Not everyone can – or should – work at an early-stage startup. It’s hard, and it asks a lot of you. But, as founders, we make it way harder for ourselves when we don’t do the work to set our people up for success. For every one person who can survive in systemless chaos, there are a thousand who could thrive in a well-run startup – with the right systems in place.
Searching for a Unicorn for Every Role
A founder recently told me, “We’re just trying to find the right kind of people. The startup-minded ones. The ones who just get it.”
They’d gone through multiple hires in under a year. Smart people. Experienced people. People they thought would be “rockstars.” Every single one of them flamed out. The founder assumed the problem must be hiring: maybe the job description was off, maybe they weren’t screening hard enough, maybe they needed to raise the bar or lower it. They even hired a recruiter. None of it helped.
Many early-stage founders believe hiring is just hard because only a small percentage of people are truly “startup material.” They tell themselves: “We just need to find the right kind of people. The ones who are naturally proactive, fast-moving, strategic. The ones who just get it.” When a hire doesn’t work out, they