Across 1,200 workspaces, 43% regretted their first hire within a year — and the regret tracked the timing, not the calibre. Hiring before a repeatable demand signal nearly tripled it.

Write the role as a falsifiable bet before the JD: “We’re hiring X so Y happens by Z; we’ll know we were wrong if W.” If you can’t complete W, you’re not ready to hire — you’re ready to decide.

Nandini Shah killed a working lending product — and a term sheet sized for it — to build the ledger 40,000 traders now open first. The hire that survived was the one she let change the company.