Gave a talk at SaaStr today. A lot of people asked for the slides — here they are:
The Top “People” Lessons — And Mistakes — From Founding a $3.8 Billion Market Leader
The 7 “People” Things No One Tells You When You Scale a B2B Company
• Drum roll please
Recruiting is over-rated
- What?????
- Best companies will have fewer people
- More People = More Communications Issues
- Track revenue/employee
- My mistake: I have ALWAYS over-hired
THE important business skill: selecting (and managing) vendors
- Rely on APIs instead of hiring more
-
Vendors are getting better faster than employees
- WhatsApp had under 60 people at time of acquisition
- Kylie Jenner’s company has 7 employees
- Vizio got to $2BB revenue with just 80 employees
- My mistake: again, I have ALWAYS over-hired
Unbalanced teams beat balanced teams
- Pick 1-3 areas where your team will be dominant
- Just hire for the things you are already really good at … forget about the rest
- Even Salesforce.com is not good at lots of things (like UI)
- My mistake: I ALWAYS try to hire to fill the gaps – bad idea
Try to NEVER hire in the San Francisco Bay Area
- Really hard to attract great people to SaaS in SF
- Really hard to keep great people in SaaS in SF
- Not being is SF is a massive strategic advantage
- My mistake: I almost have EXCLUSIVELY hired in San Francisco
Put off hiring VP HR and VP Marketing (for as long as possible)
- 90% of marketing people are in the bottom third of their organization*
- 95% of HR people are in the bottom third of their organization*
- Hire these VPs AFTER you have hired all the others. And you can wait to hire VP HR until > 100 employees
- My mistake: yup … made this one too. * stats completely made up for effect
You CAN fire people too quickly
- “you never fire someone too quickly” is very wrong
- People can be saved … you hired them for a reason
- My mistake: not being creative enough to find a fit
How to ID the 10X employee (before you work w her)
- Threats vs Opportunities
- Planning vs Action
- Negativity vs Positivity
- Individual vs Team
- My mistake: I still don’t know how to ID this person