为什么你招不到人Why You Can’t Hire
开发者和设计师并不短缺，创始人才是过剩的。
创办公司的成本已经崩塌。现在只剩下（最低限度的）工资。对创业者来说，办公桌是免费的，服务器托管是免费的，营销都在线上进行，注册公司也很便宜。
为产品开发筹集最初的两万五千美元很容易——加入一个孵化器就行。再筹接下来的十万美元也很容易——投资者会跟着孵化器，用自动可转债跟进。构建产品、发布产品很容易——用开源技术栈开发，托管在 Amazon 上，在 Facebook、Android 或 iOS 上发布，就能获得早期的增长势头。*
获得真正的增长势头很难。筹集数百万美元很难。建立一家可持续的、长期发展的公司很难。
Yammer 能招到人。Square 能招到人。Twitter 能招到人。这些公司实现了产品 / 市场契合。而你这家尚未获得牵引力的公司没有，所以招人很难。
如果创办一家尚未获得牵引力的公司的成本已经下降，那么尚未获得牵引力的创始人的回报也必然会下降。
扔掉旧的股权结构表吧。创始人拿不到 30%，早期工程师也不该只拿 0.25%。这些是过去的数字，来自那个必须先融到风险投资才能做产品的年代——在每个人都能、也确实都去创业之前。
已获得牵引力的公司可以用那些旧数字——你不行。你的头两名工程师？他们只是晚到的创始人。把他们当作创始人来对待，也以创始人的标准来要求他们。
你接下来的五名设计师和开发者呢？在你获得牵引力、以及随之而来的现金之前，你的股权结构表恐怕根本负担不起他们。
弥合股权差距，招人就会容易得多。
- 当然，没有什么是真正"容易"的——但比过去容易多了。
** 这只是我个人的看法，不代表我雇主的立场。但你可以看看他们在 AngelList Talent 上为帮助创业者做了些什么。巧合的是，这个项目的首席黑客昨天刚好在他自己的博客上发了一篇相关的必读文章。
There isn’t a shortage of developers and designers. There’s a surplus of founders.
The cost of starting a company has collapsed. It’s now just (minimal) salaries. For entrepreneurs, desks are free, hosting is free, marketing is online, and company setup is cheap.
Raising the first $25K for product development is easy – join an incubator. Raising the next $100K is easy – investors are following the incubators with automatic notes. Building a product and launching a product are easy – develop on Open Source Stacks, host on Amazon, launch on Facebook, Android or iOS, get your early traction.*
Getting real traction is hard. Raising millions of dollars is hard. Building a sustainable, long-term company is hard.
Yammer can hire. Square can hire. Twitter can hire. These companies have achieved product / market fit. Your pre-traction company has not, and so it has a hard time hiring.
If the costs of founding a pre-traction company have gone down, then returns to pre-traction founders must go down.
Throw out the old cap tables. A founder doesn’t get 30% and an early engineer shouldn’t get 0.25%. Those are old numbers from when you had to raise VC capital before you could build a product. Before everyone could and did start a company.
Post-traction companies can use the old numbers – you can’t. Your first two engineers? They’re just late founders. Treat them as such. Expect as much.
Your next five designers and developers? Your cap table probably can’t even afford them until you have traction, and the cash that follows it.
Close the equity gap, and hiring will get a lot easier.
* Of course nothing is ever “easy” – but it’s a lot easier than it used to be.
** This is just my opinion, not that of my employer. But you can see what they’re doing to help at AngelList Talent. Coincidentally, the lead hacker on that project put up this related must-read post on his own blog yesterday.