In the heady days when founders are working furiously to get their startups off the ground, many figure that if they get something wrong, they can always correct it later. That’s true to some extent, but when it comes to key roles, there are certain mistakes that management experts say avoiding will save you huge headaches as your company scales.
“As a former founder, your first hires really determine the future of the company,” says Meredith Meyer Grelli, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and assistant dean of entrepreneurship initiatives at the school of computer science. “People coming in at that stage have such an outsize impact on the immediate success of the business, from their skills to their attitude toward the mission.”
