Howard Lindzon described the current state of startups really well the other day on the Animal Spirits podcast. I’m paraphrasing, but he said something like:

There are lots of good ideas. There are lots of founders that want to pursue those ideas. There’s lots of cheap capital for founders to raise and build companies around those ideas. But there’s an extreme shortage of qualified operators to go and execute on those ideas.

There aren’t enough high-quality operators that have actually built companies from the ground up. As a result, we’re seeing significant wage inflation across almost every function inside of startups. The ability to recruit and retain top talent is more important than it has ever been in tech (Apple just offered $180k bonuses to engineers to get them not to leave and go work on the metaverse or crypto). Good companies won’t have a problem raising capital, but almost all of them will struggle to hire the best people.

Build a brand that attracts both customers and potential employees. Hire managers with high levels of followership.

Be a company that people want to work at with leaders that people want to work for. Nothing is more important in this market.