@ Raghav Soni: Its good that you liked the post and have shared your thoughts on the same. Let me share my perspective on the your suggestions point-by-point.
1. “hire any one u can find with a passion” : Passion is a must for all early employees. However, its not the only quality. Early stage employees should share your vision and understand the business in the best possible way. Of course, its your job to make them understand your business.
2. “make them work like owners”: Perfectly right. However, it doesn’t mean that every employee should be offered equity. ESOP is a great option and slowly startups and early stage employees are giving importance to it in India.
3. “pay for performance model”: I agree completely that there should be some good part of the compensation that is to be paid according to the performance. The metrics that will be used to decide the performance should be decided right at the time of profile creation and the employee should be educated well before the appointment. This helps the startup to increase the productivity enormously.

@raghav soni : thank you for liking the post

@Harsha: I agree with you completely. But as “theinterface” rightly mentioned, you shouldn’t view it as a money saver.

@theinterface: Finding right employees at right time and getting maximum productivity from them, deserves a blog post altogether. However, I feel, it depends on whether you are looking for leaders/followers. Job boards are definitely a great place as a starting point to find followers. But, you just can’t confine yourself to that option. Venues like startup lunch, market places like Dayak and most importantly references have also to be used in the process of recruitments.

One thing you don’t mention — where to find these employees? Another big mistake startups make is putting their trust in the almighty cheapness of Monster rather than coughing up recruiting fees. Let me tell you, it ain’t worth it. There are enough options out there that aren’t astronomically priced — recruiting markets like Dayak that allow for cheaper placements via a princeline model — and you somewhat lessen the burden of having to sift through mountains of sand for tiny pearls. I managed a startup last year that refused to post to anything but job boards, and the time lost was ridiculous — that early in the game the focus needs to be on the company, not on searching through resumes. But, that’s my opinion.

Looks like an article from self experiences. I agree with all the points except 4th. I feel, there can be enough cases where it is better to give away some equity for some crucial profiles. It will increase accountability and involvement of the candidate. Once you offer ownership, you can rest assure that the person gives more than 100% to the company.