Recently I have been helping ortho startup fix their hiring mistakes. This got me to thinking.
Why do startup leaders make this blunder?
I believe that these startup leaders fall into the Pedigree Trap.
They hunt for the "Safe Bet"—the veteran with twenty years at a multi-billion dollar conglomerate and a title like VP of Sales or VP of Global Marketing.
On paper, it looks like a winning move. In reality, you might be hiring a liability.
In a startup, experience is often just a record of how well someone navigated a system with infinite resources. What you actually need are scars.
The "Pedigree" vs. "Velocity"
A Big Ortho executive has a high starting point of status. They know how to run a meeting, they know the "corporate speak," and they have a deep Rolodex. But in a startup, status doesn't move the needle. Velocity does.
You need the person who can identify a surgical bottleneck at 7:00 AM and have a redesigned prototype or a logistics solution by 5:00 PM. The corporate veteran is used to a 12-month development cycle and a legal team of forty. In your world, if the prototype fails, the company might not make payroll. You don't need a manager; you need a builder who is ready ...
