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Fried: Founders should avoid hiring a second person as long as possible

Jason Fried · Jason Fried challenges your thinking on fundraising, goals, growth, and more · Dec 17, 2023 · at 1:12:38

37signals co-founder Jason Fried warns early-stage bootstrapped founders against making premature hires.

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“Figure out how to do as much as they can on their own before they bring on a second person. Like, Really work and struggle through something on your own. The moment you bring on someone else, you've got another mouth to feed. It's becomes expensive. You get another personality to deal with. The more you rely on them. And if they turn out to be the wrong person, you have to lose them. You don't have anyone to do the work that now you've have them doing. And now you've got to do it. You're not going to be any good at it.”

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