Making your first hire: When is the right time?
When did you know it was the right time to hire your first team member? Was there a sign you were ready to invest, or a specific financial benchmark that made you think, “I’m ready”? Many new founders rush the first hire because they believe they need to scale quickly to grow. In some cases, this is true. But there are a lot of hidden costs in that decision that could make or break your business.
Having previously owned a business, I know the hidden costs are payroll, taxes, benefits, bonuses, equipment, and software. These are necessary costs. And when you bring on your first person, you want to do right by them. Hiring to fire isn’t the vision for any founder, so ensuring that you can shoulder the cost is a must.
I decided this go-round to create hiring tiers based on revenue goals: $1K/month MRR, $5K/month MRR, $10K/month MRR, and beyond. I may not hire a full-time staff member for a while, but might do a one-off 1099 hire for short-term projects depending on the need. But was there a moment in your founder career where you knew it was time for full-time help? And what hire did you make? Was it a good one?
#buildinginpublic
Replies
Jasmine, the hiring tiers built around MRR benchmarks are smart, most founders wait for the overwhelm to feel bad enough instead of setting a number ahead of time. For me the moment I got closest to hiring someone was never really about revenue, it was about realizing I could not tell which of my businesses actually needed me on a given day. I almost made an ops hire just to get that visibility back, then ended up building FounderFlow instead so I could see it myself without adding a full time salary. Curious whether your hesitation on the full time hire is more about the cost, or about not yet having a clear enough picture of what that person would actually own day to day.
@stacywycof83995 Fascinating! It's definitely cost for me. We just launched beta on business A, and still in early-stage mode on business B. We're not there yet, financially. But we'll get there! I had a business prior to these current businesses with a full-time team. I'm confident we'll know how to scale when we're ready.