

Ask HN: $1,500,000 in sales, who to hire next? - felixdennis

My startup has reached $1.5 million in sales. Right now, we have 3 people, and I'm the technical guy and handles every including server administration.<p>I want to expand my business and relieve myself from the technical role. I'm having a hiring dilemma:<p>Option 1:
Hire a system admin to maintain the current system. He might not be a superstar but he will take care of the current system. Later on, hire someone with more experience/knowledge.<p>Option 2:
Hire an architect type of person where he will be able to handle the current system and able to expand future systems. This person will be someone like a chief technical officer.<p>Option 2 will take longer to search so I will be stuck in the technical position for awhile. Option 1 will immediately relieve me from the technical duties so I can build the business.<p>Which one should I take? Do Option 1 now and expand search later or wait for Option 2?
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pagekicker
Maybe you should hire another sales guy first! You seem to have good traction
there. The more sales you have the easier it will be to hire that CTO.

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hkarthik
Hire someone to handle the system admin duties for you first while you spend
more time looking for the right fit for a Chief Technical Officer or Chief
Architect.

Also I would consider hiring a less senior person for your first technical
hire, at least initially. If you hire the wrong person into the CTO role, they
are gonna push you to refactor, re-architect, or in some cases completely re-
write your code. Be very careful about who you hire into this role and make
sure they have a realistic understanding of how startup quality code gets
built.

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mayukh
Option 1 if you're working 10 plus hours a day including being on call 24/7.
See if you can get a contractor so you can try for a few months before
deciding which way to go (Will be harder to get CTO type person for a shorter
duration).

This gives you some room to think about the business and where you should be
prioritizing your efforts (sales, product, marketing, biz-dev).

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dm73
May be I can help you out as option 1)? I am flexible, experienced (yeah, old
fart, I know) and responsible, and you can hire me without contract
obligations. My pay should reflect my added value (I don't believe in minimal
wages and that kind of crap).

Contact me at freelanceadmin@forward.cat (email valid until 25th april)

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webdisrupt
Option 1 may be your best option however I suggest you get someone who can
also think for the future. So basically a 2 in 1 guy i.e. architect and admin
guy who is very ambitious and willing to take your business to the next level.
Offering share options might also be a great incentive to attract highly
skilled individuals.

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dgunn
I don't think you can find a very good 2 in 1 guy for this. These two people
are very different types. One is happy chugging along just keeping the lights
on and probably is only interested in doing that. The other is going to be
more of a visionary who would not be motivated by just admin work.

For example I consider myself more of a 2 of the two types listed here. I am a
builder and would never accept a sysadmin job. It would be boring to me.

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webdisrupt
I guess then you haven't met me and another friend hehe as I do both the
architecture and sys admin. I feel that recruitment within the IT industry is
shifting to having people that do more than one thing rather than an
individual who is very specialised. This obviously would save companies lots
of cash. E.g. Front end and back end developer merged into one.

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dgunn
I'm not saying I can't do this. Or that you can't. I certainly do everything
on my own when I'm starting something new as I'm sure many builders do. My
point is that I don't think it's a sustainable assignment. When the sys admin
job becomes big enough, admins will spend a ton of time doing simple
repetitive tasks. I can't imagine a person with the neural architecture of a
visionary/builder-of-things being willing to do this type of work for very
long.

Perhaps the fact that there are tools out there which automate repetitive sys
admin tasks is a sign that these types of people have been placed in these
jobs before and they did what they do best. Perhaps that's even reason enough
to place them in these jobs to begin with. I may have just talked myself out
of thinking this is a bad idea...

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david_ing
In the Option 1 case, what happens when you finally have to "hire someone with
more experience/knowledge"?

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brudgers
My first thoughts as well. Hiring in someone else over the top of a key hire
can be problematic from a cultural standpoint.

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felixdennis
Thanks. This is my concern as well. It would be bad to push someone away who
has been there for awhile... Any solution to this if I go with #1?

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brudgers
If everyone is still wearing lots of hats, get a CTO and put IT on his plate.
He can hire the sysadmin later at an appropriate point.

However, I am pretty much assuming CTO equity is in the offer.

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ScottWhigham
How long did it take you to reach this milestone? If it's a short amount of
time (< 1 year), I certainly think you need to evaluate Option 2 closely. If
it took a long time to reach, then I'd opt for Option 1. But I'm not sure
those are the only options.

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j45
What's unclear is if you're selling this as well. Assuming that you are the
technical person and doing the sales:

Your ability to grow is tied to two things:

1) The health of any business is measured by the rate at which it is getting
new customers.

2) To provide fulfillment to said new customers, you have to make sure you are
thinking about your architecture.

If you get the sales first, you may hit the need to scale your architecture,
or not.

Whatever you do try to be aware that management by abdication is not managing
or scaling -- no matter what you do during a growth phase you will be putting
in just as much energy and attention as ever.

