What Founders Get Wrong About Their First Hire

Everyone has opinions on this.

Books, VCs, Medium posts… even your COO probably has a take.

But if you ask someone who's actually worked inside multiple founder-led teams, the reality is more nuanced—and more useful.

At Polaris Pathways, I’ve supported founder and co-founder teams as they’ve navigated early hires. Some have made wildly successful first hires. Others... not so much. But all of them walked away with lessons that shaped the business.

So what’s the big miss?

It’s not usually about hiring too early or too late (although that happens). It’s about misjudging what the *role* actually needs to be.

Founders often default to one of three traps:

1. They hire for the work, not the impact.

The job description lists onboarding and payroll systems—but the *need* is someone who can build culture through a growth spurt or manage conflict across functions.

2. They hire for the title, not the stage.

   A Head of People at a 50-person company is not the same as one at 500. The expectations might be identical, but the resources and influence aren’t.

3. They treat it like a one-time fix, not a strategic move.

   "We need someone to clean this up." But once it’s “clean,” what then? What’s the long-game?

Let’s talk slope, not intercept.

A CEO I worked with once shared one of his favorite frameworks from this widely circulated post:

“Hire for the slope, not the y-intercept.”

In other words, don’t just hire based on where someone is now. Hire for their trajectory.

It’s a smart idea—and one I’ve seen play out in real time. But slope doesn’t only matter if you’ve defined the path. It also matters how much uncertainty you’re willing to work with. For a first hire, that path might still be fuzzy. And that’s okay. Like with the crystal ball analogy—sometimes you just need clarity on the next right move, not the whole map.

We see this all the time: companies hire someone with an amazing slope but minimal experience—maybe even a recent grad. That’s not wrong. It just depends on the context. For a first hire, you may need slope and a bit of intercept to get things off the ground.

A quick excerpt worth repeating:

“The first failure point of hiring is not being crystal clear about what you really want the person you hire to accomplish.” — Who: The A Method for Hiring

This isn’t just about HR. It’s true of *every* early hire. But the disconnect between founder expectations and the actual impact of that first hire can stall momentum early—and that’s avoidable.

The truth? Hiring the right first person is less about their resume and more about whether you’re ready to bring them into the business and actually let them move things forward.

—Michelle

Before you go, a few questions to sit with:

1. What’s the most important problem you need this person to solve in the next 6 months?
2. Are you hiring for where your company is—or where you want it to be?
3. If this hire succeeds wildly, how would you describe their impact in plain language?