Can a startup do well with mediocre early employees?

Most poeple will give you feel good answers and how you can get someone average/unmotivated to get things done at an early stage startup but the answer is No. You can't. Thats the truth. Here is why:

Startups need to execute. Execute Fast. I am not talking 80 hour work weeks but more like getting things done every day, every week, every month. Especially in early days when you don't have real Product Market fit and you are constantly experimenting to figure things out. Mediocre employees won't be able to keep up with that need. Mostly because they can't but in many cases, they don't want to. Also, book smart people can also be mediocre if they are not willing to move the needle.

The first 10-15 hires cannot be mediocre. I don't mean to say that they have to be geniuses IQ wise. But they have to have the same sense of urgency which founders have and they should be able to execute every day. Period. Definitely don't hire from large companies unless they have already shown that they want to work at startups.

Source: I have hired a lot of these "mediocre" types and I don't blame them honestly because it was my fault as the founder. Most have been nice to work with. But just being nice wont get you anywhere. You need to find hungry people who are willing to put the time in, learn and execute fast. Super fast. I could do a whole podcast on hiring mistakes that I have made as a founder. Very expensive mistakes that that cost us not just in terms of money but time to market.

Thank you for this response. What did you do with those "mediocre" types—did you let them go ASAP? If not, do you wish you had let them go earlier?

If you were in my situation, would you generally assume the company is probably a goner and look elsewhere (even if the product is/could be good)?

Fire them fast. However, I wouldn't go that far to say Company is a goner. That depends on quickly the founders and management team fixes the mistakes. The thing is that company may not die (mine didn't) but it wont grow fast if you dont have the right team at the minimum.

You mentioned you are not the founder or have decision making power. In that case, you need to see what the founder(s) feel. If they are ok with mediocrity, it will creep in further. I always say that the team's urgency by default is always 0.5x of the founders. So if the founders themselves are relaxed, it will get worse.

Thank you. One founder has urgency for himself, but not for the rest of us—he is laid-back with employees and doesn't really seem to discipline anyone. The other seems very hands off.

I'm just so frustrated. It's annoying to see what could be a good product get waylaid like this.

And from a selfish perspective, I'm wondering if I should move on now despite only working there for a few months (looks bad on resume) or push through for a while. What would you do?

If you like working with the founders and the product is good, I suggest you speak to them first and raise your concern. Leaving without trying to get this addressed with the founders doesnt sound like a good move.

Ultimately, you should decide what team you want to be part of but don't make decision abruptly either.

What are you giving these people in return for asking them to do the impossible for your company?

Let me guess, a salary that is below market's standards and yet you still expect the best from them.

That only makes you an entitled hypocrite.

Do you have an email address or a contact method outside of Twitter?

Not throwing shade, but how old are you and how many rodeos have you participated in?

You will work with a lot of incompetent people in your life, you will be someone else's incompetent person.

You need to figure out how to make it work, and that isn't necessarily just removing the folks that you think are the problem.

I'm 30 and have previously worked in one big company and one startup.

You need to figure out how to make it work --> I know I need to figure out how to make it work for myself and to do the best work I can, but I only have so much control over what other people do and how they perform. My question is more whether a startup can succeed with a few incompetent early employees. If it's unlikely, then I want to start looking elsewhere. What do you think?

i think that's good advice if you're working in a situation where you're a cog in the wheel of a business that will still exist in 5 years. it's bad advice if every person has impact strategically and may be a big contributor to the life or death of the company.

This is a challenging situation. A few thoughts: Yes, it is possible for companies to succeed even if early team members prove poorly matched or incompetent for their roles. However, it will be an uphill battle and require extra effort from other team members to compensate. Communication with the founders/leadership is key. Share your objective concerns and examples (without blame or accusation). Highlight specific problems and where deficiencies are hindering execution and operations. Propose potential solutions if you have them (additional training, reassigning roles, letting go, etc). If no changes are made, you'll have to decide if you are willing/able to carry the extra workload long-term. This could potentially lead to frustration and burnout over time. Set clear boundaries for your own work capacity. Focus your energy on the parts you can control - doing excellent work, communicating effectively, and finding creative solutions where you are able. But you alone likely cannot compensate for major underperformance in other roles forever. At some point if major issues persist with no intervention or change, you may need to have a frank talk with leadership about whether this situation threatens the viability of the company's success. Offer to help find solutions, but don't sacrifice your own health trying to single-handedly save an unwilling/unable team. The ideal outcome would be recognizing where the gaps are early and promptly getting the right people into the right roles. But sometimes early teams need to stumble a bit before figuring that out. Just don't let it drag you down in the process. I wish you patience and discernment navigating this startup's growth pains!

Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment.

Have you seen an example where a company has succeeded with mediocre early team members?

I feel torn about this because I don't want to quit so early (it's only been a few months) for many reasons—financial, looks weird on CV, genuinely like the founders—but also don't want to shoot myself in the foot staying in a possibly sinking ship.

I have, yes. What’s really important is the way members of the early team compliment each other. We’re all mediocre; some are just more willing to admit it and seek about those with the ability to make us most effective.

Looking through the stereotypes of “best” people you’ll find exclusionary habits that undermine success as often (or more often) as enabling it.

Thanks for your response. What have been some of the success-undermining exclusionary habits you've observed?

What do you honestly get out of spamming GPT-generated responses? Sock puppet account for astroturfing?

Anything can work.

If the employees are mediocre it takes the chance of success from 11% to 5%. Or something like that. The point being that it's unlikely to "do well" regardless.

More important is to figure out what you're learning. If you're on the steep part of the learning slope that's all that matters. If it's early stage and it starts to work a bit, you'll get more responsibility and you can be the one to let these people go.

But if you aren't learning or are just spending time with bozos, then it is a waste of your time.

Thanks. I want to learn but feel like I can only learn significant stuff from one founder, and not particularly from anyone else on the team.

Imo no. Early stage startups should to be ruthless and should demand employees that are obsessive perfectionists in addition to being excellent executers. They also need to be capable of handling high levels of workplace stress and adapting to new situations.

Lots of people like the idea of working for a startup, but very few are well suited for it. It's why I think probation periods for employees in startups are essential and if an employee underperforms in the first month they should be cut.

The place I'm working at right now is about as far as you can get from a startup, but simply managing crappy devs on our team takes up about half of my day. It's fine given what I'm doing, but I wouldn't personally be okay with wasting time like that at a startup, and I'd probably quit myself if it wasn't addressed.

But there are no hard rules here. The startup might be fine if the business plan is solid and rest of the team can compensate for the under performers. But either way you'd still be better off without them.

You'll have to decide if prioritising the success of the company is more important than being nice. I personally I wouldn't like the odds of a startup that's aware half of its employees are underperforming but can't do what's needed. And if you're building the company with other people's money I'd argue you're also being negligent with your investors' capital.

> You'll have to decide if prioritising the success of the company is more important than being nice

There's nothing to decide. OP said they are not in a position of power to fire those employees.

I've been in this situation and no amount of taking to founders helped. Maybe OP is in a different position but unless they were brought in to fix something urgent, I doubt the founders actually think there's a problem at all.

In my situation, I realized I was fighting up and down with people that didn't see the problem or didn't care so I just stopped. There's no point in trying to "fix" something nobody sees as a problem. Either you compromise your quality and get with the program or you just quit.

Thank you both for your input.

@gtirloni can you share more about your experiences talking to founders? Did they just disagree with you that there was a problem at all?

What is in it for early starters working at a start up? Lower pay, more demands, more stress, probably get shafted on options terms, and they have to be the kinds of people who can probably be the founders of their own thing?

If you're in it for the pay and work-life balance then nothing generally speaking. Working for a very early stage startup should be difficult. You'd be silly to expect job security and you should assume hard and long hours.

The reason I sometimes join them is because I personally find it far more interesting than a corporate gig. The reason I'm here writing this comment and the reason I work in tech is because I've always been interested in tech startups.

