Personal Networks</h2>\n<p>This is the most important source by far. Once your startup scales it’ll become less important as you’ll have more budget to spend on recruiting tools and building a recruiting team. At the start though it’s where you should exclusively focus your energy and only consider other sources when you’ve exhausted all possibilities here.</p>\n<p>Hiring someone you’ve already worked with is your best option because you already know if you’ll like working with them. How much you enjoy working with any single person matters less as you grow larger but for your first hire it could be the difference between persevering to success and shutting down the company. (Caveat: startups are also uniquely stressful environments and there’s still some probability you might not enjoy working with your friend under this kind of stress as much as when you were both at a bigger company).</p>\n<p>You’ll also have a better chance to convince someone you know to take a risk and join you. Asking anyone to join as your first hire is asking for an order of magnitude greater commitment than pitching an investor to invest. With personal connections you’ll know what would most motivate them to join and you can lean on friends to help convince them to make the leap.</p>\n<p>Yet I’m surprised by how often founders don’t fully explore their personal networks for hiring. It’s easy to be quick in assuming that none of your friends are available before even asking them. It’s understandable. Asking your friends to leave their jobs and take a risk with you is scary. It’s also more awkward to be rejected by your friends than strangers. Still, if you’re optimizing for the success of your startup you’ll have to put this aside. Here’s a plan you could follow:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<p>Make a list of the best engineers you know, whether you think they’re available or not. Go through your Facebook and LinkedIn to jog your memory.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>Invite them to lunch or dinner with them to talk about your startup.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>Make the ask – would you consider joining us?.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>Whatever they answer, ask a follow up question – if you did join us, which engineers would you most want to hire?.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>Ask for an introduction to those people.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>Repeat 2 – 5 with each of the introductions.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>Repeat 1 – 6 ad infinitum, I know public company founders who still do this. Expect to be spending at least a third of your time on this alone.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>For your first three engineering hires I’d recommend focusing exclusively on personal network hiring. As your team grows though you’ll start thinking more about the composition and diversity of your team. Hiring through your personal network usually isn’t the best option for this and the larger a team grows the harder it becomes to change the balance. After your first three hires, I’d suggest continue to work your personal network and supplementing with the strategies below to meet candidates your own network wouldn’t reach.</p>\n<h2>Hiring Marketplaces</h2>\n<p>Newer recruiting startups like us (Triplebyte) and Hired operate as marketplaces. There’s candidates on one side and companies on the other. The value to candidates is increasing their number of options and to companies it’s reducing their time to make hires.</p>\n<p>These marketplaces are strictly inferior to using personal networks for your first hire. The good ones can attract high quality candidates but most will want to work somewhere that already has an engineering team. They also charge a fee per hire that will usually be around $25,000 for an experienced engineer. Whether that’s good value for you depends on how much funding you’ve raised and how much founder time you’d have to spend on making that hire.</p>\n<p>Candidates on these marketplaces are also speaking with multiple companies so you’ll face competition. You can get success though (we’ve had startups make their first hire on Triplebyte). Your results will depend heavily on how effective your pitch and closing process is. I’ve seen a lot of variance in how effective companies are at this. An engineer hired at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://gusto.com//">Gusto (YC W12) through Triplebyte <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://kellysutton.com/2016/10/20/visualizing-a-job-search-or-how-to-find-a-job-as-a-software-engineer.html/">blogged about how much difference there is between companies in just being responsive to him. To get the most from a hiring marketplace you need a polished pitch for why your company is an exciting place to work and a speedy process for moving them from first call to interview and offer.</p>\n<p>Despite the disadvantages I still rank (good) hiring marketplaces as your second best option because they provide quick access to a pool of vetted, skilled engineers. The candidates on these marketplaces are mostly motivated to move jobs right now. You can quickly get on the phone to make your pitch and start interviewing the interested ones. This also helps you practice and improve both your pitch and calibration on what exactly you’re looking for. Getting better at pitching will increase your success at hiring in general.</p>\n<p>Some of the marketplaces will also do a rigorous technical evaluation of the candidates before accepting them onto the marketplace. If that evaluation is done well, you can skip your own pre-onsite technical screening and expect a higher conversion rate of onsite interviews to offer which saves you time. (The average direct to onsite to offer rate for Triplebyte candidates is 40% vs the industry standard of 20%).</p>\n<h2>Generate Inbound</h2>\n<p>As an early stage startup you likely won’t get much organic inbound interest from good engineers. The quickest way to generate this is posting on job sites. However most job sites aren’t frequented by high-quality engineers. They’ll get you volume, not quality and volume alone isn’t what you want. The majority of job applicants for any job posting are below the bar and it creates more work for you to filter them. The job postings I would recommend trying are on sites with a sizable engineering audience e.g. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/">Stack Overflow Jobs</a>, the monthly Hacker News <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17442187\%22>%e2%80%9cWho is hiring?”</a> thread (Hacker News job postings themselves are only available to YC companies) and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://angel.co/recruiting/">Angel List</a>.</p>\n<p>You can also create content that appeals to engineers to generate inbound interest. This is especially easy if you’re working on a particularly exciting idea e.g. self-driving cars. As soon as you publicly announce what you’re doing you’ll get a burst of inbound applications. As this type of startup you’ll always have a hiring advantage by having an easier time getting press and building brand recognition.</p>\n<p>Developer tool companies also have an advantage. Your product is already interesting to engineers and you should be investing in writing good quality blog posts about it – both to attract customers and for hiring. Set a goal of writing an article that’s Hacker News front page worthy at least once a month.</p>\n<p>If you’re not either of these types of companies you can still blog about the technical choices you’ve made. Have you made any controversial or unusual choices in your stack? If so, write about them. You may alienate some engineers who disagree but you may also capture the full attention of a few who agree strongly e.g. Cognito have especially strong views on testing and wrote about how they use mutation testing (<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.cognitohq.com/how-to-write-better-code-using-mutation-testing//">https://blog.cognitohq.com/how-to-write-better-code-using-mutation-testing/). Not only does this get the attention of potential candidates, it creates content that you can also use include in cold outreach (more on that later).</p>\n<p>A more time-intensive option is creating interactive content like coding challenges or puzzles, the Netflix algorithm contest being the most famous example. This can definitely work, Robby Walker, founder of Cue (acquired by Apple), wrote about how this worked well for them here (<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/08/programming-challenges-benefit-job-seekers-and-employers//">https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/08/programming-challenges-benefit-job-seekers-and-employers/). It’s a high-risk strategy though. If you can’t design something genuinely interesting then spending time on this will be a boondoggle. If you’re confident in your ability to make something interesting then go for it but run your idea by some engineering friends first to see if it sparks interest.