How to spot a phony
You’re going to be scammed, tricked and deceived so many times in your professional career. It’s not always going to be outright. You’re going to hire someone who wasn’t as skilled as they claimed or bring on a consultant who can’t deliver what they promised. For startup founders/operators, it’s going to happen over and over again. Why? Because as a founder, you have to figure out every single aspect of running a company, and you just don’t have expertise across all of them. You’re overseeing everything including employee benefits, real estate, engineering productivity metrics, marketing channels… the list goes on and on. And you don’t have a lot of time to spend on each one. Why is it so hard?
The father away you are from mastery, the harder it is to see the gradients of quality above your knowledge level. As you become more knowledgeable about a subject, you can understand more of the signs of expertise that are imperceptible to a novice. For example: My wife grew up as a classically trained musician, playing multiple instruments, performing at Carnegie Hall, etc. whereas I have no musical bone in my body. An out-of-tune amateur performance makes her wince, whereas a professional-level performance makes her heart soar. I’m just sitting there thinking they all sound equally great.
Similarly, a startup founder with an engineering background might have a hard time differentiating who is the better marketing agency to hire. They all sound great, it’s impossible to tell. On top of that, there are so many people trying to sell into startup founders — especially right after they’ve announced a huge funding round. They’re all deploying their resources to purchase new software, hire new employees/consultants, etc. - so there are a ton of professional sharks out there - but so many are full of shit and of low quality. Here’s my guide on how to spot these people.
Outline what your actual needs are
Don’t get trapped buying something you don’t need because it sounds good. You have limited time & money - so be strategic about how you’re spending both and what is appropriate to spend it on at your particular stage and circumstances.
If you’re struggling to nail down your sales process and a fancy VP of sales comes along, that may sound alluring. Maybe it’s a silver bullet to solve all your problems!… It’s not. It’s an expensive detour. Determine what you actually need. Many others have been through this stage - see what has worked for them and learn from their experiences.
When you’re clear on your needs, you’re less likely to succumb to hiring someone who is distracting you with a pitch that sounds good, but isn’t what you need.
Construct a picture of their actual skills based on their experience.
When people tout their experiences and credentials, they often talk about the places they’ve worked and the projects they worked on. “I worked on the Uber driver acquisition team” or “I worked on Robinhood’s cybersecurity team” all sounds very impressive. Hey - this person was at X company doing Y, they must be an expert! What you really need to do is:
Get context around when that person joined a specific company/dept. Leading Stripe or Airbnb’s marketing team when it was 5 vs. 100 people are two very different experiences. Not good or bad, but one person might be more hands-on, good at building an early challenger brand, or have effective scrappy tactics, whereas the other person might be better at protecting the reputation of a brand, scaling & managing a large org, and managing a large marketing budget.
Understand what was their specific role for each of the experiences they had. People pitch themselves with generic terms like “leading the product team at ____”. Well what were you responsible for, did you lead the strategy or was it more of an execution role? Did you have a multi-tiered, heavily matrixed team or was it a small team of 2? How many rungs away were they from reporting into the founder/CEO? The same job title can mean vastly different things.
How long were they at a role, what were their contributions and what skills did they build during that time? We all know how long it takes to get acclimated and become valuable in a role. If someone has done a 8 month stint at a company, how much could they have reasonably contributed during that time? How many reps did someone get at solving a specific challenge to get mastery if they were getting onboarded and offboarded every year?
Understand what they are actually good at
When talking to someone who sounds knowledgeable, it’s important to try to differentiate between people who are good at doing vs coaching vs communicating.
Good at doing - They’ve mastered a skill based on direct experience. They’ve made mistakes and seen successes and know how to do it in a variety of different environments.
Example: A B2C customer acquisition expert who has had 3-4 meaningful stints at B2C companies, first in analyst/manager roles, eventually leading teams.
Good at coaching - They might not have much/any direct experience or skill in an area, but they’ve spent time understanding and coaching it. They have value through the knowledge and pattern-matching they’ve seen at a higher level.
Example: A head of marketing who oversees B2C customer acquisition but never directly ran any campaigns. Their experience may be helpful as a consultant or in a managerial position, but probably not as a first marketing hire, which requires a lot of execution.
Good at communicating a subject - This is someone who is skilled at talking/writing about a particular subject. They write content on LinkedIn or Substack and are “influencers” within their domains. Their value comes from their ability to communicate and the broader landscape they observe.
Example: A writer who covers B2C marketing on their weekly Substack newsletter and knows all the latest tools but has never deployed a campaign. You might learn from their writing and they are knowledgeable, but they have never developed any creative assets.
I’ve rarely seen someone who can be good at more than 2 of the 3 skills above. Its just too hard to dedicate enough time being good at all 3. The trouble is when Founders mistake one for the other. Someone who is good at writing about sales isn’t necessarily the best sales person.
My advice
Get help pattern matching
Having the instinct to spot frauds and phonies comes from pattern matching, which only comes from experience and mistakes. You can get help by bringing on an advisor in the areas you are not strong. A very small amount of time from a very experienced person is often all you need to help you vet people and gut check decisions. Advisory boards can be equity based or paid consultants (or unpaid generous friends), but just a small amount of time goes a long way.
Build out a strong and diverse network
The best way to get access to high quality people, consultants, vendors, etc. is to have a strong network of trusted people you can get recommendations from. Many of the best people who can do the work are terrible at communicating externally so they can only be found through private networks. Conversely some of the loudest people on social media and the press are the least capable at doing the actual work. A strong network also allows you to backchannel reference people and firms you want to engage - so you have a true sense of what you’re getting into.
Test for the present-day skills
The earlier stage you are, the more important it is you find people who are really going to roll up their sleeves and do the work, not just talk about it. The best way to do this is to engage them in actual work. Talk through the problems you’re facing and see how they would tackle them in real-time to get a true sense of their skills and ability to think on their feet.
Be prepared to make mistakes
With the sheer number of decisions to make, you’re going to make mistakes. Create the right frameworks to give yourself the necessary check-in points and outs in case you made the wrong judgement call. And when you do realize you’ve been fooled, accept the reality, don’t take it personally, correct the issue, learn from it and move on. The faster you can recover, the faster you can re-orient toward your north star.
UPCOMING PROGRAMMING
Startup Founders and Operators Dinner (NYC, Feb 13, 6pm ET)
Join us for dinner with other NYC startup founders and operators. This is an opportunity to get to meet about a dozen other startup people based in NYC in a casual setting.
Startup PR & Press (Virtual, Feb 15, 4pm ET)
A PR veteran, Aurli Bokovza, founder of Illume PR, will share her advice for startups on how they should think about PR, based on her experience working with brands big and small, from Bitstrips to Qualcomm (This is a virtual Zoom event).
Startup Idea Brainstorming - Conversation and Drinks (NYC, Feb 21, 6pmET)
Are you a founder or aspiring founder who wants to brainstorm startup ideas? Come hang out with other people in the same mindset to get feedback on your idea, build on each other's thoughts & imagine the future together. (Open to the public).
Ask a VC: Heidi Roizen, Threshold Ventures (Virtual, Feb 22, 4pm ET)
Heidi is a VC, corporate director, and self-described ‘recovering’ entrepreneur. She is a Partner at Threshold Ventures as well as a corporate director for Planet PBC (NYSE:PL), Upside Foods, and Polarr. She also leads Stanford’s Threshold Venture Fellows Program in the Management Science and Engineering department and serves on the Advisory Councils for the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and Stanford Technology Ventures.