Hire for Weakness, Not Strength

When you're hiring your first 5 people, you're not building a team. You're building a skill portfolio.

Most founders don't think about it this way. They hire based on what they like.

"I need someone strong in sales and marketing. That person over there is a marketing rockstar. Let's hire them."

That's hiring for strength.

But if you're strong in product and you hire someone strong in product, you have two good product people and nobody good at sales.

That's suboptimal.

The Framework

List the top 10 skills your company needs over the next 2 years:

- Product vision and design - Technical execution - Sales and customer conversation - Financial discipline - Operations and process - Marketing and brand - Customer success - Legal/compliance - Analytics/data - Fundraising strategy

Now, rate yourself and your co-founder(s) on each (1-10).

Notice where you're all weak? Those are your first hires.

A real example:

Founder A: Strong at product (8/10), decent at technical (6/10), weak at sales (3/10), weak at operations (2/10).

Founder B: Strong at operations (8/10), decent at product (6/10), weak at sales (3/10), weak at fundraising (2/10).

Joint: Strong at product (7/10 as a team), decent at operations (7/10 as a team), very weak at sales (3/10), weak at fundraising (2/10).

First hires should be:

1. Sales/customer person (fill the biggest gap) 2. Head of Operations or CFO (deepen operations, free up Founder B to focus on product) 3. Product/Engineering (strengthen technical execution, reduce dependence on Founder A)

They should NOT be:

1. Another product person (you don't need this) 2. Another operations person (you have this covered)

The Subtext

Hiring for weakness is also hiring for humility. It means you're willing to work alongside people who are better than you at some things.

Ego founders struggle here. They want to hire people they're better than. They want to be the smartest person in the room.

Those founders build weak companies. Everyone is like them. Nobody has the expertise to push back or lead a function.

The best founders hire people who are better than them at important things. Then they get out of the way.

The Implementation

When you're interviewing someone, you should be asking:

1. Where are they exceptional? (That's the role you're potentially hiring them for) 2. Where do they struggle? (That's why they fit into your portfolio) 3. Do they have growth mindset around their weaknesses? (Can they learn? Or are they defensive?)

Hiring someone weak at something but willing to grow is better than hiring someone strong but set in their ways.

The Result

If you hire well for weakness, your company has:

- Deep expertise across functions - Natural checks and balances (the sales person pushes back on the product person) - Mutual respect (each person knows they're hired for what the founder isn't) - Scalability (different people own different functions, not all dependent on the founder)

If you hire for strength and similarity, your company has:

- Depth in one or two areas - Echo chambers (everyone agrees) - Frustration (nobody is great at what's missing) - Founder dependence (all roads lead back to the founder)

The choice is yours. But the portfolio approach is almost always better.