The 11th lesson of YC Entrepreneurship class: How to recruit early employees in a start-up team

Early start-up team is the key to success or failure of entrepreneurship is the company's culture shapers. YC founder Sam Altman the 11th class, the founder of Pinterest, Ben Silbermann and Stripe, Patrick Collison, John Collison Brothers, A discussion of the company's core culture and how to recruit early employees.

As the new darling of the advertising industry, the Pinterest valuation has reached $5 billion trillion, and its "guided search" is also seen as a new generation of Google's search methods. Stripe Company has been working to make online payments more convenient and safe, and the company's high level of transparency is the difference between the company's most unique corporate culture.

The following is an arrangement for the course conversation, and students wishing to watch the full course video are welcome to the YC Entrepreneurship class Chinese community (Chinese subtitles are provided by the "Monster Subtitle Group").

What is the core part of corporate culture

Ben Silbermann: I think it can be divided into four areas: where the value of each employee is embodied, what we do every day, how we communicate effectively within the company, how to motivate and punish employees. I personally prefer to think about how to motivate, and I think it's more positive.

John Collison:stripe more attention to internal transparency than any other company, which is the core value of stripe. Stripe employees ' salaries are internally transparent. Employees working in Stripe must combine their mission with the company's mission, and transparent and easy access to information can help employees identify where they are currently in the company and enable the team to collaborate more efficiently. Another benefit of internal transparency is that it avoids the failure of many entrepreneurial teams to grow up because of an ambiguous division of interest. We had two people at the earliest, and now we've expanded to 170 people, and we've even spent a lot of time developing tools for more effective and transparent communication.

Patrick Collison: I think the role of corporate culture is to keep everyone consistent. Ideally, I would like to make every decision of the company myself, but as the company expands and business breaks down, I have to collaborate with others, and the corporate culture becomes the invariant that everyone has in common. Corporate culture is not forced indoctrination but spontaneous generation, it will be passed down spontaneously in various ways. So the company's earliest employees are very important.

You recruit the top 10 employees, but in fact you are in the top 100 employees, because each of these 10 people will bring a lot of the company, so it is very important to think about the 10 people who will bring you what 90 people are very necessary.

How to recruit the first 10 employees

Ben Silbermann: First of all, we like good people. The style of my work is, if I do not understand culture, I will go to see a lot of books about the company culture. I want to find someone similar to me in this area. In addition, I also value diligence, integrity, teamwork, creativity and curiosity.

There are a lot of geeks in our early employees who have strange habits, like a person who likes magic, even when I'm interviewing him to show me the Magic program he wrote. I do not reject these, I think strange habits herald his interdisciplinary exploration mentality and extraordinary talent, such people are likely to make a great product.

Early employees join us, they have no income, they may give up the other job opportunities, neat office, high salary and so on, join us simply hope to make great products. Such people are willing to take risks and challenge themselves.

When recruiting people you should use all the avenues that you can use, I will advertise on the Internet, have BBQ parties in my office, and even lobby for the best café near my office. It is also an effective way to use the elevator to sell your product to others.

Patrick Collison: A lot of people start starting a business just after they graduate, and often fail because they are too small or too weird to do something, which I don't recommend, because you're doing a lot of things and it's going to be hard for you to recruit. Of course this is a little bit far.

Recruit talents I pay more attention to three: sincerity, attention to detail, to the finish.

Startups looking for a lot of people are still in the early stages of their careers, or to some extent underestimated, if you go to Facebook or Google to find talent, convincing them will be very time-consuming, because they have gained market recognition. But if he is still in college, it will be much easier to lobby him.

Rather than spending a lot of time doing different things, I prefer to spend two years in an area of focused talent.

At the same time he should have a great ambition and will not be satisfied with his immediate achievements. In addition, I like the person who pays attention to the details, and if an API requests an error in our team, the message is sent to everyone's mailbox because we can't stand the fact that the user found the error but did not immediately resolve it.

How to judge whether or not to recruit the right person

Ben Silbermann: To be absolutely sure you can only work with him later. If the wrong person because of their own mistakes, in addition to the company to apologize, should be quick to dismiss immediately.

Knowing what qualities make him fit for the job, and what traits determine he is not, will help you quickly judge your job. If there is a lack of knowledge about the profession of recruitment, I usually choose to chat with the world's best friends in the industry, ask them what qualities I should look for, what to ask when recruiting, where to find someone as good as them, and let them tell me the address and phone number of the best people.

Companies do not need to hide the risks when they expand, and good people like challenges, and they want to solve difficult problems. So in the interview we prepared a series of difficult questions, I think the interview process is also the process of learning from both sides. PayPal once said to the interviewer, "Now you do something a little illegal, and MasterCard has been trying to kill us, but if we succeed we will subvert the original payment method." They don't even tell each other what you're going to do, just say you may not see your family for three years, but they will be proud of you once you succeed. But be sure to explain why you think it's a great idea and then state why it's hard to do it.

John Collison: I think it's important to spend time working with him before deciding to hire, and the early 10 employees spent 7 days working with them to see if he was good. At the same time, referring to other people's evaluation of TA, and others horizontal comparison is also an effective way to consider a person.

How to quickly integrate employees into company culture and work efficiently

Ben Silbermann: Everyone worked and lived together at the beginning of the business, and everyone was able to get into the company culture quickly. As companies expand, many things need to be standardized slowly. We are very concerned about the different stages of experience and feelings of employees, we have set up a one-week project to enable employees to quickly meet other colleagues in the process, understand the company's organizational structure, familiar with the company's culture, etc. and periodically through his own feelings and other people's impression of him to determine whether he has been integrated into the company and began to grow at a high speed. In addition, I think care is very important, the company should go to understand each employee's preferences, habits, style, give them the care of humanity.

John Collison: I think first of all to let staff quickly into the job, real work, so as to expose problems, assess his progress speed. Then quickly give feedback to employees, especially in terms of adapting to corporate culture. In ordinary life you seldom tell others that you do well or not, but in a company you should give feedback to employees as their duty, forcing yourself to do it often.

What changes should be made to recruitment and management after the company expands

Ben Silbermann: I've been trying to keep up with the start-up team as the company expands. As the complexity of management and communication increases, it is inevitable to divide the company into small teams, and what we do is give each team all the resources it needs to be the best designers and engineers. Each team has its own goals, everyone has their own personality, but can still work together, our job is to help them clean up all the obstacles encountered in the process, so that they work more efficiently.

As more and more new recruits join the company, recruiting becomes more difficult, and the most important decision we make is to find a great recruiting expert in the hiring of the 14th and 15 employees who have worked in startups and big companies like Apple, In the long run, she will choose talents who will be able to integrate into the company culture in the future.

Patrick Collison: The early start of a business is to be able to work immediately, but as the company expands, can carry out the necessary talent reserves, recruiting some potential talent is a necessary investment. As the company expands, it is a question of thinking about how to strengthen social ties within the company. In the stripe we have a large long table for the lunch, I think this kind of dining environment can generate a lot of random exchange opportunities, there are many similar in the company in order to facilitate communication arrangements. For efficient management, we will develop the appropriate tools, and we will gradually adjust their own culture as the company's development.

YC founder Sam Altman has shared in his blog a lot of experience in how startups recruit good employees, and interested students can go to 15 tips for recruiting talent in a start-up company.