Lenny Distilled

Hire for mission alignment and intrinsic motivation

Leadership → Team Building

We want people that show up to our company with some fire in their belly, something that they are out to do. And for each person it's a little bit different. For some people it may be UI Craft details. For other people, it may be achieving double the performance with a quarter of the engineering headcount. Everyone has something, but they show up with this heartfelt intensity.

Josh MillerCompeting with giants: An inside look at how The Browser Company builds product

We made sure we hired people that were really excited to be there, right? They wanted to build Airbnb and they were really excited to work on Airbnb. That was the most important thing.

Gustaf AlströmerLessons from working with 600+ YC startups
Supporting

What really motivates people is building shit that gets used in the world. People will say, and they'll fight for equity and money, but in the end, that's not what actually motivates them.

Matt MocharyAre your fears giving you terrible advice? | Matt Mochary
Supporting

Finding people who are high agency and work with urgency, if I was hiring five people today, those are some of the top two characteristics that I would look for in people because you can take on the world if you have people who have high agency and not needing to get 50 people's different consensus.

Logan KilpatrickInside OpenAI
Supporting

We at Lovable try to hire the absolute best talent available out there that we can bring in, and that we can source and that we can attract to grow with. And what do I mean by that best talent? It's not that somebody who has been at really large companies, or somebody that has really done a lot of logos or has big success stories behind them. It's somebody who is extremely passionate about their job.

Elena VernaThe new AI growth playbook for 2026 | How Lovable hit $200M ARR in one year
Nuanced

Our goal of interviews is to convince people not to join The Browser Company. If I have an interview with someone, I don't pitch them and say, 'What do you want to ask me? Anything you want? I'll be super honest, most people shouldn't want to work here.'

Josh MillerCompeting with giants: An inside look at how The Browser Company builds product