Standout Jobs

Joe Kraus is a serial entrepreneur with a number of amazing successes under his belt including Excite and more recently JotSpot. One of Joe’s key messages and lessons for startup success is the importance of hiring top talent.

“Joe’s core hiring philosophy: no false positives. Bad hires really screw up your company. A Players hire A Players; B Players hire C Players; and C Players hire Losers. Although it’s hard to resist the urge to hire for the short term - don’t give in. Hire slowly and carefully - it will make the difference between success and failure.”

Of course, this makes complete sense. You want to hire top talent. But what you see amongst startups (and non-startups) is that they regularly slip into hiring less-than-stellar people. As Joe points out, “it’s hard to resist…” Hiring B or C players is easier, there are more of them, and they’re out there looking for jobs more regularly. It takes less time and effort to hire lower quality candidates.

Taking the time to hire right means learning how to present your company well, learning how to attract people. And once they find you it becomes a question of building ongoing relationships with the potential candidates. Getting to know people who might eventually, someday, want to work for you. It’s a long-term process of developing your startup as a worthwhile place to work and developing a network of people that have expressed interest.