Guide

Building the company

First hires

Hire generalists for the bottleneck. Specialists amplify a machine that already works. The test is which scarce skill unlocks the next learning loop.

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Until you have a repeatable product and a clear bottleneck, generalists beat specialists. You need people who will talk to users, write the ugly first version, fix production at 1 a.m. and revise the roadmap without a committee. Specialists (platform SRE, enterprise AE, brand designer) amplify a machine that already works. They struggle when the machine does not exist yet.

Typical early sequence for a B2B software startup:

  1. Founders cover everything until a clear time sink appears (usually engineering throughput or founder sales capacity).
  2. First eng hire(s) — often full-stack or "product engineer" — to increase iteration speed while founders keep customer contact.
  3. Second wave — another engineer, or a designer / founding AE depending on whether the bottleneck is product clarity or pipeline.
  4. Specialists after signals — once unit economics and a GTM motion are visible, hire for the constrained function.

Warning

Hiring a VP of Sales or a big marketing team before you can describe who buys, why they buy and what the sales process looks like is a classic premature scaling failure. Process cannot fix an unclear product.

Consumer and deep-tech companies diverge: a consumer app may need a growth generalist earlier; a hard-tech company may need domain scientists before any GTM hire. The test is the same: what is the scarce skill that unlocks the next learning loop?

Trade-off

Hire ahead of revenue vs hire behind the pain. Hiring ahead burns runway and creates idle people who invent busywork. Hiring only when founders are drowning means you hire in panic and lower the bar. A practical middle: hire when the founders have been the bottleneck for several weeks and you can describe the role's first 90 days in concrete outcomes.

Early startups often mix full-time, contractors and agencies. Core product and IP should be full-time (or very long-term contractors you treat like team) with equity when possible. Burst capacity (migration, design sprint, tax prep) can be contractors with clear scopes. Agencies for brand sites can work; agencies for your core application usually create a product you do not understand. International hiring adds payroll, IP assignment and equity-plan complexity — local counsel matters.

Common mistakes

  • Specialists before the machine works.
  • Hiring a VP of Sales to "set up process" on an untested ICP.
  • Using agencies for the core application.

Check yourself

  1. The bottleneck is iteration speed and founders still talk to every customer. Who is hire #1? A product-shaped engineer, not a specialist SRE or a VP of Sales.
  2. You cannot describe the first 90 days in outcomes. Ready to hire? No. You will hire in panic or invent busywork.

Key takeaways

  • Generalists for bottlenecks. Specialists after the machine works.
  • Hire when founders have been the constraint for weeks and the 90-day plan is concrete.
  • Premature sales and marketing orgs are a failure mode.
  • Keep core product on the payroll. Contractors for bursts, not the heart of the codebase.

Further learning

How those people actually get hired: founder recruiting.

Hiring and early teams

First hires, compensation bands, equity grants by role, and culture.

Product-market fit

What fit feels like, how to measure it, the false positives that fool teams, and what changes after you find it.

Go-to-market strategy

ICP, positioning, motions and channels: how a product reaches the people who will pay.