Your First 5 Hires: Founder-Fit Before Culture-Fit

The order that works

• Hire 1 — a builder who covers your weakest technical gap.
• Hire 2 — a commercial generalist who can run discovery and close design partners.
• Hire 3 — a second builder so the first one can take a holiday.
• Hire 4 — an operator: finance, hiring, ops, vendor management.
• Hire 5 — a domain specialist for your wedge market.

“The first ten hires set the velocity of every decision for the next five years. Get them wrong and you spend the rest of the company unwinding it.”

Equity ranges that won't bite you later

Use Index Ventures' OptionPlan as your sanity check. For a UK pre-seed, hires 1–2 typically take 0.75–2% on a 4-year vest with a 1-year cliff under EMI. Hires 3–5 sit in the 0.25–1% band. Document the strike price the day you grant — HMRC valuations matter.

“The first ten people determine the next ten years. Hire for the mission you have, not the company you imagine.”