Notes on how founders can hire big by thinking big

It takes only a few minutes to hire a perfect team member.

Before I reveal the trick, you need to know that, as a founder, you have to always surpass mediocrity in hiring, because

A single mediocre hire in the first five will kill the startup.
-- Sam Altman

Following trick is a tool, which will break your mental barriers, help you think big and then provide you with all the resources, to speed up the hiring process.

I’ve noticed, most founders already have a mental picture of an ideal employee or partner. Whether they will join you or not is a different question. But, you know someone who'd be a fit if they join, someone whom you "will hire instantly" if they say "I want to join you"(e.g. If Bill Gates says I want to join you, would you deny?).
Sadly, many founders give up hiring that ideal team member giving excuses like:

• We don't have sufficient budget.
• We don't have proper infrastructure.
• He is a well-established player in this field and there’s no chance that he would join us or our goals might not align.

Are you sure? Low cash and small offices are the deal breaker?
Do you really know your dream team member's goals?

Failing to convince that perfect person, founders go on to find people by creating robot like criteria for humans, and then fail to find that perfect robot(human).
It doesn't have to be this way. The solution is simple when you look at it from the right perspective.
Let's say, your dream team member is "James Bond"(you must be thinking big here). There are two things you can do right now:

Before reading further, you may play following music for an amazing reading experience

1. Make an offer to James Bond right now:

When you know who the perfect person is, but if doubt whether he’ll accept what you’ve got to offer or not, then, no worries, still make an offer, be honest, be transparent and focus on explaining your passion and vision, not just the deal($$). If this works by any chance, thank your luck and your attitude of thinking big. But, if the offer is rejected, no worries, you still get two things:

1. Feedback, which will be useful for building teams and businesses.
2. Help/references from the person. (they are more likely to help you out if for any reason they had to reject your offer)

If the offer gets rejected, then

2. Find alternatives to James Bond

Got rejected? Find someone who is exactly like your dream candidate in one click with "Invide Matchmaking"

Altmen ("alternative to James Bond")

This utterly simple utility helps founders define, visualize their dream team member, put things in perspective, find the perfect match automatically using AI(trained over 12m records of proprietary work behavior data) & human intelligence(our expertise).

Features

• AI assisted and human-verified profile(1 profile every week)
  • 533 machine verifiable data points
  • 74 human-verifiable data points
• Crawls 1000s of websites for information that empower you to make good decisions
• AI-powered background check

How It Works

1. Think of your James Bond: Someone who's the best match for your project/startup but they are hard to get. Think big. Think of someone you know personally.
2. Think why your James Bond fits: Why your James Bond is a fit and what does a better version of your James Bond look like.
3. People similar to your James Bond: Get suggestions of people similar to your James Bond. Connect with them.

Try it out here, takes only a couple of mins and return is huge.

The fewer moving parts, the better!

— Pradeep Sharma (@pradeep_io) May 10, 2018