Essential Hiring Tips for Startup Success

Hello everyone, I hope you are having an awesome day. My name is Daniel, I'm a part of the Founder Institute marketing team, and today I am super, super excited, uh, to bring for you another global event. And I'm especially excited about this one because today we have an FI grad with us, and it's always really great to hear, uh, the perspective of our grads because they've also not just gone through the program, but they've gone into the real world, uh, tested out their startup, and now they're here with us with some really important lessons and insights. And today's speaker, Karan, specifically will be focusing on building your early team. Building a team is one of the more challenging things that you'll do as an early-stage founder, particularly in your first couple of years. So I think getting somebody to share that knowledge is super, super important, especially if you're like in the earliest parts of your startup journey. Before I let Karan take over the stage, I just want to go over some ground rules. Folks, if you have any questions for Karan, you'll see a Q&A button on the right-hand side of your screen, right under the chat button. So feel free to drop in your questions. I'll come back on stage at the end of Karan's presentation, and we'll go through some questions. And folks, I know we always have a really international audience, so feel free to let us know where you're joining in from. I know that we have people here from Brazil, we have people here from the UK. I myself, I'm based out of Pakistan. So super, super engaging and as always a global audience, so that's always exciting. And the final thing is if you're enjoying what Karan's talking about, if you're enjoying the event, if you like all the insights and the networking that's happening here, there is an emoji button at the bottom of your screen. So as always, feel free to show us some love. Let us know what you think about the event. Uh, further ado, um, Karan, would you want to maybe take over the stage, start your presentation, introduce yourself?

