The First 30 Days: A Simple Onboarding Plan

You spent weeks finding the right person. You went through the whole process from writing a scorecard to making an offer. It feels like the hard part is over. But it’s not. The work of turning a promising candidate into a productive team member has just begun.

Most startups get this wrong. They treat onboarding as a checklist of administrative tasks. Get them a laptop give them the wifi password and point them to the code repository. This is a waste of the momentum and excitement a new person brings. A good start compounds over time. A bad start is a slow drag on the entire team.

The goal of the first 30 days is not to get them up to speed on everything. That’s impossible. The goal is to get them their first win and integrate them into the team’s workflow. Everything else follows from that.

Before They Arrive

A great first day starts the week before. Your new hire is probably nervous and excited. You can make them feel welcome and prepared with a little bit of planning. The goal is to eliminate friction so their first hours are spent learning and meeting people not fighting with setup.

Here is a simple checklist:

• Equipment: Order their laptop and any other hardware well in advance. Make sure it’s at the office or shipped to their home before they start.
• Accounts: Create all their necessary accounts. Email Slack GitHub whatever tools you use. There is nothing worse than spending your first day waiting for permissions.
• Schedule: Send them a simple schedule for their first day. Who they will meet with and when. This removes a lot of uncertainty.
• Welcome: If you have company swag send a package to their home. A t shirt or a mug is a small thing that makes a big difference.

This work takes maybe an hour but it pays off enormously. It signals that you are organized and that you value their time.

Three Pillars for the First Month

A successful onboarding plan for a startup rests on three simple ideas. You don’t need a complex HR system. You just need to focus on what matters.

1. A Clear 30-Day Goal
2. A Designated Buddy
3. Structured Immersion

If you get these three things right your new hire will be shipping code and contributing to discussions faster than you thought possible.

Pillar 1: The 30-Day Goal

This is the most important part of the plan. You must give your new hire a small self contained project they can own and complete within their first month. This should not be busywork or a tour of the codebase. It must be a real task that provides real value.

Why is this so critical? It gives them a clear direction. It forces them to learn the parts of the system they need to know right now not everything at once. And most importantly it gives them a tangible win. Shipping something that users will see builds confidence and a sense of belonging.

Good 30-day goals look like this:

• For an engineer: “Fix these three specific user reported bugs and deploy the changes.”
• For a designer: “Redesign our settings page based on this user feedback and deliver mockups.”
• For a marketer: “Analyze our blog traffic for the last six months and write a short report on what topics perform best.”

Notice these are specific and achievable. The worst thing you can do is give them a vague task like “learn the codebase” or “improve performance”. Those aren’t goals they are wishes. A concrete project provides a path to learning.

Pillar 2: The Designated Buddy

The founder or manager is not the right person to answer every question a new hire has. Questions like “How do I run the tests?” or “What’s the best way to ask for a code review?” feel silly to ask your new boss. This is where a buddy comes in.

A buddy is a peer not a manager. Their job is to be the friendly go-to person for all the small questions that come up. This does two things. It takes a huge load off you as the founder. And it gives the new hire a safe person to ask for help which speeds up their learning and makes them feel more comfortable.

Your buddy should be someone who is patient good at explaining things and respected on the team. Tell them their job for the first few weeks is to help the new hire get settled. It’s a formal role with a real purpose.

Pillar 3: Structured Immersion

You can’t just throw someone in the deep end and hope they swim. You need a simple structure for their first week to guide them. This doesn’t need to be a minute by minute schedule. It’s more of a set of priorities for each day.

Here’s a sample for a new engineer:

• Day 1: Get their machine set up. Have a one on one with their manager to discuss the 30-day goal. Meet their buddy. Get their first “hello world” change committed and pushed to a staging environment.
• Day 2: Start working on the first small part of their 30-day goal. Pair program with their buddy for an hour or two.
• Day 3: Continue working on their project. Sit in on a team meeting to see how decisions are made.
• Day 4: Spend an hour watching or participating in customer support. Nothing connects you to the user’s problems faster.
• Day 5: At the end of the week have them do a very informal demo of what they accomplished or learned. This isn’t a test. It’s a celebration of their first week.

This structure provides a ramp. It starts with setup and small wins and gradually increases their autonomy and exposure to the team and the customers.

What to Avoid

Just as important as what to do is what not to do. Avoid these common mistakes.

Don’t leave them alone. Isolation is the enemy of onboarding. Check in with them for 15 minutes at the end of each day for the first two weeks. Ask “What did you learn today?” and “What’s blocking you?”.

Don’t give them an impossible or poorly defined task. Their first project should be a confidence builder not a test of their grit.

Don’t forget the human element. Go for lunch on their first day. Introduce them to everyone on the team. Talk about things other than work. Startups are small communities. You have to actively build them.

A thoughtful onboarding process is one of the highest leverage activities a founder can do. It turns the significant investment of a new hire into a productive reality. It sets the tone for their entire career with you and shows that you care about their success.

Think about the last person you hired. What was their first meaningful project?

— Rishi Banerjee
September 2025