Thank you to Pablo Fernandez of Flexpoint Tech for creating these notes. To contribute to the TWiST PodNotes archive email us.

Top Insights

Have complimentary skills with a co-founder.
- Have tech and sales present in your co-founding team.
Establish clear equity schemes.
- Co-founders vest their shares.
- Employees get options from an ESOP, Employee Stock Option Plan.
Adapt as your company grows:
- Hire generalists first, specialists later.
- Hire people with more experience as you grow.
- Don't keep someone around just because they were an early employee.
Outsource non-strategic functions: hr, legal, accounting, office managing.
Fire fast, be kind but firm, it's not a discussion, involve HR and legal if necessary, have a process that includes a PIP as the last warning.

Guests

Do you have complementary skill sets?
- You should be working on different problems.
- Being an engineer can't be learned overnight, so it's good to have an engineer.
Establish co-founder equity.
- It's uncommon for all co-founders to stick around to stay until exit.
- Have a vesting schedule. Commonly: 4 year vesting period with 1 year cliff.
  - Non-vested shares get retired, everybody increases their equity, including employee options pool and investors.
Funding teams are generally 2 people, as big as 5 sometimes.
- Not always equal split.
- A co-founder might join later, with less stock.
- A co-founder might also invest, and have equity as an investor.
  - They would own common and preferred shares at this point.
If you have less than 10 employees: hire generalists.
- They need to be on board with working at a startup.
  - Be tenacious.
  - Be hard working.
  - Require little management.
  - Even specialists tend to have a secondary responsibilities.