Posted on

Hiring for your startup

This may be one of the most clichéd topics on startup land. Everyone and her mother-in-law would have a view on who should be hired and who should not be! So, I would start with a disclaimer that these are some of personal experiences in hiring for my two startups and according to me, the top 2 or 3 focus areas for any entrepreneur.

Few hiring practices which worked for my startup are

Always look for attitude – It may sound simplistic but the test I employ for this when doing an interview or a casual discussion is – would I see myself working with him / her managing the ups and downs of a startup? Does the candidate bring the maturity needed to tackle the ride? If the response is not an unequivocal yes, then I would not proceed. I hired a person who brought 2 years experience doing QA work in another startup, but wanted to do something in travel. I saw passion for travel and determination, so she was in. Within few weeks, she created impressive content on various travel destinations for our website. She also was able to work with the product team and have conversations with customers about the destinations fairly soon.

Probe the intent – Is the candidate looking at the startup job as a stopgap arrangement or does she seriously want to have a startup experience? This is especially critical when hiring mid-to-senior level candidates. So, I go deeper into their motives and try to understand the reason. Like the earlier case, if the intent is vague, then I do not proceed.

The Big Picture – Apart from the adrenaline rush and the excitement, what else pushes a candidate to join a startup? Canned answers of “changing the world” would not fly and we all know that! Is the person able to really think big , is what I would look for. I have had the most elegant narrative of the big picture from candidates who were fresh out of college. One time, this kid talked about how too many social media tools hamper his ability to keep in touch and he wants to create a tool to keep it together. Sure, it is not an earth-shattering idea – but I liked the fact that he is able to spot the problem that needs a solution and attempts to do that – exactly the traits for a startup company! We need castle builders and not stone cutters.

Manage the ambiguity – this is a pre-requisite to be in startup world without getting stressed out! I generally ask the below open ended questions which give me a reasonably good grasp of their personality :

  • If she works on a team with clearly laid out vision and goals but not the steps to achieve them, how would she operate?
  • If their area of work changes frequently or their work gets scrapped or thrown away more regularly, how do they take it?
  • How would they react if the entire team has to pivot and do something entirely different?
  • Does the candidate have the experience (either in their personal life or professional life) where key decisions had to be taken without a guarantee how it would pan out?

 

Team Dynamics – Look for team players than “leaders” – in a startup everyone has to exhibit natural leadership qualities. Do they share knowledge without holding back ? Are they happy sharing credit as a team rather than individual accomplishments ? What do they most enjoy in a team? While some of these leading questions would provide qualitative answers, it is up to us as entrepreneurs to sift through the noise and get a real sense from the candidate

Referrals – As startups, we do heavily rely on candidates from friends and other sources of referrals. In my mind, that’s a double-edged sword. If you cannot sit down and have a performance conversation (in the event of things not going well), then it would be a burden for both you and the person. Recently, I had to have this difficult conversation with someone I had worked previously and had believed she would add tremendous value. Within few weeks, I realized she was not carrying out what she signed up for. I had to discuss this and have it resolved amicably, it was painful. Key lesson for me was to have an explicit conversation of setting expectations; Prepare for the worst while hope for the best!

As a startup you don’t have the luxury of spending your time hiring replacements – it has to be first-time-right. If you see the initial high wearing off too quickly in the person you have hired, take the tough decision quickly and let them go in the first 60-90 days rather than lingering longer.

In my earlier corporate avatar and in the current startup world, I have applied a simple heuristic test (and it has worked for me most of the times!) is – Would I see myself or my current team work with this person in the years to come? If this does not give me a solid “yes” I would let it pass and would not hire the candidate.

On a related note, one of the articles I found really interesting is from Paul English who is the co-founder of Kayak, the meta search engine which got sold to Priceline for $1.8 Billion after a very successful IPO. He really talks about how hiring has to be one of the key focus for one of the members of the management team. You could check out his thoughts here

Building a high performance culture and shared vision is something every entrepreneur needs to focus on. Getting the first few hires right really holds the key to creating the next Zappos or Netflix or Amazon!

