
Ask HN: Who were your first 10 hires? - throwaway129312
Curious what roles other startups hire for in the early stages. For example, at which point did you hire a full time designer? A full time DevOps guy?<p>I&#x27;ll start. We&#x27;re in seed stage (pre-revenue) and building a B2C app. We have a CEO&#x2F;&quot;business guy&quot;, a CTO&#x2F;backend developer (myself) and a frontend developer. We&#x27;re planning on hiring either a designer or another backend developer next.<p>What about you?
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fillskills
As our company grew, so did the roles needed to keep it on the path. Initially
it was just the CEO and CTO(me). Then came the CMO. That took us to 6 months
and some solid revenue. Then we needed help with raising funds, so our first
financier became our CFO. Then we needed help with growing a sales team so a
Director of Sales came to being. And a year from that, after hitting 10MM
Rev/Yr we need a COO to manage all the customer service issues.

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forkLding
I think it depends on the business, care elaborating what kind of business it
is? Currently its just CEO/Designer plus CTO (me) and a marketing person

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slowmotarget
French Startup here, created in 2016. We're developing a SaaS software for
e-commerce merchants. First we hired a back-end dev, then a full time graphic
designer / illustrator, because we think it's crucial to have a strong visual
identity.

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MuffinFlavored
> We're developing a SaaS software for e-commerce merchants.

Mind elaborating? That's exactly what our SaaS platform is. :)

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slowmotarget
We're working on a module for popular e-commerce platforms that will unify
referral / customer loyalty and membership rewards!

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richardknop
I'm not sure I would give myself a CTO title if I were a single backend
developer in a company of 3. Seems a bit ridiculous.

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beisner
But technically he /she is the chief technology officer

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richardknop
I guess you are right. But CTO is an executive-level position. It doesn't
really make sense in a company of three where.

It's like me technically being a director of a company while working as a
contractor.

It is technically true but when I get asked about my previous role at
interview I'd say I was a software engineer / consultant, not director.

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zhte415
I agree with you. It sounds pretentious. Chief of what? Yourself? Chief by
definition means chief of others also in a decision making position.

Founder is enough; Founder is a big enough title to encompass the challenge,
struggle and reward doing something new, independent or fresh.

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bobosha
This varies widely between startups: we are an AI/ML (machine vision) company,
so our first hires were 2 AI/ML developers, added 1 web dev (frontend) and 1
backend engineer to build our MVP. Now are a 15 strong team (added sales,
customer success members later)

