17/10/2025
There is great tension for early-stage founders with the concept of building your company as a "family" versus a high-performing team.
Especially when you start, hiring and firing aggressively and quickly could make or break a company.
You have to move fast and secure an amazing engineers, and be quick to let them go if you see they are not a good fit or toxic.
In one of my own startups, we hired a UX designer and made a decision to end the contract a week later because of some Behavioural signals we saw that followed up with discussion of the real motivations of joining our team.
In other startups I advised, we hired top execs and decided to part ways with them just months after they joined due to lack of alignment on vision and needs.
As founders, we want people to feel home when they come to work, feel a part of the team and be kind and accountable. We give them swag, tell them to remove their shoes at work, and make the office very comfy. However, we want people to be high-performing, sometimes competitive and fast-learners - there is no tension between those, right?
However, when things go not as planned, when someone is not performing, or not a fit, you suddenly want to remove them from the "family" - that's a tough thought. This happens, by the way. in all families, when you have people that are isolated or no one cares about. They might have done something that did not fit to the norms of the family, or made someone irritated.
Here is my take, as a founder you can call it whatever you want 'Family', 'Team', 'Club'. The most important thing is to be clear with new hires and joiners and with existing members about expectations - you from your teams, and from your team of you.
Write it down, put it on the wall as a set of values or leadership principles - make it super clear what it means to be a part.
Being transparent and open about expectations makes you one step ahead to creating a high-performing startup team, the one you need to make your startup grow and succeed.
