This post is directed at startups that have not yet reached product/market fit.
I have nothing against hiring for the right reason--when it is clear that doing so will advance critical path quicker and/or with higher probability. When that's clear I've extolled (and am practicing) inbound hiring; when it isn't clear I think the right answer is not hiring until it is clear.
Hiring seems to be the preferred use of seed funds (by investors and founders), whereas I'd prefer a focus on customer acquisition. I realize I'm the outlier here, but even though it's the norm I nevertheless cringe when I here something like this:
Me: what's the use of funds?
Founder: we'd like to hire a designer, n front-end programmers to do slick JavaScript and round out our product, n back-end programmers to help us scale, and a data guru to help us model all the data we're generating and/or build out these complicated algos we need.
Let me unpack why this bothers me so much.
Continue reading Do you really need a full-time hire for that?.
