For a startup business, its one of the biggest questions, risks and costs – who do I employ?
In any small business everyone wears a few hats, so it would be great to find someone who can do a variety of things. But does that mean they are going to be expensive?
The good old rich vs king argument says you should employ senior people if you want to be rich (but lose control because you don’t hire someone with experience and ignore them) and you employ less senior people if you want to be king. I’d rather just have someone with a hunger to learn, a can-do attitude and a good fit for the culture I’m trying to build.
So, here’s the first three people I want to work with:
#1 has got to complement my skills and since we’re building web applications – that means I need interaction design, graphical design and a CSS/JQuery guru. That might sound like three people – but like I said, you’ve got to wear a few hats so lucky I know just the person and between us we can cover the entire process end-to-end and build some stunning software.
#2 there are a lot of possibilities here, but the best is someone to focus on my weakness(es) – which is the operations side of things allowing me to focus on development and running the business. I’ll never forget one of my best customers saying to me, “I love your product, but the only time you ever talk to me is to chase money – so I’m going to switch to this other product”. Without good operations, its so easy for things to spin out of control – so having someone to take care of this side of things will be massive.
#3 is to replace me. I want to run the business, so I need to replace myself as a developer. I also want to have time to learn about the parts of business that I don’t have so much experience in, so I figure I’ve got to make myself redundant as a developer. Not that with 2 developers I’ll exactly be redundant – but at least we can deliver software without me getting in the way.
I’m really pleased to have found great people for the first two roles – people who share my values and excitement for what lies ahead. #3 will have to wait a little longer, but if its you then I’d love to hear from you.
Posted by Andrew 
