Hiring for Growth

There's kind of a natural growth in a company, again, early stage, crazy idea, you don't have much money, you can't afford much, you just simply can't get the world-class execs in those early days. You're just not wired for that, and they're not even the right people in those early days, so there's going to be a transition of the early people, in many cases, maybe most cases, certainly, some people make it all the way through and they grow with the company and that's awesome, but I think it's very natural that you're going to have a period where you're not letting go those early people, but you're going to be hiring over them, and so having that conversation and trying to do it in a positive way because usually, those people can learn from these world-class people coming in as the company grows and again, if it's in that lucky position of being a hot company that can attract world-class execs, they're going to now come in over those early people. They might have kind of equity, so that can be a tricky conversation. If they're the right people and you explain it the right way, that should be kind of a natural growing for the person and the company.

What's the best way to have that conversation though? Because it is touchy. You were there in the early days, you have lots of equity, you were in a leadership position, and now, new hires are coming in and they're at a higher leadership position than you.

Yeah, well, that's where the equity option system actually, I think, works really well, right? Because even though they might have somebody coming in over them, they might very well have a bigger equity stake because those early days, you're going to be giving more equity than, of course, people later on, and even when the person's job is way bigger later on, so that kind of obviously softens the blow, but I think that's the period of where, and maybe that's where after you brought in kind of that top exec, maybe that top CEO that's replacing you, you can sometimes pump that and that person's taking care of it, but along the way making sure that you're giving lots of warning that that's coming, lots of good feedback to that person, even if they're not doing anything wrong but maybe the areas they need to grow into so that it becomes kind of a natural progression. Most cases, that goes pretty well, but I think you need to be pretty aware of the sensitivities of those kind of necessities, right?