Curate People

What It Covers

Naval explains why founders cannot delegate recruiting and must personally hire every early employee, emphasizing that undiscovered genius-level talent with low ego and high creativity determines company DNA and product success.

Key Questions Answered

• •Founder recruiting rule: Founders must directly recruit and approve every hire until the company has 20-40 people. The moment middle management layers appear and founders stop personally vetting candidates, the company's ability to build zero-to-one products disappears.
• •Undiscovered talent sourcing: Find engineers before they become famous on Twitter or win awards by discovering their obscure GitHub projects, unusual hobbies, or side experiments. Engage them with thoughtful technical questions about their work, not generic recruiting pitches.
• •Team quality test: Tell new candidates to randomly interview any existing team member for 30 minutes. If you instinctively flinch at them interviewing a specific person, that person must be removed immediately to maintain high-functioning team standards.
• •Genius-only hiring: Reject the slot-filling mentality of hiring the best marketing candidate from a pool. Instead, only hire people who qualify as geniuses in their domain, even without an open role, and warehouse exceptional talent regardless of immediate fit.