The Startup Checklist

17Round out Your Team with Employees and Freelancers

Think about the number of distinct job titles/responsibilities that are needed by McDonald's Corporation. With 1.8 million employees in 112 countries, my guess is that they have hundreds—if not over a thousand—separate roles to be filled. These range from the CEO to a counter person in the Wichita downtown drive-through; from a director of human resources to a U.S. quality systems/food safety manager specializing in potato and oil products.

By contrast, consider a hot dog vendor on a street corner. The fact is that virtually all of those same roles are required . . . it's just that they're all filled by the same person. The counter person making your hot dog happens to be the CEO of the company, who manages his own health insurance and, by the way, is responsible for ensuring that his potato knishes are safe to eat.

Similarly, in a startup, there are an infinite number of roles that can be filled, but all are filled by a limited number of people who are multitasking. For example, in the canonical “hacker/hustler” startup team, the former may combine every role from chief technology officer (CTO) to junior assistant regression tester in the quality assurance department, and the latter, every role from CEO to night shift call center operator in the customer service department.

What this means is that a startup will take all the help it can afford, shedding whatever burden is possible from the shoulders of the founder(s), who ...