What "The Best" Looks Like

Summary

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see. —Arthur Schopenhauer The second that the next round of funding hits the bank, every new CTO starts obsessing over the same thing: Who the hell do I hire next? The answer is surprisingly non-obvious. You’re told that you always want—scratch that, need—the best of the best, your startup’s future depends on it. You’re told your company is unique, special, and it requires the most hardcore among researchers, designers, engineers, and product managers. You never skimp on who builds the golden goose. You can’t succeed with any less than that. But, is that actually true? Every startup-hustle YouTube video, VC podcast and celeb founder interview regurgitates that the key to success is to hire the very best people, no matter what it takes. And yet you live in the real world, with real-world constraints. You have only so much money in the bank. Only so much time and bandwidth to hire. Only so much attention in a given day. And you’re not alone in your hunt. You’re competing with hundreds of other players in your geography, industry, and problem space looking for “the best.” Many of them have a more famous brand, more cash, more promising equity, more charming founders, and maybe even a high production value promo video showcasing happy employees, rare wood office counters and a shoes-off policy. Will you actually hire the best of the best against those odds? Many years ago I found myself in this pickle and I had to learn all the relevant lessons the hard way. I share these lessons here, so that you don’t have to struggle through that same maze yourself. My pain is your gain. My first time around the startup world in 2012, I hardly knew what I was doing and relied mostly on luck—and unfortunately, firing—to end up with a team I could be proud of. I had no real point of reference for greatness, for what “the best” in our area could look like, and building that model required lots of experimentat...