Your First 10 Hires ARE Your Culture

There's a common founder misconception that culture comes later. First, you hire smart, execution-focused people. Then, as you grow, you build culture.

That's backwards. Your first 10 hires ARE your culture. You're not hiring people into a culture. You're hiring people who will create it.

A founder we worked with at a Series A company had hired 8 people in her first year: all super talented, all from big tech companies, all high-ego, high-output people. By month 12, the team was fractured. Infighting over resources. Competing agendas. Low morale. She had 8 amazing individual contributors and a toxic team.

She had to make a hard choice: let some of them go and rebuild. Because those first 8 people set the tone. And the tone they set was competitive, political, and individualistic.

If you hire 10 people who are ambitious, analytical, and detail-oriented, you're building a culture of optimization and process. If you hire 10 people who are mission-driven, collaborative, and scrappy, you're building a culture of purpose and teamwork. If you hire 10 people who are all hard-driving individual contributors with massive egos, you're building a culture of politics.

Your first 10 hires don't join a culture. They create it. Choose carefully.

Mistake 1: Hiring for Pedigree Over Adaptability

The resume looks amazing: VP Product at Google, head of sales at Stripe, engineering lead at Uber. But here's the thing—that person was incredible at a 500-person company with massive infrastructure. They had a team of 20 reports. They had specialized functions. They had budgets.

At your Series A startup with 8 people, they're useless. Or worse, they're toxic. Because they're used to operating without constraints. They expect systems and processes that don't exist. They don't know how to function without infrastructure.

One founder hired a former Google PM (amazing pedigree) as her first PM. This person arrived expecting a product analytics team, user research infrastructure, data systems, all the things Google has. When she realized those didn't exist, she spent three months building them. Meanwhile, the product wasn't moving. And she was miserable because she was doing individual contributor work that would have been delegated at Google.

The founder eventually let her go and hired someone who'd worked at two Series B companies. Person #2 had seen early-stage companies that didn't have infrastructure. She knew how to function in ambiguity. She was perfect.

For early-stage startups, you need people who've succeeded in constrained environments. Either they've worked at previous startups, or they have the adaptability to function without the infrastructure they're used to.

Google alumni are great hires at Series C. They're usually bad hires at Series A.

Mistake 2: Not Selling Hard Enough

Good candidates have options. If you're a Series A startup, you're competing against FAANG jobs, cushy corporate roles, other startups. Your biggest selling point is probably your vision and upside potential.

Most founders undersell this. They go into interview mode (candidate interviews us) rather than sales mode (we interview candidate AND sell them on why this is the opportunity of their career).

Recruiting is sales. Your best candidates are not looking. You need to convince them that joining your startup is the right call even though it means more risk, less security, and (often) lower salary than their current role.

What founders should do:

  • Start recruiting conversations as conversations, not interviews. Coffee, drinks, genuine discussions about what they're looking for.
  • Be honest about what's hard and what's exciting. Don't oversell or undersell. Paint the real picture.
  • Tell your vision multiple times, in multiple ways. Once in a pitch deck doesn't cut it. Candidates need to feel it.
  • Sell equity. Make it real. Show them the math on what a 10% option pool could be worth if the company succeeds.
  • Be willing to lose great candidates to better offers from bigger companies. That's just the market.
  • Follow up. A lot. Great candidates take time to convince. If you give up after one meeting, you lose.

The founders who succeed at recruiting their first 10 are the ones who treat it like a sales process. Because it is.

Your best candidates are not looking for a job. They're looking for a reason to take a risk on your vision. You need to sell them that reason.

Mistake 3: Hiring All Generalists OR All Specialists

A common founder move: hire nine generalists and one specialist. The idea is that generalists are flexible, can wear multiple hats, are scrappy. Specialists are too rigid for early stage.

Wrong. You need both.

Generalists are necessary because you have 10 people doing the work of 100. You need people who can go deep and wide, who don't say "that's not my job."

But you also need specialists, because some work is too important to be done by someone splitting attention. Sales is too important. Engineering is too important. Product is too important. You need at least one person who's so focused on that function that they become the expert, the standard-setter, the person who builds the muscle in that area.

