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If they're pre-funding, in the middle of an angel round, why are they hiring employees already from general public? First off, why aren't they doing themselves? Is the team technically incompetent (by the virtue of too many biz-dev people)?

It looks like they really need another person on their core team - not just a regular employee. Somebody who's willing to be in the garage with you ( why do you even have an office at this point, by the way? ).

You don't recruit that person by posting on the Internet, you use your social network ( and I don't mean Facebook ) to do that. Do they not have any acquaintances, former coworkers?

This may well not be the case - and in fact, I'd imagine it isn't - but the situation screams "these people don't have a technical clue themselves and don't have anyone in their social network who believes strongly enough in them to take the risk and go into a garage with them".

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You ever tried to recruit employee #1-3? I have. I have a pretty rich network (including the extended network you get being funded by YC, a VC firm, and a mess of pretty top-tier angels). We all worked our networks pretty hard (and ultimately hired out of 'em) but we also posted the job in a few places (and found some amazing candidates).

Very very few people in your network ultimately have the stones to make the leap into the uncertainly of an early stage startup (even a well-funded one). I imagine it gets MUCH harder in Boca Raton, FL and even harder in these particular economic times.

And, expanding a team does NOT equal technical incompetence. It could mean that they have an ambitious problem they are tackling. Or that they have a line of customers out the door and want to accelerate development.

Seriously-- they fucked up-- but at least they're trying. Cut 'em some slack and stop assuming the worst.

I said myself at the last paragraph - this may well not be the case. They may be competent, but they're not giving that impression - and stating it the way I see, is at least real feedback they could use.

That's what I'm taking away from it. They put out a job listing for an employee, but are expecting that person to have the attitude of a partner.

They're looking for "employee number zero". First person involved who isn't a founder (isn't in the room when the idea is created), but takes on founder level risk and should expect greater than usual equity and compensation somewhere between that of a founder and an employee.

Something screams poor execution: confused goals (they're talking about "getting real" - a 37 signals type philosophy of building a sustainable small business - but are acting like they're built with the intention of an exit, expecting people to work for equity), getting an office before they can truly afford, lack of the right connections to find the person I've mentioned the first paragraph (without resorting to the Internet equiv of newspaper's classifieds page)

They're also doing enterprise software/SaaS - yet it's not clear that their "biz-dev" guys have any "sales engineering" experience (that's what makes or breaks an enterprise product). Along this angle, what's even more ironic is that they're asking the prospective employees to sell themselves short! What's the guarantee that such an employee won't do the same to their software/service (and yes, an early stage engineer will be involved in the sales/support process)?

I read through all this and am thankful that I've reached a level of experience and wisdom where life is always tempered a bit.

Youth rocks, but sometimes it rocks hard enough that you can end up hurting yourself in a very real way.

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