Should staffing decisions come from the gut? It’s debatable.

Question: What’s the rnbiggest mistake you’ve made so far? 

Andrew Goetz: We rnhired somebody to help us with the business that was just. You know whenrn you say you should listen to your instincts? We were feeling like we rnwere, I don’t want to say overwhelmed, but we needed a consultant for rnsomething and knew we needed a consultant, but we weren’t really sure rnhow to address it. And somebody had recommended somebody and we both rnfelt... you know there was something off and then it turned out to be rnvery,rn very off. I’ll look at it that it was a learning experience and it rncould have been a lot worse and you know we caught it at the beginning rnand now it’s almost done, but… 

Matthew Malin: It’s the rnnewest mistake. I guess maybe it is the biggest. 

Andrew Goetz:rn I think it was the worst mistake. 

Matthew Malin: I rnguess, maybe. 

Andrew Goetz: Yeah, because he was toxic. Irn mean that was the worst. It was just someone who lied and cheated rnand... rnit happens. I mean, it’s human nature and … 

Matthew Malin:rn We’ve made a lot of mistakes, but nothing big or bad. 

Andrewrn Goetz: Yeah, I mean we usually catch them. The good news is when rnyou’re relatively small all your mistakes are relatively small as well, rnand when you’re big they can be colossal. And so as a young, very supplern rncompany we can recover from them. But everyone makes mistakes. I think rnthe real question is do you make the same mistake twice?  

Question:rn What’s the secret to hiring? 

Andrew Goetz: I think rnyour gut is important. 

Matthew Malin: No, I don’t think rnso. 

Andrew Goetz: I think we probably should have done rnmore due diligence. I think it was just we were the business was moving rnvery, very fast and frantically. We know we needed somebody and we were rnlike all right, "Let’s just do it."

Matthew Malin: We’ve rnhad hires that have been sort of gut responses, which have been great rnand others that have not. And we’ve had other hires that weren’t rnnecessarily a gut response, but they were hired nonetheless and again, rnterrific ones; where we weren’t necessarily it wasn’t the first choice. 

Andrewrnrn Goetz: The lesson is after two, three weeks we probably should havern reacted more quickly than we actually did. 

Matthew Malin:rn For a company of our size the thing that I think is most crucial in rnterms of what we do is hiring somebody that culturally is a good fit andrn if they’re smart and they fill the position in a manner for which they rnhave experience or we feel is appropriate, et cetera, et cetera. Having rnthe cultural fit and the passion for the business is probably the rnbiggest hurdle because we’re only 20 people of which 10 of those are rnworking sort of right out of our office in New York City. I think that’srn the most crucial aspect of where we are for this size today.