Hiring Tips from Pebble Watch Founder Eric Migicovsky

Pebble Watch founder and Y Combinator partner Eric Migicovsky on shares advice on qualities to look for when hiring for your startup

Eric is a Partner at YC. He was the founder and CEO of Pebble.

[essentialist]

By the way, "trustworthy" isn't an isolated character trait. It pre-supposes a social context in which trust is possible. If you built up trust with people, then you become trustworthy to eachother. It's not like you'e some kind of god who gets to decide which person is trustworthy and which person isn't. People will trust you as much as you trust them.

[DeWhiskeys]

I hoped you mentioned trust, as I also believe it's a cornerstone. TL;DR hire people you trust, not necessarily friends, colleagues and family.
I'd like to offer a word of advice if you don't mind: Eric has had a very good experience hiring friends and colleagues, because the experience he had before the startap lead him to trust them. That's fine and can totally be your case, but my experience would tell you the opposite: never hire friends or family. Today I could probably narrow the problem I had down to unmet/false expectations based on my assumption of "he/she is a friend, so..." Trust is a tricky topic that starts with us, and you may want to explore more about it in literature. That being said, I still agree on the fact that it's in the top 3.

[vaexperience]

Great points. Can't agree more re: trust... But it also highlight how important it is to foster relationships throughout the years to arrive to the state where you can invite someone to work on a project.

[mobied_ai]

I think you can add a 4th is empathy. Can they put themselves in the mindset of the customer to look at the customer's problem holistically to help with the vision of the product

[peiditube]

What about anything related to competency?

[Gitohandro]

My question is WHO? WHO did u hire for ur start up? ie what positions?

[essentialist]

Keep hiring your high-school buds, if you can convince them you're a unicorn. That's ok, contractors don't need you. We'd rather work for big corporates that actually make themselves, and us, a profit.

Many people care about things like savings, retirement and having a life outside of work, and are rational enough to know when they're not in the lucky top 1% network (you know who I'm talking about - Stanford alumni, parents with money, 150 IQ, etc) and probably wouldn't even make 500k off a startup if they worked 70-hour-weeks for 5 years straight.

There's way too much magical thinking in the Valley these days. Time you people started to be more realistic.

[jmxfifa]

Hey YC,


Love the channel. Have sent an email via the YC website about how I could help you guys to improve your YouTube reach.
Hopefully someone gets a chance to review it.


Thanks!

[basselmatta]

How can we get to work with Y combinator?
We have a new patented technology in the Virtual Desktop space that's allowing us to be priced close to half of our competition in the market while providing more features!

[SeanFenlon]

It's great guidance Eric. Except when it isn't. ;-)

[AmericazGotTalentYT]

This is pretty terrible for society. This is why the hiring process needs to change. Being “trustable” is not a quality that requires you to know the person. It makes me sad that Linkedin has failed to be anything more than an online paper resume.

[addtyu]

I'm not sure why are we listening to advice from a failed starter