To teach you how to recruit employees and how to allocate shares effectively

"Hands-on teaching You" series of topics selected from the Silicon Valley well-known venture capitalists, incubator instructors, well-known internet companies, CEOs, founders of new star Company and other celebrities entrepreneurial experience, to share. In this series of articles, the above "entrepreneurial teacher" will bring you from the entrepreneurial preparation to venture capital, listing and other listed constructive guidance. This article is the second article on the topic. In CS183B's first class, Sam talked about the ideas and products needed to start a business. In the second class, he will share some of his experiences and experience with the recruitment of team partners and early employees. Sam will tell you how to recruit employees and how to effectively share the shares. Before class quiz Before I lecture today, I would like to answer a few of the last lecture before the question, I have been sent an e-mail. So if you have any questions about the last class, I'm happy to answer it now, so start. Q: How can I tell if a market is growing fast, and how can it be determined to maintain this level for the next 10 years? A: As far as this problem is concerned, you, as students, have an advantage. You should trust your intuition. Adults tend to think of technology as something young people do. You can look at what you are doing and what your friends are doing so that those older than you are not as good as your intuition. The answer to this question is: trust your intuition, think about what you often use, think about what your peers are using, and these things may herald the future. Q: Do you want to keep working effectively, but what if you feel tired at work? A: My answer is, although the situation is bad, you have to stick to it. Unlike students, students can put up their hands, admitting that they are exhausted, this semester exam, the hardest thing is that it is part of your life, you can only bite the bullet to survive. For others, you can relax on vacation, but not for the entrepreneur. It's hard to understand, but it's something that needs to be sacrificed to start a business. So all you have to do is stick to it. The support of others is very important to you, if the entrepreneur is depressed that is a big problem, you need a support network. In the face of burnout, the method is to meet the challenge, correct the mistakes, and finally you will feel better. 3. The team last class, we talked about ideas and products, I would like to stress that if you do not do these things, the next thing to say will not work for you. Today, I will talk about how to recruit staff and how to do it. I hope you won't fire the man you hired. Sometimes, of course, it happens. First of all, I'd like to talk about partners first. The relationship between partners is the most important relationship of the whole company. Everyone knows to be aware of the relationship between partners, a tension, you have to find a way to solve. That's true, of course, in YC too, and the number one reason startups fail early is that partnership breaks down. But for some reason, many people choose partners without being as cautious as hiring employees. Don't do this.！ This will be one of the most important decisions in your entrepreneurial career, and you should take it very seriously. For some reason, students do not do well in this area, they casually find a person. The idea is similar to: I want to start a business, you want to start a business, then do it together. Like at a partner meeting: Hey! I am looking for a partner, although we do not understand each other, it does not matter, let's open a company. This is crazy. You're not going to be like this when it comes to recruiting, but it's too bad you're willing to choose a partner like that. Grab a partner very casually, or find someone you don't know, or even a friend who is not even friends, and when the problem arises, there is no foundation for you to get along, and the business usually ends in failure. YC has hatched 75 companies in one plan, 9 companies, either during an interview or at the start of a start-up, to join a new partner, and the next year all 9 companies were disbanded. This record tells us that there will be serious consequences if there is no understanding between partners. It's a good way to find a partnership in college. If you don't know any partners in college, I think the next thing you can do is to work for an interesting company. If you work on Facebook, Google, or something like that, you can find as many partners as Stanford. It's better to have no partner than to have a bad partner, but it's not the best thing to do alone. I read some data before class. I counted so fast that I probably missed one, and I think that almost all of the 20 most valuable companies in YC have more than two partners. Only about 1/10 of the companies we fund are in single combat. So it's best to find a partner, and secondly, to go it alone. Students have their own reasons to find a partner at random, but that's the worst thing. When you think about finding a partner, everyone looks good, so the question is, what kind of person are you looking for? At YC, we have a widely circulated saying that "mins", which everyone has heard. You do need to find a partner in mins, and in YC's first class, we'll talk about a more vivid example. It was originally Paul Graham, and now I'm going to use it. You are looking for a partner who is capable of being in a state of emergency, perseverance and knowing what to do in every situation. This person has to be quick, judgmental, creative, and ready for a case in popular culture. It sounds very silent, but at least it's memorable and for a long time we've used this example in YC's class and I believe it will be useful for you. This man is Bond. Does that sound crazy? But at least it will impress you that if you are looking for a partner, you have to look for someone like Bond rather than an expert in a field. As I mentioned earlier, you'd better have a few years of knowledge about your partner, especially for early hires, but inadvertently, many people are so attractive that they don't pick partners. So take advantage of the school to give you. Besides mins, you need a strong and sober partner. There are also a few small points to consider, such as smart, everyone wants to find a smart partner, and do not give priority to the strong and sober two characteristics, if you feel that you are unable to remain strong and calm, then find a partner that contains both qualities. If