Sounds good. Thanks, Daniel. So as Daniel mentioned, I've been through the grind with founders, but in addition to that, I've This is not my first gig. I've had a number of startups, and this is the one which we have actually taken global. Let me start with a simple fact that, you know, the human asset is the most versatile and the most difficult asset. And as founders, this is where we would struggle the most. And what I'm going to do is let me just jump straight to the presentation. And as Daniel mentioned, feel free to ask questions whenever you want, wherever you want. We will pick them up at the end. And if any of you want to reach out to me later, feel free to do so as well. Right, so what we wanted to talk about today was building, building a team. So what I'm going to cover is, first of all, why a team? Because this is one of the most critical questions that comes up. You know what, I can do everything, I am able to do everything, so why do I actually need to build a team? Then is, I'm going to talk a little about what a team composition is and because there are a lot of, uh, confusion in terms of what a team means, what co-founders are, etc., etc., etc. And then I'll spend some time on the challenges that we've all faced. This is nothing new, uh, we're all facing it on a day-to-day basis. Some of them, some of us must have faced it in our earlier life. Some of them are going to face it in the late lives when we launch. I think the most critical element is for a founder to know his or her role, or to know their role. If you understand your role, if you know what your role is, it just becomes that much more easier to build a team. Last off, I'll close with some models which you can use when you want to engage with your teams and, and as you go along and build your teams. A quick note on some of the sources. First, securing talent, and lastly, I'm just going to close the conversation and open it for a discussion. Why is it that a team is important? Why is it that we believe that, you know, despite having all the capabilities and abilities that either any of us has, we still should be building a team? Capacity is something that we all are going to struggle with throughout our startups journey, and not only through a startup journey, but even as you grow. The larger you grow, the more capacity you need. And when I say capacity, is not about the ability to do a piece of work, but also the time that is available to do this piece of work. I've got a metrics later, it'll just become self-explanatory there. In addition to that, you also need to add to the capabilities that you have. Lastly, time to think. Most startups, most founders have a challenge that they are not able to give themselves enough time to plan and think. Remember that, uh, the planning is more critical than the execution. If you don't plan well, your execution is never going to be the best. Finally, building checks and balances. As founders, we tend to take decisions very quickly, but we also need some checks and balances. Make sure that you create your backups. And that is the reason why you built a team, because when you're building a organization. You don't want to be focused around you. It should have an entity and a life of its own. So what exactly is a team, right? Team is made up of multiple elements. It is the founders who start the project and decide, right, this is what we're going to do, this is how we're going to do it. It is also those folks that you'll reach out for advice. It could be your mentors within FI or any other area. You could hire individuals to do work for you, so those are all your co-workers. And lastly, do not forget that vendors and suppliers are an equal critical part of your team. They become your partners. If you can actually work with them in a partner mode, you're going to find that your work happens much better. Challenges. I'm sure this will resonate with each and every one of us. I don't think there's one person here who's not— who's going to say, right, I don't have one or more of these challenges. The biggest one when it comes to talent is the ability to access the right talent. And even if we do access the right talent, we end up using a single capability or a single capacity for multiple roles. So which basically means that we don't get the right talent for the right duration because the need for talent as the startup grows changes. Then we don't create delegation plans, which basically means that I've got a whole load of work, I've got a large to-do list, I'm not able to transfer that work to someone else, which eats into my time, which makes it all the more difficult for me to work. Then of course, our ability to identify the capability or the skill gap. This is something that I'm going to focus on a little further down because this is something which is a practical application that I want to share with you, something that I've used over and over again. And been very successful in actually getting the results from this, from, from a capacity planning standpoint. Of course, lack of funds. Many of us are bootstrapped, some of us are self-funded, some of us are working on angel, and then a few lucky ones are actually going to get the funding we need. A challenge that founders also face is a desire to control everything. This can actually be pretty detrimental to your project because if you are not going to let go certain elements, your project may get stifled, it may not grow, and that's because of the lack of confidence in others. So you have to show confidence in others, and you have to make sure that you understand what you're asking someone to do, which very nicely leads us into the, the role of the founder. I'm going to take a pause here because I want you to think about yourself. Think about how you see yourself as a founder. And then see how we should actually emerge and what is the role that we should be playing. The role of a founder changes at different stages. So this is a little matrix. I'm going to share these slides, uh, feel free to leverage it however you can. Initially, you are setting up an organization. You're just one of— one, either one of you, only one, or you're a couple of founders, or you've got a couple of 4 co-founders are a small team. So we call that the core or the early stage team. At this particular point in time, you're focused on your product. You've got to get a market fix. You need to know how to survive. You start building your culture of your organization, because the culture that is built at this particular point of time is the culture that's going to run in the future. The people that you bring on, the culture that you— they adopted is the culture that's going to go on. At this point, you need generalists. You need someone who's got a very strong entrepreneurial spirit, somebody who's going to be able to say, right, this is what needs to be done, I'm going to pull my sleeves up and I'm going to do it. When