Rules on hiring

Important lessons from 6 months of searching for a winner

I’m really excited that to share that Jamie McNeill is joining Shapeshift.

It’s only been 3 weeks, but customers have already told me how much they love him and Jamie has freed my headspace and calendar to focus on more strategic tasks.

Here are a few hiring lessons I want to remind myself of as I think about team building for the long run.

And as you are thinking about growing headcount in 2026, I hope this helps you too:

1. An S class hire is like playing a game on cheat codes. Standard “B class” hires will do quality work (that’s what you hired them to do), but S class hires will do the same work faster and more autonomously.

2. It’s hard to tell the difference between a S hire and a B hire. The only way to know is to talk to a lot of candidates OR find someone in your network you can benchmark against.

They’re usually more senior and not ready to leave, but you want to use them as a north star, and find the candidate who will evolve into the next Sasha, Karina, or Alex.

3. Build your roster of all stars before you need them. A mentor of mine keeps a shortlist of execs she wants to hire in her iPhone contacts and keeps relationships warm. She doesn’t waste any time cold starting a hiring process and is quick to move when the timing is right.

4. It’s really tempting to prematurely hire a B candidate. The reason you’re making the hire is because the business pain is so acute that you feel like you have to settle to create more bandwidth.

This is a trap. B candidates don’t actually give you time back, because you can’t completely trust them.

Letting an employee go is way worse than rejecting a candidate. Trust me.

5. I’ve learned to detect whether a candidate is a B hire if I feel any shred of uncertainty throughout the interview process.

Saying no is never easy. But it’s kinder to reject B candidates mid-process than to wait for A candidates to finish interviewing.

I rather miss out on a good candidate than hire a bad employee.

6. Never skip the backchannel.

This might be the most important point of all.

I almost hired a candidate who interviewed well, but would’ve been a terrible employee. But I was saved by the extra day I took to do confidential backchannels.

Today, you can easily use LinkedIn to find out who managed a candidate. Great candidates will have managers that rave about them.

7. If it’s not a good fit, don’t force it.

Jamie was not the first candidate I gave an offer to. I tried so hard to woo the other candidate that I even took them to a movie premier with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Ultimately, the other candidate was looking for something more stable and I’m glad we didn’t force it.

Jamie was willing to take on the risk and reward of joining a very fragile startup and has already risen to the occasion in the face of unexpected existential threats to the business.

Don’t be too sad if it doesn’t work out. The right hire is out there.