</p>\n<p>Finally your inbound conversion will increase the higher quality your job posting is. Invest time in making it stand out. Larger companies default to generic job postings that all look and sound the same (often because they’re literally using the same software to create them). As a startup you can do better. You could make your job posting personal by writing in the first person as founder about why you started this company. You could use an informal tone that doesn’t read like corporate boilerplate. Experiment with what feels right but move away from blandness.</p>\n<h2>Cold Outreach</h2>\n<p>Cold outreach is messaging engineers online. This could be on career/recruiting specific platforms like LinkedIn or places where engineers spend time like Hacker News and GitHub. (One advantage a technical founding team has here is they’ll already know where the best places are to look).</p>\n<p>The challenge with cold outreach, especially on recruiting-specific platforms like LinkedIn, is the overwhelming number of messages good engineers receive on them. For your message to stand out from the crowd you need to put in work to make it personalized. Greg Brockman has some great advice (<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://stripe.com/blog/startup-advice-cold-recruiting/">https://stripe.com/blog/startup-advice-cold-recruiting) on this.</p>\n<p>You’ll also see a greater return if you can hunt down email addresses rather than sending messages. If you’re looking at profiles on LinkedIn, use the Connectifer (<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.connectifier.com//">https://www.connectifier.com/) Chrome extension to get them. Otherwise do what you can to find an email address (sometimes people include them in their forum profiles or try finding a personal website that might have contact information). If you have any press articles or noteworthy mentions, I’d link to these in the message too. You also need to follow up and expect it’ll take two or three emails before you get a reply.</p>\n<p>This approach is how the majority of technical hiring at larger companies is done. Teams of recruiters reach out to candidates and optimize their messaging over time to get more responses. There are tools to help you with this optimization e.g. Sourceress and ZenSourcer. If you send enough messages this approach will work and can result in great hires. If you reach people just before they’ve started interviewing and move quickly, you’ll have a much higher chance of closing them.</p>\n<p>The disadvantage is it’s very time consuming and will feel draining. The majority of your messages won’t get replied and you’ll be tempted to give up. You’ll have to commit to spending a certain amount of time per day sending emails and messages. One time saving trick you can consider is giving someone else access to your email and paying them to send the messages on your behalf then you handle the replies. How comfortable you feel doing that is of course your call.</p>\n<p>It’s hard to estimate how quickly you might be able to hire through cold outreach. If you’re lucky you could get the right person in for an interview next week. More realistically, I’d expect this approach to take up to 6 months before it results in a hire.</p>\n<h2>Recruiters</h2>\n<p>Hiring a technical recruiter to make your first engineering hire is hard to make work. The strategy they’ll probably use is cold outreach and it’s unlikely they’ll achieve higher response rates than messages coming from a founder.</p>\n<p>What a recruiter does have more of than you is time and focus. They can send more messages per day and this could get more candidates replying if the gap between their effectiveness and yours is narrow enough. My recommendation if you go down this route would be to find recruiters who work on a contract basis. You can agree on a rate per hour, how many hours they’ll work per week and for what period of time. Then if they’re producing candidates, great. If not, you cancel the contract. Anecdotally, I’m noticing a trend where more of the best recruiters at companies are starting to work as independent contractors for multiple startups.</p>\n<p>Before working with a recruiter make sure you’ve invested time in really training them on how to pitch your company well. I’d give them all the information they need, give them a day to prepare and then ask them to pitch it back to you. Only work with them if they do this well.</p>\n<h2>Meetups</h2>\n<p>Meetups are difficult to rank on this list because their effectiveness has high variance depending on both the type of event and the type of person you are. Meetups that are primarily business conferences with corporate sponsors who send along some members of their IT department are almost certainly a complete waste of time. Smaller, informal meetups with a deeply technical agenda where people bring laptops and code can be great. Even these will still only be an effective strategy if you’re either:</p>\n<p>(1) An engineer who can gain the respect of other engineers through technical conversation. (2) A highly charismatic personality</p>\n<p>You need to honestly decide if you’re either of these. If you’re unsure whether you are (2), you probably aren’t. If you’re (1) and tend to avoid group meetups, you’ll have to get over this if you’re the only technical founder. Convincing engineers to join is one sales job you can’t delegate entirely to your cofounder.</p>\n<p>Even if you attend great technical meetups and you’re the right type of personality, it’s still unlikely you’ll make a good hire quickly through this channel. The better meetups have fewer people and they’re primarily not there to find a job. It’s a good way to build a network of smart people, which will become valuable as you scale, but not a good bet to solve your problem right now.</p>\n<h2>Agencies</h2>\n<p>Traditional recruiting agencies tend to have bad adverse selection bias on the candidates they can engage. Most good engineers won’t work with them and the engineers that do are being sent out to as many companies as possible. I can’t think of a startup I know that made their first engineering hire through a recruiting agency. While I’m sure there are counter examples, it’s more likely using an agency will suck up a lot of your time with little ROI. The best agencies tend to focus more on executive level hiring which won’t be helpful for you.</p>\n<h2>Conclusion</h2>\n<p>As I said at the start, hiring your first engineer is incredibly hard unless you’re lucky enough to have a friend you can convince to join. To make any other strategy work you need to treat hiring like you did fundraising and start by refining your message and pitch. Candidates think differently to investors and you’ll need to tweak the message that worked for your fundraise e.g. candidates will think less about your market size and more about your most interesting product challenges.</p>\n<p>Once you understand what resonates most about your company with engineers you can switch gears to working through channels to get that message out to potential candidates. Then be prepared for a lot of struggle and rejection until you find the right person. Good luck!</p>\n<p>If there are any other strategies you’ve tried with success that should be added here, please do email me (<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"mailto:harj@triplebyte.com\">harj@triplebyte.com</a>), I’d love to hear them.</p>\n<p>If you’re hiring engineers and would like to try Triplebyte, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://triplebyte.com/tblog/express/">use this link</a> to sign up and you’ll get a special $15,000 hiring fee for your first hire</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1102767","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2018-08-21T05:02:11.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T12:05:59.000-07:00","published_at":"2018-08-21T05:02:11.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71094","name":"Harj Taggar","slug":"harj-taggar","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Harj.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Harj is a Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder and CEO of Triplebyte (S15), which helps great engineers find work at the fastest growing companies in the world with the least amount of time & effort.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/harj-taggar/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71174","name":"Advice","slug":"advice","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/advice/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71094","name":"Harj Taggar","slug":"harj-taggar","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Harj.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Harj is a Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder and CEO of Triplebyte (S15), which helps great engineers find work at the fastest growing companies in the world with the least amount of time & effort.