How Do You Get Great Experienced Engineers To Join Your Startup?

About one month after our company went operational, we decided to have an open house. The idea was my cofounders and I would ask our friends to stop by and check out our office. Hopefully, we could convince some of them to join us.

Jeroen, our VP Engineering, much to my surprise invited Greg and Matt to the open house. Greg and Matt were two of my favorite engineers from Maxim, and it would be a coup for us to get either one to join the company.

Greg and Matt were two of the best engineers in our industry, but their skills as engineers were different.

Greg: A creative genius.

The first project I ever got involved with Greg on was “the Super Reference”. Greg had this idea for designing an unbelievably low drift voltage reference.

His idea was, at the time, about 100X lower in drift than anything on the market. We would dominate the market if we could actually produce the product.

However, we were never able to get the product to market after years of trying. That was the deal with Greg in those early days; you either won big or you flamed out.

As time went on, Greg’s flame outs became less and less frequent. And Greg, who had never been that driven by revenue in the early days, became much more pragmatic. By the time we spoke at the open house, he had a great combination of engineering skill and pragmatism.