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.