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/harj-taggar/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71174","name":"Advice","slug":"advice","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/advice/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/how-to-hire-your-first-engineer/","excerpt":"Harj Taggar [https://twitter.com/Harjeet] is cofounder and CEO of Triplebyte\n[https://triplebyte.com/] (YC S15). Triplebyte helps great engineers find work\nat the fastest growing companies in the world, with the least amount of time and\neffort. Before cofounding Triplebyte, Harj was a Partner at YC.\n\n\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nThis post is advice for early stage startup founders who are hiring their first\nengineer. At this stage traditional","reading_time":12,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},"mentions":[],"related_posts":[{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71b50","uuid":"48a359ec-9a9c-404e-b5b6-4a1e9e0a8144","title":"How to Manage a Board","slug":"how-to-manage-a-board","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p><em>With special contributions from Nic Dardenne</em></p>\n<p>One of the most common questions we hear from founders is “How do I manage my board?” It’s something that provokes anxiety, because this is the first time the founder/CEO is subject to external supervision, and the board has powers that include the firing of the CEO and the senior management. It is natural to feel this way. So, in this post, I’m sharing the collective wisdom of the YC community to help guide founders on best practices in managing a board––including running board meetings and overcoming board issues. Where possible, I’ve included specific examples – drawn from YC companies and partners – of how companies have handled board issues.</p>\n<p>But first, what’s the purpose of a board? The main role of a board is to help guide the company through major decisions, such as hiring and firing senior management; approving corporate actions (e.g. compensation, stock options, and budget); and offering guidance on strategic decisions that impact the business longer term. As a legal matter, every Delaware corporation must have a board once it starts operating. At the start, this consists of the founders and the board functions mostly just as the technical body for approving corporate actions that must follow certain formalities (e.g. option grants). When people refer to setting up a board, what they usually mean is the process of adding outside directors, after the company raises money. These may be investor directors or independent directors.</p>\n<h3>A note on board composition</h3>\n<p>If you need to have a board, who should be on it? Since the answer depends so much on the particular company and industry, we won’t spend much time on board composition in this post, but the short answer is that the investors who lead your Series A and Series B rounds will typically join the board (later-stage growth stage investors don’t tend to ask for board seats).</p>\n<p>A smaller company will have 3-5 board seats and a public company board will have 7-9 seats. The composition tends to significantly change a few years before going public, beginning with recruiting independent board members. Later, as the company grows, specific topical expertise committees (e.g., audit and compensation) will also be formed.</p>\n<p>But in terms of how to pick the <em>right</em> board members – for an early stage company – the #1 attribute you need is trust. And the only way you build trust is with time. We recommend getting to know partners at VC firms on your list at least 6 to 9 months before your fundraise. Mathilde Colin, the CEO of Front, shares her experience doing this <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://medium.com/@collinmathilde/front-series-a-deck-f2e2775a419b/">here./n
Before you add new board members, you should have a sense of their strengths, their weaknesses, and whether you would want to work with them for 10+ years––that’s how long some of these boards may last, given the median time to IPO. So, how do you get to know who these people really are beyond spending time with them? One thing you can do is check references with founders that those investors have worked with – just as with recruiting any talent.</p>\n<p>Interestingly, many founders feel that this reference check and balance may be causing many VCs to be less transparent in terms of providing feedback with the founders they work with – since they’re afraid of getting bad feedback and losing their next investment opportunity – so a number of founders have started bringing on independents much sooner.</p>\n<p>In their series B, Atrium founder Justin Kan added YC partner Michael Seibel––a former co-founder of his at Justin.tv. Similarly, the Brex founders (Henrique and Pedro) added TFG Founder/CEO Victor Lazarte, another founder from Brazil who has known them since the age of 16. The Faire founders (Max, Marcelo, and Daniele) added Brian Grassadonia, who leads Square Cash and was their former manager at Square. These are all examples of CEOs’ desire for deeply trusted independent board directors. Many of these relationships are likened to family relationships, where the family privately shares the kind of direct feedback no one else will. However this does not mean you add your friend to your board. You need someone you really trust, who is 100% independent, and has the ability to help both you and your team as you scale the company.</p>\n<h2>Managing Your Board</h2>\n<p>Below, I’ve tried sharing our advice for managing your board – from how often to meet, to the materials you need – in order to ensure a useful and productive group discussion.</p>\n<h3>Meeting Schedule</h3>\n<p>At the Series A stage, most meetings tend to be informal (like 1:1s), ranging anywhere from bi-weekly to even bi-monthly. By the time you reach the Series B stage, however, you should establish a regular meeting cadence: Every quarter, with all meetings scheduled a year in advance to ensure all board members can attend. Ideally, only in person!</p>\n<h3>Agenda and length</h3>\n<p>As the CEO it is your job to set and own the agenda for the board meeting, which can last about 3 hours.</p>\n<p>Be careful not to treat board meetings as a status update meeting, but rather as a meeting where you can openly discuss strategic or tough topics. That’s why the best CEOs tend to allot only the first 45 mins for sharing highlights/lowlights and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and then use the rest of the time to deep dive on no more than 1-2 strategic topics.</p>\n<p>Here’s an example agenda from the last board meeting I attended for Gusto (a company that offers payroll, benefits and HR for Small and Medium Businesses)––shared with their permission of course!</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Highlights / Lowlights (10 mins)</li>\n<li>Performance / KPIs (50 mins)</li>\n<li>Strategic topic 1: Gusto 3 Year Strategic Plan (45 mins)</li>\n<li>Strategic topic 2: Engineering Org – Current and Future (45 mins)</li>\n<li>Closed Session – 30 mins (e.g., Any board matters such as approvals, sensitive topics, and feedback)</li>\n</ul>\n<p>What this shows is that the company spends no more than 1/3rd of the time on the state of the business, and then the majority of the time on the strategic issues that shape its future. I also recommend identifying and aligning on key KPIs with your board members early as it helps the company standardize reporting across board meetings. It also “trains” board members to efficiently process the most important ones quickly – focusing on the “why” (why did or didn’t you hit certain goals?) – so they can turn to more strategic matters.</p>\n<p>What really allows Gusto to pull off their strategic focus within their board meeting, however, happens <em>outside</em> the board meeting: (1) They do a lot of prep work on the areas where they’re seeking input. Ideally this is a topic you’re already discussing with your executive team so the materials can be leveraged for multiple discussions; and (2) They send out a pre-read version of their board deck at least a week in advance, collecting questions from each board member in a Google Doc three days before the meeting. The Gusto team then answers all those questions in the Google Doc by the morning of the board meeting, so the subsequent discussion <em>inside</em> the board meeting can focus on the two most strategic topics.</p>\n<p>Getting through the entire agenda effectively requires strict time management. Consider assigning formal time-keeping responsibilities to a rotating member in the room.</p>\n<h3>Elements of a board deck</h3>\n<p>The board deck is just a tool for discussion, not an end in and of itself. For the principles of what goes into a board deck, Bryan Schrier from Sequoia has a great post <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/preparing-a-board-deck//">here.
