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Homegrown talent dramatically outperforms big-company hires in scaling startups
  • HubSpot had 100% attrition rate on hires from Salesforce/Google/Microsoft
  • Internal promotions understood cultural context and growth stage
  • Big-company hires expected polished systems that didn't exist
  • Successful exceptions (like David Ortiz in baseball) were rare strategic additions
Brian HalliganLenny's Podcast00:13:06

Supporting quotes

We hired so many people from Salesforce and Google Microsoft like 100% attrition rate on all those folks Brian Halligan
There's just a massive impedance mismatch when you hire them on what their expectations are versus your expectations Brian Halligan

From this concept

Hiring Like the 2004 Red Sox

Brian advocates for blending homegrown talent with strategic external hires, warning against over-indexing on big-company pedigrees. He shares HubSpot's painful lessons about impedance mismatches in scaling organizations.

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