you are not skilled, even most of the students sitting in the classroom think they know the technology, or should find a technical partner. One of the strangest things about starting a business now is that people will say, "We don't need technical partners, we hire people who know the technology, we just have to be a manager." As far as our experience is concerned, the effect is not good. The software person should open a software company, the media people should open a media company. In YC's experience, two or three partners are the best. A person obviously bad, five people are too many, four people can also, but still two or three people best. The second part of my story is how to recruit people, that is: do not recruit/not too many. When you run a company, you notice a strange thing, that is everyone will ask you how many employees you have. People judge the size of the company and your personal talents. If you say you have a large number of employees, they will be sure of you, but if they are not, they will not take you to heart. But in fact, having a lot of employees is a terrible thing, and you should be proud of the number of employees you have. The number of employees will bring a consequence, that is, burn money quickly, you have to send a lot of salary, and to solve trivial things, decision-making has become slow, in short, many problems, people are not good. You should be proud of the fact that the staff is small, but can do the same. YC Many companies have a small number of employees in the first year, sometimes the only employees are founders. They start as small as possible. In the beginning, you just have to hire someone you desperately need. After that, you need to learn how to recruit quickly and expand your company, but it's best not to hire early. The disadvantage of being more attractive is that early strokes will cost you dearly. Some of the companies I have followed, the initial number of people are not very good, the company in the end can not recover the vitality, directly dragged down. It took Airbnb 5 months to finish interviewing the first employee. They recruited only two people in the first year. Before hiring a person, they will list the corporate culture to the interviewer, and if they want to be their employees, they have to accept the culture. One of them is to be able to Airbnb bitter end, if you can't, they won't use you. Airbnb's CEO, Brian Chesky, has an example of his obsession, and asks the candidate if you will accept the job if you have only one year left to diagnose your life. He later felt that this was a bit exaggerated, and that he had extended the term to 10 years, and recently I heard he was still asking the question. These hiring methods really work, and the people you recruit will decide your company, so you need to trust the company as much as you do. His problemIt sounds crazy, but these cultures bring him a lot of people who are extremely focused, and when the company is in crisis, these people are very united. The company faced a major crisis early in the day, when every employee lived in the company and was busy shipping until they were through the crisis. Airbnb is a bit impressive and when you talk to more than 40 people who come into the company, they all feel they are involved in the company's creation. But if you're hiring with a lot of rigor, slow hiring, and people with a sense of mission, you can meet Airbnb standards. As we said before, don't recruit if necessary. Recruitment, the first task is to recruit the best people, production, to produce the best products, financing, your top priority is to find ways to raise money. Entrepreneurs always underestimate the difficulty of recruiting. You have a good idea and you think everyone will join you, but that's not the case. You want to recruit the best people, but those people usually have a lot of good choices, so it often takes a year to recruit someone. This is a very long process, and you have to convince them that your plan is the most valuable of all their choices. This also explains why there must be a good product first. So the best people will know that they are joining a fast growing company. By the way, if you want to join a start-up, first of all I have a suggestion to join a fast growing company. Choose a company that has already started, even if not everyone has heard of it, but you know it will grow in the future. You can see whether a company has the potential for development. Good people understand these things, so they will wait until you are on the right track. Someone asked me online this morning how long it would take to recruit. The answer is 0 or 25%. If you're not hiring, it's going to take a while to recruit. In fact, all management-related books will tell you to use 50% of the time to recruit, but the people who give advice don't bother spending 10% of their time recruiting. 25% of the time is not very small, but once you recruit will spend so much time. If you compromise, you recruit some level of people, you will always regret. We all tell entrepreneurs this way, but they always do not hit the south wall does not look back, such practices will destroy the corporate culture. Mediocre people in big companies can bring some problems, but not life. But there is a mediocre person among the five strokes, which is a fatal blow to startups. A friend of mine posted a slogan in the interview room so that the candidate could see it during the interview, as the slogan says: Mediocre engineers can't build great companies. It's true. Mediocre people can be happy in big companies because few people pay attention to them, but everyone in a startup will play a decisive role. 1. If you are in the first recruit five people, 10 people compromise/2. If in the first recruit 10 people, you to five person compromise, (do not know which one to understand) the company may be over. When it comes to hiring everyone,You should think: Can I put the company's future on this person? So be sure to be strict when hiring. When a company develops to a certain extent and you are strong enough, you can compromise when recruiting. Theory and practice are not the same, and there will be speakers to talk about how to deal with them. But in the early days you couldn't screw up the hiring. Then say the source of the recruiter. This is where students often make mistakes. The best source is the people you know and the people they know. For most of the big companies mentioned earlier, more than 100 people were recommended by people. Although entrepreneurs are embarrassed, they still connect with the best people they have met