After experiencing BuzzFeed's hyper-growth phase, Ben Smith champions a radically slow hiring process. He jokes his goal is to "never hire," focusing only on adding individuals who make a huge impact. He believes the old model of competing with a "cast of thousands" is ineffective for modern journalism.
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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 primary purpose of hiring is not to add capacity for growth, but to free up the founder's time from low-value tasks. This allows the founder to reinvest their unique talents into activities that truly drive the business forward, making growth an outcome of strategic time reallocation.
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.
Contradicting the common startup goal of scaling headcount, the founders now actively question how small they can keep their team. They see a direct link between adding people, increasing process, and slowing down, leveraging a small, elite team as a core part of their high-velocity strategy.
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.
Before hiring for a critical function like growth marketing, Gamma's CEO spent 6-12 months doing the job himself. This immersion taught him what "great" looks like, preventing a bad hire and ensuring he could properly lead the function he was delegating.
To scale hiring efficiently, eliminate ambiguity. Each interviewer must make a definitive 'yes' or 'no' decision. If an interviewer is 'not sure' after their session, they are the problem, not the candidate. This prevents endless interview loops and forces clear, decisive judgment.
The primary goal of hiring should be to reclaim the founder's time from low-value tasks. This frees up the business's most valuable asset—the founder—to focus on high-leverage activities that truly drive growth, rather than simply adding capacity.
Ramp's hiring philosophy prioritizes a candidate's trajectory and learning velocity ("slope") over their current experience level ("intercept"). They find young, driven individuals with high potential and give them significant responsibility. This approach cultivates a highly talented and loyal team that outperforms what they could afford to hire on the open market.
Dropbox's founders built their team using a first-principles approach, prioritizing exceptional talent even when candidates lacked traditional pedigrees or direct experience for a role. This strategy of betting on the person's potential over their polished resume proved highly effective for scaling.
