

Ask HN: Nontechnical first employee? - onetrickaccount

Hi HN, we've got an early stage, consumer-facing web startup, with all technical founders. We're still a number of months off from having a beta of some sort. We're considering bringing in someone to handle some of the non-technical parts of the business – researching our competitors, doing market research, finding good business models, etc. – but we've gotten advice that this sort of hire is nonstandard at this stage, and that we should only bring someone on once we've got a product and we're growing. In the meantime, we should just make the product and do the research ourselves. On the other hand, our potential hire is excited about our business, and willing to work for cheap.<p>What are your thoughts HN? Have any of you hired a non-technical employee in your early stages?
======
drKarl
Well I think it depends, but in your case, as you state

"our potential hire is excited about our business"

and

"and willing to work for cheap"

so if you can afford him/her and you think the candidate would do a better
job/at least as good a job than you regarding those tasks, then I think it
would be a good move, because then you can focus on building a better product.

