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Comment by majormajor | Hacker News Reader

> Don’t hire someone to do something you’ve not yet figured out (some exceptional candidates can bring new capabilities to companies, but often the most reliable route is for some “founder magic” to re-assemble the company until it can perform the new thing)

I'm curious what this "founder magic" bit means. Is this advice largely because of the difficulty of trying to find a qualified expert to bring new capabilities to your company when you personally aren't familiar with that area? E.g., it's hard to not get the wool pulled over your eyes by someone who talks well but can't deliver?

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The problem is that a founder who hasn't already filled that role themselves doesn't know two things: 1) what the key parts of doing the job are and 2) which skills/personality the hire must possess.

There are many many ways to fail in a position and only a few key parts that matter. The "founder magic" is taking your unique perspective as a domain expert in your business and finding out what the role really needs. You do it by executing in that role for real. After you do that for a while (weeks/months) then you know what will make a candidate successful (and now you have a 50/50 chance of hiring the right person rather than a 10/90).

Unless you are hiring someone for a VP type role, your new hire likely isn't going to step in and know exactly what they should be doing everyday to achieve the goals you have laid out for them.

So you have to try it all out yourself first and figure out what makes someone in this role successful, what makes them not successful, and how to create a process or blueprint that your new hire can follow to success.

Specifically: in a company of five, don't hire a customer service person if you haven't done customer support yourself at least a bit. Don't hire a database person if you yourself (or somebody internal) hasn't already tried [and presumably failed].

Experience and Failure are important guide-posts to help you look for the right person to fill that role. Where are they better than you? Then you have to mentor them so they get to be better than themselves so they can make your next hire(s).

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