Early-Stage Founders Can’t Afford to Get Interviewing Wrong
In the early stages of a life science venture, every hire is a strategic decision—and a bet on the future shape of the company. When your team is fewer than ten people, one poor fit is at best just a delay, but it could end up a directional risk. You’re not just hiring for skill, but for judgment, resilience, and the ability to thrive in ambiguity.
Interviewing, especially for founders, is rarely taught. Usually you learn it through the pain of getting it wrong - we want to spare you that experience.
Harvard Business Review reports, over 60% of candidates admit to stretching the truth during interviews, and more than half of hiring managers say they’ve been “blindsided” by performance gaps that didn’t show up in the process. Founders often rely on intuition—but intuition alone can’t decode “coded answers” or surface reference-level truths behind polished narratives.
In this session Tariq Ahmed will share what it takes to build a rigorous, founder-led interview process that reveals character, not just credentials.
We will look into:
Hiring multifunctional generalists.
Filling first-time leadership roles (e.g., first head of ops, first regulatory hire).
Navigating the high-stakes investor scrutiny of team composition.
Tariq Ahmed has a wealth of experience gained across multiple business sectors. In his last role as Executive Vice President, People at Achilles Therapeutics he helped navigate their growth from a small private bio-tech to a NASDAQ listed company.
Prior to Archilles Therapeutics he was Chief People Officer at London Business School, International Communications Director at RSA Insurance and VP Talent & OD at Visa Inc. where he led the People & Culture workstream for Visa’s IPO.
Tariq's passion is in coaching and helping people and teams unlock their potential in order to improve their performance. He holds a Masters in Strategic HR, has passed his Chartered Director exams with the IOD and is a certified Leadership Coach.
Why This Is Relevant for You
Early-stage hiring carries outsize strategic weight—but it often happens with the least structure.
At the seed-to-Series A stage, you’re often hiring for roles that don’t yet have fixed boundaries. You may be filling a blended position (e.g., part product, part operations), and the right candidate may not have an obvious track record that maps cleanly to the needs.
In other words: you’re making high-impact decisions with fewer clear signals.
Titles and résumés don’t translate cleanly from large orgs to 5-person startups.
Reference checks are often now just governance steps with individuals and companies limiting what can be said. How can you navigate this and avoid polite endorsements that miss how someone actually performs under pressure or ambiguity.
Coded answers—like “I’m used to process” or “I prefer autonomy”—often go unchallenged, when they may signal potential misalignment with startup dynamics.
As McKinsey observes, founding teams aligned on vision and ways of working are 1.9× more likely to outperform financially. In contrast, lack of clarity about what “good” looks like in early hires undermines execution and leadership cohesion.
Our aim for this session to give you a real experience of what good and bad look like and some pragmatic tools and techniques to help you.
Design interviews that surface executional and behavioral fit, not just domain expertise.
Interpret coded responses that could mask red flags.
Use reference conversations to test for resilience, collaboration, and self-awareness.
Questions to Reflect On Before the Session
In your current team, where did you get lucky vs. make deliberate, evidence-based hiring calls?
What signals do you currently rely on most during interviews—and are those predictive of performance?
Are your reference checks surfacing honest, context-rich insights, or just affirmation?
What would shift if you treated interviews as decision-risk mitigation, not just relationship-building?