and ask their employees to do the same. If you work on Facebook or Google, you will find that in the weeks before your work, there will be HR interviewing you to get to know more about the smart person you know, and keep it as a recruiting consideration. Recommendation is really the knack of recruiting. Another way is to recruit from outside Silicon Valley. Recruiting engineers in Silicon Valley is very competitive, but people elsewhere may be willing to follow you. Another entrepreneur often asks us questions about how important experience is. In short, experience is useful for certain positions, but not for others. Experience is important when you want to recruit a person who can manipulate the whole situation. In early recruitment, experience may be insignificant, the key to talent and faith. For the rest of my career, most of the best people I've recruited are inexperienced. So if a job requires experience, you have to think about it. You will find that the answer is no, especially in the early stages of entrepreneurship. I am looking for three points in recruiting. Are they smart? Can they finish the task? Do I want to spend more time with them? If I had three positive answers, I would not regret having recruited this person, a method that was always useful. There are three things you can learn from an interview, but the best way to work with them is to hire people who have worked with you, and you don't even have to interview them. If there is no such person, then I think it is best to work with them for a day or two before recruiting them. You both learn a lot, most first-time entrepreneurs are not good at interviewing, but after working with others, they know how to evaluate a person. One of our suggestions at YC is to work with the interviewer. If you have an interview, you should ask the interviewer in detail about the projects he has done in the past. This is a better way to get a thorough understanding of a person than your brain-teasers problems. For some reason, young tech entrepreneurs prefer to ask questions that have a sharp turn, rather than asking what the candidate has done. Should really dig out what the applicant has done, you can contact the referral person. First-time start-up people like to skip this step. You should contact those who have worked with the candidates, when you contact them, do not just ask, who who who who, you have to dig something out. Ask them: Is this the best 5% of people you've worked with? What exactly did he do? You'll hire againHim? Why don't you hire him? You have to keep Taowen the content on the phone. Talking to a lot of yc hatching companies, I noticed that the quality of communication is closely related to the success of hiring. I did not pay attention to this in the past. In the future, I will talk about why communication is crucial in early entrepreneurship. If someone is difficult to communicate with, if someone can't articulate what they mean, they may not be right for the job. In addition, early hires need to be able to take risks. You know this truth, those who can not take risks will not be interested in starting a business, and now the business is also popular, you have to recruit people should have some adventurous spirit. If a person chooses between McKinsey and your company, he will probably not choose you. You also need someone with an unusually strong will, which is different from daring to take risks. You have to recruit people who meet these two points. Paul Graham has a famous "animal experiment". What it means is that, according to the employee's behavior, they are described as an animal. I think it's not a good idea to refer to an experiment as an "animal experiment," but it's really possible to find those who are indomitable by this test. You need someone who must have the spirit of mission. Entrepreneurs will be very pleased with some of the early hires, and the founders will say, "No matter what, these employees are the best people in the world." Mark Zuckerberg said he would consider two things when hiring, first, whether the person is easy to get along with, and if he is willing to work for the other person if he or she is interchangeable. This makes me very enlightening. You don't have to be friends with every employee, but at least enjoy working with them. If this is not possible, at least you can respect them very much. Again, if you don't want to spend more time with someone, trust your instincts and don't hire them. When it comes to recruiting, you should talk about employee shares. Entrepreneurs are always going to screw this up. Roughly estimated, you should hand over 10% of the company's shares to the top 10 employees. They will "earn" the value of these shares in the first four years, and if they succeed, they contribute far more. They will greatly enhance the company's value, if not successful, they will automatically exit. For some reason, entrepreneurs are stingy with their employees and generous to investors in terms of equity. This is putting the cart before the horse. I think this is one of the things that entrepreneurs always screw up. As time accumulates, employees will continue to create value. Investors usually open cheques and make promises they can't deliver. Even if the promise is sometimes achieved, it is less than the employee's contribution to the company over the year. In my opinion, we should strive to reduce the amount of investors ' shares and maximize their share of shares. YC-hatching companies are doing a good job in this area, with companies that are particularly generous to early employees are the most successful. When entrepreneurs recruit people, they ignore one thing, and that's how to get your people to stay. There is a class later, I will not start, but still a little talk, because it is aThe mistakes that the industry often make. It is important to ensure that the employee is feeling high and feel valued. Employees are so excited when they join the company that they don't have time to think, day after year, when they feel they are being treated unfairly, they get angry and even resentful. There's one thing that's not going to happen for the first time: learn some management skills that will help you a lot. This summer, an entrepreneur came to YC to make a speech, and he's been very successful, but he's had a lot of twists and downs in the early days of his team. Someone asked him what his biggest difficulty was, and he said, "If you don't want your employees to resign collectively, don't tell the employees that they are behaving badly because once you say it, they will really quit." But as an