

Ask HN: What does an early stage startup look for in their first(few) recruits?  - bhoomit

Additionally-<p>Came accross some of the blog posts which says Valley startups look for "kickass programmers"? What does a "kickass programmer" mean?
======
onion2k
I imagine "kickass programmer" in that context means someone who can handle
the hard challenges writing complicated, core product code.

I'd argue that sort of person probably shouldn't be your first hire (assuming
that the founders are technically capable and built the MVP themselves).
Founders usually concentrate on the interesting code that solves the pain that
the product fixes, and leave the boring but necessary work of writing house-
keeping things like account management, email update, and even payment
processing to someone else. The first hire should be someone who can come in
and write decent code to do that stuff. If they're capable of writing core
product stuff as well, even better.

That said almost all the teams who had investment out of the UK's Ignite100
accelerator (my company graduated from it last year) hired marketing and
content people first. Getting the word out is very important.

~~~
bhoomit
So does that mean being first recruit is not always good?

~~~
onion2k
If you're thinking "If I can get a job at XYZ start-up I must be a brilliant
coder", so it's essentially a validation of your ego, it's probably not
brilliant.

If you look at it as a challenge where you'll be working on something new,
where what you write makes a very visible difference to the product, in a fast
moving environment, where you'll meet people who don't mind taking a risk
(usually more interesting folk than the cautious ones who work in
corporations) ... it's completely awesome.

~~~
bhoomit
The first point about the validation of one's ego is totally valid.

But my question was more of validating the startup when you are going to join
as a first recruit.

------
umut
The biggest success in our story involves perseverance and being humble. Any
startup involves ups and downs, so especially the early recruits should be
there to lift the heavy weight when needed. Losing an employee is bad for any
company, but it is more relevant and can be severe when you are a small
startup, since most roles don't have substitution scenarios, yet.

Being humble is also crucial, coz when you are very few, keeping the database
up and putting out the garbage may sometimes be equally important.

