It's yours. You and a couple of friends started this dot.com a full eight months ago. Along the way, one left to be a Web-designer in the valley and another realised he was an organisational man after all when you suggested that you train-down from Delhi to Mumbai to save costs. Now, you have managed to build the skeleton of a great organisation with some capital you raised from an angel, and are in the middle of negotiations with veecees that have displayed a modicum of interest in your baby. And you've built what you consider the beginnings of a great team: a coo who was destined for great things at a FMCG transnational; a marketing head who made a name for herself selling refrigerators; and a finance jock who was considered a whiz-kid even in the foreign bank he last worked for. This is, truly, your organisation. But do you know it well enough?

Your coo, for instance, was backed by a huge team at the company he worked for. The marketing head was helped by a great product, a best-selling brand, and heavy-duty advertising. And the finance head had lots of money to play around with. What is more, none of the three really like the office. Or the fact that they have to manage without secretaries. Still think you know everything you need to about your company? Your three most important people could leave any moment: indeed, two of them even have the same head-hunter seeking to place them elsewhere. What went wrong? Everything, starting with your hiring strategy.

Hire for attitude. Don't be taken in by educational qualifications or past record. Apart from functional skills, your top team should have a mindset that allows them to look beyond the trappings of a typical corporate job: reserved parking spaces, fancy offices, and telephone operators with cultured accents. The job itself is certain to be far more stimulating than pushing soap, but if you make the mistake of hiring people who cannot overcome the absence of executive trappings (at least in the initial years), your venture has had it.

Watch for slackers. And mercenaries. Keep an eye open for signs during the recruitment interview itself. If a candidate raises the issue of stock options 30 seconds into your meeting, end the interview there. Ditto, if someone starts off by asking whether working from home is a possibility. Remember, if your venture has to succeed, your key people will probably have to forget home and hearth for a few months.

...And Choosing the Right Company

That's easy. A dot.com company is only as good as its business plan. But evaluating this isn't going to be easy since no dot.com worth its links will share this with potential recruits, NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) or no NDA. Nor is it a good idea to join a dot.com on the basis of how its office looks, or the number of full-page advertisements it takes out in the financial dailies. Find out whether the core-idea behind the company's business plan thrills (excites isn't good enough) you. And, putting greed aside, value the company's conservatism when it comes to your own pay package. It might also make sense to look at people who are already with the company? Are their backgrounds similar to your own? Finally, look within yourself. Do you have what it takes to work in an unstructured environment where the roles and hierarchies are unclear. If you do not, perish the thought of working for a dot.com, at least one that is in the start up phase.

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