Ben Horowitz explains how startup CEOs should think about delegation
“You only get leverage if the person that you hire can do it better than you can. As long as you feel like you’re better than them at it, you’re just going to keep second guessing them and you’re not going to get any leverage.”
Ben argues that your next hire should always be the person who gets you the most leverage. And he believes CEOs should seek leverage in “all spots”:
“As CEO, you can be the keeper of the vision and quality control over the top, but you can’t be the lead engineer forever. Larry Page - as great an engineer as he was - is not an engineer at Google. He just isn’t. And he can’t work on production products because it’s a full-time job… And if Larry can’t do it, you can’t do it either. I guarantee you. You’re going to have to give them all up.”
Source: @ECorner (Nov 2014)
Brian still spends over two hours a day on recruiting and personally hires the top 200 people at Airbnb.
I loved this idea of being in the flow of talent to find the best people:
"Don't do searches. Build pipelines. I try to map out all the best people in the Valley.
So let's say I need to hire really good engineers. I don't do searches. I just informationally meet the best engineers in the world. Every meeting, the job is to get the next meeting, meet someone else.
The mistake people make when they hire. They go, "I need to hire a blank." So they hire a search firm. They give you 50 profiles, and you pick the best one. That is the wrong way to do it.
The best way to do it is pipeline recruiting. You're constantly recruiting, you're constantly meeting people. in advance of searches. And all of it is referral based.
The two ways to find out if people are good – is to start with the results and work backwards to the people.
Find an ad you like and figure out who made that ad. Start with the results. Work backwards to people. Don't start with the resume.
The other thing to do is just keep asking people to build your Rolodex. The moment I find somebody that's really good, I ask them who all the best people they know are.
And I build these little mafias and they tell you who the other good people are.
I am the co-hiring manager for the top 200 people in the company. This is very radical. A lot of CEOs think it's their job to hire their executive team, and their executive team hires their team. I think that is fatal.
You always want to be marrying up, hiring people of the future. It should be like we're reaching. If you can hire them without my help, we're not reaching far enough. You want to hire the very best person you can."