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1/ How do the best startup teams hire well? Every company that finds product-market fit has customers to support, fires to handle. But if they don’t prioritize hiring, they fall into a vicious cycle, increasingly behind and unable to scale. 2/ The winning alternative is simple but hard. The best startup teams prioritize hiring. They make it a core competency. They expect it to cost time. They compress the cycle, schedule same day, debrief immediately, post mortem. Pace and throughput matter. 3/ So does understanding people as full people. Great team builders figure out someone’s motivations, requirements, goals. Who their advisors, stakeholders are. They qualify upfront, don’t try to appeal to everyone. They sell, instead of expecting recruits to care. Nobody cares. 4/ So many early stage companies do a half-assed, haphazard job. They do a little bit of outreach, they don’t see the quality they want, they feel awkward asking for referrals, their storytelling sucks, they don’t know how to screen. So they lower the bar or they deprioritize. 5/ They go back to product! And customers! How could that be wrong? But what got you here won’t get you there. You can’t single-handedly code your way to a $100B company (yet). 6/ Another key is treating talent as a long game. Many founders are myopic about the single role they need, after they desperately need it: “JIT recruiting.” But teams need to intersect recruits when it makes sense for them, too. Calibrate ahead. Always be meeting quality people. 7/7 Team building is a key founder competency. Learn from folks who know how to recruit. There is no free lunch. Pace, discipline, iteration, time. Put those things in, you can get a great team out (assuming your starting technical talent and is great).