Sandy McKinnon, partner at Pentech VC, explains how to navigate the tricky process of making the best hires to grow your team.
Scaling a startup from a group of mates in a co-working space (your typical ‘Hustler, Hipster & Hacker’ – core) to a small, growing team is arguably one of the toughest challenges founders face. It’s a journey very few people ever have to attempt, and without a route-map there is a high probability of getting lost.
Over the years at Pentech, we have been lucky enough to support companies like Nutmeg as it scaled from two people to become Europe’s leading robo-advisor, FanDuel from a team of four to 400, and Maxymiser as it grew from 23 to 400 headquartered in NYC (and acquired by Oracle). Focusing on the more chaotic two-to 20 team-member stage of company growth, here are some of the tips we’ve picked up along the way:...