Vishal Soomaney Vijaykumar’s Post

Making the right early hires is critical for an early stage start-up, but how do you know what to look for? The best candidates all have one thing in common. They are proactive, high agency individuals. At Messium we have a dedicated 7-person team that keeps over-delivering, but how? Everyone has a high amount of autonomy and can handle a large amount of responsibility. 5 out of 7 are ex-founders 7 out of 7 have prior experience as early employees at high growth start-ups This combination gives the team speed, flexibility and constant iteration. Self-prioritisation: High agency team members can wear many hats and manage juggling a multitude of short-term tasks with long-term strategic projects. Sense of urgency: Companies talk about shipping fast and iterating often but can rarely achieve it. The speed and urgency that comes from a team of ex-founders is mind-blowing! Confidence to disagree: High agency individuals have the confidence to disagree, leading to healthy debates, improved processes, resilient technology and better end-product. Independent iteration: Proactiveness means team members constantly take initiative to improve on ideas and features based on market feedback and new academic literature to better hit product goals. As a result this leaves leadership more free to focus on high level strategy and go deep on unblocking the highest value barriers to faster growth at any given time.