Vestingnotes: 130 subscribers in 10h - First week as a first hire

Vestingnotes Newsletter - 23.09.2025

Sep 23, 2025

Wow.

I had already wrapped up the Substack newsletter and the LinkedIn version. But after launching my LinkedIn newsletter yesterday morning at 7:30 and seeing the response, I just had to get back to my laptop and add this update.

130 subscribers in just 10 hours 🎉 🚀

It might seem small to some, but for me it’s a milestone worth celebrating with you.

So a huge thank you to everyone who subscribed on LinkedIn and to those now signing up on Substack with their email to receive Vestingnotes directly in their inbox every Tuesday morning.

It’s amazing to see how many people are interested in Vestingnotes and to start the week with a dose of first-hire perspective!

Now, back to what you actually came here for…!

Last week I shared the story of my second giro di boa: the moment I decided to join nestermind.

This week, I want to dive into what happened right after that decision…

What’s it really like to join a startup, when things were just starting to take shape?

First week as a first hire

It all started right after Christmas - as I mentioned in my last post - on December 27, 2024. While most people were still on holiday, I packed my bag in Lugano and headed back to Zurich

No smooth transition, no warm-up phase - just straight into startup life.

At that exact moment, nestermind was in the middle of its Pre-Seed round. Imagine joining a company when the founders are pitching, negotiating, and fighting for the resources to make the vision real. There’s no time to ease in. You have to learn on the move.

And here’s the point: I wasn’t joining as a developer. I wasn’t building codes. My role was everything else. Sales, operations, coordination, jumping into client conversations, making sure nothing fell through the cracks.

When you join a startup, titles and clearly defined tasks don’t really exist. You have to be ready to switch from one topic to another, create new processes, and think both short- and long-term. At the beginning, there’s no such thing as “my task” or “your task.” Everyone tries to cover where a teammate can’t, simply because they’re busy with something else. Basically, I became Lucas’s right hand.

Looking back, I realize there’s no better way to accelerate your learning curve. You’re close enough to the founders to see the strategy take shape, but also deep enough in the execution to feel every win and every mistake. It’s intense - and it’s exponential.

This reminds me a lot of ice hockey, the sport I grew up with. The culture of helping each other, never giving up, and asking your teammates if they need a hand. There’s no selfishness, no “this isn’t my job.” Instead, it’s: “I have no idea right now, but I’ll figure it out and come back with a plan or something already in place.”

Of course, that’s just the start. As months go by, the structure begins to solidify and everyone becomes the owner of specific topics, taking full responsibility. But at the beginning? Oh man… you do everything. Literally everything. And that’s exactly what makes the learning curve so exponential.

Okay Jona, that’s all great - but what actually happened in the very first week?

📲 COLD CALLING

Yes, you read that right.

Out of all the things on the list - processes to set up, product to shape, documents to prepare - one thing came first: picking up the phone and making calls.

Why cold calling?
Because in the early days of a startup, nothing creates traction faster. You can run surveys, write LinkedIn posts - but none of that compares to talking directly to potential customers.

Cold calling does three things at once:

Speed: in just a few hours you can hear real feedback, instead of waiting weeks for warm introductions.
Conversion: people say yes or no on the spot. It’s not filtered by polite email exchanges or long decision cycles.
Learning: every rejection tells you what’s missing, every “maybe” shows you where to adjust, and every “yes” becomes proof that someone is ready to use your product today.

Agree, Stefan Velikov?

I still remember my first calls.

My heart was beating fast, my hands were sweaty. I had no perfect script - just conviction and curiosity. But those first calls with Lucas and conversations with potential clients opened doors that no marketing campaign could have opened at that stage.

They gave us more clients, the ones willing to bet on us when everything was still taking shape.

That’s why cold calling matters in the beginning: it forces you to face reality. You test if someone is actually willing to use and pay for what you’re building.

And if they are, congratulations: you’ve just found traction.

The funny part? My native language is Italian… but I was calling in German, English, and sometimes even French when there was no other way. Let’s just say my accent was working harder than I was.

Chaos vs opportunity

My first week at nestermind started with cold calling.

Picking up the phone was the fastest way to bring more clients on board, to test if other clients out there were willing to use nestermind.

And here’s the thing: cold calling was just the tip of the iceberg. Behind it, there was the bigger challenge - the chaos.

No processes. No playbooks. No “this is how we’ve always done it.” Just a small team, a huge vision, and a lot of things that had to be figured out along the way.

At first, it feels like standing in the middle of a storm. One call brings you closer to a client, the next meeting pulls you into operations. It’s messy. It’s unpredictable. And it can be overwhelming.

But here’s what I realized: chaos isn’t just disorder. Inside it lies opportunity.

Opportunity to learn faster than you thought possible.
Opportunity to leave a fingerprint early, when culture and processes are still being shaped.
Opportunity to prove to yourself that you can adapt, improvise, and deliver even without a manual.

That’s the paradox of the first hire experience: the chaos that scares you at first is the same chaos that gives you room to grow.

And maybe you’ve felt it too - in your first job, your first internship, or the first time you took a risk that didn’t come with a safety net. The mix of fear and excitement, of not knowing exactly what’s next but moving forward anyway. That’s where the opportunity hides.

Agreements and equity

After my last post, some people asked me:

Okay, but what kind of agreement do you actually make with the founders when you’re the first hire?

The truth is: there’s no single formula. When it comes to equity, the conversation almost always leads to ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans).

I highly recommend reading Federico Lorenzon’s post on Startup Salad 🥗 - a clear explanation of how ESOPs actually work, from pools and vesting to cliffs, phantom shares, and more.

If this is a topic you’d like me to go deeper into, leave a comment and I’ll dedicate a future newsletter to it.

Why Vestingnotes

Why bother writing all this down?

Because the messy, unexpected, human lessons usually vanish in the rush of startup life.

I don’t want to forget what it feels like right now. And maybe by writing, I can give something back - to students curious about startups, founders searching for a first hire, and investors wondering what really happens in the trenches.

Spoiler: I haven’t even told you what nestermind actually does yet. That’s coming soon😉

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