you're looking for people, these are some of the character— characteristic traits that you would look at in them. However, Once the organization has grown, it changes. This is when you start looking at hiring professionals, as we call them in the industry, you know, who are going to build the operating procedures, and they're going to forget— make sure that they follow the operating procedures. The entire organization starts to follow those procedures. So that's what changes when you scale up from the early stage team. At this particular point in time, you make sure that you hire for potential and the fit that you're building. Because if you find someone who is amazing but doesn't fit the culture of your organization, your organization's culture is going to deviate, and it's going to be a big struggle to bring it back into what you want it to be. Again, I'm going to leave this in the comp models, but from a comp model standpoint of the engagement model that you have is at this stage is you're again low on funds, so you want to give low cash, but you're willing to give away a fair amount of equity. And believe me, there are n number of more people out there Fantastic people who are willing to work on this because they understand that this is a long-term investment that people are making. Okay, this is a critical and a practical, uh, area. In your questions, if you have questions and you want to ask them, if you want me to come back to the slide later, I will, but Principally, a startup has got 4 divisions, as you would call in a large organization, and they are the product, sales, finance, and operations. As the founding team— and this could be a founder or a couple of founders or the co-founders— you have to identify all the roles that are there in your organization. I've just showcased some of the indicative roles here. You might have all of these, you might have more than these. It's something that you've got to then first note down and say, what is it that we need from the organization? Who amongst us can play the role? That gives you a very high-level identification of the gap that you have. So now you know what are the roles you've got to fill. You start to understand what kind of people you've got to find. You've got to start— it gives you an idea of what is the capacity or the capabilities that you've got to look for. It could be a number of co-founders, it could be more in terms of mentors, or like I said, you'd even be looking at an outsourced organization to do certain elements of what is needed from a team. The deep dive from here goes to the capability mapping. Capacity mapping is nothing but the overall time available to an individual. We say you should have a max of 50 hours in a week. You must not burn yourself out by saying, right, I'm going to work 70 hours a week. That way you're not going to— not only are you going to lose sleep, but you're also going to be putting pressure on yourself, which is undue. And make sure that you spend enough time in actually mapping out the capacity that you have as an organization. Now, this would be the two founders. So you've got the— you've done your, uh, gap analysis earlier. Now you're doing a deep dive. I've just given an example. As an example, if you're a large— if you're looking at a B2B sale, then as a salesperson, your job is to close an enterprise sale. You want to be spending about 10 hours on that. A competency is something that you have to define for yourself. The way I define competency in my case was, what am I happy doing? What do I enjoy the most? Which leads to the energy impact. You know, if I'm doing something that I don't enjoy, as an example, when I have to fill the compliances for the corporate side of the work, I'm— it actually is a drain on my energies, even though I'm just spending about 2, 3 hours or 4 hours a month. But it actually drains those 3, 4 hours. It's painful. So you have to understand whether it's the activity that you're going to do, even if you're competent, is it actually giving you a gain or is it a drain? Then comes the element of how strategically important is it. Is it transactional or is it strategic? If it is strategic, it is quite likely you want to give it to someone, whether it is you or someone else, who's actually going to be able to meet the deliverable that is needed for that particular activity. And that's when you decide you can keep the activity for yourself, you can identify somebody else and delegate it to them, you can outsource that activity. And now with the advent of AI, a large number of these activities can also be automated. So you have to take a decision there, and then you put the cost element against the, uh, the map that you're creating. Now that gives you a fair idea in terms of your budgets, in terms of your commercials. How much can you actually, um, give out? How much can you retain even if you don't like a certain activity? So once you have worked out the, the entire map— and when I say the way to do it is map it out in its entirety without analyzing any element. So once you have mapped the capacity, the capabilities out, that is when you start identifying cost versus benefit versus strategic, and then you can arrive at the action plan in terms of keeping or delegating. Engagement models. At the initial stage, you would want to look at an equity share rather than a large outlay of funds, because what you want from people is to get a commitment that they're in it for the game and not for the money. You have got to draw your, um, plan, your equity plan, very clearly. You have to draw it up upfront. You've got to make sure that you know how much ESOP you're going to give. Make sure that you use a professional when you built your model out so that you don't make a mistake when actually— when you are actually looking at getting yourself funded. The second way that you can look, look at is giving sweat, which basically means, as an example, I've got some of my senior leaders, so they work on the basis of the number of hours that they invest on my project. Once they have invested a certain number of hours, we also have a method of analyzing the outcome of the effort that they have put in, and then we convert that into sweat equity. So I pretty much don't give them any cash remuneration, but it goes out as a sweat equity. Then you also have the option where you can offer certain amount of salaries. The advantage of offering salaries plus sweat equity is that you can actually control the individual, because when you are paying a salary, you have more say over the person. So if a person is more entrepreneurial, I would go with the sweat partnership. But if the person is more transactional or action-oriented, then I would go with a sweat equity plus a salary. Then of course the standard model of salary only. In sales, you also have the option of identifying individuals who will work on a commission basis. Then depending on the level of