Building Your Core Team: Where to Start, What to Build, How to Grow

Avomind
5 days ago
5 min read

In collaboration with BEAM

Insights from an Avomind founder training led by Olena Didenko-Weber, Head of Operations at Avomind

Hiring your first core team is one of the most defining moments in a startup’s journey. It’s also one of the most underestimated. In an early-stage environment, every hire has an outsized impact - on culture, execution speed, and ultimately on whether the company reaches its next milestone.

This was the central theme of a recent online training hosted by Avomind together with BEAM, where Olena Didenko-Weber, Head of Operations at Avomind, worked hands-on with founders from BEAM’s portfolio on how to approach early hiring strategically.

Rather than focusing on generic hiring advice, the session addressed the real challenges VC-backed founders face: limited resources, high investor expectations, and the pressure to build a team that can grow with the company. Below, we expand on the core ideas from the session and why they matter for founders building their core team today.

Why Your First Hires Are Strategic Decisions

Early hires do far more than fill open roles. As discussed at the start of the session, your first team members define how your company thinks, moves, and solves problems. They shape the culture long before values are written down, and they influence execution long before processes exist.

From an investor perspective, early hiring decisions are also a signal. Strong first hires show that a founder understands their business priorities, can attract talent despite uncertainty, and is building a company that can scale beyond the founding team.

Hiring mistakes at this stage are particularly costly - not only financially, but in lost time, momentum, and morale. That’s why founders were encouraged to reframe hiring as a strategic lever, not an operational task.

A key question Olena posed during the training was:

Which single role, if filled today, would unlock our next major milestone?

Closely tied to this is a second question many founders overlook:

What do our investors expect the company to achieve in the next 12–18 months, and which hires make that possible?

From Founder Profile to Core Roles

One of the most common early-stage mistakes is hiring based on what a “typical” startup team looks like, rather than what this specific company needs at its current stage.

During the session, Olena walked founders through a more grounded approach: starting with the founder profile and business model.

For example, a solo technical founder may need their first hire to be commercially oriented - someone who can handle product feedback, customers, or early sales. A non-technical founder, on the other hand, may need a founding engineer or technical lead to turn vision into execution.

Rather than fixed job titles, the focus should be on problem ownership. Early core roles are often broad by design and evolve quickly as the company grows. What matters is that each hire directly contributes to traction, learning, or revenue.

The session explored common early-team setups across different models:

SaaS startups often prioritize a technical lead, product ownership, and customer success early on.
Consumer apps tend to focus on engineering, growth, and community-building capabilities.
Marketplaces frequently need strong operational generalists alongside business development and engineering talent.

In all cases, the principle remains the same: hire for what moves the company forward now, not for what a mature org chart suggests you’ll need later.

What Makes a Great First Hire

When hiring for the core team, experience alone is rarely the best predictor of success. Early-stage environments demand a specific mindset - one that goes beyond role definitions and comfort with structure.

Throughout the training, Olena emphasized that strong first hires share a few critical characteristics. They are comfortable operating with ambiguity, able to switch between strategic thinking and hands-on execution, and willing to take ownership without waiting for perfect instructions.

Equally important is the ability to build culture proactively. Early hires don’t just “fit” the culture - they actively shape it through how they communicate, make decisions, and handle pressure.

Founders were encouraged to look for signals such as:

A track record of learning quickly or operating in fast-changing environments
Willingness to take responsibility beyond a narrow role
Examples of initiative, problem-solving, or entrepreneurial thinking

In short, the best early hires are not those who need a company to be ready—but those who help make it ready.

Designing a Lean but Rigorous Interview Process

Speed matters in early hiring, but speed without structure often leads to poor decisions. One of the most practical takeaways from the session was a simple, repeatable interview process designed specifically for core team hires.

The recommended approach balances efficiency with depth. It starts with a founder-led conversation focused on motivation, vision, and alignment. This ensures that candidates understand the reality of the stage and are genuinely excited about the journey ahead.

Next comes a case study or working session. Rather than testing hypothetical knowledge, this step focuses on how candidates think, prioritize, and approach real problems similar to those they’ll face on the job.

Finally, a more informal culture-focused conversation - sometimes even a founder dinner - helps assess trust, communication style, and long-term chemistry. At this stage, technical skill is assumed; what matters is whether the founder and candidate can realistically work together under pressure.

This process helps founders move quickly while still making high-quality decisions.

Equity, Compensation, and Transparency

Compensation conversations are often uncomfortable for founders, especially when cash is limited. However, avoiding clarity early on creates far bigger issues later.

As discussed during the session, early core hires often accept lower cash compensation in exchange for equity and long-term upside. Typical equity ranges for early key hires can vary, but what matters most is transparency.

Being open about vesting schedules, company valuation, and risk builds trust and sets realistic expectations. Founders who communicate clearly early are far more likely to retain strong team members as the company grows.

Where Founders Actually Find Their Core Team

Another recurring theme during the training was that the best early hires rarely come from traditional job postings alone.

Warm introductions - via investors, advisors, former colleagues, or other founders—remain one of the most effective channels. Founder and operator communities, whether on Slack, WhatsApp, or LinkedIn, also play a critical role in accessing talent that is already familiar with startup realities.

When internal networks are limited, targeted external recruitment support can help founders move faster without compromising on quality - especially for highly critical or hard-to-fill roles.

Measuring Early Hiring Success

Finally, the session addressed the importance of tracking hiring outcomes, even at a small scale. Metrics such as time to hire, cost per hire, and early turnover rates provide valuable feedback on whether the hiring process is working.

For early-stage teams, these metrics are not about optimization - they’re about learning. They help founders spot patterns, adjust expectations, and improve decision-making before the team scales.

How Avomind Works with Founders and VCs

At Avomind, we partner closely with founders and VC firms like BEAM to support one of the most critical phases of company building: assembling the core team.

We help founders clarify which roles matter most at their current stage, design hiring processes that work in practice, and access talent that can grow with the business. The Avomind x BEAM session reinforced what we see every day: getting early hiring right is one of the highest-leverage decisions a founder can make.

If you’re approaching your first hires - or preparing to scale your core team - we’re happy to support you through the process.