by Sedef Şahin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sedef-sahin/

At pre-seed/seed, “people” isn’t an HR topic. It’s a product and strategy topic

Your first hires don’t just help you ship. They decide what you ship, how you ship, and what kind of company you become when things get hard. So the goal isn’t to hire fast. The goal is to build a team that increases your odds of finding product-market fit.

This page is about how to think and act before you have budget, process, or a recruiting engine.

Why “people” is a strategic decision from Day 1

In the early stage, a hire is not just “extra hands.” One person can change how the whole company works.

Because the team is small (1–10 people), each hire has outsized impact.

They don’t add 10% capacity — they can either upgrade or damage the way decisions and work happen.

So hiring isn’t just “fill a role.” It’s “choose the kind of company you’re becoming.”

• If you hire to fill gaps (“we need a backend dev”), you often end up with random pieces that don’t fit well together.
• If you hire for impact (“we need someone who makes how we build better”), you create a team that improves over time.

Why early hiring mistakes are expensive and cultural (not just operational)

Early hiring mistakes rarely fail because of skill alone. They fail because of:

• Misaligned pace: one person wants speed, another needs certainty
• Conflicting taste: different bars for quality create constant friction
• Different ethics under pressure: shortcuts, blame, avoidance
• Founder avoidance: hiring to escape hard responsibilities (sales, clarity, decisions)