Amos Schwartzfarb: Gut Instinct and Data

Nearly 20 years ago, Amos Schwartzfarb was running his own dot-com business and had to make his first hire. It was a big decision: Does he choose the well-trained, metric-driven product manager straight from central casting, or the off-beat, articulate and thoughtful candidate who writes thank-you notes on yellow paper in green ink?

Schwartzfarb, now the managing director at early-stage investment firm Techstars in Austin, Texas, chose the latter. It went against his notion of the successful buttoned-up product manager, but it paid off. The outside-the-box candidate was a knockout.

“I know I’m not supposed to do this, but I’m going to trust my gut here because my gut says this is the guy,” Schwartzfarb told MSH CEO Oz Rashid on the “Hire Learning” podcast.

Two decades later he has followed Schwartzfarb through multiple businesses, including the merging of Work.com and Business.com.

“He’s like a brother,” added Schwartzfarb, the author of the bestseller “Sell More Faster: The Ultimate Sales Playbook for Startups,” and co-author of “Levers: The Framework for Building Repeatability into Your Business.”

While many entrepreneurs and managers may never be so lucky to have such an all-star candidate knock on their door, Schwartzfarb believes hiring solely on box-ticking credentials is a limiting factor.

“I often hire for potential not for skill,” he said.

Schwartzfarb began his business career packing boxes for an outdoor equipment company and later helped transition it into ecommerce.

When looking for potential hires, he often seeks out markers such as intellectual curiosity. That suggests whether a candidate has the potential to grow at the company.

But after close to 30 years in business, Schwartzfarb has refined his intuitive madness into a method.

“Earlier in my career, I naively trusted my gut a lot, but … didn’t often have the data to back it up,” Schwartzfarb said.

He now weaves the two together.