New business survival rates aren't great. Roughly half will shut down within the first 3 years. That's still far better odds than the survival rate in Netflix's Squid Game (1 in 456) but in both cases the key to lasting longer than others is teamwork.
Many of the top VCs in the early-stage business space point to the quality of the team as being the #1 criteria for investment: there is a strong correlation between a good team and a successful outcome.
Now we've hyped it up, lets look at building your start-up squad in the early days and how you hire people into those roles.
Step one: Co-founder
First up you might want to look for a co-founder if you haven't got one already.
The Jay-Z to your Beyonce. The Luigi to your Mario. The Ben to your Jerrys.
This should be someone who has a complementary skillset to you and one which is critical to getting the business off the ground. So if you're good at software development and building a digital product, you should be looking for someone good at sales and marketing to help push that product out there. And similarly the other way round.
Beyond the skillsets, you want someone you click with and that shares your values. This is important when you consider that the co-founder will (probably) be taking a significant chunk of equity in the business, and this won't be easy to untangle in the future. Pick wisely.
Step Two: The first hire
Knowing when to make your first hire is a delicate dance. Its going to depend on a lot of things - the business you're building, the money available, the co-founder skillsets, etc. Here are some examples of likely first hires within different business types:
Software / Online product - software developer or engineer
E-commerce - growth marketer
Content - creators (most likely freelance initially)
Physical product - operations specialist
This role may end up coming in as a further co-founder or as an employee with some opportunity for equity in future, or simply as a freelancer.
You're unlikely to be able to afford to hire someone with significant experience at this stage. Focus on attitude and potential 💪
Step Three: The A Team
The next few employees are likely to be an extension of that first hire. So, for example, if you are building a software business and you've hired one developer, you are probably going to want to prioritise adding further developers as you build the product. The good thing is, you've now got someone in place that can help you with the hiring.
Your initial team of 5-10 is likely to comprise: co-founders, 3-4 specialists (eg. software or content or growth marketing), and 1-2 generalists (often interns/work experience with the right attitude).
How to hire into start-up jobs
Given the money situation (tight), you're left with the following options for finding these initial hires:
FREE - your networks / word of mouth
FREE - online communities (eg. hatchin 👋 )
PAID - LinkedIn
PAID - online job boards (eg. work in startups, Otta, Fiverr)
Go into this accepting that it could be a long process. In business as in life, its much better to spend time finding the right person rather than rushing into it with the wrong one....
Takeaways
☯️ Seek out complementary skillsets
⭐️ Focus on attitude and potential over experience for start-up jobs
⏰ Don't rush the process
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