Brian Delahunty

A few of my learnings: The most important relationship you’ll have when building an office is the partnership with your recruiting team. Your partners in recruiting need information from you and it’s your job to get it to them, fast. Enable them to succeed.

Remove barriers preventing people from your “home” office from spending time in your new location. Spend time there with intention, not just to visit; traveling to new locations is cool, but it’s not leveraged work unless you are recruiting, interviewing, or spinning people up.

Show every candidate, and every employee at the company, that you are serious about the office—don’t staff “safe” projects. Put mission critical work in the office, from day 1.

Multi-disciplinary office > engineering only office

Build diversity into your hiring from the beginning. The first n hires will be the ones whose networks you get referrals from; networks tend to be fairly homogeneous. Don’t build an office of sameness; build an office of broad, diversified perspectives, ideas, and experience.

Landing team! If possible, have one. The individuals in this team should be passionate about the act of building teams and an organization. They should be spending ~50% if their time recruiting: coffee chats, sourcing, interviewing, selling your office. Enable them to.

Your goal should be to build an enduring, productive, functioning, happy organization. Don’t underestimate how hard this is. Be the person who is “the one into org stuff” (h/t @chughesjohnson). This work is so important—if you don’t want to invest in it, dont open an office.