Recruiting Without Retaining
Altman: When you're a seed or Series A company, you spend a huge amount of effort recruiting but almost no effort retaining talent. That's right at the beginning. But if you don't shift to viewing retaining talent as as much of your job as recruiting — you eventually have some level of disaster on your hands.
Zuckerberg once said at YC that he'd only hire people he'd report to if the roles were reversed. If you're hiring people that good — they have as many opportunities as you do. If you don't make the role good enough that you yourself would stay in it, you'll have a hard time retaining your best people.
You recruit like crazy but don't retain. If you don't shift, you'll have a disaster.
Dinner With Your Best 10 People Every Month
Altman: The thing your best 5 or 10 people crave most is time with you — time with the CEO. As people get busier, they spend less and less on this.
Some of the best CEOs in our portfolio — every month, they take each of their best 10 people out for a one-on-one dinner or drinks. That's a huge time commitment. 30 dinner slots in a month and 10 of them go to this. But it works — because that is the thing these people really crave. They want you to ask them what they think and listen to them.
Your best people crave time with the CEO. Take each of your top 10 to dinner every month.
New Tasks, New Responsibility, New Comp
Altman: If you stop giving people more responsibility, they will eventually leave. If they get to take on new tasks every year or additional tasks every year, they're happier.
And most founders are very bad about proactively re-upping comp to the level they should for their top 5 or 10 lieutenants. This is one transition that many of our companies have failed to make.
Stop giving people more responsibility and they'll leave. Proactively re-up comp.