When I review candidate pipelines with founders, I see the same pattern over and over.
They gravitate toward the big logos. The long tenures. The candidate who’s “been there, done that.”
On paper, it makes sense. You’re building something hard. You want someone who’s seen this movie before.
But here’s what I’ve learned after years of recruiting for startups:
In a startup environment, the safe bet might be the most dangerous hire you can make.
I don’t mean dangerous like they’ll burn the place down. I mean dangerous like they’ll do a perfectly adequate job while the company slowly stalls out. They’ll execute yesterday’s playbook on tomorrow’s problem. They’ll be fine.
And fine is fatal when you’re trying to win.
The Two Dimensions That Actually Matter
When I evaluate a candidate, I’m not thinking about years of experience or brand-name companies. I’m thinking about two dimensions:
-
Slope vs. Tenure (Trajectory vs. History)
-
Spiky vs. Stable (Outliers vs. Generalists)
Most founders over-index on Tenure and Stable. They want someone who’s already good at the job and won’t cause problems.
Most startups actually need Slope and Spiky. The person who’s going to be great in six months. The person who breaks through on one specific thing.
Slope vs. Tenure
Think about it like a graph.
Tenure is the Y-intercept. Where the candidate is right now. Their accumulated experience. The things they’ve already seen and solved.
A high-tenure candidate shows up on Day 1 with pattern recognition. They’ve run this sales cycle before. They’ve debugged this system before. They don’t need to figure it out—they’ve already figured it out.
Slope is the derivative. The candidate’s rate of learning. How fast they’re improving. How quickly they absorb new information and level up.
A high-slope candidate might be less experienced today. But their trajectory is nearly vertical. They outpace their job description every six months. The person you hire in January is meaningfully better by June—and dramatically better by the following January.
Here’s the key insight: in a startup, the problems you have today are not the problems you’ll have in six months.
If you’re pre-PMF, you’re still figuring out what you’re even building. If you’re scaling, you’re going from 10 to 50 people, and everything about how you operate is going to change. If you’re in a wartime pivot, the entire strategy might be different in two quarters.
You’re not hiring someone to solve a known, stable problem. You’re hiring someone to solve a series of unknown, evolving problems.
Tenure helps you with the first problem. Slope helps you with all the problems after that.
When Tenure Wins
I’m not saying tenure is worthless. There are specific situations where experience genuinely matters.
Hire for tenure when:
-
You have a known, repeatable problem that needs to be optimized
-
The playbook is established and you need someone to run it
-
The cost of mistakes is extremely high and you can’t afford a learning curve
-
You’re building a function that requires deep domain expertise
If you’ve figured out your sales motion and you just need someone to execute it at scale, a tenured AE who’s run that exact motion might be the right call. They’ll ramp faster. They’ll pattern-match to situations they’ve seen.
Most early-stage founders think they’re in this situation when they’re not.
They think they’ve figured out the playbook. They think the problem is known and repeatable. But actually they’re still iterating on product, still refining positioning, still learning who their real customer is.
In that environment, the tenured hire who “knows how to do this” becomes a liability. They’re applying yesterday’s playbook to a problem that’s changing every month.
When Slope Wins
Hire for slope when:
-
You’re pre-PMF or still figuring out your go-to-market
-
The problems you have today won’t be the problems you have in six months
-
You’re in a wartime pivot where everything is in flux
-
You need someone who can grow into a bigger role as the company scales
The high-slope candidate doesn’t have all the answers yet. But they have something more valuable: the ability to figure out new answers faster than the market changes.
I’ve seen this play out dozens of times. The founder hires the “safe” experienced candidate for a VP role. That person implements the playbook from their last company. It works okay for a while. But when the market shifts or the product evolves, they can’t adapt. They keep running the old playbook on new problems.
Meanwhile, the “risky” high-slope hire figures it out. They’re uncomfortable with ambiguity, but they’re not paralyzed by it. They learn the new context, adjust their approach, and keep getting better.
A year later, the high-slope person has caught up to the tenured person’s starting point—and they’re still accelerating.
Spiky vs. Stable
The second dimension is about shape, not speed.
Stable candidates are spheres. Good at everything. 7/10 communication, 7/10 technical skills, 7/10 strategic thinking. Well-rounded. Low friction. Easy to work with.
Spiky candidates are stars. 12/10 at one specific thing—maybe backend architecture, maybe outbound sales, maybe product intuition. But they might be a 3/10 at administration or a 4/10 at punctuality.
Most hiring processes are designed to find stable candidates. We screen out the weirdos. We look for “culture fit.” We ding people for weaknesses even when their strengths are exceptional.
The result: a team of perfectly reasonable people who are good at everything and great at nothing.
But startups are powered by spikes.
The early employees at breakout companies are rarely well-rounded. They’re often kind of weird. They have one thing they’re absolutely obsessed with and world-class at. And the company figures out how to build around that spike.
The engineer who’s impossible in meetings but writes code that’s two years ahead of anyone else. The sales rep who’s a disaster at admin but closes deals nobody else could close. The marketer who can’t manage a team but writes copy that converts at 3x the industry average.
These people are hard to manage. They create friction. They don’t fit neatly into your org chart.
But they’re the difference between building a normal company and building a great one.
The Trap
The mistake I see most founders make is hiring Stable + Tenured for every role.
It feels comfortable. It feels safe. Someone experienced AND easy to work with. What could go wrong?
What goes wrong is you end up with a team of B+ players.
Nobody’s bad. Nobody’s causing problems. Everyone’s executing their job description competently.
But nobody’s breaking through.
You’ve minimized downside, but you’ve also capped upside. You’ve built a team designed to not fail rather than a team designed to win.
The Case for Spiky + Slope
If you want to win—really win, not just survive—you usually need Spiky + Slope.
People who are obsessed with a specific problem. People who learn faster than the market is changing.
These hires don’t check every box. They have obvious gaps. Your gut might tell you they’re too risky.
But they’re the ones who figure things out. The ones who come up with the approach nobody else would have tried. The ones who get dramatically better every quarter while the “safe” hires plateau.
Spiky + Slope is a bet on trajectory over current state. Upside over risk mitigation. Potential over proof.
In a startup, that’s usually the right bet.
The Honest Question
I’m not saying you should only hire high-slope spiky savants. That’s not practical. Some roles genuinely require stability. Some problems genuinely require experience.
But most founders I talk to have the balance wrong. They’re over-indexing on safe. They’re systematically filtering out the candidates with the highest upside because those candidates also have the most obvious risks.
Look at your open reqs right now. Look at the candidates you’re excited about and the ones you’ve passed on.
Are you hiring to minimize risk? Or are you hiring to maximize upside?
Are you looking for Stable + Tenured because it feels comfortable? Or are you looking for Spiky + Slope because it gives you the best chance to win?
You usually can’t optimize for both.
Choose wisely.
Because the most dangerous hire isn’t the one with obvious risks.
It’s the one who feels perfectly safe—right up until you realize your company has slowly become perfectly average.
