How to spend it — part 3

Hiring the First Employees

It’s not that simple

Uwe Weinreich
10 min readMay 15, 2023

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Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

There were times when we had enough money, and the biggest challenge was finding the right people to hire. But that’s a later phase. Let’s talk about the first phase, when you can barely do all the work and funds are not sufficient to hire enough people and pay adequate salaries.

Does this situation sound familiar? It does to me. I suppose it is quite normal to go through such situations in the beginning. I’ve been through it many times, and here’s what I’ve learned.

Masses of work cry out for helping hands — or better not?

It sounds like a fair equation. The number of tasks divided by what one person can do equals the number of people needed. Unfortunately, this equation never adds up.

Let’s imagine a young startup. The founders know exactly what they need to do. Even in a team, only a limited amount of coordination is required. Days are filled with work, and the team takes it one step at a time. It could go faster, and the work could get done better if there were more people, couldn’t it?

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Uwe Weinreich
Uwe Weinreich

Written by Uwe Weinreich

Uwe works as coach, author and consultant focusing on agile innovation and digital transformation. What he does is simple: he solves problems.

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