Prioritizing a candidate's skills ('capacity') over their fit with the team ('chemistry') is a mistake. To scale culture successfully, focus on hiring people who will get along with their colleagues. The ability to collaborate and integrate is more critical for long-term success than a perfect resume.

Like Napoleon, founders can attract top talent by giving them a grand mission, branding teams to create a proud identity (e.g., "the men without fear"), and demonstrating they are in the trenches alongside their people. This builds loyalty far beyond compensation.

Bending Spoons views its company as its most important product, engineered to be the ideal place for the world's best inexperienced talent. The goal is to create an institution that acts as the ultimate training ground, enabling high-potential individuals to skyrocket their careers.

By strictly limiting team size, a company is forced to hire only the “best in the world” for each role. This avoids the dilution of talent and communication overhead that plagues growing organizations, aiming to perpetually maintain the high-productivity “mind meld” of a founding team.

To scale from 100 to 1,000+ employees, you must stop interviewing everyone. Success depends entirely on the cultural foundation built with the first 100 people. By personally hiring and imbuing them with the company's core values, you create a group of leaders who can replicate that culture as the organization expands.

When contractors complain they can't find good people, it's often a culture problem, not a talent shortage. A great workplace turns existing employees into recruiters who attract other high-quality talent from their networks, creating a self-sustaining recruitment pipeline.

The common practice of hiring for "culture fit" creates homogenous teams that stifle creativity and produce the same results. To innovate, actively recruit people who challenge the status quo and think differently. A "culture mismatch" introduces the friction necessary for breakthrough ideas.

To ensure 100% team cohesion, implement a full-day working interview where candidates interact with everyone. Afterward, give every single team member a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote. A single "thumbs down" is a veto, which prevents the poison of a bad cultural fit from entering the team and is easier than firing them later.

To build a truly product-focused company, make the final interview for every role a product management-style assessment. Ask all candidates to suggest product improvements. This filters for a shared value and weeds out those who aren't user-obsessed, regardless of their function.