After product-market fit, you should probably be spending between a third and a half of your time hiring. It sounds crazy, and there will always be a ton of other work, but it's the highest-leverage thing you can do. Keith Rabois believes the CEO should interview every candidate until the company hits at least 500 employees.

Don't hire a VP of Sales (or any role) before you've done the job yourself. The classic mistake is a hacker-CEO hiring a VP of Sales because he doesn't want to get his hands dirty. If you don't understand a role in detail, you can't hire well for it.

By at least a 10x margin, the best candidate sources are friends and friends of friends. Go after the best ones relentlessly even if you don't think you can get them—if it works 5% of the time, it's still worth it. As soon as a new hire proves she's a star, sit her down and wring out the names of everyone else you should try to hire.

Andrew Mason: 'Values are a decision-making framework that empower individuals to make the decision that you, the founder, would make, in situations where there are conflicting interests (e.g. growth vs. customer satisfaction).' Diversity of opinions is good; diversity of values in a startup is bad.

Pay slightly below to roughly market salaries with very generous equity—about double what your investors suggest for the first 20 hires (roughly 1.5% for the first engineer, 0.25% for the twentieth). If someone wants an above-market salary, they should go work at a big company with no equity upside.

Watch for red flags like focus on title or 'how many reports will be in my organization'—these usually mean the person won't succeed in a startup. If you have a difficult-to-articulate desire to pass, pass.

Never met a newbie founder who fires fast enough; never met one who didn't learn this lesson after a few years. When it's obviously not working, it's unlikely to start working—and everyone else at the company is probably aware the person isn't working out before you are.

Companies generally work better when they are smaller. Don't hire for the sake of hiring—hire because there is no other way to do what you want to do. Always think about the least amount of work you can feasibly do, and the smallest team to do it.