How to Attract Great Employees to Join Your Startup

The other thing that drives your probability of success is your overall ability to attract amazing people. In fact, like, the founder's job— this is a hard thing— is to take exceptionally smart, hyper-rational people and somehow convince them to do this irrational thing, which is join you in this startup. That's like a developed talent and developed skill. That's what you have to do. And I'll tell you the secret to how you go about doing this if you're a founder. Number one, as it turns out, there are a subset of the human population that has this genetic flaw that compels them and draws them towards startups, even though it makes absolutely no sense. They can't help it. They just have that gene. Many of you are in this room right now. So once you learn how to identify those people, like half the battle is already— they can't help themselves. You just have to kind of get the opportunity out there and get good at selling and good at convincing. And the other thing you have to do is that one trump card you have as a startup, you're not gonna be able to pay them much, if anything, right? That's not the thing. You're not gonna give them a brand. It's not gonna look great. on their resume. The thing you can give them is the ability to learn more than they would have any other place, right? Because it's like a small team growing really, really fast. And you want to give them crazy ambitious, almost impossible goals. People with a genetic flaw that are super good really love the challenge. Amazing people don't like average goals. That's the key. Dharmesh Shah is the founder and CEO of LinkedIn.