On Hiring People

He walked.

I sold our startup’s value proposition honestly but unfortunately it didn’t work. He agreed and was excited at first at first but I guess got scared away by my honest admission of risks involved in joining a startup. I guess I sold the risks far more than the merits. But, what was I really supposed to do?

It is tough to hire smart talented people for startups and keep them motivated but the situation becomes far more involved when one is hiring from one’s own network. How do you bring in an engineer whom you have worked with for years without telling them the risks in detail? Isn’t it imperative that they know both the sides and take an informed decision? How does one really show the bright side while sharing these kind of risks in detail?

I failed.

I wish I knew the answers. I wish I knew the magical words so that everyone was ready to take a chance to build what we aspire. I wish I had read Tarun Upadhyay’s advise. On the other hand, I also wish if everyone could see that huge success or colossal failure is just a game of probability and the actual fun is really in building a company itself. I’m not trying to evangelize that reward is in taking a risk itself but sometimes one has to take chances, unleash the adventurer and see if the rainbow actually exists on the other side.