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Hiring top talent for startup: US vs. UK?

2 points by unicornication ↗ HN
Hi HN,

I run a tech startup that's grown to $20M ARR. While we are relatively big, we are incredibly cash strapped till Q3 due to debt we took on last year and are currently paying back.

We've built a mostly B or C team, and it really annoys me. We are slow, we are not up for big challenges, and people are, on average, not that brilliant. Our of our nearly 120 employees, I think I have ONE A player. However, they are also functioning at 60%.

In Q3, I'll finally have a large budget to sit and focus on building out our team. Now I'm trying to figure out: what are the optimal circumstances? We really screwed it up with our first batch of key hires after our seed round: US Product Manager, US Head of Customer Success - quit; US Head of Sales, US Head of Engineering - fired.

Today we are fully remote, should I get an in person office going? In general, which city should I hire talent from? I live in San Francisco and sometimes LA, but find the culture here generally too laid back. New York? But to keep a high quality, let's say, marketer, interested long term, they're going to want $200-220k base (and that's not even that competitive). Which is fine, but that will slow down hiring. London? I found some interesting programs where I can hire Oxbridge grads interested in startups for $40k USD (update: with a bit of professional experience; the program sets 1st year pay @ $40k but I'd gladly 3/5X their pay if they work out.) In terms of budget, I'd love to aim for $180k/key hire and to go as high as $300k if appropriate.

As for what exactly I'm trying to hire for, lots of key hires: department heads, digital marketers, content people, engineers, AI engineers, operations people, strategy people, and more.

I don't know enough about all the working cultures in these places, but I want to find and incentivize people who are willing to own and take responsibility for an area of the business, be trusted to make good decisions, and view it as their responsibility to improve their areas drastically, more than the typical 9-5.

What do you think?

Also, any other practical tips for finding awesome people like this?

6 comments

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keikobadthebad
You can do it in the UK, but you'll either have to move here or hire one key guy to manage it.

If you change the remote, you either have to flush those who won't do 5 days on-site, or create two classes of employee from those who will comply and those who can't physically be there. It will create an energy-sapping internal gradient of envy and negative feelings.

I wouldn't hire people at US$40K just because they're oxbridge grads if you want something exceptional you have to recognize it and then remunerate and encourage it well.

floathub
I don't think there's any magic bullet to tech hiring. You can pay over-the-top for headhunters and the like, and get almost useless candidates. You can have people who can barely figure out how to submit a resume who turn out to be serious 10x superstars.

It's hit or miss, and takes time. The only thing I've ever found that works is doing as much as possible on an interim/consultant/1099 basis. If things work out, hire permanently. If not, no harm no foul.

foldr
>I want to find and incentivize people who are willing to own and take responsibility for an area of the business, be trusted to make good decisions, and view it as their responsibility to improve their areas drastically, more than the typical 9-5.

>$40k (USD)

I would say that if you can't afford to hire good people, just don't hire anyone.

unicornication
Oh my mistake for lack of clarity, the specific program I am referring to in the UK has a mandated starting/1st year salary of $40K USD for high performing Oxbridge grads who understand startups. I'd gladly pay more.

I am open to paying anything up to $300k for key hires. However, the crux of my question is, what approach should I take, and what city should I take it in?

foldr
The average graduate starting salary in the UK (across all disciplines and universities) is around $30k USD. So I wouldn't kid yourself that you're going to get anyone especially exceptional for $40k. That's actually slightly less than the average starting salary for an Oxford graduate.

I appreciate the broader aspect of the question but I think that part is a bit unanswerable ("how should I hire people?")

unicornication
That's a solid point, maybe it's probably worth finding folk on my own rather than leveraging programs like that one. Thank you!

I suppose a better distillation of my question is: @HN, if you had a blank canvas and the budget to build an A-player team, no geographic constraints, how would you do it? Where would you do it? Remote, office? Any other advice?