Whom you hire is more important than what position they have.
In the early stages of a company’s development, there is a single “person” you should never bring on board. However, they often end up working for startups because they know how to present themselves in the best light possible.
As far as I can tell, they are eager to join a startup because
(1) they have already demonstrated that they cannot function in any other setting and
(2) they believe they can thrive in an environment where things are chaotic, unclear, and rarely quantified or monitored. Where drama can be cloaked as a normal action.
To put it mildly, a startup office is a chaotic environment.
You come up with ideas, put them into action, fail quickly, and try again. In such a setting, it is extremely challenging to determine whether or not a given resource is genuinely productive.
Raising money from investors is not a measure of success any more than completing a task.
And I’ve seen that happen to a couple of companies I recently helped.
There is exactly one person in charge of marketing and communications at each of these organizations who meets these criteria.
Both times the company had to fire the employee, the individual was bitter and resentful, and made threats the company could not carry out.
Avoid working with people who are unable to provide you with a concrete promise of what they can accomplish, and realize that if they don’t deliver, they will leave your organization.
Don’t stop making progress. There are others that yearn to perform the grunt work and will stop at nothing to see real results realized.
Achieving anything worthwhile by just filling your time does not signify progress.
One terrible employee may ruin an entire company, and unfortunately, there are many more people like that out there searching for a free ride than you might imagine. I doubt they are nasty people, but they seem to believe their own ridiculous claims.
Before you’ve grown to the point where you can absorb a person as I described above, it’s best to stick with people you know or who are known to people you know.
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Have a good day, everyone!
Brian Imambaks
