Your Pathfinder Could Be Someone Who Crashed & Learned

Rob BakerPathfinder SalesLeave a Comment

wooden tiles spelling learn from failure

“Candidates who have experienced failure with a back catalog of tales of adversity in their careers are of the most interest to me; in short, I am looking for someone who has failed”, to paraphrase the interviewer’s opening gambit. The occasion was a first interview to facilitate a move from one well established and mature industry into a relatively new, … Read More

7 Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring Your First Salesperson

Neil HartleyHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

Road sign saying Wrong Way

Execution around sales and marketing remains a major challenge for B2B tech startups looking to  move along the growth/valuation curve. Despite founders readily accepting the importance of sales and marketing in moving from startup to scale-up, execution remains a major barrier to success. As a gauge of the challenge, less than 1 in 5 startups accepting seed investment ever make … Read More

The Right Five, Not Just the Best Five

Neil HartleyHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

poppy in a field of wheat

You’re a busy person. You’ve founded your B2B tech startup, got your product into the market and led from the front to win those first few key customers. You’ve proved that someone will pay for your product and it looks like you’ve made it onto the right trajectory for success. You may have taken a little seed money already and, … Read More

Why Five?

Neil HartleyHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

Many people making up the number five

Conventional wisdom suggests you should screen all your candidates for a given role and then perform in-depth interviews with 3-5 of them and, hopefully, make your selection from there. However, does that conventional wisdom apply to B2B tech founders looking to make their first Sales hire? In any area of business, you would imagine that most hiring managers have a … Read More

Dealing With the Resumé Haystack

Neil HartleyHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

haystack in a field

Tech is a hot space and, for startups, hiring the right people is critical to the future success of the business. Given that most founders have a solid technical background, identifying whether a developer can do the job is relatively straight forward. Do they have the relevant Ruby experience, have they worked with Angular are both relatively straight forward to … Read More