Key points:<p>The challenge for a startup is four fold:<p>1. Screen out folks with negative productivity in the interview process.<p>2. Avoid screening out potential employees who have great strengths in addition to some obvious weaknesses.<p>3. Attract, hire, and retain enough strong players from the start to complete your first product in a timely fashion.<p>4. Fire anyone who made an initially strong impression but who is actually negatively impacting the performance of the team (more broadly: identify and eliminate sources of negative productivity).<p>This last category, the “Plus Minus People,” are only truly dangerous if you don’t have the ability to detect and acknowledge that you have made a mistake.<p>Joe Kraus has argued that it’s better to be completely conservative and avoid any “false positives” but my experience has shown that allowing some leeway with a contracting or probationary period to make a final assessment allows some ultimately strong contributors to also be recruited who may have made a negative impression on some members of the team. There is also a value in having folks with diverse backgrounds and perspectives on the team (Doug Hall states that leverage diversity is the second law of capitalist creativity in "Jumpstart Your Business Brain," observing that “You exponentially multiply the power of stimuli when you seek the ideas, opinions, and judgments of people with diverse perspectives.”<p>You are always better served to select a candidate who has made a strongly positive impression on most of your team over someone who has unanimous but lukewarm support.<p>related<p>Good advice from Tim Converse <a href="https://timconverse.wordpress.com/2004/12/08/hiring-false-positives-and-negatives/" rel="nofollow">https://timconverse.wordpress.com/2004/12/08/hiring-false-po...</a><p>Joe Kraus' unwitting explanation for Google's early lack of diversity "avoid false positives at all cost!" <a href="https://bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/2004/09/hiring_no_false.html" rel="nofollow">https://bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/2004/09/hiring_no_false.ht...</a>