Three years ago, I hired someone who said all the right things. Polite, confident, came from a big-name company. I trusted the vibe.
Two months in, deadlines slipped. Communication dropped. And then, complete silence.
That hire cost us weeks of progress, four burned-out teammates, and a tough conversation with a client. I didn’t make a hiring mistake. I made a founder mistake. I didn’t know how to interview, like a strong founder would.
But wait. What does that even mean?
What the hell is a strong founder interview?
Is there a guidebook? A checklist?
Do you wear a black turtleneck and ask them to sell you a pen?
No. A strong founder doesn’t interview for answers.
They interview for the truth.
For patterns. For friction. For clarity.
If you cannot read people, you should not be building a team. And if you cannot build the right team, your product, pitch, and strategy won’t matter. Hiring is not an admin or HR or talent acquisition task only. It is not something you delegate too early. In the early stage, hiring is survival.
Look for patterns, not polished answers
Everyone has rehearsed the perfect response. Thanks AI. What actually matters is what they repeat. Listen to how they speak about ownership, failure, and team dynamics. You are not looking for keywords. You are spotting patterns.
I call it the “RFA Check”.
It stands for Regret, Friction, Accountability
Ask questions that tap into these three zones and you will learn more about a person than any CV or referral ever could.
Here are the three questions that changed how I interviewed and brought me amazing results.
You will learn more from how they pause, reflect, and respond than from any impressive bullet point on their resume.
I once rejected someone for being too soft spoken. A month later, she was hired elsewhere. Today, she leads a product team and mentors ten engineers. That experience taught me something most founders forget. Some of your best hires will not be loud. They will not impress you in the first three minutes. But they will show up when it counts.
So, what matters to you? Results or visibility?
A few years later, I took a chance on a quiet candidate who showed deep clarity in just three questions. She now leads two teams and built the most reliable system we run today.
See Founders, hiring is not just another task on your list, and please do not treat it like one. It is the quiet lever behind every loud success. If you are still winging interviews or outsourcing them too early, you are not scaling. You are gambling. And not the fun kind with chips and free drinks. The kind where you bet your company’s momentum on someone you barely know. And in this game, the wrong hire does not just cost money. It costs momentum, the one you have worked so hard to create. I see some of you already gulping, remembering those wrong hires.
So here’s the takeaway
Treat every interview like a turning point. Because it is.
The wrong person sets you back, and the right one unlocks the next stage of your business.
Before you say yes, ask yourself
No matter how polished their answers are or how well AI has coached them, the human element always shows up.
Watch how they pause, reflect, and react.
That is where the real hire reveals themselves.
Got a favorite interview question? Drop it below.
The best ones often come from founders who have made a few painful mistakes and learned from them.
Regards,
Rupesh
