How to Convince People to Join Your Start-up | Hacker News Reader

How to Convince People to Join Your Start-up

thedailymuse.com

26 pointsacav31 comments

My response, in two parts:

- Whatever

- Pay me

Here's the baseline: pay your people what they are worth and build something worth building. Everything else - free beer, foosball, catered lunches, tall ceilings, hardwood floors, is just details.

This may be my curmudgeon coming out (I'm in my 20s, WTF), but this really rubbed me the wrong way:

> "The Possibility of Making a Lot of Money"

This is a myth that needs to die, and founders need to stop perpetuating it. It's insulting to be approached like that, with the assumption that I'm going to be so wowed by your beanbag chairs and artisanal coffee that I lose the ability to do basic arithmetic.

The amount of equity I see being tossed around to employees - even relatively early ones - is pathetically little, while many founders strut around as if they're writing your yacht check personally with a 0.1-0.2% offer.

If the amount of equity you're offering is supposed to trump cash, you better be bringing a lot of it to the table. But guess what, you're probably not.

If you're not willing to pay market salaries, you can either bring >1%+ equity to the table or GTFO.

> "In a successful start-up, the potential financial upside that comes from stock options can far outweigh a low base salary."

LIES[1]

[1] Barring Black Swan events.

> It's insulting to be approached like that

You are smart you won't but many kids will. You'd be amazed how much free lunches, and free espresso can do. The job needs to be cool because they need to be able to tell themselves that they work in a cool place and tell their friends that they work in a cool place. That story is worth quite a bit.

Not only will they believe it, they will also work 60 hour weeks to make it happen.

They only way I can see a trade-off is if they give me a lot more vacation time. Not 2 or 3 weeks but 6+. Can't pay me enough? Ok, good, let me have free time at least so I can relax, travel or work on my won projects then.

Working on your project regularly(as in everyday, not even every week) is entirely different from working on it every six months or each month using one of those extra leave days or weeks. So, the extra leave is hardly a worthwhile compensation if you are being paid less and working insanely more hours than normal.

"many founders strut around as if they're writing your yacht check personally with a 0.1-0.2% offer"

It is even worse than you suggest for the not-a-founder-employee, the 0.1-0.2% offer is almost assuredly common stock and could easily turn into 0.001% via dilution that occurs in further fund raising rounds.

Yes, you can still make a fantastic amount of money if you're strapped to a moonshot like Google or Facebook and the founders aren't completely manipulative dicks coughZyngacough, but even calling those "rare" (without a qualifier like 'super duper OMG so rare') as the article does is insulting.

"There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money." ~ David "Pardo" Keppel

well said. It needs to be said more often so that people eventually hear it though :)

Seriously: if a company can't pay its people market, some combination of the following is true: the "biz guy" cofounder is doing a shit job, they don't value people, they don't have enough investor capital to pay people, and/or they're not making money. Realistically, all of the above! (since most startups fail :) )

How to convince me to join your startup: be an interesting person and do interesting things.

This could include:

  - making an office that's actually a nice space to be in
  - creating an environment that respects constant learning and 
    knowledge exchange
  - structuring the environment around well-considered principals
  - writing, and fostering a community of writing (structured thinking)
  - being funny, and fostering a community of humor (enjoyment of life)
  - having a story about why the problems you are solving are important 
    and constantly repeating it
  - being harshly critical of your mission, constantly re-evaluating
  - actively studying philosophy, economics, psychology, business, art,
    literature, religion, science, music, etc.

I didn't read the article.

The list in the article is:

  -The Opportunity to Make Significant Contributions
  -The Chance to Build Something Meaningful
  -Your Great Team
  -The Possibility of Making a Lot of Money

Things like "number of working hours" and "free weekends" - you didn't find important enough they are part of one of your points?

>>- actively studying philosophy, economics, psychology, business, art, literature, religion, science, music, etc.

It's like the free lunch thing pitched by start-ups, isn't it?

It's very simple. Give me money and I'll decide what to do with it because I know better about myself than you do.

Good sir, it is my intention to have a good life. I may achieve a good life by purchasing freedom on the dime of my master or by associating with righteous causes in the company of great people. Of course I would prefer to have both, but given a choice, I would pick the latter.

As for "number of working hours" and "free weekends", if one is prepared to make a sacrifice in the name of their beliefs, working many hours and losing weekends can be judged to be a necessary part of that sacrifice. During the few times that I've been able to align my beliefs with my work, I have readily dedicated the majority of my time to the task at hand.

For those who are not willing to make such a sacrifice, I suppose I would think it too obvious to mention. Of course you should never accept such conditions. I've never been forced to work more than 40 hours, nor have I known anybody who has, and so honestly the possibility of such a thing happening doesn't come readily to mind. Civilized countries have laws protecting people from such things.

I would agree, however, that most if not all startups are not truly a "righteous cause" worthy of personal sacrifice, and that is why I don't work at a startup.

This is the same article that is posted here every week by a different author.

The author always explains how health insurance, pension, benefits, child care, vacation and competitive salary are not important, because those are not things their start up wishes to offer. What the reader is told should be important to them is teamwork and an opportunity to work on something "meaningful", which means what the author is working on and personally interested in. In addition, this is "altruistic" or "nonprofit". And then, stock options will make you rich at this altruistic nonprofit endeavor.

I've got a real problem recruiting smart people to my ideas. Here's the issue from my point of view:

Lay people are easy to convert, you can simply answer questions intelligently. Someone with no interest or experience in the area isn't very emotionally invested either way, and can be convinced with ease.