Posted on

Nurturing Product Managers & Entrepreneurs

More than 3000 product companies generating revenue of $2 Billion – that may sound miniscule compared to $100 Billion IT services industry.  It is pertinent to look at how the eco-system needs to be developed to create $100 Billion Software product industry from India over the next decade. Ambitious ? Yes, but not impossible. There are few fundamental building blocks which needs to be laid to make this as a reality.

Over the years as an entrepreneur and as a mentor, I have interacted with a number of product startups on how they view their startup and more often than not, conversation revolves around one of these questions especially when the startup is in their early/idea stages.  I am beginning to sense few recurring themes during my interactions with product startups ;

  • Problem definition
  • Business Model
  • Competitive landscape
  • Product positioning

 

Problem definition: What problem we are trying to solve?

As a startup, in my mind entrepreneurs tend to focus too much on solving the problem versus spending adequate time and effort in defining the problem they are trying to solve.

In most cases, for a services company, the customers discover the problem and provide it to a services company. Half the battle is won ; the remaining challenge is to find a best-fit solution.

But the product company has to identify a problem that is large enough to solve with their product while at the same time looking for a space which is solveable as a startup…

As product companies we make a few common mistakes in this aspect –

  • We think there is a problem and look around for confirmation ; differing opinions are quickly discarded – a classic confirmation bias problem
  • We spend a very small portion of the time defining the problem and eager to jump to the solution ;

It is key to pullback and spend the effort in defining the problem clearly. It is all the more difficult if it is a new / different area than the entrepreneur’s core expertise. It is essential to observe the domain landscape, network extensively and validate the problem with practitioners before trying to solve the problem.  While it is said that newcomers have an innate ability to look at an existing industry problem very differently, but, it is quite critical to understand what is going on before relooking at the problem with some fresh set of eyes and ears.

Business model : What business we are in?

Business model is the guiding light , will always be in the back of our mind. Granted it gets ignored for certain short term gains at times. As product startups/entrepreneurs, we get caught between the million dollar question : short term survival mode and long term vision.

I am guilty of this dilemma in my startup as well.  We end up choosing a path “for now” over what we will “eventually” do. As we all know, the “eventually” never happens! An example could be  B2B vs going Direct to the consumer or an e-commerce company finding themselves in an identity crisis : Am I in a consumer experience business or a in a logistics business?.

If this cannot be explained in simple English with clarity, it is better to go back to basics and start refining the business model;

Keep asking the questions; Mentors and other startups play a very crucial role in unraveling and validating the business model. As entrepreneurs we either take it for granted or don’t see it all.

Competitive landscape: Who else is working on this problem already?

Ths is one of my pet peeves –  Entrepreneurs tend to have a tunnel vision and do not look around for existing players in their own problem domain. Time and again, I find the entrepreneurs with no knowledge of other startups or product companies who may be doing exactly the same thing or something complimentary in their respective areas be it in India or outside.  Going back to my first comment on problem definition, they would either have a cognitive dissonance or try to portray it as we do this as well as that but that company is not focusing on what we do.

While we as entrepreneurs need to be obsessive and passionate about what we do, we also have to be equally paranoid about what else is happening in our own domain. There is nothing called “Blue ocean” in our times I guess! Someone in the team must be thinking 24×7 about what else is happening in their area and at times it is perfectly normal to be cynical I guess! J

Production positioning: How does our product fit in the marketplace?

As startups, we focus on the here-and-now when building our products, we miss out on how we can be part of an eco-system of connected products / apps.

It means intense research, trying out different apps, looking at product features of others more closely etc. It is worth the effort to look at the landscape and eco-system , understand the product fitment holistically.

It is better to ask (or get asked) some real tough questions around where do we add value to the eco-system, how does our product fit in the existing scheme of things, why would customers pay to buy our product and what is one thing which makes them use our product etc.. during the initial stages of the product development stage.

There is a huge opportunity to look at product positioning and marketing (similar to how Lean Startup approach evangelizes) along with the product development and engineering.

Revenue model and product marketing are two areas I have still not touched upon in this article. Hope to cover it sometime later!