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The Marker Guide to Hiring for Your Startup
A startup can never have too many makers
One of the most common questions I get from company leaders is about who to hire and when.
It doesn’t matter if your company is two people or 20 or 200 — your next hire is always the most important hire. Filling the wrong role at the wrong time is a waste of money and potentially even a waste of talent.
But how do you know when the time is right and which skills are most critical for your success? Here’s a guide I put together, based on building dozens of companies, for all stages of a company’s growth cycle, from the first hire to the 500th.
First: Should you hire at all?
When I get asked for help on a hiring decision, nine times out of 10 it comes to me as “What role should we hire for next?” And nine times out of nine I try to gut-check whether a hire needs to be made at all.
Here’s the rule: Good hires are like bullets. You don’t want to use them until you’ve locked in on a target and you’re 100% sure you want to pull the trigger.
During the early days, a hire shouldn’t be made until the pain of missing that additional resource is twice the value of the total hire package. In other words, if it’s going to cost $100K all-in to…