On the other hand, those with real knowledge or experience are also easy to sway, but once you show them a glimmer of potential, credibility is on the line. The inevitable response to a good idea is a quick reactionary criticism. "Yeah that's a good idea, but it would be much better if you did X". It seems like a kind of flexing, or posturing to one-up your concept. I've encountered this several times now.

My reaction is to exhaustively answer questions and politely offer answers. This tactic seems to be met with defensive resentment, and it really sucks the excitement out of the conversation.

This is a real communication problem for me, I'd appreciate any advice.

Why are you treating what they say as a criticism? You are explaining how your ideas are level 10, and they are saying how to take it to level 11. Note that it builds on what is there, and they are excited and positive. To them it probably sounds like you are rejecting what they are saying hence the downward spiral.

A great way to counter this sort of thing is not to reject it, but to pencil it in for later. "That is interesting. Our plan is to get an MVP out the door and find market fit, and then we will be in a better position to do X." You can then discuss whatever is in common between their X and your existing stuff.

Well I could have worded that differently. Sometimes it's a good addition like you suggest, I think I handle that gracefully.

More often the response is more "The problem with that is..." which I counter with "here's the answer to that" which after a while gets frustrating, I suspect. I don't do half-baked ideas, I over-plan if anything.

There is always the possibility you are actually wrong :-) You also realise you don't have to "correct" them or get the last word in? Smile, thank them for their feedback/input and move on. And if you are so confident you are right then why even talk to these people?

If you are trying to recruit them then you are doing a sales job, and you'll likely encounter the same things when dealing with prospective customers, partners, investors etc. Sometimes people just need to think out loud, so give them enough space to do so. You may find them coming around given a little time.

Also realise they are trying to work with you. If you shut them down then they'll realise they'll just have to follow your orders (ie not a collaboration) in which case their experience has little value to you, as does the relationship to them.

That's reasonable. Thanks! I'm going to re-examine some existing relationships because of this advice.

I would put it this way. They're not responding to your ideas, they are responding to you.

A thought experiment: imagine Larry Page, or Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk is sitting across from one of these people, selling your same idea. The exact same idea, with the same words. Do you think they would respond with that quick reactionary criticism? Of course not.

I suspect you've failed to communicate first something that is much more important than the idea: why you are impressive. i.e. why it is that they should even be listening to you. You probably just figure you're being humble, when really you should spend more time talking yourself up (not in a douchey way) before talking about your idea.

I think you nailed it. I definitely under-sell my own value and abilities, I need to work on that.

Maybe people are gauging how much influence they'd have on the end product and it's not as important what you reply, as long as you demonstrate a willingness to listen to feedback, and extract the useful bits.

Yes, agreed. That's a great way to handle it.

That’s the problem, they’re just ideas. If you can build an MVP and show some traction, that will be far more effective at recruiting people.

You're assuming I didn't already, but point taken.

At least once I've gotten past MVP. I guess the decision to go public to get feedback is tricky, but if it fits the idea better that may be the next step.

"Aside from the official interview, we often take candidates to drinks, dinner, or coffee to get to know each other in a more casual environment, and we make sure they have the chance to get to meet multiple members of the team."

I really like this one, mainly because it seems to be overlooked by so many companies today. Recruiting smart brains is one thing, but recruiting smart brains that will work well in your company's system, in and outside of the office, is just as important. Meeting in a casual setting is far different from having a business casual interview. Not to mention, taking interviewees out also shows them that the employees also have fun and that is something that everyone their cares about, not just says on their Jobs page.

Although as an add-on to that, many people abstain from alcohol for a variety of reasons (not because they're "no fun" or stuck up) so I'd leave that out to avoid making potential candidates feel uncomfortable.

I don't drink (and for a variety of reasons), and I don't associate going to a bar with drinking alcohol. Yes, I understand that drinking alcohol is the main profit center of a bar. But if people want to go to a bar, fine we'll go to a bar and I'll have soft drinks or non-alcoholic beer (as long as it's not sucktacular O'Douls or the like).

I can see the recently-sober recovering alcoholic being the sticking point here, and I don't have a good answer for that possibility. So maybe you have a good point. But for the religious/philosophic/recovering-but-far-enough-along-to-go-to-a-bar I don't see a problem.

EDIT: now that I read the actual quote, it occurs to me that one can just throw out multiple options: drinks at a bar or coffee? The smart candidate picks coffee, drinker or teetotaler, to avoid the influence of alcohol in front of a potential employer. :-)

At the same time, many events are still held at bars right? It wouldn't be a bad idea to see someone who abstains from alcohol in a bar-type setting...he/she wouldn't be forced to drink, of course, but it would be nice to see them at least remain comfortable and social.

Sort of controversial, I know, but it's important for everyone to be open IMO.

This article would have been incredibly insightful if it had been written in 1994.

I'd add, the possibility to be part of a community greater than any one company, if you're in a tech hub and recruiting someone from corporate

Not crashing my mobile browser (ie not using OnSwipe) would be a start.

I didn't bother reading the article because of that stupid sidebar thingy that chases you down the page. Maybe I'm the only person that finds it annoying, but there is nothing on the web I need to read so badly that I'm willing to put up with it these days. And, yeah, OnSwipe's starting to get on my nerves, too.

And in a pathetic effort to remain on-topic, I'm unlikely to work at your company, either. Such window dressing over substance (I gather from comments that the article wasn't much) gives me a possible hint that my compensation may suffer the same fate. Bean bag chairs and a kegerator don't add to my 401K.

I assume you don't mean my company. We're not really hiring right now, but we'd be big on good working environment (private offices and/or wfh/remote+trips), great hardware, fun/meaningful stuff to work on, and either great pay+find-your-own-benefits or good pay+good benefits.)

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