The mix that works: 6-7 strong generalists who can support multiple functions + 3-4 specialists who are deep in critical areas (usually engineering, sales, and ops/finance).

And your specialists have to be people who can also think broadly. They're deep in their domain but willing to help elsewhere when needed. Not siloed. Just deep.

Mistake 4: Waiting Too Long to Hire a Recruiter

Here's the founder's dilemma: recruiting is a huge time sink, but you don't need a recruiter yet. You're a 5-person company. Do you really hire someone to focus on recruiting?

Yes. Or you partner with one.

By the time you're at hire #5, you should be thinking about hire #10 and beyond. By hire #8, you're probably spending 40% of your time on recruiting (if you're doing it right). That's time you're not spending on fundraising, product, or strategy.

By hire #10-15, recruiting is a full-time job. If you don't have someone focused on it (either a hire or a partner), hiring slows dramatically. And recruiting that slows is recruiting that gets worse (you get desperate, you lower standards, you hire wrong people).

What we usually recommend:

  • By hire #3-4: You're actively recruiting hire #5. You're spending significant time on it. Consider whether you want to own it or have someone help.
  • By hire #5-6: You should either have a recruiting person (even part-time) or a recruiting partner. Because by hire #8, you'll be spending 30%+ of your time recruiting.
  • By hire #10+: You need recruiting to be someone's primary responsibility. Not split responsibility. Primary.

For many Series A startups, this looks like partnering with an embedded recruiting firm for the first 18 months. That costs money upfront but saves you enormous founder time and usually results in better hires (because you're working with someone who specializes in startup recruiting).

Mistake 5: Ignoring the Compensation Conversation

Founders often build offers without clear thinking on compensation. They offer what feels right, or what they offered the previous hire, or what the candidate asks for.

This creates problems:

Equity is often undercompensated: Founders think equity is valuable because they know how big the company could be. Candidates don't have that same information. If you're not being explicit and enthusiastic about equity, candidates devalue it. Show them the math. Make it real.

Salary is often inconsistent: You hire person A at $120K, person B at $140K (because they negotiated), person C at $100K (because they were passive). By month 12, when people compare, you have equity and morale problems. Set clear salary bands. Be explicit about them. Don't negotiate salary away from them (you can negotiate equity or bonus, but salary band signals should be consistent).

Benefits are afterthoughts: Healthcare, 401K, PTO policies should be clear from day one. They're part of the offer. Being vague about them creates uncertainty that candidates interpret as cheap or disorganized.

What to do:

  • Define salary bands for each role level (junior, mid, senior) based on actual market research
  • Explicitly communicate what equity means (options, vesting schedule, strike price, likelihood of exit)
  • Be crystal clear on benefits from day one (health insurance, 401K, PTO, etc.)
  • Have the compensation conversation early with candidates, not as an afterthought at offer stage

Mistake 6: Hiring All Your Friends

Not exactly a mistake, but a warning: there's a temptation to hire people you know, people you've worked with before, people you're comfortable with. This works in moderation but breaks down if you overdo it.

The risk: you end up with a homogeneous team. Same background. Same way of thinking. Same blind spots.

Diversity of background and thought is valuable for startups. You need people who challenge your assumptions, who come from different industries, who think differently.

Maybe 3-4 of your first 10 are people you know. The other 6-7 should be new networks, new perspectives, new backgrounds.

The Real Talk: Why First 10 Hires Set Trajectory for Next 100

Here's what's true: your first 10 hires set the culture code. They model the behavior that defines your organization. They set standards (high or low). They demonstrate what kind of work is valued. They show what it's like to work together.

Every subsequent hire arrives into an organization shaped by those first 10. So if your first 10 are brilliant jerks, you'll have a culture of political, siloed, high-output people. If your first 10 are collaborative and focused on mission, you'll have a culture of teamwork and purpose.

You can course-correct later, but it's hard. The first 10 matter enormously.

So spend time on them. Be thoughtful. Sell them on your vision. Be honest about what's hard. Hire for both culture AND skill. Make sure you're building a team that can function in ambiguity and execute in constraints.

Your first 10 hires are the foundation everything else is built on. Get them right, and the next 100 are easier. Get them wrong, and you'll spend years trying to shift culture.

Choose well.