Step 1: Read the hiring plan as a list of functions
The round's hiring plan lists titles: a finance lead, a support lead, a marketer, a sales lead. Rewrite each as the functions it would own, and sort each function's work with the First-Function Matrix: which parts are repetitive with a checkable answer in a system you run, and which are judgement. The finance lead's plan is mostly reconciliation and close until the company is larger; the support lead's is mostly first-line categories; the marketer's is mostly the measured loop; the sales lead's is mostly qualification and hygiene until the pipeline is real. Those first-column parts are the functions to give owners now.
The persona piece for founders describes the same sort from the founder's seat.
Step 2: Record the baseline while the founder still does it
For two weeks, log the founder's and early team's hours on each function with the baseline time template: matching transactions, answering the support inbox, writing pages, updating the CRM. This is the only baseline the company will ever have for these functions, because after the hires the functions will be theirs and the comparison will be lost. It is also the number that tells the founder which function to hand over first, which is usually the one that takes the most evenings.
A founder who skips the baseline will never know what the first roles returned.
Step 3: Hire the first two roles in order of evidence
Reconciliation and first-line support have the clearest evidence and the fastest approval records: a Finance Controller FTE proposing matches against the bank feed and the ledger, and a Customer Support FTE answering one category from the knowledge base with citations. Hire the first, run its thirty-day playbook with the founder approving in minutes a morning, and hire the second when the Second-Role Test says the first is settled, which post-funding is usually the second review. The first-run wizard pre-fills everything from the company's site and profile; the founder writes the three lists and connects scoped accounts.
Two settled roles before any human hire arrives is the target.
- Role one: Finance Controller FTE, reconciliation
- Role two: Customer Support FTE, one category
- Both under their thirty-day playbooks, founder approving
Step 4: Add search visibility and CRM hygiene as the hires approach
In the month before the marketer and the sales lead arrive, hire a Search Visibility FTE and take the baseline sample of the prompt set, and hire an SDR FTE for CRM hygiene and qualification with the protected list written. Neither will be settled by the time the humans arrive, and that is fine: each human inherits a role in its first cycle with a remit, a baseline, and a record beginning, and becomes its manager. The marketer's first quarter starts from a sampled prompt set and rewrites already under way; the sales lead's starts from a CRM that is being made honest.
The ninety-day search visibility playbook and the sixty-day SDR playbook are what each hire runs from day one.
Step 5: Rewrite the job descriptions around judgement
With the functions owned, the hiring plan's job descriptions change. The finance lead is hired for the close, the model, and the board, with reconciliation as a direct report to review. The support lead is hired for escalations, the knowledge base's strategy, and the team's growth, with first line owned. The marketer is hired for positioning and the flagship pieces, with the loop running. The sales lead is hired to sell and to build the team, with qualification and hygiene owned. The candidates are different, and better, because the roles are judgement roles from the first day.
The hybrid team design whitepaper describes what each hire manages on arrival.
Step 6: Hand over on each hire's first day, and route
On each hire's first day, walk them through their function's workspace: the remit's three lists, the Brand Brain with its provenance, the Targets, the approval record so far, and the send-back reasons the founder wrote. Route the role's approvals to the hire from that day, and take the founder off the approval path. The hire's first monthly review is their first act of management of a direct report that has been working since before they arrived. The founder reads the workforce view from then on.
The first-day story in the library shows what the hire sees, from the wizard's side.
What does done look like?
A baseline sheet for every function the founder used to do; two settled Digital FTEs, finance and support, with promoted routine classes; two more, search visibility and SDR, in their first cycle with baselines taken; job descriptions rewritten around judgement; each human hire routed as approver of their function from their first day with a handover walk-through recorded; the founder off every approval path and reading the workforce view; and cost per outcome for the first two roles against the founder's own hours from the baseline, ready for the first board meeting after the hires land.
The hiring plan then buys what a round should buy: people to decide, on top of functions that already run.