There are two categories of great individual contributors: the ones with great technical skills and also maturity, and the others without maturity.

The first rule is that you should never bring people without a great technical background or adequate for their level, so let’s focus on people with that – right side of the chart.

The best people I worked in my life were very mature. I learned a lot from them. They know how to solve complex problems, but also how to stay focused, motivated and positive, communicate well, and empower people and teams.

A lot of great people I met without enough maturity became mature over the time after different experiences. Self-knowledge and openness are crucial for that. They also became the first group.

But a couple of them stayed the same and took ages to take a small step. They will never become rock stars.

Depending on your bar, you won’t want them too.

Every day is a different day in a startup. There are good days and positive signals that make everybody get happy however there are bad days when you have to deal with loses and incidents for example. Sometimes this also changes during the period, there is no rule.

No matter what happens, you have to control your emotions and learn how to deal with it. You have to operate in a regular bandwidth. Nothing is too wrong that you are dead, neither too good that the game is won.