Most entrepreneurs understand that developing a new product or service involves multiple iterations, pivots, and extensive changes. When a company progresses from concepts to prototypes to minimum viable working versions to products ready to scale, the team’s required skills will inevitably also evolve.
The initial stages of a startup require people with a certain set of core strengths, and it can be difficult to accept that the people you initially envisioned — maybe people you trust who you’ve known professionally in a different capacity — may not be the best suited for the job.
Archetypes and the entrepreneur archetype
To address this common hiring oversight, it’s helpful to introduce the concept of archetypes. Archetypes are a representation (with a short, sweet name you can remember) of a set of characteristics that you use as a model to evaluate people. The beauty of archetypes is their flexibility; there’s no standard template, and the traits you choose to look for are subjective and tailored to your project’s needs. For any role you may be hiring, identify what archetype you’re looking for and create your interview around that.
In your launch (and pivot) phase, it’s crucial to hire individuals fitting the Entrepreneur Archetype. It’s not the same as simply hiring people with entrepreneurship experience, no matter how positive or negative the outcome. Here, we focus on the core strengths and traits that typify entrepreneurial individuals:
They’re extremely comfortable with ambiguity
To survive the chaos and extreme ambiguity of a startup in the Launch Wave, entrepreneurs are smart, intuitive, and able to function without knowing all the facts, solving problems creatively without frameworks or processes. One way you can recognise them during the interview process is that they won’t ask a lot of questions about the scope of the role and responsibilities.
They’re well-rounded
You need people who can connect the dots at a time when you don’t even know where the dots are going to be. Except for certain deep tech or specialised companies, you want to hire people who have a range of experiences, who can find opportunities within the opportunity, stay alert, and move fast. Hiring someone who has worked on the same types of products in the same domain for a long time can be a red flag, since they may be set in their pre-existing knowledge, and everything will look like a nail for their hammer.
Also Read: Startups should celebrate failures. This is how to keep the experimenting culture alive
They’re proactive and risk takers
You need people who take the initiative even when good outcomes aren’t guaranteed. Startups have few playbooks, and most of the time you depend on people to just do things on their own without being told. Look for signs of initiative in their personal lives or how they approached their roles. Are they curious? How did they get into their different roles — was it part of the natural growth carried by inertia or were they their own agents of change? Did they do something unexpected?
They’re hard workers and roll up their sleeves
You need people who can wear multiple hats and have a generous understanding of what their contribution means. In a startup, one day you’re designing a feature and the next you’re printing shipping labels to ship a workaround that unblocks a customer. No prima donnas.
They work with enthusiasm and grit
You’re going to spend a lot of time together, under a lot of pressure. Things may go well, but they’ll also go sour often, so you need people who display stamina, grit, and a smile while they go through the thick of the storm. Look for signs of committing to something hard and seeing it through. Has this person jumped from job to job every year for the past ten years? That’s a red flag.
One of the mistakes entrepreneurs make is hiring someone for the needs of today (Launch) and tomorrow (Scale), because that’s rarely the same person. You’ll have different needs along your journey, but you need to hire (and fire) for the phase you’re in. This implies that in the future you may need to replace people as your needs change. Some people are avid learners and flexible, so they’ll be able to adapt and grow with the company. Others will have to go to make room for the newcomers with the skills required at that time — and that may include yourself.
Also Read: How early-stage deep-tech startups can attract and retain the right talent
In startup culture, grit and persistence — and the accumulation of vesting stock at the potential gigantic exit — might cause people to extend their welcome. Other people lack the self-awareness to realise it’s not working. Not recognising the mismatch of skills will make everybody unhappy, and cutting ties in this situation is the healthiest thing to do for everyone involved. You’ll have different needs along your journey, but you need to hire (and fire) for the phase you’re in.
Often when you must let someone go because of performance, it’s not about their performance in general — it’s about their performance in that role at that moment. Usually, there’s a mismatch of archetype with what the role requires. Developing those core strengths is hard, even in normal conditions.
It’s even harder in a startup (a pressure cooker disguised as a company), where there’s an almost nonexistent training budget and coaching programs. That person would be much happier in a different role in which their core strengths match what the role requires. A startup can teach you a lot very fast about an industry or how to perform a particular function, but it’s not the place to develop new core strengths. What you hire is what you get.
Excerpted from Sail to Scale: Steer Your Startup Clear of Mistakes from Launch to Exit by Mona Sabet, Heather Jerrehian and Maria Fernandez Guajardo. Copyright 2024 Mona Sabet, Heather Jerrehian and Maria Fernandez Guajardo. Reprinted with permission.
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