Panelists advised following gut instinct when deciding who to hire, but being willing to act quickly when it becomes obvious a new hire isn't a good match. They also advised drawing from as many disciplines and backgrounds as possible to form a founding team to get the necessary advice to make good hires as the company grows. While stock options are still important, the speakers agreed, they are generally not the key to being able to hire a good candidate. The first job is to screen out people only motivated by money and by a sense of entitlement. You want to know if they have a hunger for scale, if they strive to build something bigger than was ever built before.
Silicon Valley is the biggest video game on the planet.
Once people are recruited, the next challenge is to keep them on board. The chaos that wears on people is not the work load or the ever changing demands of a startup environment, but rather an internal structure where key players don't understand their roles and the company's goals. Employee loyalty is more often to a team than to a company. Losing one key person may mean the loss of other who worked with him or her. Keynote speaker Meg Whitman, president and CEO of online auction site eBay was hired two years after the firm's founding.