Your safest hire might be your riskiest bet.
That candidate with ten years at a Fortune 500 company and the polished interview? They've been trained to operate inside systems you don't have. They expect clear roles, defined processes, established hierarchies. Your startup offers none of that. And when the structure they're used to doesn't exist, they freeze.
The real danger isn't incompetence—it's competence in the wrong context. A senior marketing director from a company with a $50 million budget doesn't know how to generate leads with $500 and a laptop. Their skills are real but mismatched. You end up paying premium rates for capabilities you can't use.
Wade Foster understood this when building Zapier. He grew the company to 600 employees without an HR department for eight years. His early hires were unproven developers who learned on the job. That bet worked because Zapier's remote-first model forced them to document everything, accidentally creating the training infrastructure that potential hires needed to succeed.
The pattern repeats across successful startups. Founders who hire for curiosity and resourcefulness over credentials build more adaptable teams. These hires don't carry baggage about how things "should" work. They'll try approaches that veterans dismiss as impossible.
Not every role rewards potential over experience. Legal, finance, and compliance demand expertise you can't fake. A first-time CFO learning during a funding round creates existential risk. The decision framework: How costly is a mistake in this role? If errors are recoverable, lean toward potential. If errors are catastrophic, pay for experience.
AI changes the calculus further. Knowledge gaps that once required years to close can now shrink in weeks. A potential hire with strong fundamentals and AI fluency can ramp faster than ever before. Law firms are cutting entry-level positions, but for startups, this creates opportunity—high-potential candidates who can't break into traditional firms are available, hungry, and willing to prove themselves.
When evaluating candidates without traditional credentials, filter for curiosity and resourcefulness. Curiosity shows up in questions—does the candidate ask about your business, your challenges, your customers? Resourcefulness shows up in stories about figuring things out without guidance, learning from YouTube, cold-calling experts, building prototypes with determination.
When a hire fails, blame your process, not the candidate. You chose them. You set the expectations. You created the environment. Hire for curiosity and resourcefulness first. Everything else can be taught, bought, or built.
Watch the Full Episode on Hiring for Experience vs. Potential below:
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