Been up to my ears with A.C. finishing the due diligence responses to VCs. One thing come up that is a red flag: how much cash to plan on spending on recruiting people?
The VCs have been pushing back on the recruiting plan (A.C. wants to use the buddy system for the first 10 and then 100 percent recruited for a 25% annual wages fee). That is realistic. Hopeing for half to be found by employees is foolish. It is like whistling while walking through the graveyard. It denies what is most likely to happen: you need cash to pay for getting people.
The alternative is to turn employees into professional recruiters doing the scouting and cold calling. That is a waste of time to save pennies. It delays time to market of the first product and is not likely to produce better people to recruit.
BOTTOM LINE: Plan on spending real cash on real people for real recruiting. Do not deny reality. Skip internal cold calling. Go to professionals. Focus instead on what you do best: deliver the first product to market ASAP. Beat your competition with better people and quicker time to launch. Plan on it.