confidence you have, you can identify individuals. These could be your advisors, these could be your salespeople, these could even be some development individuals or somebody in the finance and legal side to whom you pay a retainer. A retainer is nothing but a fixed amount of money paid every month every week, whatever you decide to do. They may or may not have any activity during that period, but when there is an activity, it doesn't matter what the cost of that activity is, they are then supposed to be delivering that activity for you. So that's the retained model. It normally works when you're talking about lawyers or you're talking about accountants and in those kind of areas of your business. And then lastly, the outsourced component. I don't think I'm going to spend too much time on that because I'm sure we all know very well what the outsourced model is. Let's talk about some of the sources of talent. From us, for a startup, the best source for talent is a reference. Speak to your colleagues, speak to your friends, ask them what it is that you're looking for. And now, the, the most important thing from a founder's standpoint, from a founder's standpoint, is the ability to actually write very clearly what your expectation is from people. What you're looking for from them, and what is the outcome that you expect. If you can write these three things and give it to someone, not only are you very clear about the capacity that you're filling in, but you're also being very transparent with your potential team. So it doesn't come as a surprise to anybody, it's documented. It's upfront, it's been discussed, and it's locked. And that's where your friends, your family, your colleagues can actually give you some fantastic individuals. Recruitments, platforms like LinkedIn, job boards, etc. Now this is a more complicated, uh, source. It's also costly, it's also time-consuming, it's also an iterative process because you might end up with finding someone, they're not joining you. So it's a, it's, it's a more, it's a more effort-oriented and cost-oriented process of finding people. Although it seems to be the easiest, I would say this is not the easiest among all of these sources from a talent standpoint. And please make sure that you use your incubators, because your incubator is actually an amazing source, because You build a network, you can access the network, you can reach out to that network, you can ask questions. The network can help you actually build the capacity, build your capability maps, and build a very clear job description. Now, the job description is a word which is bandied about, but as I explained, the job descriptions is not about what the other person is going to do, but it is about what you are looking for, what is the outcome that you want, and what is your expectation from that individual. Freelance talent— there is Fiverr and there's Upwork, and there's a whole lot of other freelance talent sites which you can actually reach out to. And then of course you've got your investors if you're reaching out to to anybody from an investment standpoint, please don't hesitate to ask them if they have got recommendations in terms of the teams, the capacities that you're going to fill. They are a wonderful source, and they actually turn out— many a times they turn out to be a cheaper and a better, and they feel more invested in you. Sorry, just give me a minute. Sorry about that. So that's the element that you have to look at. Don't forget to reach out to them, be sure that you ask them. And then, and then, as in, as it could be the end of this evening itself, some, some of you might have already identified what you're looking for, ask. In conclusion, as I mentioned earlier, you've got to be absolutely clear about your capacity metrics. If you don't have capacity metrics, it is very difficult for you to define the capabilities that you want, the expectations that you have, and the outcomes that you want to get. Again, do not just hire for capability. It is very easy to hire for capability. Before you hire for capability, make sure that you're comfortable with the individual, the individual is comfortable with you, because you are going to be working together to make something. It's not something which is established. But there is going to be a lot of effort, time that's going into making mistakes and correcting them. So you have to be comfortable with the person that you're working with. Comms. Many of us fail in this particular area because we are not transparent. Uh, in one of the meetings that I had Someone asked me, how come you have a co-founder who has been with you for the last 5 years? This was an individual who's been changing co-founders almost every year. And this is post a time when we ran out of funds. For about 6 months, we had no money. We had to carry on. This was the end of COVID We had launched before COVID I had a team of 3 developers, 2 people in sales, my co-founder, and, uh, one other director. It is just simply because I was absolutely transparent with them. I made it very clear in terms of what our cash position is, what our cash position is going to be on a later date. What effort we have to put in to get to that cash position that they stood by. And you know what, in about 6-7 months' time, we got the money from the market and everybody's happy. We've again reached a situation where we are doing a pivot and we have taken a pause on some of the payments, including the payment for a vendor Had a discussion with the vendor, absolutely transparent. Vendor has said no problems at all, we are with you. Takes 3 months, takes 4 months, we're with you. This is extremely important, which is why I'm spending so much time on it. Transfer— always transfer responsibility along with authority. If you're just going to transfer responsibility and no authority, you're not going to get responsibility. The next point is a little complicated because it is, it is a very difficult, uh, act to balance. You have to trust, but remember that explicit trust is also not always the correct way to work. As an individual, you should even not trust yourself, which is why you've created those checks and balances. So therefore, do not explicitly or implicitly trust anybody. Make sure that whoever the team is, whoever you are working with, whether it is between two founders, co-founders, vendors, you should always reassure re-evaluate, and continuously make sure that the expectations are being met and the outcome is being delivered. The last point, I cannot, I cannot emphasize how important this is. Take your time, be slow to hire, find the right person, make sure you're comfortable with that person. But if that does not work, do not attempt to try partways, because the amount of effort you're going to spend on something that you're going to try and salvage is not worth the outcome. It doesn't happen. That's pretty much from me. I'm open to questions now.

