Ever read the book: “Don’t trust your gut” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz? If you haven’t, you get the context. Our gut is typically pretty bad at making decisions, riddled in bias, human error and illogical forms.
Yet of course, most founders and hiring managers swear by it. "I just knew they were a fit." Or, "Something felt off, so I passed." It sounds sharp. Confident. Decisive. And sometimes? It works. But more often than we admit, that gut feeling is just a shortcut. An emotional reaction dressed up as wisdom.
Here’s what’s actually happening: your brain is recognizing patterns based on your past experiences. Maybe that candidate reminds you of someone you worked with who crushed it. Maybe their communication style feels familiar, or their energy syncs with yours. But unless you’ve taken time to audit where that instinct comes from, it might not be telling you what you think it is.
Gut instinct isn’t useless. It’s just incomplete.
Relying solely on it creates blind spots especially in hiring. It makes you more likely to favor candidates who look, sound, or act like people you’ve liked before. That’s not intuition. That’s bias.
It’s also kind of lazy, if we’re being honest.
Hiring is one of the most high-leverage decisions any startup makes. Every early hire shapes product, culture, speed, survival. So why do so many founders treat it like a vibe check? If your gut is making decisions your brain hasn’t caught up to, you’re flying blind and are probably repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
The smarter move? Treat your gut like a clue, not a conclusion.
If something feels right or wrong about a candidate, pause. Ask: what exactly triggered that reaction? Was it something they said? Didn’t say? Do you have objective evidence that supports your impression? Or are you just running on vibes?
Structured hiring exists to keep us honest. Scorecards. Project-based assessments. Clear rubrics, they don’t replace intuition, but they do surround it with reality. When your instincts are tested against data and defined standards, you don’t lose speed you gain clarity.
You start catching things your gut misses. You learn to separate presence from performance. You stop rewarding polish and start spotting actual potential. And you realize some of your strongest hires might not have made it past your first impression filter, had you relied on instinct alone.
Even better, you begin to sharpen your gut over time. Because as you hire with structure, your brain collects new, better patterns. You build better references for what "good" actually looks like not just what it felt like. Intuition evolves. That’s when you become dangerous.
Great founders don’t abandon instinct. They upgrade it.
So next time your gut says, “Yes!” or “Nope,” slow down. Test the feeling. Dig deeper. Ask if the pattern you’re following still serves the kind of company you're building or if it’s just familiar and easy.
Your gut can be a guide. But without structure, it’s just a mirror pointed at your past.
Audit it. Refine it. Then let it lead with eyes open.
