You’re really just looking for owners

There’s a lot that goes into being a good employee. Skills, communication, effort, foresight, focus, and so much more.

But if I had to distill it down to just one thing, the very best employees are owners.

Owners are people who take responsibility for the thing they signed up to do and just make it happen. They’ll bring others in when they need them, but you don’t have to worry about it getting done. Ownership can exist at any level of abstraction — a particular project, a hiring plan, hitting a product roadmap, owning a broad company-level metric.

These are the people that I want to hire, promote, and retain. Some of the reasons are admittedly selfish—they make my life so much easier. But more importantly, they’re the people I know the company needs if we want to succeed.

You get this feeling at the very beginning of the startup through your cofounder. They will always be the one other person in the world who cares about the company as much as you.

But a little bit after the honeymoon phase of just starting up, there will be too many months of feeling like too many things are going wrong and only you can fix them. But hopefully around then you’ll start getting these people who are owners, almost as much as you are, it will feel like the most beautiful relief.

My advice is don’t take those people for granted. Show them appreciation with words, stock, new roles and responsibilities. Whatever it takes, because you need them.