SaaStr 019: David Cancel on Hiring People Not Skills, The Importance Of Investing In Relationships and Being Scrappy

Following our meeting at SaaStr Annual 2016, I am thrilled to welcome David Cancel. Now David really is a serial entrepreneur having founded 5 companies, with the last, Performable, being acquired by Hubspot, resulting in his taking up the position as Chief Product Officer at Hubspot. Now David is the CEO @ Drift. Drift allows you to talk to your website visitors and customers in real time. David is a master when it comes to hiring, company culture creation and maintenance and team building and we dig into all that in today’s episode, as well as:

• Why David’s golden rule to recruiting is hiring people not skills?
• Why is cultural fit so important for future employees? How can you test for it in an interview? Can you hire a team of all A team players without having insane competition and friction?
• What does David mean when he says it is important for candidates to be scrappy? What signals are there that the person is an insane hustler?  
• What questions does David pose to get the candidate out of the standard interview style answering? How does david push them out of their comfort zone?
• Why does David believe it is crucial to never hire PMs who have done it before? What is the benefits of this?
• How does David view success? What commonalities does David se in thementiality fo those that have and have not been successful?

In a round we call the 60 Second Saastr, we also hear:

1. Must read books for startup CEOs?
2. What are the 3 biggest lessons you learnt the hard way?
3. What is David’s approach to learning?

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here:

• Jason Lemkin
• Harry Stebbings
• Saastr
• David Cancel