Your founding team!
Hiring the right founding team is crucial to take off!
This team will be the difference between success and failure. Many startups focus on hiring for specific skills or experiences, but the critical factor is often overlooked: hiring for slope and not intercept.
When I talk about slope and intercept, I refer to a candidate's ability to learn quickly and their experience.
The slope represents the candidate's ability to learn and adapt to new situations, while intercept represents their experience.
We at Stable Money are hiring for the slope, not the intercept!
In my experience, these three things become essential when hiring for the slope.
Adaptability is crucial for success in a fast-paced early-stage environment where changes happen frequently. Therefore, hiring candidates with a high slope, i.e., the ability to learn and adapt rapidly to new situations, is essential to building a successful founding team. This helps the company push through challenges and eventually leads to success.
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The ability to learn is unique to everyone. While skills and experience are essential, they can be learned over time.
However, the ability to learn and adapt quickly is an innate quality that cannot be taught. Therefore, focusing on hiring for slope and intercept means investing in candidates who have the potential to learn new skills and adapt to new situations, which is more important in the long run.
The slope is the accurate indicator of future success. While past performance can indicate future success, the slope is even more critical.
A high slope means that the candidate has the potential to learn and develop new skills, which is essential in a startup environment.
Moreover, hiring for slope also means that the team can continue to grow and evolve as the company grows. It's also worth noting that a team with a high slope doesn't necessarily mean they lack experience.
Therefore, prioritising slope over intercept is an intelligent strategy for your early-stage startup. It focuses on the potential for growth and not just experience.
Senior Manager | Lean Six Sigma MBB | Digital Transformation | RPA | PMI-ACP |
1 年Saurabh Jain wonderful explanation & even though I don't have such a vast experience ever expanding product understanding, be it any, like you have, but my first mentor Gaurav Kharbanda and my ever challenging and my leader Tilak Anand taught me that while you may want to get on downhill on bicycle to reach your goal fastest, have you ensured that your brakes are working? These are nothing but sometimes will be much needed in TIME. I definitely can't deny what you mentioned however, with relatively low experience but with high learning quotient, I don't see reaching to long term goal in true sense.
Program Manager | Consumer Tech | Fintech | Product Management
1 年Great idea explained in such a simple equation Saurabh Jain! I am getting two more related thoughts to this. in y=mx+c While hiring for growth, org should also build an environment where people are nurtured and provided with an environment to learn and grow, that would be the X factor here, if that is less than 1, then people wouldn't reach their potential. Ensure people stay, else benefit of slope won't be realised. If the average span of the team is around 2 years, Intercept would also matter right?
Citi Markets | IIM Ahmedabad '23 | BITS Pilani '19 CFA L2 | Ex-JP Morgan Quantitative Research
1 年Saurabh Jain please check your DM.
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1 年Great Read??
Helping fintech/crypto startups with growth and content
1 年Saurabh Jain please check your email or Twitter DMs ??