Hiring Your First Employee

At what point does one go from the feeling that they have to do everything themselves to make sure it's right to actually taking the leap of faith to hiring someone. I feel like I am constantly bottle necking growth, but it gets scary. What experiences have you guys had with this? What does it feel like to hire your first employee?

A point I would make about 'Vision Over Job Description':<p>I think it's vital to also be open about the need for a generalist. If all you do is give someone a title (plus vision), there's going to be enough of a role associated with that title to create a set of expectations. It's easy to put someone in a position early on where they think, 'an x doesn't do y, what's going on?'<p>Even for a low-level employee, I would consider doing salary plus equity if they're the first on board. I've seen it work before.<p>Another point I think is critical is if you expect someone to come on board and wear all hats, you'd better make sure you're willing to do it as well. If you're working all hours to make your business grow it will be easier for your employees to swallow.<p>If they think they're working more than you they'll leave and that's hard to recover from, at least in the sort term. Losing a team member hurts everyone's morale, especially your own.

We found our intern with the intention to hire if we found a good fit. (And he found us by my comments here on HN!) I described somebody who was interested in wearing many hats from admin to programmer, with at least some programming/Ruby experience, and voila!<p>We lucked out on the first try and we will be employing him as soon as we can get the paperwork together.<p>I highly recommend this type of approach for junior devs, do-it-all peeps, and even admins.<p>Also, from my hiring days in corporations, my more general recommendations:<p>* hire on attitude, passion and team fit, not current skill set (unless you are totally crunched)<p>* ask them what they read on their own time<p>* figure out why they do what they do (or do what the job description says)<p>A smart, motivated, passionate, conscientious person with not-quite-enough experience will quickly bring herself/himself up to speed. On the other hand, a person with the exact skillset you need may be unbearable.<p>As for the money, well, we're a 2-person company. We have not just our SaaS product, but live training courses, etc. Yes, it's kind of scary to employ somebody, but we figured out that, worst case, we can just do one training course a month to cover the monthly salary of our new addiction. That's a good trade.