Last night I was at an event for foreign entrepreneurs. Pranay Srinivasan (CEO of Sourceeasy) was asked by someone in the audience,
“How do you deal with recruiting in today’s competitive market?”
His answer was that you just need to accept the fact that it is really hard, one needs to dig into their network and to always be in recruiting mode- all the time. She was not asking for her own startup, but for her husband's startup. She mentioned that they were desperate to hire and couldn’t find any talent.
So I shared two “tips” that I have used. There are rarely mentioned (by angels or VC’s) but they are real and effective.
Before talking about them, please read this excellent post of Recruiting, from David Skok of Matrix Partners.
There are two very different kinds of people when it comes to cash affecting the way you think. The first group of people need to receive a certain amount of cash month after month and know for certain how much they make annually. This helps to lower uncertainty and the stress of having enough to pay the rent and put food on the table.
The second type is the one that doesn’t know when or how much he/she is going to get. One month can be $10k the other month can be $0. Or even spend a whole year making nothing more than the cost of living. This people look at their bank account going down and disappearing without fear because they know that eventually this will get paid (by themselves or by someone else). This mindset is extremely important when it comes to starting a startup. They don't call them “ramen” for no reason.
When someone goes to work in a startup for “certain level of salary” you should understand that the mindset could be not aligned with what you need. I have talked with people in Google, FB and Apple about leaving their job and starting a startup. My advice is what I just mentioned. First think what kind of mindset do you have and if you can you take that psychological stress. Be prepared to be in survival mode. Knowing this, here are the 2 approaches to try to recruit talent.
2 tips for hiring:
1-Wait until their startup dies.
2-Get them young before they start
Let’s start with the second one. Is not actually a tip but something we forget about. Hiring a student out of college or bootcamp (or code camp) and train her to become a great engineer. Takes time? Yes, and sometimes we don't have it in a startup. Is it inefficient? Maybe, they can be not that good or not become who we need (or become better than we ever thought). But you would you be able to teach them the culture, values and the core important things of your startup? Definitely. Is it worth it? Absolutely.
The first one is not always taken well, waiting for my startup to fail? What? Waiting for someone’s startup to fail is not something anyone wants or something we wish upon anyone. But it happens, and very often. So, when networking not only think how you can help each other, but if you would like to hire that person. Does this person embody the grit and values that you need in your organization? Often times serial entrepreneurs have just that! Remember that most startups fail.
So the question is: are you going to fail first? Follow those people that you know embody what you need and that have been apart of startups before. Check in on them, determine if they have funding and how long their runway is. It is difficult to convince a founder to let go her dream and join you, but in the moment of grief sometimes reaching out to help and offer to build another dream can actually be something good.
I want to make clear that I don't expect or want any startup to die. I want everyone with great ideas to succeed. It would be great if that was possible for everyone. But it just isn’t. Sometimes helping others to build their dream will encourage and gives us courage to build our next one.
