You don’t need “A Players” to build a great startup. You need people with something to prove
Why founders hire for the wrong signals and what actually predicts performance
Every time a founder tells me they only want to hire A players, a little piece of me dies.
How do I (not) love thee? Let me count the ways…
Because I have heard it so many times. From founders I’ve worked with, to founder “influencers” on LinkedIn. It’s one of those ideas that’s become so embedded in startup culture we barely question it.
And honestly? Part of the reason it sticks is ego. “We only hire A Players” is a flattering story about yourself and your company. My husband loves to tell people I work in “startups” (he says it with such pride) - the idea of startup exceptionalism goes beyond the people actually working in them.
So when I hear “we only hire A players”, my heart sinks. I’ll usually ask “what do you actually mean by that?”
The answer is almost always some version of Emily.
Emily joined early. There were no proper job descriptions, onboarding processes, or a particularly clear roadmap. Emily just got it - the mission, the pace, the dynamics. She didn’t need managing. She took initiative. She had strong judgement, so she delivered, and delivered well. And when things were on fire, or needed pivoting, she ran towards the hard problems.
She also became a bit of a founder darling. Whether anyone said it out loud or not, the rest of the team calibrated to her.
In the early days at Entrepreneurs First (EF), we had a name for people like this: barrels. The people you can point at any problem and know they’ll solve it. Who pull others along with them. Who don’t need permission to charge to the finish line. Your company’s output actually depends on them.
So founders aren’t wrong to want more Emilys.
They’re just wrong about what makes Emily, Emily.
The moment “A player” enters the conversation, our thinking about what “great” looks like usually gets worse. The label feels like a high bar. In practice it collapses a complex question into a fuzzy archetype - one that tells you almost nothing useful about who to hire, and smuggles in unexamined assumptions.
Now with that out the way, allow me to share just why I do not love thee…
Why “A player” thinking fails
First, it’s lazy. “A player” collapses performance, potential, and motivation into a single label and lets everyone off the hook from defining what they actually mean.
There is no such thing as an objective hiring process. When you add a vague label on top, you supercharge the subjectivity. Founders default to the easiest signals to recognise: pedigree, polished communication, impressive logos, people who “feel” like they’ll fit.
The data also tells us that the primary methods most companies use are weak predictors of performance. Schmidt & Hunter’s1 landmark meta-analysis of 85 years of hiring research tell us that:
Years of experience predicts 3% of variance in job performance
Unstructured interviews? 14%
Structured interviews? 26%
Work sample tests? 29%
Years of experience, vague “vibe checks”, and unstructured interviews tell you far less than you think. Structured interviews and work sample tests do far better - and yet when founders say “A player”, they’re almost always talking about the former, not the latter.
Second, it cultivates the wrong culture. Companies ride or die on teamwork, not individual stars. Optimising for individual brilliance doesn’t build a team; it builds a loose collection of people with good CV badges and misaligned incentives.
You get a room full of people who want to be “the A player”, not a group who actually compound each other’s impact.
And even if “A player” meant something consistent (it doesn’t), you still couldn’t build a whole team of them.
Performance is fat-tailed and contextual
In startups especially, performance is fat‑tailed: a small number of people generate a disproportionate amount of output. You already know this. You’ve lived it. Emily was probably one of three or four people carrying the weight of what could have been ten.
But output isn’t just a product of who these people are. It’s a product of where they are.
Performance is contextual. The person who was exceptional inside a well resourced, high structure environment may be ordinary in yours. The person who looks underwhelming on paper may be extraordinary in exactly the conditions you’ve built. You cannot detach performance from environment and treat it like a portable asset.
Which means the “A player” you’re picturing - the one from the famous company, the big brand, the shiny CV - might not perform like that in your company. Ask me, I’ve seen this plenty of times. And the person you’re screening out because they don’t “look” the part? They might be the one who will actually move your roadmap forward.
Beyond a certain size, I don’t believe you can have 100% “talent density” in the way people fantasise about. You’d need every single person operating at the absolute top of their game, simultaneously, in exactly the same environment. That’s not how humans, or startups, work.
So if “A player” doesn’t help, what are founders really trying to hire for?
The thing you’re really hiring for
Underneath the language, founders are rarely trying to hire for raw capability. They’re trying to hire for motivation.
And motivation is alchemy.
I mean this seriously. Individual motivation is so specific to the person, the moment, and the context that trying to “install” it is a fool’s errand. You can’t create it from nothing with onboarding, a beautifully written mission statement, or an inspiring all hands. You can create the conditions that support it. You can amplify it, channel it, occasionally destroy it. But you don’t manufacture it out of thin air.
It either exists in the person when they walk through the door, or it doesn’t.
