The flying wedge.

Solving the problem of assembling a good team: When I became the CEO of a new company, every founder I talked to had the same warning: hiring is the hardest thing you will do... Currently, we use approximations: we look at the school a person attended, the jobs they’ve held and the length of time they were there. We might take a look at two or thre... See more

Collapse the talent stack every chance you get . As I reflect on the teams I’ve led and hundreds of start-ups I’ve worked with, there is a consistent unfair competitive advantage i’ve witnessed when the talent stack was collapsed - when the lead designer was also the product leader, when the front-end engineer was also a designer, when the designer... See more

Unsurprisingly, hiring friends and former colleagues was by far the biggest channel. This also in part explains why multi-time founders, and anyone with a large network (e.g. Y Combinator), have an advantage:

“All of our early hires were friends/ex-coworkers.”

“First hires were practically all former colleagues. Several people who worked with me in m

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