Hire your friends

People usually tend to turn the recruiting process into an exhaustive game where at the end you know everything about the potential employee and his mother. And I know that because I’ve done it hundreds if not thousands of times in the past.

But after close to 5 years of entrepreneurship, I’ve learned that you should only hire people that you feel you can be friends with. You have to feel that you can go out for beers and spend your holidays together. If you don’t, you’ll probably find it difficult to communicate with that person and, ultimately, you’ll lose time and money.

Even more than that, I believe that a company’s team is its DNA, therefore every member of the team should feel like he can be friends with any other member of the team. That’s difficult and requires a lot of trial & error during the recruiting process, but it pays off.

And I have the best example to prove that it’s f**ing worth it. For the past couple of months, my brilliant friends in the Brainient team have been building our products all by themselves back in Romania. And they’ve been doing a fantastic job although I’m in London, focusing on biz-dev and other “boring stuff”, to quote a friend. Actually, I’m starting to think they’re better off without me :-).