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early-hiring-advisor skill

/bundles/startup/skills/early-hiring-advisor

This skill guides founders through prioritizing first hires, compensation, and equity to assemble a strong early team and scale efficiently.

npx playbooks add skill shipshitdev/library --skill early-hiring-advisor

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Files (3)
SKILL.md
2.7 KB
---
name: early-hiring-advisor
description: Use this skill when users need to make early hires, build their founding team, determine compensation/equity, decide who to hire first, or scale from founders to first employees. Activates for "who should I hire first," "early hiring," "equity for employees," or team building questions.
version: 1.0.0
tags:
  - business
  - hexa
  - hiring
  - team
  - equity
  - compensation
  - startup
auto_activate: true
---

# Early Hiring Advisor - First 10 Hires Playbook

## Overview

Help indie founders make critical first hires using Hexa's methodology. Guide users through role prioritization, compensation frameworks, and equity allocation.

**Hexa Principle:** "Launching a project is not about building a product within the team, but about gathering a team to build it themselves."

## When This Activates

- "Who should I hire first"
- Making first hires
- Equity for employees
- Compensation/salaries
- "Should I hire or outsource"
- Building team
- Contractor vs. full-time

## Hiring Readiness Check

| Criterion | If No |
|-----------|-------|
| PMF signal | Wait for traction |
| 18+ months runway | Extend first |
| Clear scope of work | Define first |
| Tried it yourself | Do it first |
| Time to manage | Founders must manage |

**If 2+ "No":** Wait or outsource.

## Role Prioritization

Score roles: Revenue Impact + Time Saved + Urgency - Difficulty
**Hire highest score first.**

| Company Type | First Hire |
|--------------|------------|
| Technical, B2B | Sales/BD |
| Technical, B2C | Growth/Marketing |
| Non-technical | Technical CTO |
| Solo technical | Designer |

## Hire vs. Outsource

**Always Hire:** Core engineering, sales, customer success
**Outsource First:** Legal, accounting, PR, recruiting

## Compensation Ranges (Seed)

| Role | Cash | Equity (First 10) |
|------|------|-------------------|
| Engineer | $100K-150K | 0.5%-2% |
| Designer | $90K-130K | 0.25%-1% |
| Sales | $80K-120K + comm | 0.25%-1% |
| Marketing | $80K-120K | 0.25%-0.75% |

## Equity Guidelines

| Hire # | Range |
|--------|-------|
| 1-2 | 1-2% |
| 3-5 | 0.5-1% |
| 6-10 | 0.25-0.75% |

**First Engineer:** 1-3% pre-seed, 0.5-1.5% seed
**Vesting:** 4 years, 1-year cliff

## Sourcing Channels

1. Personal network (best for first 3-5)
2. Investor intros
3. Communities
4. Job boards (last resort)

## Don't Hire If

- Don't know week 1 work
- Haven't done job yourself
- Can't afford 18+ months
- No time to manage
- Hiring to "figure it out"

## Integration

- `cofounder-evaluator` - Founding team first
- `financial-operations-expert` - Plan runway

---

**For complete interview framework, offer scripts, negotiation handling, onboarding plans, and output templates, see:** `references/full-guide.md`

Overview

This skill advises founders on making their earliest hires, building a founding team, and setting compensation and equity for the first 10 employees. It provides a pragmatic playbook for role prioritization, hire vs. outsource decisions, runway and readiness checks, and equity guidelines tailored to pre-seed and seed stages. The guidance focuses on impact, manageability, and preserving runway while scaling from founders to employees.

How this skill works

The skill evaluates hiring readiness by checking product traction, runway, scope clarity, prior founder experience doing the work, and available management time. It scores candidate roles by revenue impact, time saved, urgency, and hiring difficulty to prioritize who to hire first. It also recommends when to hire vs. outsource, offers compensation and equity ranges for early hires, and suggests sourcing channels and onboarding/vesting defaults.

When to use it

  • Deciding who to hire first for a startup or early-stage project
  • Setting compensation and equity for initial employees
  • Choosing between hiring full-time or outsourcing a function
  • Building a founding team or evaluating cofounder needs
  • Planning hires to preserve runway and accelerate traction

Best practices

  • Only hire when you have at most one or two key unknowns and a clear week-1 scope of work
  • Prioritize roles by impact: revenue impact + time saved + urgency − hiring difficulty
  • Prefer hiring core functions (engineering, sales, customer success) and outsource specialized non-core tasks (legal, accounting, PR)
  • Reserve meaningful equity for the first 1–5 hires and use standard vesting (4 years, 1-year cliff)
  • Source early hires from personal networks and investor intros before using job boards

Example use cases

  • A technical founder deciding whether to hire a designer or a salesperson first
  • A non-technical founder evaluating whether to hire a CTO versus outsourcing engineering
  • Estimating equity to offer an early engineer at pre-seed vs. seed
  • Running a quick hiring-readiness checklist to decide between hiring or contracting
  • Planning a first-three-hires strategy to reach initial revenue or growth milestones

FAQ

How many "No" answers on the readiness checklist means I should wait?

If two or more readiness criteria fail (traction, runway, scope, founder experience, management time), you should delay hiring or use contractors.

What equity range is typical for a first engineer?

Expect roughly 1–3% at pre-seed and about 0.5–1.5% at seed, with standard 4-year vesting and a 1-year cliff.