The Art of Speed for Startup Founders
One of the most crucial things I have learned during my foundership journey is that you need to be fast in everything. Taking a relatively wrong decision might be better than not taking any action at all. In some cases, your wrong decisions might even lead to positive outcomes as well.
Speed is Important to Learn Who’s your Ideal Customer Profile
Assume that you acted quickly to define the right customer persona of your business, and you defined it in the wrong way but you are not aware of it yet. How you will get awareness at light speed? After having your first hypothesis about who’s the target group, the next step would be to run a marketing campaign or to directly talk to your potential customers. Right after doing that, you would discover that your hypothesis was wrong because the people you were talking to are not the right fit for your value proposition. That’s great actually, you had some first-hand experience and obtained factual data now. Imagine if you hadn’t defined the target audience quickly, you were still at the stage of evaluating alternatives without actually experimenting with them. But it’s great that you acted fast, and realized that you should switch your attention to another customer persona.
The Effect of Acting Fast While Recruiting
It’s true that large corporates usually have long recruitment processes. For instance, Amazon typically hires in between 6–12 months, isn’t crazy? No, it’s quite normal for a company like Amazon. Why does it take months for large companies to hire someone? First, corporates are heavy: Decision making takes time. But more importantly, they hire slower because they have nothing to lose since there’s already an ongoing operation, a validated market. Why you should be fast in that case?
Impact Factor of Employees: Corporates vs Startups
I think there’s an Impact Factor for every employee of any organization, startup, or corporate. What’s the impact factor? The impact factor is the metric that defines the potential contribution of an employee, which is a clearly measurable metric and be seen obviously by anybody in the company. For large organizations, the impact factor of the employees in the bottom part of the organizational hierarchy is very low. Top-level executives, usually C-level or directors have a higher impact factor. But honestly, for corporates, it’s not the end of the world even if the top-level executive is not contributing a lot. There are already enough people who know the company dynamics and business well, so they will be handling the situation no matter what. On the other side, startups usually have a lean organization structure, so startup members have a great opportunity to show their impact in days or weeks, instead of years/decades!
Should startups have the same speed of Recruitment as corporates?
Absolutely no. Without having a product/market fit, you have full uncertainty about the business and also you are not financially stable. On top of it, startups are fragile. Considering the external factors happening these days, hyperinflation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the post-pandemic economy, and the unrealistic valuations of Web3 startups… We are now in a very challenging world to start a new business. This means that Startups have a different strategy when hiring talents.
Is that true that you should Hire Fast & Fire Faster if you are a startup?
I totally acknowledge that this statement does not sound good at first glance. However, startup founders have to find human resources much faster due to their limited time. They burn money every single second, and their capital and investment are limited. Due to the nature of their business, they cannot be as tolerant as corporates by having long hiring processes.
By hiring talent faster, the startup can gain a competitive advantage and eventually grow faster. But there’s also the other side of the coin. What if the new here is not the perfect fit for the new venture? Then, the bell rings for you. You need to take the action immediately.
How to Fire Your New Hire? Should you do it really? The Gain Perspective.
Every founder has a unique style and decision-making. In my approach, it’s always better to gain the person instead of firing him/her. However, time is running faster for startups, and not every attempt leads to gaining people. When you start having doubts about your new hire, you need to run the “Alert mode”. In this mode, you should build direct communication with the new hire and be sure that you are on the same page about your expectations. Having empathy and giving smaller tasks will make things more measurable and observable at this stage. Make sure that you made the resources available for the new hire, and that there’s nothing else you can give. Then, measure the number of contributions of the employee. Since both of you know about what are the expectations and also since the tasks are smartly defined, everything has become crystal-clear now. After you collect your observations about the new hire, then it is time of giving a set of constructive feedback. While giving feedback, there are some additional elements that you should explore in the new hire’s attitude. How does this person behave when criticized constructively? What’s his/her way of dealing with stress and how does he/she accept challenges? In my experience, many new hires fail after this stage. The good news is that you don’t have to fire the new hire because since you make everything obvious, that person will clearly understand that it’s not the right place for him/her. Few of your new hires will qualify and they will become the leaders of your startup in the short, mid, and hopefully long-term growth journey!
To sum up, Hire Fast & Fire Faster is a misleading Statement according to me, The correct statement should be:
“Hire Fast, challenge Faster to Find Your Greatest Leaders!”
This is how we recruit at Pivony. If you found this article useful, please make a comment to contribute! If you’re interested in joining our amazing startup, visit our careers page.
