Hiring Plans Should Be Cautious Even After Successful Fundraising
I’d like to introduce a cautionary case study article that really made me realize that “hiring plans should be conducted carefully even after successful fundraising”.
Saito: What was the problem with how you used the funds?Matsuda: Most of the talent we gathered with the raised funds didn’t contribute much and ultimately couldn’t do anything. They basically had no interest in the actual work of food distribution, only looked at numbers to think about business, and never wanted to go to the actual workplace. They wouldn’t meet with customers to listen to their stories either.
I think it took considerable courage for Hachimen-Roppi to publicly share their hiring failures after fundraising, so I’m grateful to them for that.
Reading it as text, everyone should understand that “Well, of course. Even if you can raise funds, you should have a proper hiring plan and use money appropriately where it should be used.” However, the reality is that things don’t go so smoothly in practice.
I think you can acquire “talented people” to some extent by having clean backgrounds and titles and offering decent salaries and treatment. However, if you don’t specifically identify “what do you want to entrust them with? Are there any misunderstandings between both parties about the work you want to entrust?” after hiring, talented people quickly become people who can’t do anything.
From the hiring plan stage, I think you should break things down in detail until you can specifically verbalize “we’re recruiting for this position to handle this work.” If it’s vague like “we want to hire someone knowledgeable about EC (e-commerce)” or “we want to hire someone knowledgeable about logistics,” mismatches will occur.
For example, EC or logistics are too broad categories. Within EC, there are various tasks like whether you want them to handle product buying, improve delivery operations, etc. If you don’t properly communicate to candidates during interviews which part you want them to handle with what expectations, hiring mismatches will occur immediately.
I’ve also often heard and actually seen many cases where talented people from large corporations don’t immediately become effective forces at startups.
Before fundraising, I think the key to avoiding major failures is to verbalize and document in detail: “How will the raised money be used?”, “If funds are used for hiring, which positions do you want to hire how many people for, and what specific tasks do you want hired people to handle from their first day?” Reading the article “Confusion Began with Nearly 500 Million Yen Fundraising” made me think about this again.
That’s all from the Gemba.