So, you’re on the hunt for that mythical creature, the “unicorn” talent. That 10x Engineer who codes in their sleep and single-handedly turns your ramen-fuelled dream into a market-dominating reality. This article is for you.
But it’s also about something more profound: Ownership, diversity, and the soul of your company – its culture. If you’re a leader with actual skin in the game (and not just a vested interest in the kombucha tap), read on. This is where the real magic happens.
On ownership: The gospel of ‘skin in the game’
Let’s be honest. There are two types of people in the startup world: those who are better at explaining than doing, and those who just get it done. The latter possesses what we might call the “startup spirit”. It’s a scrappy, self-driven, and sometimes undefinable combination of hunger, curiosity, and the ability to bite the bullet for the daily grind. They are the ones who lower entropy, bringing order to the beautiful chaos of creation.
“When I cast actors, I cast eyes.” – Guillermo del Toro
The great filmmaker Guillermo del Toro doesn’t look at CVs; he looks for a certain fire in the eyes of his actors. He’s looking for the soul of the character. We should hire in the same way.
When you have skin in the game, you develop an instinct for this.
You look for that spark of extreme ownership, not just in your leaders, but in every member of the team, including your interim hires. It’s those teams where everyone, from the intern to the CEO, feels that sense of ownership that truly makes your startup become unstoppable.
Diversity, your competitive advantage
As your startup begins to scale, a funny thing happens. You look around one day and realise that everyone looks… remarkably similar. You’ve accidentally created a monoculture. This is not just a social failing; it’s a catastrophic business error. Research shows that on complex, innovative tasks, diverse teams don’t just outperform homogenous ones – they lap circles around them.
Also Read: A founder’s field guide to managing performance and giving feedback that lands
Here are a few unpopular, yet essential, decisions you can make to build a truly diverse team:
- Mandate the 50:50 rule: For every male candidate you meet in the final round, make it a rule to meet with one more female candidate. Yes, it’s more work for your recruitment team. Yes, it might slow you down. But it’s the way to ensure you are truly hiring for merit, not just for pattern recognition.
- Sanitise your job description: By default, job descriptions are riddled with unconscious bias. Words have power, and the ones you choose might be inadvertently turning away entire demographics. I’ve used text analytics tools like Textio to scrub our JDs and create a more gender-neutral tone. We did this for over 100 job descriptions while hiring across Asia for a tech unicorn, and saw a significant shift in our applicant pool.
- Break the monoculture cycle: It’s tempting to hire a bunch of people from that one big tech company down the road. They all have the right skills, right? But before you know it, you’ve created a clique. Factions form, groupthink sets in, and innovation dies. We experienced this personally and had to put a hard stop on hiring from a single company once it reached a certain percentage of our team. It was a tough call, but it saved our culture.
The Glassdoor mirage and the vicious circle
Ah, culture. That nebulous, all-important thing. Does it really matter?
And let’s talk about the elephant in the room: those glowing five-star Glassdoor reviews. We all know it’s shady to ask your most agreeable employees to write them to drown out the one-star rants from disgruntled employees. We also know that almost every startup has done it.
Also Read: The art and science of feedback: A guide for first-time founders and new managers
Here’s the thing: smart candidates see right through it. They read every single review, good and bad, and they can smell a cover-up a mile away. The real question for a founder with skin in the game is not how to game the system, but whether the system is even worth gaming.
Organisational psychologist Adam Grant has a surprising take on this. He found that while founders who are passionate about “culture fit” are more likely to IPO, their companies often grow at a slower rate afterwards. I think this means that an obsessive focus on “fit” can lead to a dangerous level of homogeneity. This brings us to the Polish painter Jacek Malczewski and his haunting masterpiece, Vicious Circle.
The Vicious Circle: An allegory for startup culture
In the painting, a whirlwind of figures, some ecstatic, some melancholic, some grotesque, dance in a dizzying circle around a central figure, the artist himself, perched on a ladder; he seems to be both the conductor of this chaotic symphony and a prisoner within it.
The circle is a representation of the creative imagination, a vibrant, powerful force.
But it is also a trap – a self-referential loop that, once entered, is nearly impossible to escape.
This is my analogy for a startup company’s culture. It can look like a cheerful dance of collaboration and innovation. But when it becomes a monoculture, when “culture fit” becomes a euphemism for hiring people who look, think, and act just like you, it becomes a vicious circle. The dance becomes a death spiral of groupthink, stagnation, and, ultimately, irrelevance.
Also Read: Fractional executive hiring: Break the vicious cycle, build the virtuous one
A Founder’s final revelation
At the beginning of the hunt for the 10x talent, you should know that it was never about finding a mythical creature of your dreams and desires; your goal should be about building an ecosystem where such talent can thrive.
This chapter begins with leaders who have real skin in the game, who understand that true ownership is the bedrock of any legendary team.
Then, it is fortified by the kombucha on tap and your singular commitment to diversity (not as a box-ticking exercise but as an imperative determination to fuel innovation and shatter that echo chamber of groupthink).
Then, only when you start to hire, you need to remember two things:
- Find the true 10x-ers who will not only drive performance but also elevate your culture.
- Create an environment that makes them want to stay – An environment that breaks the vicious circle and is a home for true innovation.
The goal is not to find people who ‘fit’ into a pre-existing mould, but to assemble a mosaic of brilliant minds who will challenge, elevate, and redefine what is possible.
This is how you will build a legacy.
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