entrepreneur, it's natural to say that employees are bad. You think you can do everything well and when someone else is not doing well, you may say it casually. So learn some management skills to avoid the riots in these teams. For most entrepreneurs, it's not easy to learn to praise the team. It took me some time to learn. You have to learn to attribute the good to the team and blame yourself for the bad. You don't have to manage every little thing, and you have to keep your employees on a small scale. Entrepreneurs don't even think about it. It would be nice if the first-time entrepreneur realized that he would be a very bad manager and might be overdoing it. Dan Pink Three things that will motivate people to do something big: autonomy, mastery and mission. I never thought about it when I was running the company, but then I started thinking about these three points, which I think is really right and worth considering. It took me a little while to learn to be responsible and give clear feedback. First-time entrepreneurs usually do not do these things, but listen to me right, will not let you suffer. As for the team part, the last thing I want to say is to dismiss a person who does nothing. No matter what I say here, you still can't avoid making such a mistake, because firing is really the hardest thing to do in a company. In my experience, this is really the hardest thing. The first person to start a business will again and again give employees the opportunity to hope that he can change. But if he has nothing to do, the most correct approach should be to dismiss him as soon as possible. This is good for the company and for the staff. But dismissal is painful and terrifying, and you haven't done it a few times before. In addition to firing bad employees, there are two types of people you want to dismiss, first, the establishment of office politics, second, always negative people. Other employees will be affected by these people who are cumbersome and poisonous to the company. Again, these issues may not have any impact on big companies, although I doubt it, but these people will eventually ruin startups. If there is such a person, you should pay attention to it. So the question is, how can you avoid the anxiety of an early employee when you quickly dismiss someone? The Laid-off employees were dismissed not only for one or two of the botched tasks. Everyone makes one or two mistakes, even moreMany mistakes, at this time you should love them, do not take them out of breath, like a team to solve together. If there is no one thing you can do right, when you decide to fire him, people will understand your difficulties. It's not just a few minor mistakes, but the person who 违拗 your thoughts every time. Such a person does not need you to decide, someone will help you decide. If someone does everything wrong, it lasts for weeks or one months, and you'll notice. This, in theory, sounds complicated, and you probably don't know what I'm talking about. Occasional mistakes and "loopholes, create trouble, make people unhappy," although these are uncomfortable, but you can see the difference. Q: When should the partner decide on the division of shares? For some reason, I never understood why there was such a problem: entrepreneurs and partners like to keep the problem long. They may even sign some very wonderful cooperative books, so it's no surprise they're dragging the question. The problem is not that it will become easier to deal with over time, preferably after you work together as soon as possible. Try to be average. If you don't want to give the partner a share of the shares (the hunter-gatherer editor: This is not to say that the partners share as much as you), I think you should think about whether you want them to be your partners. In any case, you should solve the problem at the beginning of the company's operation. Preferably a few weeks before the start of the company. How can you find out if someone stops, doesn't develop, when everything is growing but he's dragging it down? As I said, I can do without experience. Some people are smart, and over time they can learn something new and play their part in the company. You can transfer them to a different position, or even to a position where they don't have a Greek job. Maybe you've got someone who leads the engineering team, and when this team reaches 50 people, it doesn't expand anymore, and you give the leader a new job. Good people always find a place in the company, so this is usually not a problem. The other question is what to do if you break up with your partner. I'll discuss the technical content in a later session, but let's talk about the most likely part of the entrepreneur to screw up. Every partner, including yourself, wants to cash in on the shares. But for a partner's stake, talk ahead, if any of you get out first. In this case, the general practice in Silicon Valley is to issue shares in four years, if you divide the shares by an average of two, work four years to get the full shares. And only after a year of work does the assignment take off. In other words, you leave your job after one year, retain 25% of your shares, work two years later, leave 50% of your shares, and so on. If you're not doing this, if one of your partners leaves early and takes away half of the company's shares, which is a heavy burden on your stock table, it's hard to find investors to invest in and other remediesIt doesn't work. In order to avoid this situation, the first suggestion is to do a good share of the cash. If entrepreneurs can't cash in on their shares, we won't finance them because it's too bad. Another point, every company will happen more or less, that is, the partnership problem, once the emergence of early communication, do not ignore, let the relationship deteriorate. How do you choose to hire a passable employee and give your customers to their opponents? If this employee is one of the first five people, then I will choose the latter. As far as damage is concerned, I would rather lose some customers than let bad employees destroy the company. My point of view may be slightly different later, but in general it is hard to say. What if the partner's place of work is different from yours? Don't do that. In general, I am skeptical of those who collaborate remotely, because in the early stages of entrepreneurship, communication and efficiency are the most important, and video conferencing does not work too well. Data show that 30 successful software companies, their respective workplaces are unified, and partners are in different places, it is really difficult to operate.