Challenge the 'hire slow' mantra. Hiring is an intuitive guess, so act quickly. Once a person is in the organization, their performance is a known fact, not a guess. This clarity allows for faster decisions—both in removing underperformers and, crucially, in accelerating the promotion of superstars ahead of standard review cycles.

The ideal early startup employee has an extreme bias for action and high agency. They identify problems and execute solutions without needing approvals, and they aren't afraid to fail. This contrasts sharply with candidates from structured environments like consulting, who are often more calculated and risk-averse.

Delaying key hires to find the "perfect" candidate is a mistake. The best outcomes come from building a strong team around the founder early on, even if it requires calibration later. Waiting for ideal additions doesn't create better companies; early execution talent does.

In a fast-moving environment, Larroudé prioritizes hiring people who admit what they don't know rather than bluffing. They also seek candidates who, when in crisis, proactively look for solutions instead of panicking. These traits, combined with non-negotiable ethics, indicate success in a scrappy culture.

In fast-paced environments like AI, the opportunity cost of lengthy internal debates over good-enough options is enormous. A founder mindset prioritizes rapid execution and learning over achieving perfect consensus, creating a significant competitive advantage through speed.

Visionary, fast-paced leaders naturally gravitate toward hiring people like themselves. However, to build a balanced and effective team, they must consciously hire for complementary traits—like detail-orientation and methodical thinking—to provide necessary rigor, ensure completion, and prevent burnout.

A founder's retrospective analysis often reveals that delayed decisions were the correct ones, and the only regret is not acting sooner. Recognizing this pattern—that you rarely regret moving too fast—can serve as a powerful heuristic to trust your gut and accelerate decision-making, as inaction is often the biggest risk.

Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg asserts that if you've never done a role, you will hire the wrong person 100% of the time. For first-time founders, spending even three months in a function provides the necessary context to understand the job's demands and successfully hire a leader for that position.

The number one reason founders fail is not a lack of competence but a crisis of confidence that leads to hesitation. They see what needs to be done but delay, bogged down by excuses. In a fast-moving environment, a smart decision made too late is no longer a smart decision.