This is what the “A player” framing gets wrong. It focuses almost entirely on capability and signals - what someone has done, what they’ve demonstrated, what their track record looks like. It says almost nothing about why someone performs. What’s driving them. What they’re running toward (or away from).
Founders are often trying, when they say they want “A players”, to select for something they feel but can’t quite name: an internal drive, a restlessness, a standard that’s coming from somewhere deeper than a job.
They describe it in fragments:
“Hunger”
“Edge”
“Ownership”
“Drive”
“They just have ‘it’”
When I look back across every exceptional person I’ve worked with - the barrels, the Emilys, the ones who really moved companies forward - they almost never came with the most obvious credentials or the thickest stack of experience. But they did share one thread:
They had something to prove.
This isn’t always a chip on the shoulder (although it often can be). It shows up as an internally referenced standard: they’re not waiting around to be told what “good” looks like; they decide that bar. They close gaps other people ignore, or don’t even see. They take ownership without asking if they’re allowed. If something isn’t working, they don’t just flag problems; they bring solutions and feel compelled to fix them.
Their motivation wasn’t installed by the role or the mission. It came into the company with them.
“Something to prove” has a research base
The psychological traits clustered around “something to prove” are among the strongest predictors of performance we have, especially in high ambiguity, high autonomy environments like startups. Think of them as different facets of the same underlying pattern:
Achievement motivation - a strong need to achieve; they seek challenge, take ownership, and self‑correct without needing close management.
Proactive behaviours - they don’t wait for direction; they scan for opportunities and act.
Internal locus of control - they believe their actions influence outcomes, and they locate themselves inside both success and failure.
Grit - perseverance and passion for long term goals; they stay when things get boring, messy, or hard.
Self‑efficacy - a belief in their ability to figure things out; they move toward problems they haven’t solved before without needing certainty.
Put two people in the same role, with the same manager and the same mission. One thrives; the other coasts. That’s the alchemy.
And a CV won’t tell you which one you’re looking at.
That’s the problem with “A player”. It assumes the signal is obvious. In practice it becomes a proxy for what’s easiest to recognise: pedigree, credentials, impressive backstories. Achievements that are visible and legible, and often shaped as much by access and opportunity as by ability.
Some of these signals do matter, but they are incomplete. They tell you what someone has done, not what’s driving them to do it. They favour what is easy to evaluate over what actually predicts performance. When you can’t define what you’re really looking for, you default to familiarity (affinity bias is the no.1 watchout I personally have to look out for when I’m hiring). So you hire the person who looks impressive on paper, or reminds you of someone who was, not the person who would actually move your company forward.
An “A Player” doesn’t raise the bar, it just makes the bar look more impressive.
Startups as weak situations
Why does this matter so much in startups specifically?
Enter situational strength theory. In “strong” situations - high structure, clear rules, defined expectations - individual traits get suppressed. Everyone behaves roughly the same way because the environment tells them how to.
In “weak” situations - high ambiguity, low structure, fast pace, no playbook - individual traits amplify. Who you are at your core becomes the primary variable.
Startups are weak situations, almost by definition.
Processes are half‑built or nonexistent. Role descriptions change every six months (or less). Priorities shift week to week. In this environment, the person who needs structure to perform, or who waits to be told what “good” looks like, will struggle. That doesn’t mean they aren’t talented, but it does mean the conditions that activated their talent elsewhere don’t exist (yet).
The person with something to prove doesn’t just perform well in startups. They shapethem. They don’t wait for the machine to exist. They build it.
If you’ve read my work on organisational ghosts, this will feel familiar. Startups do not have neutral ambiguity. They have ambiguity shaped by a specific founder’s psychology. The pace, standards, what gets celebrated, what gets punished, who thrives, who doesn’t - these aren’t random. They’re imprints. The emotional blueprint the founder created, often without realising, from the earliest days.
Your version of an Emily doesn’t just have something to prove. She has something to prove that fits, almost perfectly, the specific conditions your company created.
That’s the alchemy, as I see it.
How to actually hire for “something to prove”
We tell ourselves our hiring decisions are structured and considered. They often aren’t.
Daniel Kahneman talks about two modes of thinking. System 1 is fast, instinctive, pattern based (most founders hire from here) - your brain’s autopilot. System 2 is slow, deliberate, effortful - the mode that questions first impressions and challenges assumptions.
Our brains are wired for efficiency, not accuracy. In hiring, System 1 is almost always running the show. You form a quick impression and then spend the rest of the interview unconsciously trying to confirm it.
The candidate went to a good university? System 1 lights up.
They remind you of Emily? System 1 lights up again.
They’re confident and articulate? System 1 calls it “gravitas”.
We hire from instinct and familiarity. “A player” is System 1 thinking dressed up as a standard.
