Do It End-to-End Before You Hire For It
If the core team can't crack a function once, a new hire won't rescue it.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 88%
A hiring-sequence principle: the founding team should personally do a new function (sales, marketing, product) all the way to a working outcome before hiring a specialist for it. Use it when tempted to solve a capability gap by hiring rather than by learning.
Origin
Wiz's growth outran its org: Herzberg and the founders were closing contracts before hiring a single salesperson, always 'behind.' By selling a couple million dollars themselves first, they learned the process deeply and could hand real proof and confidence to their first sales hire. She generalized this against the common founder wish that a hire will simply fix what the team can't do.
Core principles
- 01The founding core has the most context, passion and motivation; if they can't do it once, an outsider is unlikely to.
- 02Hoping a hire will 'be it' and solve the problem is wishful; it rarely works that way.
- 03Doing it yourself first produces both learning and proof you can transfer to the specialist.
How to run it
- 1
Attempt the function yourself, end to end
Have founders personally take the new capability all the way to a real outcome (close deals, ship the message) before hiring.
- 2
Extract the proof and the playbook
Capture what worked so you understand the process firsthand rather than delegating a black box.
Pro tip 'We sold a couple million of this' gives a first hire immediate confidence the thing is sellable.
- 3
Hire to scale, not to discover
Bring in the specialist once you've proven the function works, so they amplify a known process instead of inventing it from scratch.
Watch out Don't hire a first PMM/salesperson hoping they'll fix a message or motion the founders never got working; that gap usually persists.
In the wild
Wiz closed contracts as a founding team before hiring any salesperson, learning the full contract-to-close motion themselves. When they made their first sales hire, they could say 'we sold a couple million of this,' handing over proven confidence.
→ First sales hire onboarded onto a de-risked, proven motion rather than an unvalidated one.
Common mistakes
Outsourcing an unsolved problem
Believing 'I'll hire the right person and they'll be able to do it' for something the core team never cracked. Herzberg says she's never seen that work.
Is it for you?
Best for
Early-stage founders deciding when to hire their first sales/marketing/product specialist.
Not ideal for
Highly specialized functions (legal, deep infra) where founders genuinely can't operate and expertise is mandatory.
From the transcript
“we ended up selling before we had a sellers team”
“if if you can't do it one time and to end then you like the core core Core Group the chances of just bringing somebody…”
From the episode
Building Wiz: the fastest-growing startup in history
Raaz Herzberg (CMO and VP Product Strategy)