How Not to Burn Your Company Down with Your First 10 Hires
Most founders pour everything into product and runway, then treat building a team as a series of emergencies, hiring fast and worrying about the weaknesses later. The result is depressingly predictable: senior roles filled years too early, a "we'll just DIY the HR stuff" culture, and teams that look impressive on paper but come apart the moment there's pressure.
Mark Mullinix unpacks what actually happens when you hire before you're ready, skip the boring-but-load-bearing people stuff, and say "yes" to anyone willing to join. Drawing on a decade-plus of building and scaling startups, he'll share mistakes made along the way and show how starting with the right hiring framework protects both your growth and your sanity.
This is a practical look at how smarter people decisions keep a company from becoming fragile as it scales.
If you've ever regretted a hire, ignored a people problem until it blew up, or watched your culture drift as you grew, this session hands you concrete ways to stay flexible, intentional and human while you build.
About the Speaker
Mark Mullinix has spent the last two decades building and scaling ventures across Asia-Pacific, in organisations ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 multinationals. Over that time he's founded a strategy consultancy, helped launch the technology behind leading credit-card rewards programmes, and built Singapore's largest loyalty coalition, backed by Temasek and DFI Retail Group. He's also made most of the hiring and team-building mistakes he'll be talking about, several of them more than once.
His route here was deliberately unconventional: he started out in radio broadcasting and live arts production in the US before an MBA led him into strategy and partnership roles at American Express. Today he's founder and principal at Growth Vectors, where he helps founders and leaders figure out what's actually going wrong using a perspective that blends people-first decision-making with a strong commercial growth lens. Originally from the US, he's been based in Singapore since 2012.
About Aspire
Aspire (YC'18) is the all-in-one finance OS for modern businesses — international payments, cards, expenses, payables, and receivables in a single account. Trusted by 50,000+ businesses worldwide.