Series A startups should refrain from hiring admin functions that were created for corporations
Office Manager.
Personal Assistant.
Front Desk Associate.
Accounting Manager.
HR Manager.
VP of Administration.
Chief of Staff.
Titles that used to be reserved for international corporations have found their way into the startup world. How often have you seen job postings for one of these titles for a Series A startup?
Having just passed Series A ourselves at Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, rest assured: There is not a single dedicated admin person in our company. I’m the Founder & CEO, but I also do accounting, recruiting, HR, empty the mailbox, insurance, contract management, etc.
One of my fellow co-founders takes care of the office. He makes sure there is enough coffee. He talks to the landlord when stuff needs repair. He empties the mailbox when I’m out of the office.
Our CCO and her team write all the customer invoices. They know best what can be invoiced and when. Our CCO also chases our customers if their payments are late. Again, she knows the customers and their peculiarities better than any admin staff ever could.
Our COO takes care of all the software tools we are licensing and the costs associated with them.
Last but not least, our external accountant does payroll, tax, VAT, social contributions, and annual accounts.
That’s it. I hate administration, and we only do what is necessary to keep our company of 35 people running. We passed the Seed stage just before COVID-19 hit, so we are crisis children and have been very diligent about spending money wisely. In almost all cases, spending money wisely means hiring more people who either build or sell our product.
What specific actions did we take to delay hiring admin staff as long as possible?
1. Establish strong leadership
As outlined above, all the admin tasks are delegated to the leadership of the different teams. This move eliminates the need for a chief of staff. Plus, it keeps our leadership focused on execution. Because that’s what leadership in a 35-person company needs to be.
2. Use web-based tools
Even before the pandemic struck, we built a setup that is based entirely on web-based tools. Everything can be done location-independent by using the right web-based tool.
The pandemic has helped decrease the dependency on letter mail, and now even our social contribution invoices arrive by email. Signing contracts via DocuSign is now a standard, even for shareholder’s agreements and subscription forms.
3. Automate
Most of the administration work is tedious and repetitive. That’s why errors happen when those tasks are done by a person. And if this person happens to be somebody from the leadership team, most often people call for hiring an admin function.
I would argue for automation before hiring an admin function. Creating orders and invoices directly from a won proposal in Salesforce is possible. Sending out proposals to prospects directly from Salesforce is possible, even with an integrated DocuSign functionality. Automatically scoring marketing leads in Hubspot is possible. Booking meetings with calendar integration is possible directly from Hubspot, too. Zapier helps you connect all sorts of web-based tools (see point 2 above), e.g. for filing periodic documents that arrive by email or syncing contacts between your CRM and your accounting tool. Expensify simplifies the expense process significantly, as all receipts can be photographed on the smartphone or sent to Expensify by email.
Conclusion
At some point in the future, I guess we won’t be able to get by without admin staff. But delaying this as long as possible has merits both in efficiency and in financial terms.
