Don’t just sell the company and the role; set the expectation that this is a place where everyone is direct and honest with one another because they care. Some candidates may fall out of the funnel in the process, and heck yes

Don’t just sell the company and the role; set the expectation that this is a place where everyone is direct and honest with one another because they care. Some candidates may fall out of the funnel in the process, and heck yes
So much of the world of startups is about celebrating being wrong. Whole books, loads of whole books, have been written about the virtues of failure. Yet every founder I know has the hardest time admitting when they are wrong, because often what they are wrong about fundamentally underpins their business.
For your first ten employees as a founder, you not only have to be very clear on the why and the what, but you have to be comfortable occasionally venturing into the how too. You have the context of the entire company all in your head, but no one else can read your mind. So, for a bit, overcommunicate.
If you’re like most people, you’re probably living far too much in category three — filling your time responding to people because, well, that’s what we’re supposed to do, right? People ask for our time and we give it.
The first step is to take a look at your corporate values, and determine if the employee shares them. This assumes of course, that you have corporate values. And honor them. Companies have values in order to give employees a north star when faced with complex decisions.
CEOs often forget that their company exists solely to solve the problems of their customers. And while “focus on customers,” isn’t a step only to be taken during an apocalypse, it has outsized importance when everything around us is changing.