If Everyone Is Firing, Should We Be Hiring?

A Recap of This Week’s Teaching Startup Q&A Newsletter

The house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes, the house takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big, and then you take the house.

Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful

The first quote is from Danny Ocean in the Oceans 11 remake. The second is from Warren Buffet. Let’s knock the cool factor down a few more notches and add a bit of my own advice.

If you want to succeed with a startup, you need to take advantage of every irrational spike in supply or demand.

This wave of layoffs in the tech sector might be one of those irrational spikes, this time in supply of talent.

Unless you believe AI will replace EVERYONE…

In this week’s issue of the Teaching Startup Q&A Newsletter, a member wrote in with a question about pulling the trigger on some planned hiring.

Question: We’ve been systematically executing according to our business plan, and we’re planning on growing quickly later this year into next year. However, it wouldn’t be unthinkable to kickstart that growth plan early and take advantage of all these recent cast-offs from other companies, to lock them in less expensively than we would be able to otherwise. Does that seem like a reasonable strategy?

By all means, yes. It’s conventional wisdom that down periods in the larger macroeconomic environment are the better times to start a business. And those irrational spikes in supply and demand are one of the reasons why.

When people start to panic, like when everyone thinks AI is going to universally replace the need for skilled labor, they start to throw out the good with the dead weight. Are we seeing that now?

When should you fire yourself?

The second Q&A in this week’s newsletter asks that very question.

I founded [my company] four years ago and it feels like yesterday. I really loved the first three years out of the last four, and while nothing much has changed, I think I might just be done. Does this happen often? Is it just a lull? Should I power through it? Should I transition out?

There isn’t a simple answer here, but there are indeed a few more questions that few founders ask themselves. Alicia Parr, an 8-year founder/CEO and an expert in all things Human and Resources, gives some pretty solid questions every founder needs to ask themselves before they make these kinds of decisions.

And yes, it does happen often. Almost always, in fact.

So are you getting greedy?

In last week’s issue, we teed up this week’s answer with a poll of our member entrepreneurs to gauge their hiring outlook for this year. We have the results of that poll this week with some analysis, plus a new poll about how entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs.

Teaching Startup provides access to actionable, insightful, and honest advice for entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders at all experience levels, regardless of their connections or resources.

Members get access to over 700 questions from hundreds of members, answers from hand-picked experienced serial entrepreneurs, advice posts and member polls, plus new Q&A each week in an exclusive newsletter. It’s 80% of the benefit of a traditional advisor, and it’s a fraction of the cost.

Get a free trial of next week’s Teaching Startup Q&A Newsletter.