Awesome. Thank you, Karan, so much for taking out the time to go through that presentation. There was a ton of great insights, a bunch of things that I think founders at their earliest stage might not have thought of, because what I, what I really liked was that you also took into account growth, right? As your startup grows, With time and with more customers, your needs when it comes to talent also changes. So props to you for that. Just two things that I wanted to maybe zoom in on, folks, if you are in the process of looking for a co-founder, what we've done is put together this incredible co-founder bootcamp where we follow a systematic approach to help you find and pair with a co-founder. So do check that out. We have our team that's dropped the link in the chat here. And the other thing, Karan, that I wanted to zoom in on was you mentioned transfer. And one of the things that we really focus on at FI when it comes to our team and something that I've personally found super helpful is documentation. And I think like if you're an early, you know, if you're a co-founder who's just building out their team or even if you haven't started building out your team, I think you want to definitely document like all the processes that exist within your organization, right? So when you're ready to kind of hand off the reins and, you know, get another person in to help you build, I think that's always super, super helpful.

Now that's absolutely right, because if you're not actually documenting all of the elements of your organization, it's going to become very difficult. For you to actually get to a point where you can successfully do the transfer of your responsibilities and authorities.

Awesome. Yeah. And so going into the questions, Karan, like, I have a bunch of things that I want to ask as well. So like, very selfishly, first thing, you have AI that's now playing a much bigger part in how founders build startups. and you also have this notion that maybe you don't need a co-founder or maybe you don't need as big a team because now you have the help of AI. Like how do you as a co-founder, sorry, as a founder in the earliest stage reconcile with that? Like, you know, should you maybe focus more on like optimizing how you use AI or should you be like, okay, whatever, I definitely need somebody to help me out with this.

Now, this is actually a wonderful question because this is something which I've faced in a number of meetings that I've had with a number of people. And this is not only just from a founder's perspective, but from a number of other perspectives. Now, again, I'll play back to the same capacity planning and the capacity management, because if you understand what capacities you have, what capacities you need to fill in, that will actually give you an idea of What component of that capacity can actually be done by AI? It's very easy to say, you know what, I'm going to get this bot, I'm going to get this bot, I'm going to get this bot, this bot is going to do this for me. But unless you have actually mapped out what your expectations are, what the outcome is, that bot is really never going to work because all you have done is you have taken a technology and tried to shoehorn it into somewhere. And you really don't know what that's going to do for you and how it's actually going to work in your organization. The way I ask founders to do it is I ask them to look at a bot as an employee. So you write a job description for an employee, just write a job description for a bot and see if that bot is actually going to deliver what the employee is going to deliver for you.

Awesome. And I think one of the other things that's kind of helpful to remember, and this is something our speaker from last week also brought up, was as a person on a team that's building a startup, you're also going to be dealing with a lot of people, right? So I think you can't, you know, hand off that stakeholder management when it comes to AI, right? So I think that's also something to maybe account for.

You're right. So the AI is basically another member of your team and you've gotta treat AI as a member of your team. And again, like you said, if that member is not working, if that member is not delivering, fire the member.

Right, there you go folks, fire the member if they're not working. So, okay, so we have a bunch of questions from our audience. I wanna start off with this one, Karan, because I think this is kind of like the crux of what we are talking about here. Harry asks, how do I identify the moment where I need to start looking for employees for my startup, especially as someone who's, you know, a solo co-founder?

Well, the answer there, Harry, is very simple. You've got 50 hours in the week. How many hours are you actually working? Build that, put that metrics together that I shared with you. The slide deck is going to be with you. Fill that in. Understand how much of that activity that you're doing is a drain on you. Understand how much of it is low value. And just understand how much of it is repetitive. Check that out. Give it out to somebody else. Your time is more important on actually getting your business off the ground, not doing your accounts, not doing something which can be done by another person. Well, that said, the other element that you need that I will have to caution is you have to understand your numbers very well. How much are you going to spend? What your burn rate is going to look like? Can you manage that burn rate? So you have got to take all of these elements into play and then take a very conscious decision on moving up the low hanging, increasing the time that you have and increasing the capacity that you have. So this is what I call in terms of an individual is you add to your individual capacities to grow.

