How To Hire When You're Too Busy, How To Pivot Your Product

The Startup Help Desk

In this episode we answer questions submitted by founders just like you, including:

• How do you handle a co-founder who isn't scaling in their position at the company?
• What do you do when you are overwhelmed as a founder and know you have to hire, but don't have the time?
• I have a consulting business that is cashflow positive, but want to pivot to a product so we can grow faster. How do I do that?

You can submit questions for us to answer on our website https://www.thestartuphelpdesk.com/ or on Twitter @thestartuphd - we'd love to hear from you!
Episode Notes:
Q1: How do you handle a co-founder who isn't scaling in their position at the company?
Bad expectation setting is the root of all founder problems. Be clear, open and objective about performance and roles from the beginning. Make it clear what’s necessary to scale and provide coaching to help founders do their best.
Key three steps to consider include:

1. Discussion! Talk with them early and often about the issues, provide feedback and try to find out if there’s something going on that you’re not aware that might be influencing performance. Motivated people often change their behavior with these kind of conversations.
2. Remediation. More training - trying things like executive coaching and reducing a founder’s portfolio of responsibilities can allow them to flourish.
3. Parting ways. If 1-on-1 discussions, additional help, and a change in role haven’t resolved the issues, then it is time to transition them out. With founders, the separation is usually much more complex than if someone is only an employee, so be sure to chat with your lawyer and investors before taking a big step.

If a founder has to leave, it almost never happens peacefully. No one’s ego is ready to handle the rejection of being pushed out of the company they started, so be prepared for backlash. Vesting, etc. are critical to protect the company.
Q2: What do you do when you are overwhelmed as a founder and know you have to hire, but don't have the time?
Make the time. Everything else doesn’t matter if you can’t scale.

• Usually this is a symptom of something else, since hiring is one of the most important things you can do. For example, some founders avoid hiring because they don’t enjoy it.
• New hires accelerate you so slowing down in the short term helps you go faster long term.

In order to make time...

• Start by doing an inventory on all of the “hats” that you are wearing as a founder
• Identify which of those hats are part of your business’ core competency: the thing that you need to be the best at
• For any hat that is not part of this core competency, someone else should be doing it
• Then, start small with your hiring efforts: write a job post, send it a to a friend, share it on social, and post it on the classic online hiring spots (LinkedIn, AngelList)
• Build these small efforts into your day to start exercising your hiring muscles

Q3: I have a consulting business that is cashflow positive, but want to pivot to a product so we can grow faster. How do I do that?
Are you still focused on the same problem for the same customers? Answering this question will help inform your pivot.

1. Best way - find someone to take over your consulting business.
2. If you’re running a successful consultancy, you will usually be planning to put resources into it first. Do not simply have the consulting company build v1 of the app - decide on how much you can invest, make a budget, and pay your consultancy for the work, so we don’t muddy the waters.
3. Set clear goals on what is needed for you and other team members to leave consulting for good.