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… Show 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

What I appreciate most about the talent stack is that it opens us to more positive-sum games. Rather than competing head-on and trying to climb one global summit, the talent stack empowers us to be the best version of ourselves. It’s a lesson I wish they taught in school. It is the ultimate escape from competition.

The teams are currently structured by function (product, R&D, design, business, etc.), and different teams think about different layers of the company and stack. But all energy is directed toward improving the core product. We design objectives that translate to common top-level metrics and improve the user experience holistically. For example,... See more

[Startups loose this in scale up when] the leaders instead try to scale by staffing and directing project and feature teams, not realizing they are losing the most important ingredient from their earlier years.

You sometimes hear that a team built something great despite being small - we think that teams most often build great things because they’re small (with strong talent, passion, and chemistry, of course). So our hiring approach thus far is hiring only people that are so talented they could have been co-founders in another sequence of events. We’re f... See more

Takeaways:

1. Sales becomes the second most common hire , after engineering.


2. A quarter of companies hired a product manager at this point.


3. Recruiters become a surprisingly common hire. I did not expect that. This is particularly true across some of the most unique startups, like Linear, Figma, Ramp, and Coda. Here’s Jori Lallo, co-founder of Linear,

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The synthesis and cross-pollination of ideas from diverse fields presents low-hanging fruit for both individuals and society. The investment of time and effort required to become a specialist quickly runs into a point of diminishing returns. By contrast, accumulating a ‘talent stack’ of dilettante-level knowledge or skills can unlock insights and o

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Companies are fighting for talent in the same arena where devs are settling for positions that barely align with their ambitions and work-life balance requirements. In an era like this marginal improvements in talent allocation can unlock incredible amounts of economic value. This is not easy to accomplish. The market currently reduces software cre... See more