Awesome, great answer there. So we have this question here from Felix. And Felix, Felix asks, how do we hire early team members without exposing them to sensitive information when it comes to operations, uh, marketplace, or strategy, especially while you're in stealth mode?

Um, Felix, I'm just going to go into a little off the cuff here. There's something called leadership. From a leadership standpoint Remember that as a leader, you're the one with the vision. You know the product from end to end. You know where it is today, where you're going to take it tomorrow. Now, when you're working in stealth mode and you bring people in, you are never ever going to share your entire vision. Because remember that when you share your entire vision, you might actually be confounding and confusing the person that you're bringing in, they may not have the capacity, the capability to actually understand your vision and stand by your vision. So therefore, as a leader, as a founder, one of your critical jobs is to break down that vision into small consumable chunks and pieces. So the people that you bring in, you're just giving them those chunks and pieces of your vision. Whether you're in stealth mode or you're in open mode, it is the same policy. So you are not actually going to lose anything of what you're doing.

Awesome. And I think from a practical standpoint, there's always the option of NDAs, right? But I think something that you often hear is the likelihood that your idea, at least the idea alone, is, incredibly unique and no one else has ever done it is super, super rare, right? So I think some of these concerns are not as valid, but of course, like Karan said, right, this is something that you manage through leadership. And Karan, another thing that I wanted to maybe zoom in on a little bit that you discussed in your presentation was culture and how team members adopt it, right? So my question is, as a, You know, as an early-stage founder, when do you start building that culture? As somebody who's just, you know, building out their idea or who just has the idea, how would you exactly define culture? What are like those components of culture?

That's a beautiful question. Whoever asked this question, I'm really impressed, right? Because culture actually starts from the day you get the idea. Your culture and your idea are going to run in parallel. A poor culture is going to actually make you— get you more sleepless nights than happiness. So what do we define as culture? Culture in its simplest form are the ethics that you want for your organization. It is the, um, expectation that you have from people in terms of behavior with your clients, your customers, or anybody else outside your organization. It is your expectation from people in terms of behaving or engaging or with their peers. It is engaging with you as a leader. So you have to establish all those norms if folks are interested. Again, I have built a matrix for my organization. It's again a very detailed matrix. We went down to the element of if someone in the team brings an idea to the leadership, the leadership cannot say no for the, the leader to say no, we need to give 3 valid reasons that are going to be accepted by everybody else. If we can't give 3 reasons, that should be tried. It doesn't matter if it succeeds or fails, but it has to be tried. So it's simple elements like this that are documented. Again, going back to documentation, you actually document everything, you make sure you've written it down, and I'm happy to share that metrics.

Awesome. One of the other things, folks, that I want to remind you is once we're done with this Q&A, we will be open for networking. So if you want to stick around and meet founders, aspiring founders from across the world, you're free to do so. Okay, Karan, so going back to the questions, Leslie here asked a really, really great question that I wanted to bring up. Leslie asked, I am a cash-constrained solo founder in a very niche, relationship-driven market. If I need one person in the next year to help me win and serve high-value clients, what should that role be?

Leslie, that is actually a very, very niche question as well. It is going to be very difficult for me to answer that without getting a deeper understanding of what you're looking for and who you're looking for. But I would say that if this is to approach high-value customers, then the individual that you're looking for has to be somebody who is a shadow of you, someone who is going to be acting, behaving, speaking, and reflecting you as an individual. Because you are at a point where you're cash-strapped. You will have to convince whoever comes in that the work that you're doing is something that is going to give them results, it is going to give them value, it's an investment that they are going to make in your project for their returns. So this is where that equity model comes in. So you have to actually part with a certain amount of equity, and when you're parting with equity You have to have the confidence that the person— sorry to use this acronym— but the person that you're marrying is a partner who's not going to divorce you midway and take your house and car with them.

There you go, Leslie. I hope you found that helpful. So we have this really interesting question here from Lingan, and Lingan asks, can you expand more on advisors versus mentors? Does an early stage startup actually need both?

