Assemble Spikes, Not Well-Rounded People
Hire sharp, complementary spikes instead of developing everyone into generalists
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
Loktev argues the standard strengths/development-areas ritual is backwards: it pushes every person toward being adequate at everything. Instead, identify what each person spikes on — the one thing they are exceptional at — and assemble a team where the spikes differ and are individually crucial. The team only works if everyone practises inquiry, because complementary spikes require listening across gaps.
Origin
Loktev's own team-building model from Airbnb, now the first filter he applies to founders as a partner at Index Ventures: what is this founder spiked on, and is that spike relevant to their problem?
Core principles
- 01Almost nobody spikes on everything. Trying to make each person good at everything is the wrong mindset.
- 02A spike must be crucial to the team, not just impressive.
- 03Different spikes on one team beats uniformly-competent people.
- 04The assembly only works if everyone inquires and listens — otherwise the spikes collide.
- 05As a leader, do the same audit on yourself: immerse in the decisions where you have edge, delegate the rest.
How to run it
- 1
Identify each person's spike
For each person (and candidate), name the single thing they are exceptional at. Common spikes: domain/marketplace mechanics (driver→lever→measurable-result reasoning), packaging and selling, process and cross-team connection, product design intuition.
Pro tip Ask what this person does that nobody else on the team could do, rather than scoring them across a competency grid.
- 2
Test the spike against the problem
Ask: how is that spike relevant to the problem the team is tackling right now? A world-class spike that is irrelevant to the current mission is not a hire.
Pro tip This is Loktev's literal first question when meeting a founder as an investor.
- 3
Assemble complementary spikes
Build the team so the spikes differ and together cover what the mission needs. Do not hire another instance of the spike you already have.
Pro tip Also assess whether a leader hires well for spikes they lack — that is a distinct, high-value trait.
- 4
Install inquiry as the connective tissue
A team of sharp, differing spikes only performs if everyone asks questions and actually listens to the others. Make inquiry-over-advocacy the norm, or the spikes will talk past each other.
Watch out Without inquiry, complementary spikes become competing egos.
- 5
Apply it to yourself
As a leader, name what you spike on and immerse yourself in the decisions where you have real edge. Let go of the areas where you would add little, delegating to someone you trust to hold the quality bar.
Pro tip Chesky spiked on product, design and marketing — which is exactly why he inserted himself into those decisions and effectively acted as CPO.
In the wild
Loktev reframes Airbnb's controversial top-down model through the spike lens. Chesky spiked in product, design and marketing, so he immersed himself in exactly those decisions — not because he wanted control everywhere, but because that was where his insight was unmatched.
→ The apparent autocracy was actually a spike-allocation decision — and it is the model Loktev recommends founders reason with when deciding where to insert themselves.
Now at Index Ventures, when Loktev meets a founder his first internal question is: what is this founder spiked on, how is that spike relevant to the problem they are tackling today, and how well do they hire to bring other spikes onto the team.
→ This trio of questions is, in his words, literally what he thinks about when evaluating a founder — replacing generic 'is this a strong founder' assessment.
Common mistakes
Running the strengths/development-areas ritual as usual
The standard performance process pushes people to develop every skill until they are good at almost everything. Loktev calls this the wrong mindset — it sands down the very spikes that make people valuable.
Hiring another version of your own spike
Comfortable hires duplicate the strengths already on the team and leave the real gaps uncovered. The value comes from assembling different spikes, not more of the same.
Is it for you?
Best for
Hiring managers and founders building a team from scratch or diagnosing why a competent team underperforms.
Not ideal for
Roles that genuinely require broad, uniform competence (e.g. small teams where each person must cover many functions alone).
From the transcript
“you need to look for people who spike on specific things and then add them to a team with different spikes”
“what is this founder spiked on? And how is that spike relevant to the problem that they're tackling today?”
From the episode
Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product)