/nThis seems obvious, but is underrated: The structure of the board deck should align with the agenda of the meeting. For example, Gusto’s board decks are 30-50 pages long and typically have the following sections:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Highlights / Lowlights – 1 page</li>\n<li>Performance / KPIs – 15 to 20 pages</li>\n<li>Strategic topic 1: Gusto 3 Year Strategic Plan – 5 to 10 pages<br />\n○ Options they considered<br />\n○ Decision framework<br />\n○ Product roadmap they plan to pursue<br />\n○ Product areas they don’t plan to pursue<br />\n○ Known vs. Unknown risks<br />\n○ Initial assessment of economic value to the business<br />\n○ Discussion on overall thinking and plan </li>\n<li>Strategic topic 2: Engineering Org – 5 to 10 pages<br />\n○ Current Engineering Org<br />\n○ Hiring Scale<br />\n○ Future Engineering Org (18 months)<br />\n○ Talent Assessment<br />\n○ Talent Plan: Retention, Development and Recruitment Opportunities </li>\n<li>Closed Session (no slides)</li>\n<li>Appendix<br />\n○ Health of the organization (10 slides): Hiring metrics by department, Close rates, and Employee Pulse Survey – Results</li>\n</ul>\n<h3>Behind the scenes preparation</h3>\n<p>Companies usually start planning a month in advance for the board meeting. In the case of Brex, the co-founders, CFO, and Chief of Staff align on the list of topics at least a month in advance and kick off a process to pull the materials together. The CFO leads the charge, working with executives across the company to align on inputs and topics for discussion.</p>\n<p>Here’s an example of a prep email sent by the Brex CFO to the team 28 days in advance of the board meeting, because obviously they are working on other things as well so they need that much time to prepare materials in between.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>T-28 days:<br />\n○ Founders/Chief of Staff: Identify the two strategic topics for discussion with the board<br />\n○ Share with executive team to align on topics for discussion</li>\n<li>T-18 days<br />\n○ Founders/CFO/Finance team:Outline topics and write/collect content to be covered<br />\n○ Share draft deck with end of month close data with executive team</li>\n<li>T-11 days<br />\n○ Execs comment/edit and provide feedback to Finance Team<br />\n○ Finance Team finalizes the deck including formatting<br />\n○ Final review if deck and backup data sent to founders and CFO </li>\n<li>T-7 days<br />\n○ Review and final run of edits<br />\n○ Distribute deck to Board of Directors (BoD)</li>\n<li>T-4 days<br />\n○ BoD submits questions (particularly on KPIs)</li>\n<li>T-2 days<br />\n○ Brex consolidates and answers all questions from BoD</li>\n<li>T-0<br />\n○ Set expectations upfront (which sections you want to spend the most time and where do you need more feedback)</li>\n</ul>\n<h3>Involving the executive team in board meetings</h3>\n<p>Post-Series B, most companies will have an executive leadership team that helps the CEO scale and grow the company. Note, the general counsel and/or outside counsel can also be invited as part of this. It is important for at least one of the GC and/or outside counsel to attend all your board meetings to capture notes and discuss any sensitive issues that require attorney-client privilege.</p>\n<p>Since the board is tasked with scaling and governance, it is important for execs to get to know the board (and vice versa). There are two approaches here: (1) Ask your leadership team to attend the entire board meeting; or (2) Ask only those executives who have a section to present to the board join the meeting for a particular agenda item, for about 45 minutes.</p>\n<p>The problem with the first approach of inviting all executives to the meeting is the board meeting can turn into a presentation vs. a discussion. It also becomes challenging for the founders and the CEO to discuss sensitive matters directly.</p>\n<p>That’s why I prefer the latter approach, where specific execs join just for that agenda item (usually about 45 minutes). This approach achieves three things: a meatier discussion on the strategic issue at hand; the executives hear the board’s feedback directly; and more time at the end of the meeting for the CEO and the board to discuss other sensitive matters on their own.</p>\n<p>Remember: The board meeting is not about selling to your board members. Of course, you want to show off great work and celebrate milestones. But, your board is already bought in, and the highest leverage on their time – and yours! – is in helping you get to the next milestone.</p>\n<h3>Monthly updates</h3>\n<p>In addition to quarterly in-person board meetings, it’s a good practice to send a 2-page monthly update email (sample <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IVAGDTl1O0wQvubGx7Rl8hKpNtA7k_826yCVcZSmRIw/edit/">here) to the board at the beginning of every month. The email usually includes a summary of last month’s performance; a hiring update; a section outlining burning issues; and a section with specific asks for help.</p>\n<p>Brex always makes two specific asks in their monthly emails: potential introductions to business partners/customers, and help with key roles they are looking to fill. In their monthly investor update, GitLab will ask for introductions to specific individuals at companies who can be potential customers — they also applaud specific investors who have helped them in the past, putting pressure on the entire board to do the same.</p>\n<p>Getting into a good rhythm of sending monthly updates accomplishes three things: (1) Board members will go above and beyond to help you with your specific asks; (2) The board is better prepared for the in-person board meetings; and (3) It is a great way for you as the CEO to take a step back and reflect on the most important elements of your business and objectively measure how well you are doing as a company. Often writing vs. talking is more effective for showcasing your clarity of thought, and written narrative is more compelling in sharing ideas than bullet points and slides, as Jeff Bezos has argued <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.inc.com/carmine-gallo/jeff-bezos-bans-powerpoint-in-meetings-his-replacement-is-brilliant.html/">about memos</a>.</p>\n<h3>Bonus: Letter to the board</h3>\n<p>In fact, some CEOs may even use the board meeting as an opportunity to take a step back and write a letter to the board. For example, Peter Reinhardt, CEO of Segment, writes a 3-5 page memo that focuses on highlights, lowlights, and areas where he would like to spend more time vs. where he’s spending time today. He prefers the written format vs. slides in the deck as it allows him to reflect on the quarter and articulate the company’s future. More importantly, he focuses on his own strengths and weaknesses and what he could be doing better as a CEO.</p>\n<p>Faire often uses the written memo format to discuss the strategic priorities during the board meeting. The memo sets the context for the discussion, articulates their decision framework, and explains why they are recommending a particular approach. They also write down all the uncertainties and blind spots they have when it comes to making that decision. Not only do these memos help the board prepare for the discussion, but they help the CEO create a record of the quality of their decision-making processes.</p>\n<h2>Leveraging Your Board & Navigating Issues</h2>\n<p>Most issues boil down to communication, which is why following the best practices outlined so far can help smooth the way. However, there are a lot of incremental opportunities CEOs may leave on the table when it comes to managing/leveraging their boards — as well as obstacles that come up from frictions or specific issues. I’ll share our collective advice on navigating these below.</p>\n<h3>Mixed messages</h3>\n<p>Conflicting viewpoints are a good thing! The job of the board is to push you on your strategy and to ask questions that help you sharpen your thinking. As a CEO you should welcome conflicting opinions and should not feel pressure to get the board to come to a consensus decision.</p>\n<p>However, if the conflict reaches a point where it is hard to move the conversation forward, offer to take the conversation offline and set up 1:1’s or small group meetings to understand the conflicting views. After understanding conflicting viewpoints, use a decision-making framework (as an example see one below) to guide the discussion.</p>\n<p>A YC CEO recently shared how two board members had strong, directly conflicting opinions about the order in which they should pursue new products. The CEO took the discussion offline and came up with a decision-making framework (e.g. economic value, resources, cash needs, and competitive threat) to decide which path they were going to take. Coming up with the framework also made it quite clear which path was the right one for the company, and why. Sometimes the answer is not very clear but a framework is helpful when you decide to go against the board’s advice. Your board members will never be as close to the business to make that decision. While board members provide important input all CEOs should seriously consider, the CEO has the authority to make the best decision on behalf of the company. As long as you have a clear decision-making framework, your board members will understand when you disagree. Also with time if you are more right than wrong about your decisions, the board will be willing to disagree and commit to the path forward.</p>\n<h3>Asking board members for help</h3>\n<p>As you get a better sense of the areas where different board members can be most helpful – whether it’s helping recruit execs, offering fundraising advice, or other areas – don’t hesitate to follow up directly with them outside of board meetings on those topics.</p>\n<p>Many CEOs seem to think it’s important to update every board member 1:1 on every topic. To which I say: NO! Not every board member needs to be in the loop on every topic or issue; it’s an ineffective use of everyone’s time, including yours. I also think it is a poor use of time to update every board member 1:1 before every board meeting. Unless there are sensitive topics that need to be discussed before hand, don’t waste time doing 1:1 calls with board members to get everyone on the same page. Allow your board members to challenge you and the team during the board meetings and encourage conflicting views to help flesh out your thinking.