Um, it depends on, it depends on the work that you're doing. It's not about what you need and what you don't need. So the difference between an advisor is someone you're going to call on with a particular specific knowledge. For example, the work that we are doing, we were doing work with human resource. So the advisors that I have are people who are working in human resource. I've got one advisor who works in human resource legal. I've got another advisor who works on human resource policies. So when I've got a specific, very specific issue or a very specific problem, I can reach out to them and say, right, can you advise me? How should I tackle this? Where do I do— what do I go? I've given them a small stake and, uh, they against that stake. That is the way they work. On the other hand, mentors are like myself and the rest of the FI world. We've got only one interest as far as the rest of the founder community is concerned. Our interest is how do we collectively make the founder community succeed. So we are not just going to look at transactional element. We are going to look at you as an individual. We're going to look at you as the direction that you want to go in. We will use our own life experiences, and then we'll try and give you and translate those, uh, life experiences to you so that you go a step ahead of where we are. So the success for a mentor is when, when the mentee actually goes above the mentor and can start mentoring the mentor.

Awesome. And folks, if you are looking to onboard an advisor, we have a really great resource at FYI called the FAST Agreement. We'll have somebody from the team share that in the chat. So do check that out in case you're trying to figure out how to formalize your relationship with an advisor. Okay, Karan, so we have this question here from I— let me just look. There we go. From Manuel. So Manuel asks, they are looking to hire overseas talent. What interview process would you recommend when it comes to something like this? And also, what would the compensation model look like for, let's say, an overseas talent and a remote worker?

Um, again, it depends on which country you're looking for the talent to be and which space. If it's technology talent, then there's a different process by which you're going to actually have to reach out to them. If it is, uh, to do with manufacturing talent, then there's going to be different sets of mechanisms by which you ensure and assure the talent The next point is, what is the duration of the talent hire? Are you looking at a short-term talent hire or long-term talent hire? What capacity are you going to fill them in? And I'm happy to take this one-on-one and give this explanation to you because you've asked a specific question and it is very difficult to explain in a generic manner. However, I'm still going to give a generic question. Hopefully that helps. So the way you look at overseas talent is, first of all, understand which country you're going to be outsourcing it to. Understand the capacity and the capability of that country. There are certain countries which have got fantastic talent when it comes to just delivering services or your expectations. There are other countries which have got fantastic in terms of research capabilities, in terms of analysis. So you understand what is the strength of the country that you're going to be working in. Then you understand which are the areas that the individuals that you're looking for— do they have the required certifications? Do they have the required projects under their belt? You, you start to get a certain sense of, uh, you, you give them certain tests These are available online. You can select the test that you want. Uh, it's only after that you actually outsource to a foreign worker. From a payment standpoint, it again depends on the specific laws of the country. There are certain countries which accept overseas payments directly to an individual. Certain need them to be routed through an organization. Certain individuals may create bank accounts in the country that you're operating in, so you can actually pay them there. It also depends on the nature of the contract you have set up. One thing that I want to caution you about when it comes to overseas talent, you need to be able to— you need to make sure that when you are hiring an overseas talent, This is a challenge faced by even large organizations where one individual is actually posing as multiple people and picks up 2 or 3 projects at the same time. So they may tick all the boxes, but then they actually may not be available to deliver what you're looking for. Sorry, that was as generic as I could be. Again, feel free to reach out for specific.

Awesome. So we've already shared, uh, Karan's LinkedIn in the chat. We'll have the team share it again, folks. If you want to reach out to Karan, get, uh, get on a call with him, get, uh, more of that insight and knowledge, please feel free to do so. Uh, so Karan, we have a bunch more questions here from the audience that I want to get through. Uh, Logan here asks If you are making an early stage hire that's equity-based, is there a model you'd recommend that allows for maybe a soft trial period before you actually commit equity? And I think maybe, Karan, if you could talk more about that trial period, like how do you set that up? What expectations should you set? And what is it that you should be looking for?

