"The most expensive thing for all these hires is not money. It’s time."

Melissa Kwan, Cofounder and CEO of eWebinar, ProfitLed Podcast

5 Wrong Hires that Ended Up Costing $450k

Resources mentioned

5 wrong hires that ended up costing $450k because we didn't "fire fast" Linkedin Post

Follow up to “fire fast” Linkedin Post

• What “fire fast” means for startups

About this episode

Hiring is one of the biggest challenges every company faces. For bootstrapped startups, this challenge is even bigger as we have to compete against funded companies and tech giants.

Part of building a startup is trial and error, throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. Hiring is no different - it’s a learning process that can sometimes get expensive if you don’t “fire fast”.

On this episode, Melissa and Todd dives into their 5 most costly hiring mistakes, what happened, and what they learned from each experience that helps them better define job requirements and run interviews in the future.

Takeaways:
• The profile of people startups should never hire
• Why marketing agencies can’t take a company from 0-to-1
• When dev shops make sense (and when they don’t)
• What “firing fast” means and why it matters for startups
• Hard lessons we learned about hiring and firing

Connect with Melissa

About ProfitLed

On Season Two of ProfitLed, Melissa (CEO and Cofounder of eWebinar) and Todd (COO) goes in-depth on one topic per episode on their "Journey to $1M" at eWebinar.

They share war stories, mistakes, and lessons learned as they grew the company to a million in ARR over 36 months. Their goal is to demystify bootstrapping by sharing their experience of it, and tell you what it's really like to figure things out as you go.

ProfitLed is a podcast by and for founders brave (and crazy) enough to grow their startups to profitability without venture capital.

Learn more about the ProfitLed Podcast and tweet us at @profitledfm.

Learn more about eWebinar.

Next episode

S2E23
S2E23: Why We Stayed Away from Enterprise
Why We Stayed Away from Enterprise

Chasing enterprise deals can drain your resources fast. Melissa and Todd break down the real costs of going upmarket and why self-serve SaaS might already be your best growth path.

Melissa Kwan
Melissa Kwan
Cofounder and CEO