</p>\n<h3>Balancing helpfulness vs control</h3>\n<p>Be cautious of board members who are trying to make decisions for you. A board member’s job is to help you think through the issues by offering tools or decision frameworks––not to give you all the answers on how to run your business.</p>\n<p>In fact, great board members will often refrain from stating opinions; instead, they ask questions to help flesh out a CEO’s thinking. My fellow board member at Brex, Micky Malka of Ribbit Capital, does this: Even if the CEO asks for his opinion on, say, “What should our typical credit loss rate be?”, Micky would respond with examples of 10 startups in Ribbit’s portfolio and their trajectory along credit loss rates; share pros and cons of each approach; yet refrain from giving one definitive answer. In doing so, he empowers the founders to make the decision.</p>\n<h3>Problem (overbearing / unhelpful) board members</h3>\n<p>As mentioned earlier, backchannel checks are a great way to test for quality and helpfulness, so take the time to do this. But, if you still end up getting stuck with an unhelpful board member, the best way to handle this is to first meet 1:1 and share that feedback, constructively (not unlike running a feedback meeting with your peers or direct reports).</p>\n<p>Be sure to focus on the issue at hand – don’t make it personal and/or scattered – and share specific examples from past board meetings where their feedback was not helpful. If you have a good relationship with other members of the board, you can also work with them to understand how to raise the issue with the unhelpful board member.</p>\n<p>In some cases, board members may step in and give feedback to fellow board members. But be careful about a board member who tries to work around the CEO. One YC company recently faced this – the board member started having direct meetings with senior management without the CEOs knowledge and jumped to conclusions without full context. This put the CEO in a really tough spot. The CEO used this as an opportunity to have 1:1 conversations with other board members, gather feedback, and directly approach the board member who was being disruptive. It took about 6 months to get the situation resolved and trust was re-established. The CEO worked with the rest of the board to set up a decision framework on when and how the board can intervene. Use every challenging situation as an opportunity to improve your existing processes.</p>\n<h3>Removing board members</h3>\n<p>This one is really hard! The situation arises when a board member is destructive to the company – trying to meddle, micromanage, act like an operator running the company – and sometimes even leaking information to the press. If you have tried everything (such as talking to the board member directly) and are convinced that your board member is destructive to the company, then you have a couple of options. I suggest the following, either (1) Approach someone senior at the firm (where the board member works) and seek a replacement or (2) Add more board members (independent or via new investment rounds) who can be a sounding board and help address some of the issues.</p>\n<p>If you pursue option (1), you will burn bridges with the board member and potentially the firm. If your company is not in good standing (<em>i.e.</em>, metrics don’t look good, and potential doesn’t look great) then it will be hard to find a replacement. You will likely be stuck with your current board member. However, if your company is doing well then you have more negotiating leverage than you think. If your company is one of the best performing companies in the VC’s portfolio, the firm will work hard to find you the board member that you want.</p>\n<p>If you pursue option (2), you can leverage other board members to push back when the unhelpful board member is giving advice that is not productive and could hurt the company. At the end of the day, you don’t have to listen to the board’s advice if you are convinced that it does more harm than good.</p>\n<p>That said, as a founder and CEO you should work to understand the gravity of the situation. Board members have the right intent––their job and their incentives are aligned to set the company up for success. If all your board members are echoing the same feedback and you are not listening, then the problem is likely you. Some CEOs bring their executive coach to one or two board meetings to get feedback on board dynamics. This may also help calibrate your perception of the board members around the table. I have also seen a few CEOs seek bi-annual feedback from the entire board via the executive coach.</p>\n<h2>Final Thoughts</h2>\n<p>Many CEOs get nervous at the idea of board meetings. But they’re a good thing. They remind you that you are not alone. Your board of directors – when composed and managed well – is dedicated to your company’s success, which means they will challenge you to make better decisions but are on your side as long as you are being ethical and doing the right thing for the company. And of course, what is considered an effective board will evolve over time as the company matures. But, you can be intentional in building the right team of advisors up front, using the best practices outlined above. If knowing is half the battle, why not enlist the best help you can get?</p>\n<p><em>Special thanks to Justin Kan, Sonal Chokshi, Ali Rowghani, Daniel Gackle, Adora Cheung, Craig Cannon, Gusto, Brex, Convoy and Faire founders for reading multiple drafts of this essay. Thank you to numerous YC founders for sharing their perspectives on this topic.</em></p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1103771","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/How-to-Manage-a-Board.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2019-07-15T00:14:05.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-02-01T15:54:17.000-08:00","published_at":"2019-07-15T00:14:05.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a7107b","name":"Anu Hariharan","slug":"anu-hariharan","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Anu.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Anu is a Managing Director & Partner at YC Continuity. Previously, Anu was a Partner at a16z, where she worked actively with the management teams of companies including Airbnb, Instacart, and Medium.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/anu-hariharan/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71174","name":"Advice","slug":"advice","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/advice/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7116d","name":"Essay","slug":"essay","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/essay/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71181","name":"YC Continuity","slug":"yc-continuity","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-continuity/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71182","name":"#ycc","slug":"hash-ycc","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a7107b","name":"Anu Hariharan","slug":"anu-hariharan","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Anu.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Anu is a Managing Director & Partner at YC Continuity. Previously, Anu was a Partner at a16z, where she worked actively with the management teams of companies including Airbnb, Instacart, and Medium.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/anu-hariharan/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71174","name":"Advice","slug":"advice","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/advice/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/how-to-manage-a-board/","excerpt":"With special contributions from Nic DardenneOne of the most common questions we hear from founders is “How do I manage myboard?” It’s something that provokes anxiety, because this is the first time thefounder/CEO is subject to external supervision, and the board has powers thatinclude the firing of the CEO and the senior management. It is natural to feelthis way.","reading_time":15,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"62f15573ab52db0001d3b642","uuid":"e8dc2872-d758-4a06-ae83-b071c12240b3","title":"Learnings of a CEO: Wade Foster, Zapier","slug":"learnings-of-a-ceo-wade-foster-zapier","html":"<p>Welcome to the second edition of Learnings of a CEO. You can read the first edition <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/learnings-of-a-ceo-max-rhodes-faire/">here. </p><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://zapier.com//">Zapier was founded in 2012 by <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/wadefoster/">Wade Foster</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/bryanhelmig?lang=en\%22>Bryan Helmig</a>, and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/mikeknoop/">Mike Knoop</a>. The founders went through YC’s <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/zapier/">Summer 2012 batch</a> and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/growth-program/">S18 Growth Program</a>, and today, Zapier automates work by connecting with over 5,000 apps. The company has been profitable since 2014 and is valued at $5B – with 700 employees working remotely. Wade, Zapier CEO, shared his learnings growing into the role of a growth-stage CEO. </p><p><strong>How has your job as a CEO changed from leading a 3-person company in 2012 to a 700-person organization today? </strong></p><p>In the early days, you’re in the trenches with your co-founders and early employees splitting up tasks and touching nearly every part of the business. Often you’re writing code, selling products, recruiting, and helping with HR and finance functions. Today, Zapier is almost a team of 700 – and as we’ve grown, people have taken more and more duties from me to help the company grow and scale.