The first 10 hires define the company more than any strategy deck. Here's how to think about sequence, bar, and process.
Every one of the first ten hires is a founding-team decision. Their taste, standards, and defaults become the culture. Hire the wrong seventh person and the next thirty are downstream of that mistake.
Hires 1-3: technical co-founders or founding engineers who can build the product without supervision. Hires 4-6: senior specialists filling gaps founders can't cover (design, ML, infra). Hires 7-10: first non-founder leaders in the functions that will scale (sales, marketing, ops).
Every early hire should be someone you'd bet the company on. If the answer is "they're good enough," pass. "Good enough" hires slow down every future hire because the bar you actually enforce is the one you actually hired at.
One founder-led screen. One work sample (paid, 4-8 hours, real problem). One team panel (3 people, structured). One reference call (backchannel, not the ones they gave you). Total: 2 weeks. Slower and you lose candidates; faster and you skip signal.
Hiring generalists when you need specialists. Hiring managers before there's anything to manage. Hiring from big-company backgrounds without startup fit. Skipping the work sample because "the resume is strong."
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