When you’re building a business, your first few hires aren’t just filling roles; they’re shaping your company’s DNA, and they will either accelerate your business or quietly hardwire its limitations.
That might sound dramatic. It isn’t.
In a startup or early scaleup, people aren’t just “doing jobs”, they’re creating the blueprint. They will influence how your team thinks, communicates, builds, makes decisions, and handles pressure. Long before values or processes are formalised, your people are your culture.
And here’s the thing, most founders only realise in hindsight: once that blueprint is set, it’s not easy to redraw. What your early hires establish will become the benchmark. For performance. For behaviour. For standards. For “how we do things around here.”
Which is why early hiring decisions carry disproportionate weight, and getting it right changes everything!
At an early stage, every hire has a visible and lasting impact, and it’s your first hires that will:
Set behavioural norms
In the absence of structure, behaviours become the operating system. Early hires define how work gets done, everything from communication style to decision making. If they default to ownership and clarity, that sticks. If they default to chaos… that sticks too.
Turn ambiguity into execution
People don’t just step into roles; they shape them. Early hires build workflows, engage customers, and translate ideas into something tangible (and ideally revenue-generating).
Influence pace and productivity
This is a big one, because the right hires increase momentum. The wrong hire? They don’t just “not work out”, they introduce friction, rework, second-guessing, and complexity, which in a small startup environment can feel like dragging a parachute behind a moving car.
Where Does Early Hiring Often Go Wrong?
Most early hiring mistakes aren’t capability problems; they’re clarity problems, and these are some of the things we’ve seen time and time again.
Hiring before the role is fully understood
When the problem isn’t clearly defined, the role won’t be either.
Over-indexing on experience over environment fit
A strong CV doesn’t always translate into success in an early-stage business. Hiring at this stage needs to be about proven impact and not fancy ex-employers or company logos
Relying too heavily on existing networks
Referrals are valuable, but relying exclusively on them can limit diversity of thought, and this is something that matters so much more to commercial growth than you might think
So, How Should You Approach Your First Hires?
You need to think like a founder but hire like a strategist.
Start with the problem, not the role
What needs to change? What bottleneck needs removing? What outcome does this hire enable? Be clear on this.
Look beyond technical skills
Adaptability, ownership, communication, and emotional intelligence matter most early on.
Define success clearly
What does “good” look like in 6 months? What are they accountable for? Clarity on ownership and outcomes reduces ambiguity where it matters.
Be transparent about the opportunity
Startups aren’t polished machines, and that’s completely fine. The right people will be attracted to challenge, but only if they understand it, so transparency is key!
Treat hiring as an evolving process
Refine as you learn what good looks like in your environment.
Onboard specialist help
Remember that your job as a business leader in a startup will include many things and whilst it’s important, hiring shouldn’t be the thing that takes up most of your time. Engage with specialist startup recruiters (that’s where we come in) that can act as an extension of your team and give you the time back to be able to do the things that matter most
How Can Hera Support You?
At Hera, we work with founders at the point where hiring decisions start to shape the trajectory of the business. Our role isn’t just to “find candidates.” It’s to bring clarity to:
- What you actually need
- Why you need it now
- What success realistically looks like in your environment
- And whether the business is structurally ready for that hire
We diagnose, structure, challenge and guide to make sure that the people you hire don’t just fit your business, but actively move it forward.
Because at this stage, hiring isn’t about filling capacity.
It’s about setting direction.
If you’re in the building stage of your business and you want a hiring strategy that solves problems before they even appear, we should talk!