Startup Hiring and Management
Early hiring and people systems that do not collapse the team's speed. Focus: first hires, clear roles, structured interviews, lightweight management cadence, and separation when needed.
When to Use
- Planning first 1-10 hires and sequencing roles
- Writing role scorecards and interview plans
- Designing an interview loop and evaluating candidates consistently
- Offers, compensation and equity basics (conceptual; align with counsel/accounting)
- Onboarding and delegation habits
- Installing a management cadence (1:1s, goals, feedback)
- Performance improvement plans (PIPs) and termination process
When NOT to Use
- Deep legal employment advice -> startup-legal-basics
- Org design at scale (50+ people) without additional context
Common Mistakes
- Hiring without a role scorecard -> scope creep and misaligned expectations
- Over-indexing on pedigree over demonstrated outcomes
- Skipping structured interviews -> inconsistent evaluation, bias
- No 30-day milestone -> slow feedback on hire quality
- Delaying hard conversations -> performance issues compound
- Hiring ahead of need -> cash burn without impact
Quick Start (Inputs)
- Stage: pre-revenue, early revenue, post-PMF
- Bottleneck: shipping, sales, support, growth, operations
- Budget: cash runway constraints and compensation philosophy
- Role: the next role you want to hire, and why now
Workflow
- Decide the hiring sequence (not just “who sounds good”)
- Start from the bottleneck to revenue and retention.
- Define what the founder will stop doing after the hire.
- Write a role scorecard
- Use
assets/role-scorecard.md. - Include: outcomes, scope, non-goals, competencies, and must-have experience signals.
- Design the interview loop
- Use
assets/interview-loop-plan.md. - Reduce bias: structured questions, score rubric, and independent scoring.
- Run references and make an offer
- Use
assets/offer-checklist.md. - Decide compensation ranges and equity band (conceptual, validated externally).
- Onboard fast with outcomes
- Use
assets/onboarding-30-60-90.md. - Define “first shipped value” and how you will measure it.
- Manage with a lightweight cadence
- Weekly 1:1 agenda (use
assets/1-1-agenda.md). - Clear goals and feedback loops; avoid “silent misalignment.”
Resources
| Resource | Purpose |
|---|---|
| hiring-sequencing.md | Choosing the next hire based on bottlenecks |
| structured-interviews.md | Structured interview patterns and scoring |
| comp-and-equity-basics.md | Conceptual compensation and equity framing |
| termination-and-separation.md | PIPs, termination process, severance, layoffs |
| remote-team-management.md | Remote/hybrid team ops, async communication, time zones |
| culture-and-values-design.md | Values definition, culture documentation, culture scaling |
| founder-delegation-patterns.md | Delegation frameworks, founder-to-manager transition, time audit |
| first-sales-hire-playbook.md | First sales hire readiness, profile design, interview, comp, onboarding |
Templates
| Template | Purpose |
|---|---|
| role-scorecard.md | Role definition and outcomes |
| interview-loop-plan.md | Interview stages, questions, scoring |
| offer-checklist.md | Offer process and inputs |
| onboarding-30-60-90.md | Onboarding plan |
| 1-1-agenda.md | Weekly 1:1 structure |
Data
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
| sources.json | Hiring references |
What Good Looks Like
- The next hire removes a real bottleneck and changes what the founder does weekly.
- Interviewing is structured; decisions are explainable and repeatable.
- New hires ship a measurable outcome in the first 30 days.