Cracking the Bootstrapped Startup Hiring Code with Meetul Shah of DemandMatrix Inc.

Why is raising capital more celebrated than building a business that is actually profitable? It may be a smarter play to join an actual business rather than a "concept company".

A bootstrapped company should be more attractive to people but for some reason, it is not. Today we are out to prove that driving a good business does not require venture capital and You do not need VC money to attract and hire the right talent.   

Today’s Quote:

"Bootstrapping is a way to do something about the problems you have without letting someone else give you permission to do them." 

- Tom Preson-Werner, co-founder of Github

Guest Bio:

Meetul Shah CEO of DemandMatrix, Inc., is a tech entrepreneur, having successfully built 3 companies prior to starting Demand Matrix. His “entrepreneurial” vision and inspiration comes from his desire to create and bring products to the marketplace that can help solve problems he himself has faced in his career. The combination of his years as a successful entrepreneur combined with his tenure at Microsoft has given a strong shape to his business acumen and technical expertise.

Meetul has been featured in several major publications, like CIO, NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Venture Beat, and more.  

If you were to ask him to introduce himself in less than 5 seconds, he’d probably just say he’s an idea machine, health freak, and wine lover! He is deeply passionate about Sales and Marketing Productivity given his time working for and selling to enterprise companies like Microsoft, DocuSign, Google, Cisco. 

Show Highlights:

• Bootstraping! What is it?
• Challenges & benefits to hiring in this type of organization
• A Process to hire when you do not have money to burn

What is Bootstrapping? 

• A bootstrap is a business launched by an entrepreneur with little or no outside cash or other support.

Why Bootstrap your company?

•  When you take the capital, you take more risks in hiring. You make bad hires under the pressure of VC money. 
• The pressure to hire outweighs common sense. 

Challenges faced while hiring 

• Viewed like you don't have money
• May not be able to afford people because salaries are supported by the business. 
• Lowering standards because people are not biting.
• Desperation takes over and you hire whoever you can. 
• Hiring is misunderstood in startups 
• False perception- you have money, you hiring 
• Early-stage it costs the company a lot when you make a bad hire!

Rick’s Input:

• VC money opens doors but it 
• Attracting people who are brainwashed by funding yet you will probably won't get a dime when the company exits

Solutions (what you learned):

As an Entrepreneur, where to Start?

• Understanding yourself, who you are
• Supplement & compliment people to support core values. 
• Hiring community understand and can divide and conquer 

Structure your process to allow for successful hiring

• Hire a really good TA person
• Build a recruiting process. 
• -find a recruiting process, glassdoor
• Don't be desperation and be non-bias and do not ignore the warning signs
• Badmouthing employer, blaming others, sharing things they should not share (internal information), bad culture, bad boss

Rick's Process:

• Determine what the business needs, set performance metrics 
• Build interview questions to gauge with company value alignment
• Formalize an interview structure for “Purpose”
  • predetermined questions
  • Timed
  • Behavioral-based interviewing (like Amazon)
• Communication/Feedback channel 

Key Takeaways:

• 1. Know yourself, and the values you care about 
• 2. Pay attention to the warning signs
• 3. Build a solid business foundation so you can use VC money "as a fuel in the fire" to align incentives/goals