Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Sell only what you believe
Recruiting Andrew
Andrew, a classmate from AT Kearney who lived in DC, was never going to leave the firm, and almost no one had heard of Instacart. Nilam Ganenthiran called him a month into his own job at Instacart to recruit him, and Andrew joined four months later, which felt like an eternity. In the meantime Andrew commuted from DC.
An honest pitch
It worked because Ganenthiran believed what he was pitching. He never sugarcoated how hard it would be, and he used humor, especially in the early days. When Andrew asked whether he should move, Ganenthiran told him his own family hadn't moved to San Francisco partly because he didn't know whether the company would be around the following year.
Honest can still be inspiring. That level of vulnerability is something people sometimes relate to, since they don't want to hear all the hype.
Why does admitting risk make a pitch credible?
In 1966, psychologist Elliot Aronson and colleagues ran an experiment in which people listened to a recording of a contestant answering quiz questions. When a highly capable contestant spilled coffee on himself, listeners rated him as more likable. The effect is called the pratfall effect. The same slip made an average contestant less likable.
Why do startups recruit people they know?
Early startup hires accept pay cuts and risk with little track record to judge, so founders lean on people whose work they have already seen. A personal connection provides evidence about character that a resume cannot. Sociologist Mark Granovetter's 1973 paper The Strength of Weak Ties found that acquaintances are important sources of job leads. His paper appeared in the American Journal of Sociology.
More from Joys of Compounding
