For most of the early hires you make in a startup, experience doesn't matter very much, and you should go for aptitude.

If you look at successful pivots, they almost always are a pivot into something that the founder wanted. Not a random made up idea.

Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.

Employees will only add more value over time.

At YC we have this public phrase, and it's relentlessly resourceful.

Because so few people make an actual long term commitment to what they're building, the ones that do have a huge advantage.

A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.