The way I've always saw it is that typically within a year (or maybe two) the company will likely have failed and you can move on to something else, or if you're lucky the company will have found its market fit and you should then perhaps expect to be move fairly compensated for your work, and if you're not you'll have a lot of bargaining power within the company.

If you're very lucky, then you'll get to ride the coattails of the success of the company, both in terms of having a likely leadership position in the company and in terms of stock options.

It's high risk / high reward. Take it or leave it.

Thanks. I get that. I think that is why I prefer smaller companies. I find bigger companies usually can’t keep the work interesting but there are some exceptions where teams are carved out.

> One of them reads so slowly/poorly that she can't keep up with her emails at all, frequently misses important information and makes really egregious spelling errors.

Is this a language barrier thing or something deeper. Have you guys looked into added some language tools in they workflow ? For example grammar and spelling errors should easily addressed with the right software tools.

> This would maybe be ok in some roles, but her role is operational and fielding emails is a central part of it.

How/why did they get hire in that position ?

> If the product is good/needed enough, is it possible for this kind of company to succeed?

Yes, it's just harder.

> I know HN and PG essay-readers will usually be biased towards thinking the early team will make or break (I also have this bias), but I'm genuinely interested in hearing any views and experiences.

HHN and PG have a different venture point then you. They have to answer what are the reasonable predictor of a unicorn. In which case execution speed is paramount. Not all startup work this way.

You have a different question, what are chance for a reasonable exit with the current condition. Just track the progress and metric and make the decision if the company is worth your time.

> slow things down and make a lot of unnecessary work for the other two (one of the other two being me)

I think this is the core of the issue. If they relative unprodictivity become a problem for the rest of the team, then that's not good. Why are you stay there ? It's not your job to fix the company...

The other thing to also think of is why exactly your company is attracting the caliber of people they are attracting ? Is it possible that the comp package is too low ? Or maybe the product is not compelling enough to attract people with more work opportunity.

It's not a language barrier, English is their first (and only) language. This is part of why it baffles and frustrates me so much that this is even an issue.

The cofounders knew this person and so it was an easy, friction-free hire when they really needed someone.

Thanks for the feedback and point about the difference between my and HN/PG's interests, it makes sense.

> One of them reads so slowly/poorly that she can't keep up with her emails at all, frequently misses important information and makes really egregious spelling errors. This would maybe be ok in some roles

Which roles would this be OK in?

To answer your main question, average people can accomplish a lot. This should be obvious because most people are average. Very few people will say so because they accomplished something so they must not be average!

Which roles would this be OK in? --> Good question. I guess I was trying to be nice.

To answer your main question, average people can accomplish a lot --> Would you say that mediocre early employees are not necessarily a death sentence for an early-stage startup? Have you seen examples (serious question)?

I guess an important place to start is how you define “mediocre employees.”

Is showing up on time, working steadily, making some progress, and then going home mediocre or excellent? Is having fanatical drive, taking sole ownership of the most important projects, and working 14 hours a day mediocre or excellent?

Which of these employees is less mediocre to you:

• Employee 1 - Says they’ll get 4 things done every week and always gets those things done

• Employee 2 - Says they’ll get 10 things done every week and they always get 8 done, but you can never predict which 8

There’s no clear definition of “mediocre” so you can bend it to whatever picture you want to paint.

I think my overall point is that it’s easy to look at a startup that fails and go, “the early employees were mediocre” and just make up whatever criteria you want to paint those people as mediocre. But it almost certainly would’ve failed with a Tech Bro Dream Team as well.

Most people (myself included) are just average and mediocre and will do anything to convince themselves they’re not. “Oh, I worked at a successful startup and mediocre early employees are death to a startup so I must not be mediocre.”

Mediocre employees = showing up on time, being well-meaning, but making very slow progress and many mistakes due to a lack of, to be honest, intelligence. Not really understanding why those mistakes are a problem even after receiving an explanation and coaching. Do you think that's a death sentence?

It won’t help, but PMF is more important by an order of magnitude.

Yes you can succeed if the market is good enough

If the market is there, even co-founders like that will be successful. Those people and you are just consumable part of the game, unfortunately, will not be recognized after success, so watch out!