In this conversational video, Evan Carmichael and Stephen (Skelly/CEO) answer a viewer’s repeated question about how to select trustworthy, mission‑aligned team members for a diverse startup. They stress that the first criterion is alignment with the company’s purpose and passion; without a shared fire for the big idea, a hire will not thrive. Next, they discuss the need to identify the complementary skills and experience required at the current stage of the business—blue‑sky thinkers for idea‑stage ventures, or sales, marketing, SEO, etc., for later stages. They warn against unconscious bias and advise entrepreneurs to consciously seek the differences that will make the team successful. A “fail‑fast” culture is advocated: test candidates with short, real‑world assignments (e.g., a 5‑hour project) rather than relying on traditional interviews, learn quickly from hiring mistakes, and be transparent and compassionate if a hire isn’t working out. The overall message is to combine purpose‑driven alignment, stage‑specific skill complementarity, bias‑aware selection, practical testing, and a compassionate, honest approach to hiring and firing.
Jonathan has asked this question like 18 times in the chat. He really needs an answer to this question. So Jonathan, I appreciate the hustle. This question is for you. How does one select people for our diverse team which you can trust and grow with?
Hey, Jonathan, it's a great question. And I think that, that is something that there's no easy answers to as an entrepreneur, 'cause I've made many decisions and some bad decisions over the time, and I'm sure we all have. But I think that the smart way to answer that is, obviously, I think number one is look for the differences you need to be successful and be quite conscious of that and unpick any sort of deep bias in your mind. And then pick the individual. And the key thing is, with all these things is you have to be aligned around the mission. You have to be aligned around the purpose. If you want to go into the music business and the individual doesn't like music, you're going to struggle. So they've got to bring something. But the most important thing is you've got the alignment and the power of the purpose, the sense of purpose, the sense of passion. Because being an entrepreneur is hard work and they're going to have to work really hard. To be successful. And if they don't have that fire in their belly that you've got about your big idea, then, you know, you might as well shut the conversation down straight away. Then once they've got that, I think then you've got to ask yourself, what is the complementary skill set? What's the competence? What's the experience that they bring to your success? And that's very dependent on where you are in your journey. If it's the idea stage, it's probably blue sky thinkers, it's probably a sort of partner. If it's further down in your sort of business journey, then it could be around, you know, sales, marketing, social media. It could be very good SEO optimization. It could be, you know, what is it you need at that stage? And I think you should be very thoughtful about that. And then the next thing is kind of making that decision, going with it. And then, you know, honestly, the best advice to give you is if you make a mistake, make the mistake and learn early, you know, just as we do in terms of ideas. We have a culture where we want to encourage all our colleagues to fail fast. And actually, again, at Spotify, just a data point, they have sort of an ideas factory. They expect like 9 out of 10 ideas to fail, but one idea will be a kind of absolute kind of barnstormer, a ripper, and they'll be hugely successful with that one idea. But I think within the culture of a great company, again, you want to encourage people to fail. There's no fear in failure. But ultimately, if it doesn't work out as an individual down the road, then it's really important to just sit down and be transparent, authentic, and just say, you know, it's kind of just not working out with you. You know, I've made a bad hiring decision. You know, I apologize for that. But we just got to be honest with ourselves. Yeah. And the great entrepreneurs, I think, you know, are always sort of focused on their business almost to a level of ruthlessness, but they're always very compassionate with the people around them and very authentic about that.
I agree with everything Stephen's saying. The thought that I'm going through in my head just to add to it is I like testing people on different projects. I think if you can find an easy way to get tested, so give them an assignment. So whether you're bringing on interns or whether you're in your hiring process, I'm not a big fan of the typical job interview process. I'd rather just let them get to work on something and see how it, see how it goes. And so I'll give them 5 hours to work on a project and see what comes up and be willing to be surprised and open to new ideas. And so if you have some kind of way to test people out on a small short-term basis, and again, to Stephen's point of you're aligned on the mission, here's our goals, here's what we're trying to get to, but I'm open to how the path, how we're gonna get there. If you can find ways to work with people and test them out to see what ideas might come out, I think you'll be surprised. A lot of the people who are on my team, I have a team of misfits. Like, they would have a hard time getting a job other places. They had the worst resumes, their cover letter, you know, wasn't great, but I just gave them a chance and they surprised me. 'Cause often the skills, if you're hiring a video editor, their cover letter doesn't really make a big difference. I'm not hiring them for their writing ability. I want to know they can make great videos. And so to Stephen's point about not falling into stereotypes and just giving people a test, I think you'll be surprised if you do that with enough people.
