Hire fast in a hurry and the bill arrives later, usually with interest. Jaineel Aga, founder of Planet Superheroes, has the receipts.
In Part 2 of his Water Cooler Conversation with The Builders Club, he shares the expensive lessons on hiring, process and negotiation that no LinkedIn post will tell you.
What are the most common startup hiring mistakes? Jaineel Aga’s core lessons
Jaineel’s central message is that a founder-CEO cannot outsource three things: keeping the company resourced, hiring the right people, and keeping the team aligned on one direction. Most of his costly mistakes came from skipping process when the company was growing quickly and had money in the bank.
At Planet Superheroes, India’s licensed character merchandise brand, that meant hires made on an impressive resume alone, weak controls over cash at stores, and one tiny spreadsheet slip that inflated a logistics bill.
- Never skip reference checks. A headhunter is not a substitute for your own due diligence, however urgent the role.
- Test skills with a case study. Every role, from intern to admin to category manager, can have a practical task.
- Build checks and balances. Process is what protects you when you are in hyper-growth mode.
- Know your leverage. Information and the contract itself can be your negotiating strength when you are the smaller party.
What should a founder-CEO focus on first?
Jaineel opened by asking the community for the top priorities of a founder-CEO. Answers included sales, team management, delegation, talking directly to users and tracking a north star metric.
His own list was simple. He framed these as the jobs that stay with the founder at any company size.
- Put food on the table. Make sure the company has resources, whether that is revenue, savings, funding or people who believe in the vision.
- Hire well. Stay deeply involved in selection, even if tools and headhunters source the candidates.
- Align the team. Shared goals and one strategy are the founder’s mandate, and nobody else can be blamed if the team runs in many directions.
How do reference checks prevent bad hires?
Planet Superheroes was building its offline distribution and needed a national sales manager. The team hired on previous experience through a headhunter, under time pressure after raising a round.
The hire turned out to have misrepresented his background, and the company let him go at once. Jaineel took the blame: nobody had made two or three reference calls. A headhunter’s job, he learned, does not include that check.
- If a candidate with ten years of experience cannot name a few reporting managers, treat it as a red flag.
- Do not assume the agency has verified anything unless it is in writing.
- Speed and fresh funding are exactly when checks get skipped.
Why should you hire with case studies?
Resumes are a skill of their own, and Jaineel says an interview is often partly bluff. His fix is a practical case study for every role.
He once hired a category manager with a decade of experience who, months in, could not define gross margin. The company lost time and salary before it noticed. Since then even an admin candidate gets a task, such as calling five vendors and negotiating a printer price.
What does a good case study reveal?
It shows how a person thinks under a real constraint, and it can also surface talented people who simply interview poorly.
- Keep the task open-ended and relevant to the real job.
- Expect it to take time to design and to change by role.
- Treat what people say in interviews as unverified until the task validates it.
How do you stop cash leakage and small process errors?
Jaineel described a store manager who under-reported cash sales and took roughly six and a half lakh rupees before the pattern surfaced. The alarm was a bank cash-pickup deposit that was far lower than reported sales.
The fix was structural: cash above a threshold gets picked up, store cash is reconciled with the accounts team, and unusual sales drops trigger a review of store footage.
- Tighten controls hardest where operations are distributed and high-touch.
- Review a monthly P&L by cost centre, not just revenue and traction.
- Teach teams basic tools, because hidden rows in one spreadsheet once inflated a store-closure logistics quote.
How can founders build negotiating leverage?
His last topic was leverage. During Covid, small retail brands with mall leases had little power compared with large anchor tenants, and landlords leaned on lock-in clauses.
Planet Superheroes responded by staying fair and sticking to the contract. It documented the days the mall was restricted, and pointed to the landlord’s own obligation to provide access. Jaineel’s takeaway is that information is the leverage of smaller players, and that the same idea applies to investor term sheets or supplier quotes.
Further reading and sources
Frequently asked questions
Do startups really need reference checks for every hire?
Yes, especially for senior roles. Jaineel’s team skipped them while growing fast and paid for it. A few calls with former managers cost little compared with months of salary and lost opportunity.
How do I design a case study for a non-technical role?
Give a small, real problem from the job and keep it open-ended. For an admin role, Jaineel asked for five vendor calls and a negotiated printer price. Judge the research, effort and communication rather than a perfect answer.
What is leverage in a business negotiation?
Leverage is the thing that gives you power at the table, such as alternative options, knowledge or contract rights. Smaller companies can build it by documenting facts, knowing the contract and keeping alternatives, like a second term sheet or supplier.
Conclusion
Part 2 of Jaineel Aga’s session is a reminder that most startup damage is quiet: a skipped call, a skipped process, a hidden row. The cure is boring discipline applied before problems become expensive.
This week, add one reference check step and one practical task to your hiring flow, and review one cost centre line by line.
Want more conversations like this? Join The Builders Club, our community of 35,000+ founders and CXOs, and explore more episodes of the Startup Founders Podcast.
