Assembling Talent > Everything Else

People really are everything...

My company was absolutely crushing it by most standards, but I was stuck there.

Tough pill to swallow…

I had an “if it needs done, just fucking do it” mentality.

This actually got me pretty far, but lead me to brick wall - hard and fast.

I reached the max capacity of what I could do “on my own” with a limited team &iIn one sudden moment a realization developed inside of me that I had done this business thing all wrong.

I realized our job as founders is not to do the work, but get to product market fit then assemble the appropriate talent to do the work. Next, establishing principles & values towards a clear vision for tomorrow (your big goal) for them to operate from.

This provides you infinite leverage and unlimited scale. Plus, you wind up creating better shit than you could have done on your own. (sorry)

The difference between a billion dollar company & one that can’t get there is the people.

While it’s true that top talent costs top dollar, every day engineers at google are leaving 7 figure careers for pay cuts at tiny startups. Why is this?

It’s because the true drives for talented people are the opportunity potential and excitement for what they are doing. Good people know they are good & want to do big things so you need to have a vision big enough for someone else’s big dreams to fit inside. This leads me to actually trying to distill who is good while interviewing someone.

It's their job to trick you into hiring them. It's your job not to fall for the tricks.

The candidates are competing with you for their livelihood (rightfully so). The competition is they want to say or do what it takes to get the job vs. you who only wants the right person and wants to make the best hire.

There is nothing wrong with this. They will try hard to present themselves in the best way to get the job. Knowing this is to be expected, you can start to point your attention towards asking the hard & uncomfortable questions to really get down to the assessing the nitty gritty.

1. Domain Knowledge (expert level top 0.1%)

2. Cultural Fit

3. Motivations & critical thinking

4. Values

5. Work style

6. Past performance

7. Leadership competency

Look for where the've already done what you're trying to do. Ask repeated questions to spot where the truth might not be as it appears. Past performance dictates future performance. Great people do the work of 10 good ones.

The best companies hire the best people. People who are already great. They let the companies they dominate (or plan to) do the filtering & on the clock learning for them in that sense.

Do your best to see outside of yourself and your day to day work. It’s a sweet & stimulating trap that feels fine but it’s really not - kinda like this guy.

My best advice is to face the fact that you’re never going to build anything great on your own. Don’t fear acquiring talent, making investments, leading others and them into your vision.

You will arrive to a place in the future where you'll no longer be able to proceed on your own, so why wait until then to start building that team?