1/ Hiring execs is one of the highest leverage things you will do as a founder. It’s also the thing that founders most consistently mess up.

If you do it right, it will transform your trajectory. If you mess it up, it will set you back months or years — or worse.

2/ Here’s how to get it right:

https://medium.com/@swaaanson/hiring-10x-execs-cbafa3f19b79

Some highlights for the lazy web:

3/ Forget about traditional interviews: Execs are polished, so it’s hard to uncover their weaknesses in a few hours of interviews. But there’s a place where both their strengths and weaknesses are intimately detailed: 360 reviews.

4/ Scale outbound 10x: Top execs are hard to find. You need to widen your search far beyond what you do for ICs. When I was searching for a new board member for Thumbtack, I sent 83 personalized emails to high-value contacts asking for referrals. How you can do that quickly:

5/ Calibrate to the top 1%: Because most execs present well, it’s nearly impossible to extract signal from them unless you’ve calibrated your search against top talent. You need to know what A+ looks like. How to do this:

6/ Searches for execs last anywhere from 3 months to an entire year. Start early, set your bar against the top 1%, and grind away until you find your 10x exec.

7/ Even if you run a perfect process, you will still make mistakes.

I don’t know a single founder who hasn’t mis-hired an exec.

What separates stellar founders:

Big thanks to @jake_zeller @nivi @sanderdaniels @NikolaiB for sharpening my thinking/writing on this topic