What Makes an Employee “Good”?

When you first start a company, it is an external manifestation of who you are. Because your endeavor is fueled by your life force, it will serve as a mirror: You will notice that the company is good at all of the things you are good at as a person, but you will also notice the company is struggling in certain capacities, because you yourself are not good at those things. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you do need to be smart, and hire against those weaknesses. 

You need to find people to help you at things that you are less good at, or simply cannot do at all. This is how your hiring process begins.

My first few employees at The Hub were people who knew the world of digital photography as it exists on social media. I needed to tap into the burgeoning world of Instagram creators and other novice talent, and those employees were my ticket in. But soon after, I realized I needed to hire developers and people who could code — not because I am bad at coding, but because I literally don't know how to write a line of code and we needed to write many lines of code to build the software that would serve as The Hub’s framework. 

A big mistake I made in that hiring process was hiring with cash. That is to say, instead of talking to the designers I wanted to hire and selling them on my vision and the company’s mission of helping democratize content creation, I hired at market rate or higher. In the case of my second developer, we needed a front-end specialist very quickly, so I matched someone’s 10-year salary plus 25 percent, because I didn't have the time or the patience to get him to buy into the company emotionally.

Startups are fragile worlds, and while there are certainly people who work on a transactional basis for cash, there will always be others who believe in an idea to the ends of the earth. It’s the latter mindset that will help you weather the ups and downs of startup culture, but the dichotomy of the two mindsets can and will create an unhealthy caste system and a host of problems in its own right. 

Now, four and a half years later, my team has been winnowed down to a core group of people who have emotionally bought into the vision. That is partially because the company has matured to the point where it's not just a vague idea — it's actually occupying physical space in the real world, and it’s easier now for people to understand what we are doing. This allows me the relative luxury of being able to hire people who understand and are driven by what we are doing more than they are driven by a paycheck. The sooner you cultivate and seek out this mindset, the stronger and more resilient your company will be. 

I wholeheartedly believe that the best employees are the ones who fundamentally believe in the work that they do. They can have a host of different reasons for why they believe, but it’s crucial that they do. 

As a business owner, you don’t want to hire people who view their work as a transaction. Wherever possible, weed out the people who operate from a mentality of, “I work a job, I get paid money.” I want people that have some emotional stake in our work and that they're willing to codify that with getting equity in the company in lieu of taking a pay cut. 

What I say to everyone to whom I offer a job is a promise that I should give them enough equity to put them in a position where their equity stake in this company is worth more than I will ever pay them in salary. If you’re making $70,000 a year and you work for four years, that's $280,000. If you own 0.3 percent of the company and we sell for $100,000, I'd like you to believe that you're going to make $300,000 when we sell. To that end, you'll make more off of your equity than you ever would off of all of your salary combined over the four years you work at the company. If at least part of you believes that that's possible, then I think you're in the right room. But if you think the company will never be worth that much, or it'll never be worth anything because it is going to fail, then you’re in the wrong room and you should find another job.

Don’t get me wrong: they can certainly do that, because this is a freelancer’s market. The future of work means that the workers don’t need companies like they traditionally did. We are entering a world where the institutions lose power and the individual gains it. I see it with designers, developers, you name it — if someone has a skill, they can find the demand for that skill without using a big institution as the middleman. They can just go right to the demand on a fractional basis. 

Workers need to view their skill set as a very unique supply and operate from a place of knowing that there is a very unique demand out there. They should strive to be matched very eloquently with that demand, and never settle for less. And if you are an employer, you should strive to find the people who fit your needs perfectly in demand. 

The common thread of people I want to hire, and of people whom I am so glad I hired is a deep hunger. Sometimes that comes from an unhealthy place, like they have something to prove to themselves or the world, or they have been held back in some unfair way. It might be because their last boss told them that they sucked at their job, or even because they came from money and privilege and wanted to show that they can work hard. Sometimes the thirst comes from a healthy place, which is to say they have a deep passion, a deep curiosity, and a deep desire to better themselves. Whatever the case may be, that hunger is a non-negotiable for me. I do not let people get to the core of my company unless they have that trait.

I’ve hired 30 or 40 employees over time, and I've definitely sought out or given preferential treatment to people that went to really impressive schools or worked at really impressive companies prior to joining me. But there really is zero correlation in entrepreneurship between these names and someone’s work ethic. In fact, sometimes those accolades can be negative, and breed a certain amount of entitlement.

Right now, The Hub has four employees, and while I hadn't realized this until recently, I am the only one of the five of us who has gone to college. By no means does this make me better than them, though the ethos of the university I went to often cultivates the notion that going to a top 10 school or a top 20 school like Princeton means you're a cut above the rest. I’ve had to work to divorce myself from that line of thought, and I’m ultimately so glad I did.

To survive in a startup takes so much more than intelligence, or a fancy diploma. It's about sustaining an effort and seeing something through. You need to bring intensity again and again to every problem you encounter, and be able to deal with failure, disappointment, and uncertainty. You need to be comfortable figuring things out and putting the puzzle together by yourself. 

If you're not willing to deal with imperfection and toil through things and deal with failure along the way, your brain will explode after months of entrepreneurship. Perseverance, grit, determination, hunger, and passion will take you much further than intelligence, charm, or eloquence will — both as an employee, and as a member of a company changing the way the world works.

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