1. When starting a new business, the author recommends hiring slowly and keeping the initial team small, around 3 people including the founder, to maintain focus and accountability. 2. It is important to thoroughly screen candidates, with the author taking 4 months and 30 interviews to hire the first person. Subsequent hires should also be carefully vetted. 3. Look outside your industry when hiring, as people from within may have fixed mindsets. Seek candidates with diverse experiences who demonstrate passion and knowledge about other subjects.

1. Starting a new business?
Three suggestions for a great take-off (and growth)!
It did not happen by choice but each time I joined a new company, I was in the midst
of early stages of a business taking shape. Each new assignment was like a whirlwind
that shook me left and right and threw me up and down. This was the way my career
looked to me till 3M happened. I embraced 3M with a full understanding that I was
joining a company to start a new business. I expected it to be one hell of roller coaster
ride with no guarantee of nuts and bolts keeping the coaster intact as I moved ahead.
So, when I set out to decide on topic for the inaugural post for this group (Business
10Xed, started today), without thinking much, I knew that I would like to write on

2. starting up a new business. The following notes talk about three most important
lessons I learned in last 8-10 years while setting up businesses. It includes thoughts
and ways of working of some amazing colleagues in 3M, Castrol and some start-up
founders in Bangalore. Since I wanted to elaborate on each of the three points, I have
broken this article into 3 parts. This write-up is first of the 3 parts. I really hope that
the group members will pick one or two good thoughts from the read.
So let’s get started -
1. Hiring
Hire Slow: The first instinct one has when starting a business is to hire people and that
too quickly. The obvious reason is to get things moving fast. Starting business, what
worked for me, unknowingly, was having few team members in the early stages of
business. Few means 3, including me, for almost 8 months. As I said “unknowingly”,
I realized much later that having few people on the team was best way attain critical
speed for takeoff
The smallness of the team made allocation of responsibility and outcome
unambiguous and ownership of deliverables high. However, despite allocation of
responsibility, several items were discussed by all three of us to decide the best way

3. forward. To bring more perspective to various issues, we would often bring in known
people from outside the business to attend some of our meetings (often from other
divisions of 3M,
occasionally from outside as
well). We would make them
the customer and ask them
to critique our strategy or
thought. Example, we would
get in the store design
agency people to play the
devil’s advocate for our
customer experience
strategy and share their
point of view. Or we would have people from other divisions within 3M to look at our
product portfolio and make holes in our product strategy. This mode of operation,
surprisingly, helped us discover facets of business that we were otherwise oblivious to
us.
First few hires, get it right: Strange as it may sound, it took me almost 4 months and
30 plus personal face to face interviews to hire the first person. The subsequent hires
were also a result of many candidates getting interviewed before the right one was
selected. The thought was that if the first few members are great, the subsequent hires
would also be well selected. It was like starting a virtuous cycle of good candidates
entering the system who would in turn select good people. This cycle could be put on
steroids by encouraging existing employees to bring in worthy candidates they knew.
In-fact this was my preferred way of selection since it greatly eliminated the risk of
getting in untested/ unknown people into the system. Once the business started
scaling, hiring moved a note ahead of the business growth.
Good business managers continue screening each candidate that gets added to the
team for a long time. Some great managers are known to go up-to personally
interviewing 500th
employee in the company. In 2015, Google added 6000 people to

4. the company and each candidate was approved by Larry Page for hiring (which means
many were rejected as well). And approving did not mean pressing on the “approve
button”. As a process, each week, Page is sent a report with links to extensive review
packets on each recommended hire with accompanying executive summaries. Page
takes a look at the highlights of what each reviewer had to say about the candidate,
and checks the candidate's portfolio if necessary. He would then send back his final
approvals or denials within a few days.
Look outside: Another practice I have seen with good managers is that they do not
necessarily hire from the same industry. The belief is that people from the industry
come with fixed thoughts. They look for people who are quick learners and have an
urge to do something new. I look for people who have worked in diverse industries
and have had an upward trajectory in their
career. I also seek out people who are deep
into subject they like. A candidate I
interviewed once expressed his unending
love for everything in North/ South Pole. I
quizzed him for almost 15 minutes on the
subject and the passion and knowledge he
displayed was outstanding (from him I came to know that a polar bear can often grow
to as long as 8 ft. and weigh equal to the weight of 7-8 average men). He worked for
about 14 months in my team. During the period he added tremendous value and then
quit to start his own venture. I was not surprised at all.*
An “average” hire amongst the first few employees can be debilitating for the
business. The work people do in early stages of business is so critical that people need
to throw themselves into the thinking process – heart, soul and mind! Anything short
of this can make a company die over time. Good managers spend a very large amount
of their time in hiring and retaining good people. With each good hire, they ensure
that they will have more time to do other thigs rather than handholding the people

5. hired. They build an echo system that has a bunch of highly self-charged people who
act as magnets for future hires.
‘* This Poles enthusiast, started a company that conducts excursions to Leh –Ladhak.
I am sure he has expansion plans for opening a branch office in North/ South pole as
well
Take a dive!