Building your initial team as a founder

Your first few hires do more than fill roles. They set the operating norms everyone after them inherits without ever being told what those norms are. Get the first five wrong on fit, and you spend the next fifty hires fighting a culture you didn't choose on purpose.

Early on, resist hiring for pure competence alone. You need people who can operate with almost no process, who ask questions instead of waiting for instructions, and who are honest with you when something isn't working. Competence without that is a liability at this stage, because there's no system yet to catch someone coasting.

The other trap is hiring too slowly out of fear of getting it wrong, and burning yourself out doing five people's jobs in the meantime. Move deliberately, but move. A mediocre hire you can course-correct beats a founder who's the bottleneck on everything for another two quarters.

The initial team isn't just early help. It's the template for everyone who comes after.

Leadership Development is where I help founders get this stage right the first time.