</p><p>Now, one place I feel I am most needed is the vague concept of setting the vision and communicating that vision — and then ensuring everyone understands what we are doing, why it’s important, and their role in getting that done. This came naturally to me when we were small and I was in the trenches with everyone and communicating constantly. But as we hired more folks, I realized leaders were interpreting the vision to their team somewhat differently. I learned that if you are not communicating the vision well, you'll have teams that seem to be working on random projects. In isolation this isn’t bad, but as a collective set of tasks, you discover their work doesn’t fit into the vision. </p><p>We now repeat the vision over and over again in many formats. We put the vision in writing and it's constantly referenced; it's communicated at our all-hands; we bring in customers to talk about Zapier’s impact; we show data, so charts and figures can help tell the story; we have a company podcast. </p><p>When people inside the company start to turn the vision into a meme or Slack emoji, I know they really get the vision. Diagnostic tools, like employee engagement surveys, also help me understand how well employees understand why their role is important. It’s also evident when reviewing roadmaps. If a team’s tasks are tight and cohesive, I can tell they’ve been making tough decisions to align to the vision; if there are a bunch of random tasks, I can tell the vision hasn’t been communicated clearly. As a CEO, you have to ask, “Tell me how this is aligned,” and force those conversations to occur. Over time, people will get more comfortable with these types of assertive exercises. </p><p><strong>As you've grown, what changes have you had to make to keep everyone at your company aligned?</strong></p><p>We host weekly all hands, bring customers in to talk at those all hands, are transparent with metrics, and make sure those metrics are reflective of the good and the bad. Ultra transparency with metrics has served us well, as they are motivating and help people get aligned. People start to ask, \"How do we get these bad metrics to the good category?\" and then work towards change.</p><p>Being candid has also served us well. Whether at all hands, on a podcast, or solely talking with one of our leaders, we have candid conversations about why we didn’t hit a goal, why we were off schedule, why a deal didn’t close – and then immediately dive into what we think needs to happen next. The goal is to give awareness to the organization, so that in various meetings and forums people can try to figure out how to improve those areas.</p><p><strong>What's your advice to other founders on how to hire executives?</strong></p><p>Hiring executives is one of the hardest things you’ll do as a CEO. It's hard to determine when to start hiring executives, exactly what you’re looking for in an executive, and then find that person. </p><p>The best way to figure out when to start hiring executives is to meet with people who are unquestionably good executives at companies a stage or two further along. With no intention to hire them, meet with the VP of Engineering, VP of Marketing, and VP of People and ask, \"What are the things you do? What makes you great at this job? What do people in your job disagree on?”. Get as smart as you can on this topic and then compare and contrast what that set of leaders is telling you with how your company operates. If these executives wouldn’t bring anything new to the table, you may not be ready for that type of leader. This starts to help you answer the when part of the equation – and also the what, because you start to see what these folks are capable of and what they are not. </p><p>Part of determining what you should look for in an executive is understanding your own strengths and weaknesses. This requires honesty with yourself and internalizing feedback you have received. (I encourage folks to work with executive coaches and get 360 performance reviews.) Figuring this out helps you start to realize, \"Okay, within my executive team, I need people who will compliment me in these ways.\" Otherwise, you risk hiring a team that is quite capable and competent at their function, but actually may not work well with each other or with you.</p><p><strong>What is Zapier’s culture? What do you do to cultivate it as a remote company?</strong></p><p>We have a strong set of values that we align around. One is default to action. We hire folks who are action-oriented – and we have to as a distributed company; folks aren’t in situations where they notice someone next to them is stuck on something. So, they need to be curious, self-starters, and (figuratively) scratch and itch when they see something that doesn’t satisfy their innate drive. </p><p>Next, we value defaulting to transparency because folks who are action-oriented should be equipped with a ton of context. The mission, strategy, metrics, goals, systems and processes – all of it – is well documented and organized so people can find them and take action.</p><p>We also have a feedback-oriented culture. I teach a course on feedback to all the new folks to ensure they understand how to ensure they understand how to give and receive feedback effectively because it helps us grow. </p><p>The rest of our values are outlined <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://zapier.com/jobs/culture-and-values-at-zapier/">here, but these are some of the things that drive Zapier’s culture – and as you scale, it’s crucial to create different forums to communicate these values. We have an internal tool we named Async, which is email meets Reddit. The platform is public by default, anyone can post, and information can be targeted at different groups or people. We find this is great for long-form substantive topics that have a longer shelf life (1-2 weeks) versus Slack channels (1-2 days). We also hold all hands and have a company podcast, where we capture evergreen content. For example, when we have key moments in the company history, we’ll break it down: Why we did this thing, what led to that decision, the outcomes, why it is an important moment, etc. We have found podcasts to be helpful when onboarding new folks. </p><p><strong>Why did you decide to not raise any additional funding since your seed round?</strong></p><p>The only funding we took in the history of the company was a $1.3M seed round in 2012. This was partially philosophical and partially about the business. </p><p>The three of us co-founders had worked at a fast-growing, bootstrapped company owned 50/50 by two brothers. When we came out to the Valley (we were from Missouri), we started to hear this line of thinking, “No great company has ever done X.\" Some of these statements would center around the impact of venture funding, and I was dismissive in part because I had this counterexample from my time in Missouri. So, when we raised the seed round, we decided to treat it like the last round we’d ever raise.</p><p>Our second reason for not raising multiple rounds: Across the founding team, we had all the skill sets to do every job inside the company. That meant we didn't have to hire to make progress in the early days. We even had rules in place around hiring like, “Don’t hire until it hurts.” </p><p>Then there was the third, rational component: We were able to grow quickly without external funding because of Zapier’s network effect on our developer platform side. We're able to have low customer acquisition costs (mostly through organic channels), and this is intrinsic to how Zapier works. </p><p>Along the way, some of the philosophical thinking fell by the wayside by observing other companies and realizing fundraising is a tool like anything else. There are moments when it can help you, and there are moments when it can hinder you. You should strive to understand when external funding is a good tool to use versus when it is not – and then apply it if it makes sense for you.</p>","comment_id":"62f15573ab52db0001d3b642","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/08/BlogTwitter-Image-Template.jpg","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-08-08T11:26:59.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-08-15T12:08:14.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-08-09T08:55:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Today, Zapier automates work by connecting with over 5,000 apps. The company has been profitable since 2014 and is valued at $5B – with 700 employees working remotely. Wade, Zapier CEO, shared his learnings growing into the role of a growth-stage CEO. ","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a7","name":"Lindsay Amos","slug":"lindsay-amos","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Lindsay.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Lindsay Amos is the Senior Director of Communications at Y Combinator. 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We compiled a list of the questions they most frequently asked about startups, and created this Startups for Students Guide.</p><p>The guide is informed by hundreds of hours of talks, blog posts, and essays we’ve written for students who are interested in starting or working at startups – many of which can be found in the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/library/">YC Library</a>).</p><p><strong>Below is the introduction, and you can read the full <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/library/D0-startups-for-students-guide/">Startups for Students Guide here</a>.</strong></p><h2 id=\"introduction\"><strong>INTRODUCTION</strong></h2><p>In his 2007 essay “<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html/">Why to Not Not Start a Startup</a>,” YC co-founder Paul Graham wrote about how common uncertainty was among people considering starting a company. “There's nothing wrong with being unsure,” he noted. “You’re part of a grand tradition.” When Y Combinator launched in 2005, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html/">starting a startup was an unusual career path for recent graduates</a>. It was hard to be taken seriously by investors if you didn’t have an MBA or years of experience in business or tech. To get a sense of how many startups were in the world, look at TechCrunch in 2005. It published about 40 company launches per month, and YC itself only got a couple hundred applications for its first batches.</p><p>The world has changed since then. Today we get tens of thousands of applications per year. On any given day you can look on Product Hunt and see dozens of new companies launch. Taking a chance and starting a startup is not the foreign concept it once was. While it has become more common for people around the world to start startups, there are many more who could consider startups as an option. For example, lots of folks choose a career in finance or as an engineer at a big company without considering other options. 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How to Hire Your First Engineer
by Harj Taggar8/21/2018
Harj Taggar is cofounder and CEO of Triplebyte (YC S15). Triplebyte helps great engineers find work at the fastest growing companies in the world, with the least amount of time and effort. Before cofounding Triplebyte, Harj was a Partner at YC.
