Should you hire at all?

A hire is the biggest recurring commitment a startup makes. Four cheaper options to rule out first.

What is it?

Before hiring, four alternatives should be genuinely ruled out:

Automate it — is this a recurring task software could do? Buy it — is there a service that solves this? Contract it — is this time-bounded or part-time? Stop doing it — does this actually need to happen at all?

Hiring is right when the work is ongoing, substantial, core, and none of the above apply.

Why does a founder care?

Because a hire is a long recurring commitment against uncertain revenue. A $6,000/month salary is $72,000 a year plus employment costs, and it directly shortens runway from the month they start.

And because hiring to solve a problem you have not defined usually produces someone with no clear job, who then fails through no fault of their own.

Example

A founder feels overwhelmed by customer support and decides to hire someone.

Before posting the role, they check the tickets. Of roughly 60 a month:

  • 31 are the same three questions → a help page and three canned responses. Automate.
  • 12 are onboarding confusion → fixing one screen removes them entirely. Product fix.
  • 9 are billing → the payment provider's portal already handles this. Buy.
  • 8 are genuine, varied questions needing judgement.

    • Eight tickets a month is about two hours' work. That is not a hire — it is a Friday afternoon.

    The overwhelm was real. The solution was not a person, and hiring one would have added $72,000 a year plus management overhead to a two-hour problem, while leaving the underlying product issues unfixed.

    The common mistake

    First-time founders often hire when they feel overwhelmed rather than when there is a defined ongoing job. Overwhelm is a signal to examine the work, not automatically to add a person.

    The second mistake: hiring before knowing what good looks like in that role. If you cannot define success, you cannot evaluate candidates and you cannot manage the person you pick.

    The third: hiring a salesperson before you have sold anything yourself, or a marketer before you know which channel works. You cannot hand over a process that does not exist.

    How it works

    Step 1: Write down the actual work

    Not 'we need support' but a categorised list of what happens each month, with volumes.

    Step 2: Check each category against the four alternatives

    Automate, buy, contract, or stop. Most lists shrink dramatically at this step.

    Step 3: See whether a real job remains

    Is the residue a genuine ongoing role, or a few hours a week?

    Step 4: Model it against runway

    Full employment cost, not gross salary. Recalculate runway before deciding, not after.

    Step 5: Check you can define success

    If you cannot say what good looks like in six months, you are not ready to hire for it.

    Step 6: Check you have done it yourself

    For sales and marketing especially. Hiring someone to discover the process for you rarely works.

    When to use this

    Before every hire, without exception.

    When not to use it

    If you are turning away revenue for lack of capacity in a proven role, hire quickly. That is the clearest possible case and delaying costs more than moving.

    Do this now

    Apply this to your own startup in My Full Journey (free account).