Culture, Bias, Referrals, & Cults

This post will talk about early hiring realities of a small startup.

Culture

Too many startups, simply inherit large corporation hiring processes, and it leads to it share of problems (Lower quality candidates, lost of culture, expensive process, death of company). The simple first step is to define your missions and you core values. You are answering the simple question of how do you work? What do you value over other aspects?

In 2024, I did some interviews at early companies, and it was clear they hadn’t come up for air from product building to address these questions. They simply dove into hiring. A simplified example of my exchange:

Me: “What do you value?”
Founder: “Speed & Quality.”
Me: “There’s only 24 hours in the day, what if you can’t have both?”
Founder: “(Didn’t have an answer)”.

There were a number of other aspects of that interview that made it clear. They had not given mission, or culture a minute of thought. They just listed off extremely high-level values. It was the equivalent of someone listing Silicon Valley company slogans: “Don’t be Evil”, “Think Different”, etc.

The truth is that most company cultures are a reflection of the founders. They decide what they value, and that often translates into the company. Ex. Airbnb and design. This is good, but it’s important it gets written down. You should be clear with what they are and what they are not. As a candidate, I know what I value as well. I run this values alignment check against them while interviewing. I value deep, async, remote work. If your company is a Sales Lead in-office organization, I’m probably not going to thrive there. That’s okay, but at least we both can compare values.

If the founder is self-aware, they can get away with not defining their company values for a while. They are commanding the interview process, and screening people based on these values subconsciously. It breaks when they are only the last step in the hiring process. Candidates only get screened out at the end and you burn resources for all earlier steps.

As a hiring manager, I knew the culture. Therefore, I measured my input of the candidates into the hiring process against the final outcome. The results aligned with me knowing the culture. For those that didn’t match, I would evaluate with what signals I missed. 90% of the time it was questions that I wish I had asked (Advice: Always ask and ignore time).

It seems simple, but as a founder be clear with what you value. It must be a 3 - 5 core values. It’s also a good idea to define what you are not.

Referrals

Referrals are the most powerful tool for building a team, and it takes a number of forms. First speaking from experience at multiple companies, often 50% or more of an early company is based on some connection. You should be able to convince people to work on this big exciting problem that you are addressing.

If you don’t have a startup or an idea yet, networking and building this list of people can happen at any point. There are plenty of people I would re-reach out and work again at a future job if I had a job to offer. Hiring is easiest if you start 6 months before you need someone. That’s hard to plan for, so networking is just and ongoing activity. Great founders have made it a habit.

After you’ve mastered it for yourself, look towards your team. I introduce a really simple process to ensure we are constantly filling the pipeline of talent engineers. Between day 60 - day 90, you sit down with the new hire and ask them who they know is smart. “Who would you want to work with again?” The reason for timing (between day 60 and 90) depends on their onboarding. In the past, people would create 30-60-90 day onboarding plans to effectively set expectation for getting ramped to the company. As you talk to them, the majority of people still feel new to the company on day 60, but unexpectedly very comfortable with the company by day 90.

As you ask about who they would work with again, you need to frame the different types of referrals. I like to thinking there are three levels of commitments:

Point to someone who is smart, I won’t reference you or say this came from you. They may reach out to you to better understand the company before responding.
Point to someone who is smart, and I will use your name as I reach out. Again, they may reach out to you.
Warm introduction - you send the introduction to between the hiring manager and the person. Explain the company, why they may be interested and see if they are open to a convo.

I find that people are more willing to refer people when you break it down like this. When I worked at big companies, you may have some interactions with people. They seem capable, but you hesitate because you really only saw a snippet of their work. That’s fine - as I hiring manager knowing that information is better. The reality is that your team member is probably filtering more than you think. Plus that’s what the hiring process is for.

People tend to recommend companies they find a fit with. People tend to recommend people when they see a fit too. When you find someone who fits your culture, they are more likely to know more people who also may fit that culture.

Bias & Cults

Startups are cults. You have to be able to go against the grain to build something that no one else has thought to build before.

“The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful startup are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.” - Peter Thiel, Zero to One

This means bias will exist in your hiring process. It’s critical to make sure the bias is around people who share your company culture, not other aspects. Your objective is to find where someone ranks on a number of aspects (Ex. Critical thinking, communication, etc.), and trying to determine values alignment. The best way to have this rubrics of sorts is to write down your company values. In an ideal world, if it could be a blind interview that would be the best. That’s not as realistic, so just orient the hiring conversation around values.

Conclusion

That’s the end of the rant - in short; write down your company values early on. It should be the top things you value. It will be a reflection of the founders. Understand that you will bias towards people who align with those values, and that’s okay. Don’t inherit an interview process, but base it on values. Finally, use people who you’ve found to align with that culture to find more people like that. As you scale, you will pass these same instructions onto the hiring managers.