This post is advice for early stage startup founders who are hiring their first engineer. At this stage traditional recruiting methods e.g. hiring a recruiter won’t work as well for you as they do for larger companies.
Hiring your first engineer at a startup is incredibly hard. As a founder you’re already stretched dangerously thin on time. There are bugs to fix, customers to close and any number of urgent existential fires that demand your full attention. You know you should be spending more time on hiring but it’s a battle to find it.
The bad news is even once you find the time, much of it will feel like wasted effort. Hiring isn’t the kind of work that provides you constant dopamine hits. It involves a lot of dead ends and frustration.
Start by being clear on what exactly you’re looking for. I’d recommend listing all the specific criteria your dream hire would have. This will be a combination of technical (are they a good engineer?) and non technical (would I work productively with them?). Then mark each candidate you interview against all these criteria and rigorously debate if you think they have enough strengths in some areas to make up for weaknesses in others.
In practice hiring decisions invariably involve tradeoffs. You could trade quality for speed by rejecting solid candidates to wait for the dream one. Or you could trade money for time by paying a candidate above market rate to join now. Founders should be aware of all these tradeoffs and make the one that’s best for your circumstances.
Once you know what you’re looking for, you’re ready to start finding candidates. I’ll go through the strategies available, starting with what I believe is most effective and working through to the least.
Note: As the founder of a hiring platform I’m not neutral in discussing their effectiveness. I have articulated both their advantages and disadvantages and we did make our own first engineering hire through Triplebyte.
Personal Networks
This is the most important source by far. Once your startup scales it’ll become less important as you’ll have more budget to spend on recruiting tools and building a recruiting team. At the start though it’s where you should exclusively focus your energy and only consider other sources when you’ve exhausted all possibilities here.
Hiring someone you’ve already worked with is your best option because you already know if you’ll like working with them. How much you enjoy working with any single person matters less as you grow larger but for your first hire it could be the difference between persevering to success and shutting down the company. (Caveat: startups are also uniquely stressful environments and there’s still some probability you might not enjoy working with your friend under this kind of stress as much as when you were both at a bigger company).
You’ll also have a better chance to convince someone you know to take a risk and join you. Asking anyone to join as your first hire is asking for an order of magnitude greater commitment than pitching an investor to invest. With personal connections you’ll know what would most motivate them to join and you can lean on friends to help convince them to make the leap.
Yet I’m surprised by how often founders don’t fully explore their personal networks for hiring. It’s easy to be quick in assuming that none of your friends are available before even asking them. It’s understandable. Asking your friends to leave their jobs and take a risk with you is scary. It’s also more awkward to be rejected by your friends than strangers. Still, if you’re optimizing for the success of your startup you’ll have to put this aside. Here’s a plan you could follow:
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Make a list of the best engineers you know, whether you think they’re available or not. Go through your Facebook and LinkedIn to jog your memory.
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Invite them to lunch or dinner with them to talk about your startup.
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Make the ask – would you consider joining us?.
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Whatever they answer, ask a follow up question – if you did join us, which engineers would you most want to hire?.
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Ask for an introduction to those people.
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Repeat 2 – 5 with each of the introductions.
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Repeat 1 – 6 ad infinitum, I know public company founders who still do this. Expect to be spending at least a third of your time on this alone.
For your first three engineering hires I’d recommend focusing exclusively on personal network hiring. As your team grows though you’ll start thinking more about the composition and diversity of your team. Hiring through your personal network usually isn’t the best option for this and the larger a team grows the harder it becomes to change the balance. After your first three hires, I’d suggest continue to work your personal network and supplementing with the strategies below to meet candidates your own network wouldn’t reach.
Hiring Marketplaces
Newer recruiting startups like us (Triplebyte) and Hired operate as marketplaces. There’s candidates on one side and companies on the other. The value to candidates is increasing their number of options and to companies it’s reducing their time to make hires.
These marketplaces are strictly inferior to using personal networks for your first hire. The good ones can attract high quality candidates but most will want to work somewhere that already has an engineering team. They also charge a fee per hire that will usually be around $25,000 for an experienced engineer. Whether that’s good value for you depends on how much funding you’ve raised and how much founder time you’d have to spend on making that hire.
Candidates on these marketplaces are also speaking with multiple companies so you’ll face competition. You can get success though (we’ve had startups make their first hire on Triplebyte). Your results will depend heavily on how effective your pitch and closing process is. I’ve seen a lot of variance in how effective companies are at this. An engineer hired at Gusto (YC W12) through Triplebyte blogged about how much difference there is between companies in just being responsive to him. To get the most from a hiring marketplace you need a polished pitch for why your company is an exciting place to work and a speedy process for moving them from first call to interview and offer.
Despite the disadvantages I still rank (good) hiring marketplaces as your second best option because they provide quick access to a pool of vetted, skilled engineers. The candidates on these marketplaces are mostly motivated to move jobs right now. You can quickly get on the phone to make your pitch and start interviewing the interested ones. This also helps you practice and improve both your pitch and calibration on what exactly you’re looking for. Getting better at pitching will increase your success at hiring in general.
Some of the marketplaces will also do a rigorous technical evaluation of the candidates before accepting them onto the marketplace. If that evaluation is done well, you can skip your own pre-onsite technical screening and expect a higher conversion rate of onsite interviews to offer which saves you time. (The average direct to onsite to offer rate for Triplebyte candidates is 40% vs the industry standard of 20%).
Generate Inbound
As an early stage startup you likely won’t get much organic inbound interest from good engineers. The quickest way to generate this is posting on job sites. However most job sites aren’t frequented by high-quality engineers. They’ll get you volume, not quality and volume alone isn’t what you want. The majority of job applicants for any job posting are below the bar and it creates more work for you to filter them. The job postings I would recommend trying are on sites with a sizable engineering audience e.g. Stack Overflow Jobs, the monthly Hacker News “Who is hiring?” thread (Hacker News job postings themselves are only available to YC companies) and Angel List.
