How to communicate why your startup is worth joining (lessons from YC companies)
Hey hackers,
I’m Vasili, a YC alum from the W18 batch.
I wrote a blog post about how to communicate why your startup is worth joining.
The idea is that most companies have many good reasons to join them (e.g., smart founders, great culture, fantastic team), but fail to communicate them well to the outside world. I explain how to do that with specifics instead of abstractions, and show how Canny, Fibery, PostHog (W20), and Wasp (W21) do it.
For example:
- Instead of saying that “the founders are reflective, thoughtful, and persistent,” Sarah from Canny writes comprehensive year-in-review blog posts.
- Instead of proclaiming that “the founder is humble and can have fun,” Michael from Fibery became a hero of this hilarious page.
- Instead of purporting that “the team is great” or “you’ll work alongside very smart people,” PostHog and Wasp show candidates who exactly those people are through bios/READMEs and interviews.
You can read the whole thing here. If you’re hiring for an early-stage co, it might improve your outcomes.
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Thank you so much for this post - finding people who can truly share your vision moving forward is such a crucial step.
It's so hard to create a fruitful WFH environment and it's always a difficult line to cross between being a fun founder or a strict founder, they're not mutually exclusive but it's a tough balance to achieve.
Thank you so much for sharing with this just in time content for me because I am in this situation of searching for teammates!
Thank you for sharing, I hadn't thought about it before, now I understand that I've lost a lot
This is great! I'm new to the saas world but have founded/grown two service companies to regional business and gone through the recruiting of core team members many times. I've done a "stop in for a beer" and it seems to work well. Every Thursday or Friday we all stop for an hour and all departments have a drink together. Potential team members we're recruiting are invited to stop by and join us or join virtually. Besides building the human connection, it also is great to get feedback form your team on the new possible candidate. When's the last time you've seen "have a drink with us" in a job posting or interview process? Probably never! Some of our best hires have been made this way and we've avoided some that would have been bad culture fits. Good people are always looking for meaningful connections at the work place, experiencing this prior to singing a contract is a good reason to join :)