early startup days 072013 (founders institute, sg)

7/28/2019 Early Startup Days 072013 (Founders Institute, SG)

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STARTUP FORMATION

2013.07.09

Founders Institute, SG

BY NIKET DESAI

FIND ME

@NIKET



WHY ARE WE HERE?

• The opportunity to build the world we see

• The opportunity to go on an adventure with lifelong friends

• The opportunity to grow abundantly and gain many life skills

FIND ME

@NIKET



The beginnings of startups are

messy. Many paths, and

people you interface with.

• Flexibility

o 12-18 of timeo Persistence

o Lateral Thinking

• Practical Incrementation

o Matching expectations with

output (an ultimateentrepreneurial skill)

CLOUDY BEGINNINGS

FIND ME

@NIKET



PUNCHD FOUNDERS



There's no set way of doing things in startups.

• But I'd urge you to highly consider a partner to do this with.

o Dilution is a poor rationale to do things alone

• My cofounders are lifelong friends.

o I attend their weddings as groomsman.

• Startups are lonely and isolated, they are more than what you aren't

o Find people with same principles & varied skills

o Great teams are usually diverse in nature with emphasis on technical prowess.

COFOUNDER(S)?

FIND ME@NIKET

Protect yourselves with vesting.



WE WANT YOU

FIND ME@NIKET

As a cofounder / ceo, recruiting will be amajor portion of your role forever.

Your job is to enable your team to do the best they can and that absolutely includes hiringthe best talent to get the job done.



How do you attract early cofounders

and recruits?

• A key to attracting talent is to build

something and do it as best as you can

• Stitch together a prototype

• Pay to get it made

• Build it yourself

• Get a favor from a friend

Where do you find cofounders and

early recruits?

• College

• Previous work colleagues

• Startup weekends / hackathons

• Friends of friends

• Communities like HN

• Failing startups!

EARLY RECRUITS

FIND ME@NIKET



ENABLE CONTRIBUTION

Why does this method work?

• Real is always better than what could be. Stay away from grandiose plans.

• We'd recruit with a live product that was terrible.

o Attracted our backend engineer just by how horrified he was of our release procedure.

git push heroku master

o Attracted our iOS / Android engineer because we told him as long as the basic functionality

was present he could experiment as much as possible

It's hard to make things real:

• Luck: having a friend who can get something out the door for you

• On the other hand: One guy that sank $100k into his project before getting his first technical

member on board.

• Others have spent years toiling in mocks and simple websites.• Ask yourself why you'd join someone else's team.

o Consider that as a baseline for how you are being evaluated.

FIND ME@NIKET



Hiring at Punchd

• Delivering Happiness

• Looked for baseline competence, but

beyond that fire and compatibility

• Expectation to rise into a leadership

function and own a major portion of the

company.

Early employees are really important in

setting company culture.

• Ask yourself: would you work with this

person for 10 years?

o 50% of first 20 people still at Google,

14 years later

• If you don't have the background to make

a good hiring decision: get help .

o Do you have friends or colleagues

that can help you assess talent?

o Has that person built things from

scratch, and can you verify it?

HI(RE) CALIBRE PEOPLE

FIND ME@NIKET



You are funded

• You have to fight market rates which are

high right now

• angel.co/jobs

You have some money

• You probably won't be taking a salary

• Go thin on expense and try to cover as

much salary as you can

• Offset salary deficit with more equity,

hopefully your valuation will help you

You have little or no money

• Tough. Equity and future cash agreements

conditional on funding may work.

F%&# YOU PAY ME.

FIND ME@NIKET

http://angel.co/jobs

http://angel.co/jobs



EVALUATING PERFORMANCE

OKRs

• Be aggressive. There's absolutely no

reason not to be.

• Understand that morale is affected by

what you can accomplish, however.

• Attach my OKR template.

Retrospectives

• Being flexible, but understanding that what

people miss doesn't matter if it's not

mission critical.

Quick to fire, slow to hire.• Lesson learned: Almost Blackmailed

• Make fires quick and clean.

FIND ME@NIKET



IT'S HUSTLE TIME

Find someone awesome to build stuff with.

Figure out a core set of values and principles that tie you together.

Find other awesome people that embody those principles.

Figure out how to hire them.

Keep building.

Good luck.

THANK YOU@NIKET



RESOURCES

FIND ME@NIKET

General Resources

Peter Thiel's CS183 NotesVenture Hacks ArchivesQuora: Startup-recruiting

Evaluating Objectives & Employees

OKR TemplateQuora: OKRs

Finding Talent / Recruiting

AngelList People (Find startup-like people)LinkedIn (Research people!)Job Templates on Hacker NewsStartup SalariesMore Startup Salaries

Building your prototype

Prototyping Service

Cofounders

PG: Having a cofounder is important.Seth on Finding Cofounders

http://www.alivendead.com/?p=4045

http://venturehacks.com/archives

http://www.quora.com/Startup-Recruiting

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OHpQOvZz76_10ebJP2AKvvXUF3H9yd6FC89F5jS4mks/edit

http://www.quora.com/OKRs-Objectives-and-Key-Results

https://angel.co/people

http://linkedin.com/

https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

https://blog.wealthfront.com/startup-employee-equity-compensation/

https://angel.co/salaries

http://popapp.in/

http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html

http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/11/finding-your-co-founders/





http://popapp.in/

http://popapp.in/

http://popapp.in/







http://linkedin.com/

https://angel.co/people

















appendix

THANK YOU@NIKET



WHERE ARE YOUR RECRUITS

Building lists and relentlessly following through your leads is critical.

• There are talented people everywhere and it's your job to find and convince them in your vision

and team

• Utilize your network: friends, family, LinkedIn, AngelList, Other Startups

o Get introductions where you can, but never be afraid to cold email someone

• Make yourself easily found on the internet and be easy to contact!

• Attend events where it makes sense, don't waste $$$

Utilize tools to help you manage your recruiting.

FIND ME@NIKET

early startup days 072013 (founders institute, sg)

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