You can also create content that appeals to engineers to generate inbound interest. This is especially easy if you’re working on a particularly exciting idea e.g. self-driving cars. As soon as you publicly announce what you’re doing you’ll get a burst of inbound applications. As this type of startup you’ll always have a hiring advantage by having an easier time getting press and building brand recognition.
Developer tool companies also have an advantage. Your product is already interesting to engineers and you should be investing in writing good quality blog posts about it – both to attract customers and for hiring. Set a goal of writing an article that’s Hacker News front page worthy at least once a month.
If you’re not either of these types of companies you can still blog about the technical choices you’ve made. Have you made any controversial or unusual choices in your stack? If so, write about them. You may alienate some engineers who disagree but you may also capture the full attention of a few who agree strongly e.g. Cognito have especially strong views on testing and wrote about how they use mutation testing (https://blog.cognitohq.com/how-to-write-better-code-using-mutation-testing/). Not only does this get the attention of potential candidates, it creates content that you can also use include in cold outreach (more on that later).
A more time-intensive option is creating interactive content like coding challenges or puzzles, the Netflix algorithm contest being the most famous example. This can definitely work, Robby Walker, founder of Cue (acquired by Apple), wrote about how this worked well for them here (https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/08/programming-challenges-benefit-job-seekers-and-employers/). It’s a high-risk strategy though. If you can’t design something genuinely interesting then spending time on this will be a boondoggle. If you’re confident in your ability to make something interesting then go for it but run your idea by some engineering friends first to see if it sparks interest.
Finally your inbound conversion will increase the higher quality your job posting is. Invest time in making it stand out. Larger companies default to generic job postings that all look and sound the same (often because they’re literally using the same software to create them). As a startup you can do better. You could make your job posting personal by writing in the first person as founder about why you started this company. You could use an informal tone that doesn’t read like corporate boilerplate. Experiment with what feels right but move away from blandness.
Cold Outreach
Cold outreach is messaging engineers online. This could be on career/recruiting specific platforms like LinkedIn or places where engineers spend time like Hacker News and GitHub. (One advantage a technical founding team has here is they’ll already know where the best places are to look).
The challenge with cold outreach, especially on recruiting-specific platforms like LinkedIn, is the overwhelming number of messages good engineers receive on them. For your message to stand out from the crowd you need to put in work to make it personalized. Greg Brockman has some great advice (https://stripe.com/blog/startup-advice-cold-recruiting) on this.
You’ll also see a greater return if you can hunt down email addresses rather than sending messages. If you’re looking at profiles on LinkedIn, use the Connectifer (https://www.connectifier.com/) Chrome extension to get them. Otherwise do what you can to find an email address (sometimes people include them in their forum profiles or try finding a personal website that might have contact information). If you have any press articles or noteworthy mentions, I’d link to these in the message too. You also need to follow up and expect it’ll take two or three emails before you get a reply.
This approach is how the majority of technical hiring at larger companies is done. Teams of recruiters reach out to candidates and optimize their messaging over time to get more responses. There are tools to help you with this optimization e.g. Sourceress and ZenSourcer. If you send enough messages this approach will work and can result in great hires. If you reach people just before they’ve started interviewing and move quickly, you’ll have a much higher chance of closing them.
The disadvantage is it’s very time consuming and will feel draining. The majority of your messages won’t get replied and you’ll be tempted to give up. You’ll have to commit to spending a certain amount of time per day sending emails and messages. One time saving trick you can consider is giving someone else access to your email and paying them to send the messages on your behalf then you handle the replies. How comfortable you feel doing that is of course your call.
It’s hard to estimate how quickly you might be able to hire through cold outreach. If you’re lucky you could get the right person in for an interview next week. More realistically, I’d expect this approach to take up to 6 months before it results in a hire.
Recruiters
Hiring a technical recruiter to make your first engineering hire is hard to make work. The strategy they’ll probably use is cold outreach and it’s unlikely they’ll achieve higher response rates than messages coming from a founder.
What a recruiter does have more of than you is time and focus. They can send more messages per day and this could get more candidates replying if the gap between their effectiveness and yours is narrow enough. My recommendation if you go down this route would be to find recruiters who work on a contract basis. You can agree on a rate per hour, how many hours they’ll work per week and for what period of time. Then if they’re producing candidates, great. If not, you cancel the contract. Anecdotally, I’m noticing a trend where more of the best recruiters at companies are starting to work as independent contractors for multiple startups.
Before working with a recruiter make sure you’ve invested time in really training them on how to pitch your company well. I’d give them all the information they need, give them a day to prepare and then ask them to pitch it back to you. Only work with them if they do this well.
Meetups
Meetups are difficult to rank on this list because their effectiveness has high variance depending on both the type of event and the type of person you are. Meetups that are primarily business conferences with corporate sponsors who send along some members of their IT department are almost certainly a complete waste of time. Smaller, informal meetups with a deeply technical agenda where people bring laptops and code can be great. Even these will still only be an effective strategy if you’re either:
(1) An engineer who can gain the respect of other engineers through technical conversation. (2) A highly charismatic personality
You need to honestly decide if you’re either of these. If you’re unsure whether you are (2), you probably aren’t. If you’re (1) and tend to avoid group meetups, you’ll have to get over this if you’re the only technical founder. Convincing engineers to join is one sales job you can’t delegate entirely to your cofounder.
Even if you attend great technical meetups and you’re the right type of personality, it’s still unlikely you’ll make a good hire quickly through this channel. The better meetups have fewer people and they’re primarily not there to find a job. It’s a good way to build a network of smart people, which will become valuable as you scale, but not a good bet to solve your problem right now.
Agencies
Traditional recruiting agencies tend to have bad adverse selection bias on the candidates they can engage. Most good engineers won’t work with them and the engineers that do are being sent out to as many companies as possible. I can’t think of a startup I know that made their first engineering hire through a recruiting agency. While I’m sure there are counter examples, it’s more likely using an agency will suck up a lot of your time with little ROI. The best agencies tend to focus more on executive level hiring which won’t be helpful for you.
Conclusion
As I said at the start, hiring your first engineer is incredibly hard unless you’re lucky enough to have a friend you can convince to join. To make any other strategy work you need to treat hiring like you did fundraising and start by refining your message and pitch. Candidates think differently to investors and you’ll need to tweak the message that worked for your fundraise e.g. candidates will think less about your market size and more about your most interesting product challenges.
Once you understand what resonates most about your company with engineers you can switch gears to working through channels to get that message out to potential candidates. Then be prepared for a lot of struggle and rejection until you find the right person. Good luck!
If there are any other strategies you’ve tried with success that should be added here, please do email me (harj@triplebyte.com), I’d love to hear them.
If you’re hiring engineers and would like to try Triplebyte, use this link to sign up and you’ll get a special $15,000 hiring fee for your first hire
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Harj Taggar
Harj is a Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder and CEO of Triplebyte (S15), which helps great engineers find work at the fastest growing companies in the world with the least amount of time & effort.