Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Hiring your first employee is a huge step for your start-up. In addition to the sudden sense of
responsibility (you’re now in charge of someone else's livelihood!), it’s a strong signal that your
company has real merit: Someone has chosen to turn down other opportunities to help make your
idea happen. And in many cases, he or she is embracing a significant amount of risk to do so.
But the most fundamental way in which it changes your business is bandwidth. A new person
dedicating all of his or her time and focus to the company means that suddenly you get to move
faster. A lot faster.
At my company, ReWork, it took over a year to get to the point where we were ready to bring
someone else onto the team. We didn’t read any here’s-how-to-hire-someone books, but instead
relied upon our observations of other start-up experiences, and advice from our Unreasonable
mentors. And after three months, 30 applicants, and a steep learning curve, we were able to find
exactly what we were looking for. His name is Shane Rasnak, and he is awesome.
Based on our experience (and that of other founders we’ve talked with), here’s the advice we’d give
anyone else in this boat.