The Advantage of a Complementary Team

We have a startup this summer, we're going to start hiring people and this is like the first time we're going to be hiring people, which is interesting. And we noticed that there are two types of Persona if we have to classify engineers. One are the hardcore engineering people who just want to given a problem, they just want to dig deep into that. And the other one is more creative. They want to understand the problem and build for that and do things.

Yes.

So two questions. First one, for an early stage startup, who would you recommend we should hire more or is there no handbook in that? And the second one is how do you build a culture that is like adaptable for both of these kind of people?

Well, you need both. But my answer, I mean all my answers are going to be about context. So depending on what you have to get done in the near term, like the next year and congratulations, it may be something you need someone who's deeply into the problem space and actually building something quite novel and will focus and focus and focus and solve that hard problem. But you also will eventually need that more creative generalist builder. And I think the question is just where are you in your product development? Honestly. But yes, both. And just the order of that depends on where you're at with the product itself. I would argue how do you build? I mean this goes back. I love sports analogies because they're so apt, which is most teams have a collection of individuals that have actually quite different skill sets but some fundamental things in common. Just think about any team you've ever been on and what those things are in common the coach, the leader can establish, which is like this is, I have an expectation of this much sharing of the ball, for example, or the way we give credit, the way we give opportunity to score. Whatever it is your shared norms that I'm talking about, your foundational stuff you put in place, it's what creates the construct within which those two individuals are playing by the same rules on the same team. And then you have opportunities for them each to shine and there will be because back to that thing where if they really see each other, I think some of the best performing teams do an inventory of what do we have around the table? What are your special capabilities, what are your awesome skills, what kind of problems are you really great at? And they actually can even assign work to one another because you've built that self awareness and that's the best team like you know, you've got. We're all watching the NBA playoffs I assume and you know there is a person you give the ball to when you need a three point shot landed. And everyone on the team knows it. And that's the beauty of sports. But you can create that in your own company, too.