Firing and onboarding

Startups delay firing because every hire feels expensive and personal. The cost of keeping a wrong hire is higher: they block a seat, lower the bar and train others that mediocrity is fine. Runway is short.

A simple performance loop:

1. Clear expectations in the first week (outcomes for 30/60/90 days).
2. Fast feedback when something is off — same week, not a quarterly review you do not have.
3. Short improvement window (often 2–4 weeks at early stage, with written expectations).
4. Decision — improve or exit. Do not create a six-month performance-improvement theater while the company has eight months of runway.

Fire for lack of skill only after a fair chance. Fire for lack of integrity or repeated cultural sabotage immediately. When you exit someone, be humane, legally careful (pay what you owe, mind local law) and direct with the team: ambiguity breeds rumor.

If you catch yourself rewriting the role to fit a struggling person, you are avoiding the decision. Rewrite the role only when the business need changed.

The first 90 days

The hire is not done when they sign.

• Day 1 ownership: one real problem with a named customer or metric, not "read the wiki and wait."
• Access: prod logs, analytics, repo, Slack, staging — friction here wastes the most expensive week of their grant.
• Context dump: founders record (or write) the last six months of product decisions, failed experiments and current constraints.
• Checkpoints: week 1 (environment works), week 4 (shipped something user-visible), week 12 (owns an area without babysitting).

If a strong hire is still blocked on credentials and unclear priorities at day 30, that is a founder failure, not an employee one.

Common mistakes

• Six-month PIPs on eight months of runway.
• Rewriting the role to avoid firing.
• Day-30 still waiting on credentials. That is on the founders.

Check yourself

1. Skill gap vs integrity issue. How fast do you move? Skill: fair chance and a 2–4 week written window. Integrity or cultural sabotage: immediately.
2. A strong hire has no prod access at day 30. Whose failure? The founders'. Onboarding is how you convert equity cost into velocity.

Key takeaways

• Fast feedback, short window, then decide. Runway is short.
• Fire for sabotage immediately. Fire for skill after a fair chance.
• Day-1 ownership, full access, a 90-day checkpoint.
• Do not rewrite the role to fit a disappointing hire.

Further learning

Kirsty Nathoo (YC) on startup mechanics including hiring and sharing equity:

Back to the map: hiring and early teams.