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When Is The Right Time For Startups To Hire?

2026-05-06 · 18:41 UTC ·Standard Capital ·1 min read

Brief

Dalton Caldwell and Paul Buchheit hold a conversation on startup hiring timing (Standard Capital, published 2026-05-06). They argue that hiring too early (pre‑PMF) slows progress while post‑PMF teams often hire too slowly. Buchheit shares hiring anecdotes from Google (employee #23), including his “Did you mean?” prototype, Noam Shazeer, and Ilya Sutskever’s early interview.

Why it matters

Hiring before product–market fit (pre‑PMF) commonly slows startups rather than accelerating them; conversely, startups that have achieved PMF often hire too slowly and risk missing scale opportunities.

Key details

  • Paul Buchheit (Google employee #23) built the first prototype of Google’s “Did you mean?” feature, used interview prompts asking applicants how to improve it, and recommended hiring Noam Shazeer (later a transformer co‑creator).
  • Dalton Caldwell and Paul recount Ilya Sutskever’s interview for the role that became OpenAI cofounder, illustrating early talent identification in AI (video published 2026-05-06 on Standard Capital).
Source evidence

Dalton Caldwell and Paul Buchheit discuss the right time for a startup to start hiring.

One of the most common mistakes startups make is hiring too early. Counterintuitively, hiring makes a pre-PMF move more slowly rather than speeding them up. On the other hand its common for post-PMF startup to hire too slowly.

Paul was employee #23 at Google and during his time at Google he interviewed and hired some of the most talented engineers in the world. Paul created the first prototype of Google's "Did you mean?" feature in Google search and would ask Google applicants for ideas on how to improve the feature. He ended up interviewing and recommending that Google hire Noam Shazeer, one of the creators of the transformer.

In addition, Paul and Dalton discuss Ilya Sutskever's interview for the role of OpenAI cofounder far before it was called OpenAI.

Channel: Standard Capital
Published: 2026-05-06
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7RnTKsASoc