Richard Wang’s Tips for Effective Startup Hiring

• The mistakes that we've made in hiring have always come when we rationalized a poor cultural fit because that person had a great resume or specific experience. For us, cultural fit means someone with low ego, humility, and an open mind. No matter how great their technical ability seems, do not compromise on values and culture. 

• Building a diverse early team with highly complementary skill sets and backgrounds is another hiring superpower. You want as many points of view as you can get if you wish to be innovative.

• Experience is surprisingly unimportant, especially for early-stage startup hires. Rather than finding people who are already experts (who you probably can't afford anyway), hire people early in their career who are hungry to learn and able to grow very quickly. Early on in your company's life you want people who thrive as generalists rather than specialists.

• A good fit for a startup is someone who treasures the rapid growth and learning opportunities, not someone who finds that rapid pace a source of stress and worry. 

• Hire mission-driven people who believe in the long-term impact of what you're doing. It helps with retention. Plus, folks who are aligned with your mission are less likely to just jump ship if a competitor offers to pay them slightly more. 

• The CEO should stay very involved in all hiring decisions, well past the point of when it may otherwise seem reasonable to outsource lower-level interviews to employees. Effective hiring may be the single most important thing a CEO does in a company, and it's critical to get right. The final decision and quality check must rest with the CEO until you're at least 30+ people.

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