“Hire the right people.” If there is one piece of advice that we constantly hear as entrepreneurs, it is this cliché of “wisdom”. But what defines “right” and what are we hiring for?
As a startup creator, I hired over 500 employees. I think we can all agree that intelligence and a strong work ethic form a good foundation for having success at any stage of businessbut the skills needed at various stages are quite different.
However, there is a type of person that I consider absolutely necessary in the first employees and very useful at any stage. I call them “Renaissance”.
What defines a Renaissance person? In any area of an organization, three elements are typically required for team members to make a significant impact:
-Make sensible decisions.
-Develop systems or processes to facilitate execution.
-Do the work.
Most people are experts in only one of these areas. “Renaissances,” by contrast, have the superpower to be able to do each of these things equally well to drive a business forward. Below I explain why this is important and how Renaissance people are ideal for startups.
Who are the renaissance people and why are they necessary for undertakings.
1. Speed of execution.
The speed with which a business can be launched is its main competitive advantage over large corporations and your team must be designed to take advantage of this advantage. Renaissance personas solve part of the speed equation: someone who can own end-to-end initiative eliminates the inefficiencies that come with shared decision making and information delivery.
Beyond this, Renaissance people bring the judgment required to de-prioritize unnecessary minutiae and focus only on the essentials that drive progress.
2. Speed of learning.
With startups looking to create and dominate a new market, there is no blueprint for success. This attaches great importance to rapid learning and improvement. If the iteration depends on a chain of three people for each step, too much is lost in the process, creating massive inefficiencies and slowing down learning.
By being able to analyze information and feedback loops and implement solutions quickly, Renaissance people improve all the time while avoiding the critical mistake of going too far in the wrong direction.
3. Use of capital.
Clearly hiring one person instead of three is more capital efficient, but renaissance people solve the problem of not having the right resources when unavoidable management changes are required.
The most innovative person is the founder who can create strategies, build systems and execute. This speeds up the time to market for the product. But having a renaissance persona in other functions, from operations to marketing to sales, is essential to quickly jumpstart product development.
And remember, if you are really interested in creating your own business, you can purchase our book “How to create a company while working: Discover how to manage your time, manage your money and motivate yourself while creating a company and working for another” , where you will find all the information you need to found your own company, without having to leave your job.
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