By now you surely have heard this a million times:
A-People hire A-People. B-People hire C- and D-People.
It’s one of the comments I hear again and again when founders talk about hiring. And typically they get this right for their first few hires. But as their companies grow and they add more and more people that bar somehow gets lowered. They start to put people into place who are not A-Players anymore. Sometimes because it’s just incredibly hard to hire amazing talent (it takes longer and costs more). Sometimes because they are not 100% comfortable in their own skin and thus end up hiring people they don’t feel threatened by.
The sad truth is: Once you start hiring B-People on your team, the quality of your team will quickly deteriorate down to Z-People. And given that execution is everything in startup land — it becomes a death sentence.
Hiring is one, if not the, most important thing you do as an entrepreneur. Relentlessly focus on hiring the very, very best people — as they will make (or break) your company.