent us an in-depth analysis of its Javascript. But just like the hipster tribe themselves, what Hipster does is besides the point (at least at the moment).
What’s more interesting is the fact that a total of 14K people have already signed up with little information about the site’s purpose, the first 10K in two days after marketing launch. How did Ludlow do it? Drawing directly from Fork.ly‘s viral “launching soon” page, he posted the following link on Hacker News, “Want to be a Hipster? Okay Hipster, now’s your turn to delight. New business ideas, trends and innovation. 1er programme de récompense des écogestes. Need. Know. Accomplish.