What founders need to know about building management teams
Eric Vishria, CEO and Co-founder of RockMelt:
If you aren’t working on building your management team now, then start
Executive recruiting is a pain in the ass. Finding
the right people is a pain in the ass, interviewing them is a pain in the ass,
closing them is a pain in the ass, compensation negotiation is a pain in the
ass; just about everything related to hiring management is painfully
time-consuming.
So start now and don’t stop. Don’t wait until
you hit a big milestone to build your management team.
Getting clear
Once you’ve identified the position you want to fill
first on your management team, get incredibly clear on what you need (and don't
need) from that position. This is the hardest thing to do, and it’s
radically different from drafting a job description. If you do this well,
it’ll allow you to cut down the actual time involved in filling the
position. This seems obvious, but it almost never happens.
At RockMeIt, for instance, they wanted to bring on
their first marketing leader and thought they wanted someone who was great at
paid user acquisition, someone who understood virality, someone who had done
historically well with PR, and someone who had a track record of building
long-term brands. The problem is that nobody
is great at all four of those things. That person doesn’t exist
– or if they do, there is probably only a few of them and the chance of
recruiting them is almost zero. Instead, you should hire for strength in
a couple of areas that matter most to your business right now, someone who’s
world-class in the area that’s most impactful for you. You want to avoid
bringing on someone who’s merely good at everything. The goal in hiring
is always world-class, not good. View Full Text at firstround.com
About RockMelt
Rockmelt got started in 2009 with a simple vision:
make exploring the web faster and more fun. The majority of computer time is in
the browser. In fact, the only activity people do more than browse the web is
sleep. They think that's a big opportunity.
Founded by Eric Vishria (CEO) and Tim
Howes (CTO) based on the observation that the way we all use the web has
changed dramatically while web browsers have not, Rockmelt is re-imagining what
browsing the web should be: mobile, visual, social, and personalized. They released a desktop browser in November 2010. Since then, they have also released
Rockmelt for iOS in late 2012.
Rockmelt has raised $40M from some of the technology
industry's greatest innovators, including Andreessen Horowitz, Accel Partners,
Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital and industry legends Bill Campbell, Ron
Conway and Diane Greene. In addition to Eric and Tim, our board of directors
includes Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, and Vinod Khosla.
