What are the six hires start-ups can’t afford to get wrong? (Part II)

Following on from part I about the essential hires during the Seed stage, this article focuses on the key leadership hires for Series A start-ups.

When you raise further capital and start to scale you need more leaders, managers, and a better reporting structure.

This doesn’t mean setting up a bureaucratic process, but it does mean giving each member of your team enough structure so they can focus on doing their best work. You don’t want them worrying about who owns what project or where they should take feedback. 

You’re probably doing some of the following for the first time:

- Building your sales team to feed the revenue machine

- Hiring a Head of Product and a Data Lead

- Thinking about equity for those who are close to vesting, and equity incentives

- Figuring out how to handle equity grants for employees who leave

- Raising your Series B or C, using more metric-driven forecasts

You probably have a laundry list of other hires you want to make in the next 6 months. Ignore it. Bringing in an interim Head of Talent will help you find new hires and retain existing ones. 

Why interim? Because when you’re scaling you need to move quickly and hire quicker. When do you need people through the door? Will it be constant or in batches? While you finalise what you need long term, an interim Head of Talent can get things moving so you don’t miss out. 

This is where solutions like our Interim Talent model come in. Our deep experience in this area means we hit the ground running from day 1, taking away the hassle of hiring so you can focus on strategy and fundraising.

An interim Head of Talent can onboard, interview, source and grow your people. We’re responsible for setting up your hiring, compensation, interviewing, reviews, feedback, and conflict management. 

Don’t wait until you have 100 people before implementing good HR practices. Do it when you have 20 full-time staff and are about to hire 20 more.

Hyper-growth start-ups are now scrambling to add a CRO to their leadership teams. However, there is a limited pool of qualified candidates in the current job market and it’s crucial you understand the nature of your business before you hire one.

CROs enter the picture to help integrate sales, account management, customer success, business development, partnerships, and marketing. That’s why it’s vital you look for more than just a resume. 

It’s easy to hire a CRO who looks good on paper but is completely wrong for your business. The CRO is a multi-disciplinary position so you need to assess a candidate’s temperament as well as their experience. Ask for referrals and look for other sources of qualitative information about the candidate to help you determine if they’re a match for your needs.

The CRO role isn’t going away and is an important milestone in the evolution of your organisation. By integrating sales, marketing, and other parts of the business, a CRO can execute fast-growth strategies that are out of reach when key pieces of the revenue puzzle operate as siloed business functions. 

The CRO will bring a salary demand that may price out a few start-ups but, if you find the right one, they are worth their weight in gold.

If you’re a CEO founder who has been setting strategy and acting in the product manager role up to this point then it’s time to let go. You need to focus on other aspects of the business. 

A senior product leader can provide the expertise, focus, and peace of mind to advance your product and product function. You should look to hire one when:

1. You have increasing development costs but stagnant growth. 

2. What the development team has built doesn’t resonate with your customers. 

3. You have disjointed customer experiences and business strategies across product functions and life cycle. 

If you don’t think you’re ready for a CPO then a more recent trend is to merge the CTO and CPO function. This creates a new hybrid CPTO role. While this sounds like a Star Wars character, it can be a cost-effective solution. 

If you’re trying to be both CEO and COO then one of your roles is getting neglected.

Here are a few signs you need to hire a COO:

- Your company and staff have grown to a point where there are too few people trying to do too many jobs. 

- There’s a specific impetus for the start-up to do so (i.e. a strategic hurdle on the horizon that requires a particular skill set to manage).

- You need to prevent bottlenecks which will slow your scaling efforts.

- You require a second-in-command to handle internal issues while you’re out doing external activities (fundraising, speaking, meeting etc.).

When you hire an experienced COO who enjoys being involved in the business they become your organiser. They keep things flowing in order, allowing your staff to focus on their expertise and to complete their jobs proficiently.

With a trusted COO looking after the day-to-day stuff, you can concentrate on the big picture growth of your business. Note: another option is to hire a Chief of Staff, rather than a COO. This is a junior version of a COO. 

Beyond these six senior hires you may start to look at a CFO, Head of Customer Success, Head of Growth, and Head of People.

But if all of this sounds like a lot then keep it simple. 

1. Understand what you need and hire for it. Don’t hire for a role because you think ‘it’s what everyone else does’.

2. Get in touch with Santa Monica Talent today for a free consultation. We help start-ups scale up by building exceptional sales, marketing, product, software, and leadership teams for them.