In Silicon Valley, we often talk about the power law of startups. In fact, it’s so prominent that it’s the underlying law that drives most dynamics in silicon valley. I think most people will agree with me when I say that the power law of startups starts with the power law of founders. There are just very, very few forces of nature who can will a company of enduring and giant value into existence.
Over the last several years, I’ve further concluded that there’s a similar power law of recruiting. In every team, a few players disproportionately move the needle. Your job as a founder is to stack your team with as many of these outliers as possible, knowing they’ll contribute 10x the value of an average hire. Not every hire you make will be transformational, but identifying and closing even a few A++ hires can change the trajectory of your company.
But this is insanely fucking hard. Most people theoretically understand this because everyone says so, but I think most first time founders still underestimate how hard recruiting truly A+ talent is. You have to find them, you have to assess them, you have to close them against competition.
So what makes this so hard? What are the common failure modes that come in the way of great recruiting? At Audacious, we focus on two jobs: 1/ Invest in force of nature founders; 2/ Help them recruit an amazing team. Accordingly, we spend a lot of time on this question. Here are the most common mistakes I see being made in the recruiting funnel:
The first and biggest mistake I see is that there’s often not a deep internalization that good is the enemy of great. There are founders and execs who understand this, and there are founders and execs who simply don’t. The reality is that if your recruiting process and mindset is geared towards hiring good enough, you’re going to end up with a bunch of mediocre players on your team. The entire funnel from sourcing to interviewing to backchannel referencing has to be geared towards: Is this person exceptional at their craft? Am I settling for someone who’s good enough? Have I pounded the pavement enough to know that this is one of the best candidates I can get to solve the problems I need solved at my company via this role?
Lack of intentionality on the role and the spec: Let’s say you’re recruiting for your first marketing lead. It’s not good enough to say to your sourcing channels that “I’m looking for a marketing leader, send me all the good candidates”. Are you solving a demand gen problem, a product marketing problem, a brand marketing problem? B2B Marketers tend to grow up in one of these three disciplines of marketing, and accordingly have different major-minors to their marketing skills. A brand marketer solves problems in a very different way than a demand gen marketer. Likewise, an SMB sales leader is very different than an enterprise sales leader. Being intentional requires work and research upfront. If you haven’t done this work upfront, the search is set up for failure. A very likely outcome of this lack of intentionality is that you waste six months on the search, and have to start over. How do you avoid this? Instead of writing a generic job description, get very specific about the problems you want this hire to solve, and the competencies and traits needed to solve this problem.
Not enough effort to generate a high quality pipeline: Intentionality is only good if the actions on the field match it. I see this lethargic mistake all the time. The high quality candidates are out there in the market, but to get in front of them, you’ll have to reach out to enough of them, you’ll have to pound the pavement in terms of getting intros to the best people you and your extended networks can get you. If you have a recruiter doing the outreach for you, you’ll have to sync with them weekly to ensure they’re reaching out to the right spec, give them feedback on who in their outreach is not a good fit. If you have a strong pipeline, you’ll end up with a strong set of finalists. Unfortunately, most searches end up with one finalist. It’s not because there aren’t more amazing candidates out there. It’s because there wasn’t enough effort put in to get to enough of them. If you don’t have enough pipeline, you don’t have a hiring process - you have a lottery.
Lackadaisical / generic vetting process: Generic interview questions are useless. They keep the discussion at the surface level and don’t really answer the core question: does this person have the talent + skills + determination to walk through walls to solve the problems that they need to in order to thrive in this role? Don’t just rely on the candidate’s charisma and ability to answer interview questions. Dive into the person’s track record. What did they actually drive in terms of outcomes in their prior roles? Look for patterns of outsized impact or demonstrated track record of overcoming adversity. Understand how did they accomplish those things. Most people will be able to answer what they’ve accomplished (those are prepared answers), but when you go deep into the how and the why, the depth of their thinking and actions (or lack thereof) comes through.
When it comes to vetting, backchannel references are mission critical, in my view. The reality is that many people know how to hack an interview process. The best data on someone’s future ability to execute is in their track record of execution so far in their life. But the challenge with backchannel references is that often the people you’re talking to on references are closer to the candidate than to you, so they’ll say all the right things. So your questions have to be really pointed towards understanding how the candidate actually operates, beyond their answers in an interview. The questions have to be pointed enough that it’s difficult for the reference to avoid giving you the truth.
Not bringing the intensity to closing candidates: Closing is war. The last thing you want is that you’re excited about the candidate but they’re not excited about the opportunity. With the best talent, it’s not enough to give them a good comp and a good process, and assume they’ll accept. Top talent has options. They might even get a counter offer from their current company when they try to resign. You have to make them emotionally excited about working with you and your startup. You have to sell the larger-than-life narrative around your company. Why should they spend their prime years working with you? You’re not just selling the job - you’re selling the mission, your vision, and why this can be one of the game changing companies of the decade ahead. Understand that their life partner’s input is going to be an important part of their decision. So how can you ensure that their partner is also excited about them joining you? Make it personal. Be relentless. Bring your investors to play. Bring all your resources to play. Once you’ve decided you want someone in your company, play to win.
Our Talent Partner, Sam, often says: “Every meeting with a great candidate is a buy-and-sell meeting, and you want to build their excitement about you to its peak right before you make the offer. Making the offer too early—before they’re fully sold—can be just as bad as losing momentum by moving too slow on someone you know you want”.
An example of always keeping closing at the back of your mind: when you’re speaking with backchannel references, you know that some of these are also mentors to the candidate, and accordingly will have influence. They’ll likely call the candidate right after your call anyway to tell them how you’re thinking about them. So ask the pointed questions you need to, but then take 10 mins at the end to also tell this person what you’re building, why it could be a special company, the momentum you have in the market and why you’re particularly excited about the candidate for this role. Get the reference excited about this opportunity for the candidate.
Recruiting a team is hard. Recruiting an A++ team is brutally hard. So mistakes are inevitable. You’ll get oversold by a strong storyteller. You’ll invest months in a search only to start over. You’ll close a candidate who looked great on paper but couldn’t execute…. But making mistakes isn’t what kills startups - failing to fix them fast does.
The founders who build legendary companies internalize the power law of recruiting - they understand that a handful of hires will define the company’s culture, standard of performance and overall trajectory. They don’t settle. They don’t treat recruiting as a side task. They obsess over it.
If you want to build something enduring, you have to become exceptional at recruiting. That means relentlessly sourcing, vetting, closing, and course-correcting. The founders who commit to this mindset dramatically increase their odds of success.