That boils down to the statement again, where you've actually clearly stated you, You've documented the expectations and the outcomes that you have from a particular individual. So the moment you have set the outcomes, right, and, and when you talk to the individual, when you work with that individual, you establish certain sets of milestones. So you agree what is going to happen at different stages. Remember that you are now working as an investor. You're going to go to another— go to an investor. That investor is going to do the same thing with you. So you now, you're doing this with the individual that you're bringing in. So you establish your expectations and outcomes, place milestones. Against each milestone, place an agreed value of equity that you're going to give out. You could give out a token equity in the beginning if you, if you believe that the individual that you want is the right fit for you. Is absolutely the person that you're looking at, but you just want to make sure that they're going to give the same level of commitment that you're going to give to your project. So at the milestone, this is to be agreed with that individual, you start breaking it up and releasing equity as you go along. I would not recommend transferring the entire equity at the offset because As I mentioned, this is a marriage, and this is a marriage where you've already given your house and your car, and then when the person leaves, you cannot take back that house and car.

Awesome. So, Karan, we have a couple of minutes left, and I just want to get through maybe one last question before we close things out. Uh, so we have Nick here, who is a very strong technical co-founder, but he really struggles with sales. So his question is, how should he go about looking for a more sales-focused co-founder? Maybe if you could touch upon some of the key skills that maybe a sales-focused co-founder should have.

Sorry, I'm just gonna ask a quick question. Are you looking at— what is the nature of business that you're doing? Is it B2C, C2C? B2C, where are you playing at? If you can answer that, then I can give you a better answer.

So, okay, so we have, uh, I'm not sure if Nick is still around. Okay, B2B, there you go.

Right, next would be to me. So if I'm looking at a B2B sales individual, the skills that I'm looking at from that person First off, is there network in the industry, the target industry that I'm looking at? Because we are a new company, we have not— we don't have a brand behind us, we don't have a pedigree behind us, right? So we are a horse that's just come out of the racecourse and we're just going to run. Nobody has any trust in us. Which is why the individual that we're looking for, for such kind of B2B sales, is a person who is from the industry, has the connects, is an individual that is going to be trusted by the people that that person speaks with. He or she or they are going to be the people that are going to bring you your marquee clients. Your marquee clients are those clients that you use as a stepping stone. Whether they bring in your entire revenue, part revenue, or no revenue is not the consideration, but the first element is for them to be able to bring in those marquee clients. Now, a marquee client is not just somebody off the shelf, right? I say, right, I'm going to go in and get somebody who's, who's running a mom-and-pop shop and say, right, I've got you your first client. That is not what we identify as a marquee client. A marquee client is someone who's got the brand, who has got the name. And when we call on them and classify them as our customer, we are actually feeding off that brand. So in turn, we get that trust because we have that client as our client. So you look for the person who understands the industry, somebody who's worked in the industry someone who has got the right level of connects, has got the right network, is willing to expose that network and those connects to you. If you find that person, that they are the ones you hire. If you're not able to find that person, then you have to look at which of these elements that individual does not have and then decide if the other elements outweigh the missing element. For example, someone may not have the network but may have amazing, uh, you know, links in the industry. You may know who is who, who is who, and may be able to reach out to them. May not have a direct link, but then can create the trust factor. So that's the element that you have to look at when you're hiring a salesperson.

Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much.

Just one last point.

Yeah, please go ahead.

Do not go by the past wins of a salesperson because what we say in sales is you're as good as your last sale. Your next sale is what matters.

Awesome. There you have it. If you're looking for a salesperson, their next sale is what matters. Karen, thank you so much for taking out the time to do this. It was super, super insightful. As you saw, we had a ton of questions. From folks all across the world. So thank you so much for all the insights. And folks, if you do want to reach out to Karan, we will be sharing his LinkedIn in the chat here. And thank you all so much for joining us. And we do have the networking open for a while. So if you want to connect with founders from across the world, aspiring partners from across the world, please feel free to do so. The FI team will be there as well for a little while. And if you have any questions or comments or feedback for us, we'll be here for that as well. Karan, before we close things out here, any parting words of wisdom for our audience?

Just this. Remember that the most expensive and the most and the only asset that you have, with which you have a relationship and which has a relationship back with you is people. No other asset has a relationship back with you. So make sure that you are keeping that in mind when you're looking at building the team.

Awesome, awesome. Great words of wisdom right there, folks. If you're looking for a co-founder, do check out our co-founder bootcamp. And if you're interested in future FI events, fi.co/events, do check us out there. That is it for today. I hope you all have an awesome day. We'll see you in the next event.

Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody. Cheers. Bye-bye.