"Don't hire your friends", Jeremy Allaire (founder of Brightcove)

Jeremy Allaire talked to us about recruiting in startups. Jeremy is the founder and CEO of Brightcove, an Internet TV platform. He was previously an entrepreneur in residence at General Catalyst Partners. Prior to that, he became CTO of Macromedia (he created the Flash platform) when his previous company was acquired by Macromedia in 2001 (Macromedia was later acquired by Adobe for $3.5B).

Brightcove was founded in 2004 and has received ~$100million in financing since then (read NYTimes coverage in 05). The main investors are General Catalyst, Accel, The NYtimes, American Online and IAC.

He talked about building an entrepreneurial organization:

• The first inclination when you start a company is to hire your friends. BAD IDEA! Some friends may become marginalized and some other will outgrow when the company grows
• Try to hire somebody for which the job is not a lateral job but something that challenges him (i.e., it stretches the person)
• If you see somebody in your organization hiring B players, both should go
• Look for interdisciplinary individuals
• Run a meritocracy
• 3 attributes to build a team: smart, nice and hard working individuals
• When to fire? when people do not perform or people have personality conflicts