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.

To improve hiring decisions, founders should proactively meet top performers in roles they anticipate needing in 2-3 quarters. This isn't for immediate hiring but to build a mental model of excellence for that specific function and stage, which sharpens intuition when you do start recruiting.

To hire for traits over background, Mark Kosaglo suggests testing for coachability directly. Run a skill-based roleplay (e.g., discovery), provide specific feedback, and then run the exact same roleplay again. The key is to see if the candidate can actually implement the coaching, not just if they are open to receiving it.

Before hiring for a critical function, founders should do the job themselves, even if they aren't experts. The goal isn't mastery, but to deeply understand the role's challenges. This experience is crucial for setting a high hiring bar and being able to accurately assess if a candidate will truly up-level the team.

Treat hiring as a compounding flywheel. A new employee should not only be a great contributor but also make the company more attractive to future A-players, whether through their network, reputation, or interview presence. This focus on recruiting potential ensures talent density increases over time.

To accurately assess an unteachable trait like coachability, you can't just ask about it. You must create a situation that requires it. For coachability, run a brief role-play, provide direct feedback, and ask them to do it again, observing their verbal and non-verbal reactions to the coaching itself.

A person's past rate of growth is the best predictor of their future potential. When hiring, look for evidence of a steep learning curve and rapid progression—their 'slope.' This is more valuable than their current title or accomplishments, as people tend to maintain this trajectory.

When hiring, prioritize a candidate's speed of learning over their initial experience. An inexperienced but rapidly improving employee will quickly surpass a more experienced but stagnant one. The key predictor of long-term value is not experience, but intelligence, defined as the rate of learning.

To build a culture of continuous improvement, prioritize hiring for coachability. Individuals with backgrounds in competitive athletics or music are often ideal because they have been heavily coached their whole lives. They view direct feedback not as criticism, but as an essential tool for getting better.