The most important thing is that there is clear reporting structure and everyone knows what it is.
As the company grows and about this 25 or so employee size, your main job shifts from building a great product to building a great company.
You need someone that behaves like James Bond more than you need someone that is an expert in some particular domain.
Before 20 or 25 employees, most companies are structured with everyone reporting to the founder. It's totally flat.
The best ideas often look terrible at the beginning the truly good ideas, don't seem like they're worth stealing.
The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself.
Just put a little pin in your mind: when you cross 50 employees, there are a new set of HR rules that you have to comply with.
The role of the board is advice and consent. If the CEO does not lay out a clear strategy and tries to get the board to set one, it will usually end in disaster.
Most great companies in tech have been built by personal referrals for the first...at least 100 employees and often many more.
A winning team feels good and keeps winning. A team that hasn't won in a while gets demotivated and keeps losing.
I think the best thing you can do is be aware that as a first time founder you are likely to be a very bad manager.
Firing people is one of the worst parts of running a company. Actually in my own experience, I think it is the worst.
... fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee.
If someone is getting every decision wrong, that's when you need to act, and at that point it'll be painfully aware to everyone.
You don't get to make their decisions but you do get to choose the decision makers.
You're saying no ninety-seven times out of a hundred, and most founders find they have to make a very conscious effort to do this.
People that are really smart and that can learn new things can almost always find a role in the company as time goes on.
One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn't is competitors.
... but the pendulum has swung way out of whack here. A bad idea is still bad, and the pivot happy world we're in today feels suboptimal.
The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.
By the way, that's my number one piece of advice if you're going to join a startup: pick a rocket ship.
You're either not hiring at all or it's probably your single biggest block of time.
A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
In addition to relentlessly resourceful, you want a tough and a calm cofounder.
We pretty much won't fund a company now where the founders don't have vested equity because it's just that hard to do.
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