Start-ups Hiring : Betty or Veronica?

As a start-up founder, faced issues on paying enough for talent and watching a higher paying company walk away with the talent?

There are 2 ways you could land good talent at your company post the hard-work of sourcing it:

a. You pay them above market salary. (Veronica)

b. You try to convince them about stock + salary, since cash conservation is everything for an early stage start-up. (Betty)

Interestingly, always when it comes to hiring smart Tech talent (assuming they want to join a growing start-up and not an Amazon or Microsoft), we inevitably face competition from both a. & b.

a. Veronica being the Series A and above companies.

b. Betty would be below Series A funded companies.

This analogy came to me when I got tired spending my entire Sunday on speaking with 3 awesome technology candidates — all of whom said they wanted to work at a start-up, and were willing to take a pay cut for the growth and learning — and even after 9 hours (combined) of exciting them, it turned out post the technology rounds, they went ahead and joined the Veronicas!

Felt like Betty, but then I realized there are ways to fix this. 2 things that have worked ever since:

The Learning

1. My typical approach to save time now is fixing the expectations mismatch with candidates by immediately asking for the expected and market salary in their minds before the conversation starts. That just basically tells me if this can work out or not. Do you do that? I think it helps a lot. Many a times the expectations mismatch is so huge, that it doesn’t make sense for either side to spend more time on it. Do this, and watch half of your and other people’s time saved. Spend the time saved in getting your best Archie ☺

2. Keep searching (sourcing) for your kind of Archie (who is willing to go with a Betty), now that you’ve saved time from exercise 1. Gives you 9 hours more to find the right Archie. We have, and will continue to.

PS: I do believe that the Veronicas have earned their right to spend galore (unlike the Veronica in the comic book who has inherited her father’s wealth) because these companies, to be where they are, have been through “Being Betty” ☺