Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook

No autoresponders. Every email comes from a person. You don’t need an autoresponse when a human responds right away.

So, as much as I advocate transparency in most areas, candidate rejections are an area to consider keeping your feedback terse.

Third, give positive reinforcement for great referrals. On the first day when the new person starts, announce to the whole company who referred her and make a big deal of it.

We send the candidate a real job offer. It’s pegged to the 50th percentile (higher than half of salaries at companies our size for that position) and has a generous stock grant. Then we give a little speech. It goes like this: We think you’re a fantastic developer/marketer/glassblower, and we’re really excited to make you an offer. We do it a littl

Note that while founders usually invest as a part of the company’s creation without further reward (and this is part of their contribution for their founder shares), family and friends should have some form of structured agreement. An uncapped convertible note with a 20%–30% discount is a good, fair instrument for this that won’t bother most invest

Being empowered means having one-on-one communications with important stakeholders and making sure they feel heard. Only then do you announce a solution.

Startups don’t outthink their competitors; they outexecute them. The best startups have founders who stay in sync, but work independently. And there’s a single magic ingredient that makes this work: trust.

Hiring a perfect team means finding perfect fits along just two scales: you want people who are ideal for the work you want them to do, and ideal for the culture that you are building.

Fourth, consider setting up a reward program for referrals. If it’s going to cost you $25K to pay a recruiter to fill the position, it’s not crazy to spend some of that on your team instead. Just a word of caution: reward programs can set up some weird dynamics. Your team may suddenly feel like they’re selling their friends out for a bonus instead