Hiring before deciding

ZERO started with one bet: pick the team first, then pick the problem together. I hired founding builders, mostly students and self-taught people aged 18 to 24, and let them help choose what we build.

I wrote the hiring stack myself in under a week: Next.js, Supabase, Resend and Calendly. Applications, assignments, interview booking and offers all run through it. I wrote the positioning and every line of copy candidates read.

• Every candidate gets a single-use tokenized link, so a forwarded URL can't take somebody else's interview slot.
• Row-level security: an applicant can write their own row and read nobody else's.
• Kill conditions in writing. Every product track the team works on has one before it starts.

353 people applied to a company that had no product yet. I reviewed 96 assignments, 123 interviews were booked, and 8 people joined. The team is now building The Middle Market.