team

Reed Hastings on the role of the CEO at a startup “In the first couple of years, you do everything—you’re doing dishes at night, you’re coding, you’re writing marketing materials, you’re dealing with customers and investors. And you have so many disadvantages as an irrelevant little nothing of a company that you have to... See more

Sam Altman: “Hire for values first, aptitude second, and skills third.” Most executive recruiters, Sam argues, will reverse this order: “If you say I need to hire a CFO, they will bring you people with 20 years of experience as a CFO at vaguely similar companies. But unfortunately, it’s... See more

Peter Thiel on the question he asks every startup founder he invests in “Why will the 20th talented person join your company when they can get paid way more at Google, they will have to work way less hard at Google, and it will look better on their resume to go to Google?” The 20th employee... See more

Sam Altman on the biggest mistake startup CEOs make when scaling a company “When you’re a Seed or Series A company, you spend a huge amount of effort recruiting, but almost no effort retaining talent — and that is [the right strategy] at the beginning. But if you don’t shift to viewing retaining talent as much of your... See more

My top advice for every hire after you raise your pre-seed: - make every offer a try before you buy two way door (90 day trial, 1 year cliff). - don't over hire early (too senior no startup experience) - prefer generalist over specialists. - focus on engineering and go to... See more

Keith Rabois on how to identify great talent “What you want to do with every single employee every single day is expand the scope of their responsibilities until it breaks… and that’s the role they should stay in.” Keith tells the story of giving an intern the task of getting smoothies to... See more

Mark Zuckerberg on how to avoid bad hires when your startup is growing quickly As Mark explains, every fast-growing startup will repeatedly face the choice: “Do I hire the person who’s in front of me now because they seem good?” or “Do I hold out to get someone who’s even better?” Mark... See more

Frank Slootman’s advice for founders learning to be CEO Founders frequently ask Frank (former CEO of Snowflake), “Do you think I can be a CEO?” Frank responds with a question: “Do you want to be?” He explains: “If you want to be, you... See more