All Articles

Early Startup Hiring, What we've learned?

Ahmad Salah

Head of Product

Releases

Aug 13, 2024

Sam Altman once said, "The team you build is the company you build." After being in the startup game for 6+ years now, I've realized this isn't just a clever quote! it's a fundamental truth.

Your early hires are your company's DNA. It's a cliché because it's true. Just as DNA shapes every aspect of an organism, these first team members will shape every aspect of your company. Most founders think they get this. Most don't.

Define Culture Before

Most startups get this backwards. They hire a bunch of people, then try to figure out their culture. That's like trying to determine your personality after letting random strangers make all your life decisions.

Write down your culture before you write your first job post. I mean literally write it down. PostHog's founders created their entire public handbook before hire #2. This isn't just documentation - it's decision-making in advance. It forces you to think about:

  • What kind of company you're actually building

  • Who will thrive in that environment

  • What traits matter most in your early team

This becomes your hiring compass. Without it, you're just collecting talented people and hoping they somehow form a coherent company. They won't.

Remember They're Human

This seems obvious but is surprisingly rare in practice. Your candidates are making one of the biggest decisions of their lives. Treat the process with the gravity it deserves.
Being human doesn't mean being soft. You can be both rigorous and empathetic. In fact, you must be both.

Transparency Wins

Your job posts should make most recruiters uncomfortable. They should be so transparent they make traditional job ads look like they're hiding something. Because most are.

Include:

  • Exact interview steps and interviewer names

  • Real tasks candidates will handle (we link to actual GitHub issues)

  • Concrete salary ranges with a public calculator

  • The hard parts of the role (more on this in a moment)

This seems scary. It's not. It's efficient. It lets the wrong people opt out before wasting everyone's time.

The Power of the Unsell

I learned this game-changing tactic from Kevin Yien's blog about his time at Stripe. Instead of the traditional "sell" conversation, he would send candidates an "unsell" email - a detailed list of the hardest parts of the job. The gnarly challenges. The frustrating realities. The things most companies carefully hide until after you've signed.

In Kevin's experience, about 30% of candidates would walk away after reading these brutal truths. And that's exactly the point.

We've adopted this practice, and it's transformative. The candidates who stay don't just accept these challenges - they're energized by them. They come in eyes wide open, ready for the hard parts, and eager to tackle them head-on. This isn't just hiring - it's future-proofing your team.

It feels counterintuitive to potentially scare away great candidates right at the finish line. But as Kevin points out, it's far less painful than spending a year onboarding someone only to have them leave when they finally discover these realities themselves.

What This Means In Practice

  1. Write your culture doc before your job posts

  2. Make your hiring process uncomfortably transparent

  3. Tell candidates the hard truths before they accept

  4. Take your time - gaps hurt less than wrong hires

  5. Trust your gut when something feels off

  6. Look for trajectory over current capabilities

  7. Remember that skills can be learned, but values are core

The best founders I know treat early hiring as their most important job. Not a task to delegate. Not something to rush through. But the single most leveraged activity they can do.

They're right.

Your early team isn't just building your product. They're building your company. Choose wisely.

Explore More

Templates, Best Practices, and Impact on Hiring Success

Releases

Aug 13, 2024