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Ask HN: $1,500,000 in sales, who to hire next?

5 points by felixdennis ↗ HN
My startup has reached $1.5 million in sales. Right now, we have 3 people, and I'm the technical guy and handles every including server administration.

I want to expand my business and relieve myself from the technical role. I'm having a hiring dilemma:

Option 1: Hire a system admin to maintain the current system. He might not be a superstar but he will take care of the current system. Later on, hire someone with more experience/knowledge.

Option 2: Hire an architect type of person where he will be able to handle the current system and able to expand future systems. This person will be someone like a chief technical officer.

Option 2 will take longer to search so I will be stuck in the technical position for awhile. Option 1 will immediately relieve me from the technical duties so I can build the business.

Which one should I take? Do Option 1 now and expand search later or wait for Option 2?

14 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 19.9 ms ] thread
pagekicker
Maybe you should hire another sales guy first! You seem to have good traction there. The more sales you have the easier it will be to hire that CTO.
david_ing
In the Option 1 case, what happens when you finally have to "hire someone with more experience/knowledge"?
brudgers
My first thoughts as well. Hiring in someone else over the top of a key hire can be problematic from a cultural standpoint.
felixdennis
Thanks. This is my concern as well. It would be bad to push someone away who has been there for awhile... Any solution to this if I go with #1?
brudgers
If everyone is still wearing lots of hats, get a CTO and put IT on his plate. He can hire the sysadmin later at an appropriate point.

However, I am pretty much assuming CTO equity is in the offer.

mayukh
Option 1 if you're working 10 plus hours a day including being on call 24/7. See if you can get a contractor so you can try for a few months before deciding which way to go (Will be harder to get CTO type person for a shorter duration).

This gives you some room to think about the business and where you should be prioritizing your efforts (sales, product, marketing, biz-dev).

dm73
May be I can help you out as option 1)? I am flexible, experienced (yeah, old fart, I know) and responsible, and you can hire me without contract obligations. My pay should reflect my added value (I don't believe in minimal wages and that kind of crap).

Contact me at freelanceadmin@forward.cat (email valid until 25th april)

j45
What's unclear is if you're selling this as well. Assuming that you are the technical person and doing the sales:

Your ability to grow is tied to two things:

1) The health of any business is measured by the rate at which it is getting new customers.

2) To provide fulfillment to said new customers, you have to make sure you are thinking about your architecture.

If you get the sales first, you may hit the need to scale your architecture, or not.

Whatever you do try to be aware that management by abdication is not managing or scaling -- no matter what you do during a growth phase you will be putting in just as much energy and attention as ever.

hkarthik
Hire someone to handle the system admin duties for you first while you spend more time looking for the right fit for a Chief Technical Officer or Chief Architect.

Also I would consider hiring a less senior person for your first technical hire, at least initially. If you hire the wrong person into the CTO role, they are gonna push you to refactor, re-architect, or in some cases completely re-write your code. Be very careful about who you hire into this role and make sure they have a realistic understanding of how startup quality code gets built.

ScottWhigham
How long did it take you to reach this milestone? If it's a short amount of time (< 1 year), I certainly think you need to evaluate Option 2 closely. If it took a long time to reach, then I'd opt for Option 1. But I'm not sure those are the only options.
webdisrupt
Option 1 may be your best option however I suggest you get someone who can also think for the future. So basically a 2 in 1 guy i.e. architect and admin guy who is very ambitious and willing to take your business to the next level. Offering share options might also be a great incentive to attract highly skilled individuals.
dgunn
I don't think you can find a very good 2 in 1 guy for this. These two people are very different types. One is happy chugging along just keeping the lights on and probably is only interested in doing that. The other is going to be more of a visionary who would not be motivated by just admin work.

For example I consider myself more of a 2 of the two types listed here. I am a builder and would never accept a sysadmin job. It would be boring to me.

webdisrupt
I guess then you haven't met me and another friend hehe as I do both the architecture and sys admin. I feel that recruitment within the IT industry is shifting to having people that do more than one thing rather than an individual who is very specialised. This obviously would save companies lots of cash. E.g. Front end and back end developer merged into one.
dgunn
I'm not saying I can't do this. Or that you can't. I certainly do everything on my own when I'm starting something new as I'm sure many builders do. My point is that I don't think it's a sustainable assignment. When the sys admin job becomes big enough, admins will spend a ton of time doing simple repetitive tasks. I can't imagine a person with the neural architecture of a visionary/builder-of-things being willing to do this type of work for very long.

Perhaps the fact that there are tools out there which automate repetitive sys admin tasks is a sign that these types of people have been placed in these jobs before and they did what they do best. Perhaps that's even reason enough to place them in these jobs to begin with. I may have just talked myself out of thinking this is a bad idea...