Hiring for “something to prove” requires System 2. It’s slower. It’s more effortful. And it starts by changing the question.
Most hiring processes ask: Can this person do the job?
The better question is: Could this person become exceptional at this job, in this environment?
When you ask that, you’re forced to get specific about what “exceptional” actually looks like.
Defining “exceptional” before you interview
Before you look at a single CV, answer:
What does exceptional look like in this role?
What capabilities - knowledge, skills, judgement - enable that?
What would I actually see or hear in an interview (evidence) that tells me it’s there?
Most hiring processes skip this. They jump straight to CVs and perfectly polished answers. If you don’t define “exceptional” in advance, you will end up evaluating the most legible signals, not the ones you actually need.
One founder I worked with described his interview process as “looking into someone’s soul and finding the cracks in the armour”. Slightly unhinged phrasing, but directionally right. He wasn’t asking “can this person do the job?” He was asking “who is this person, really, underneath what they’re showing me?”
That’s the work we need to do.
What to look for (and what to ask)
You’re not using the traits below as a checklist; you’re looking for patterns - threads that show up across different stories, contexts, and points in their career. One good answer doesn’t tell you much. A consistent pattern does.
Achievement motivation - they set the bar themselves
Signals:
They don’t wait to be told what “good” looks like.
They routinely push past the stated brief.
Questions:
“Tell me about a time you decided the bar for ‘good’ was too low. What did you do about it?”
“What’s the toughest piece of feedback you’ve had in the last year that actually changed how you work? Walk me through what you did differently afterwards.”
Proactive behaviour - they create movement
Signals:
Things exist because of them.
They move first, not only when nudged.
Questions:
“What’s something important that exists in your team or company today because you wouldn’t let it drop?”
“Tell me about a time you moved on something before you had permission or a brief. How did you handle any pushback?”
Internal locus of control - they locate themselves inside the story
Signals:
They own their part in both success and failure, without defensiveness.
They talk about what they could have done differently.
Questions:
“What’s something you got wrong that took you too long to admit?”
“Tell me about a situation in the last 12 months where something went wrong at work and you eventually realised you were part of the problem. What exactly was your part, and what did you change afterwards?”
Grit - they stay when it’s not fun
Signals:
They don’t just spike at the beginning.
They stay with hard, boring, or uncertain work.
Questions:
“Tell me about something you almost gave up on. What kept you going?”
“What’s the hardest point you’ve ever hit on something you cared about? What did you do at that moment?”
Self‑efficacy - they move toward the unknown
Signals:
They say yes before they have the full playbook.
They trust their ability to figure things out.
Questions:
“Tell me about a time you took on work you didn’t know how to do yet. How did you get from ‘no idea’ to ‘I can handle this’?”
“Describe a recent situation where you were out of your depth. How did you break the problem down and decide what to try first?”
How to go deeper than rehearsed stories
Most candidates have rehearsed their best stories. They can be so high level that they don’t tell you much.
I use a simple mental framework to know when to stay with a story rather than moving on: CAR.
Context - Do you actually understand the situation? If not, ask: “what was going on? what led to that?”
Action - What did they specifically do? If you keep hearing “we”, ask: “what was your specific contribution?”
Result - What happened, and what did they learn? If the story just stops, ask: “what changed as a result? what would you do differently now?”
You’re not trying to catch them out. You’re listening for what’s missing and using that to know when to go deeper. A vague answer isn’t necessarily a bad candidate; it could just be nerves. The follow‑on questions are their chance to show you how they actually think.
And remember: signals are not always loud. Some of the most driven people I’ve worked with were quiet in interviews, slightly awkward even, but relentless in their work.
“Something to prove” doesn’t always look like confidence or presence. Sometimes it’s a very still, focused person who does not stop until the thing is done.
Please don’t mistake polish for drive, or quietness for the lack of it.
The uncomfortable mirror for founders
At some point, this stops being about the candidate and becomes about you.
Most founders were the person with something to prove. The one who hadn’t done it before but was absolutely certain they could figure it out. The one who ran toward the hard problem. The one who, by most conventional hiring standards, was a risk.
And somewhere along the way, that founder became the person writing the hiring brief.
The version of an “A player” you have in your head now often wouldn’t have hired you back then. Some of your earliest, best people, the ones who built what you have, wouldn’t pass the screening process you have in place today.
Sit with that.
And then go back to your next hiring decision with a different question. Not: “are they an A player?” but:
“What does this person need to prove and does this role give them the arena to do it?”
In every company I work with, that is the work. Not filling your team with shiny badges and prestige, but understanding what made your Emilys, Emily - and building the conditions where more of them can walk in and do the work they’re already desperate to do.
