Hiring Advice

If you're the CEO of a fast-growing startup, the mistake you'll make in the next year that you'll regret most will probably be a hiring mistake. Possibly hiring someone established, which you'll feel you should do now you're getting big, and which VCs will strongly encourage.

Have become a huge fan of @mattmochary 's idea of checking your energy level before and after chatting with someone, when deciding whether to work with them. It seems a bit silly when you first hear about it, but over time it's become my #1 most important hiring heuristic.

A lot of very smart people work in strange ways / with a lot of quirks (e.g. contemplating for hours and appearing to do nothing, while then suddenly having 100x output burst). This usually makes them not a great fit for traditional corporate world, where you often have to fake…