You need to simplify the value proposition in the company's metrics for success on a whiteboard.

Possibly the most important thing you do is actually edit the team.

Most people, most great people even are ammunition. But what you need in your company are barrels. You can only shoot through the number of unique barrels you have, so that's how the velocity of your company improves... is by adding barrels, and then you stock them with ammunition and then you can do a lot.

It's never a metric, it's where the person is going or not. Metrics are used to make things work better, but don't necessarily make a business better.

Most people will solve the problems they know how to solve. Roughly speaking they will solve B+ problems instead of A+ problems. A+ problems are high impact problems for your company but they're difficult problems.

It's actually a good thing if you do reference checks on somebody and half the people you call say they are a micromanager and the other half say they actually give me a lot of responsibility. That's a feature not a bug.

Every good startup is a cult. And it's really hard to create a cult if you are sharing space with people. Because a cult means you think you are better than every other startup, you have a special way of doing things that's better than anyone else in the world.