The Talent Bar
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Daily Thought
"Place the right people in the right seats on your bus." - Jim Collins
Let’s Discuss
Two founders walk into a talent bar...
Two early-stage Startup CEOs walk into a talent bar, looking to hire a VP of Sales.
One CEO wants a hungry young wolf who will out-hustle the competition.
The other CEO wants an Ivy League smooth talker who looks good to investors.
They compromise and hire an industry veteran with a few exits under his belt.
No one gets what they want. Within months, their Frankenstein VP drives them crazy.
A cautionary tale of misalignment at the founder-executive level.
In early stage startups, leadership debates often boil down to grit vs pedigree. Founders obsess over whether to hire "doers" or "lookers."
But this binary view gets cloudy fast. In truth, successful scaling demands a progression of talent as complexity increases.
Flipping between extremes in hiring criteria will yield chaotic results. The sweet spot lives between extremes.
Stage 0-50M = Raw Grit
Sub-40 million, startups need producers over pedigrees. Revenue is theoretical - prove the model with calloused persistence, resilience and street smarts. Nothing substitutes hustle before Product-Market Fit.
Stage 40-100M = People Builders
Past 50 million, complexity compounds. Departments silo, culture fragments, exec egos clash. Now you need talent that can nurture a tribe towards a unified vision. People builders rally troops through turmoil.
100M+ = Numbers & Systems
Past 100 million enters the domain of seasoned empire builders. Vision channeling and people management become standardized systems. X Factors are introduced. This is when background pedigree carries clout to attract big money players.
Of course, every rule has exceptions. Facebook in growth mode empowered brilliant young wild cards who lacked traditional credentials. But for most startups, the playbook works.
The Moral:
Know your stage. What fueled that 0-40 million sprint will hold back the 40-100 million scale. And the custodian who steers past 100M requires different skills.
There's no universally "best" talent model. Every stage demands recalibration across grit, people and systems capabilities.
Don't plug early-stage round pegs into late-stage holes. Be honest about where the challenges lie today then hire specifically to bridge those gaps.
The Hiring Sweet Spot balances current needs with enough vision for tomorrow's hurdles. It blends capability with chemistry. But it rarely lives at extremes.
This stuff is hard. But at least this framework helps startup leaders diagnose their dominant pain points before the talent debate ensues. Clarity around the core problem is progress.
Remember...What got you here won't get you there. Leadership evolves in stages. Build a team that can handle today while containing seeds for the future.
That's how you scale from millions to billions.
Now back to that bar...Who's buying the next round while we unpack this some more?