Building high-agency teams: the Headquarters talent playbook

Meet Sunny Singh

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Sunny Singh, CTO and co-founder of HQ.xyz, builds crypto banking for Web3 teams. His philosophy: recruit a small, team with a shared obsession on a mission—beat Revolut in 18 months. No hierarchy, no managers, no compromise on conviction. This mission-first and lean mindset drives every aspect of HQ's hiring process.

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Key Takeaways

First impressions set everything: mission first and agency filter

Singh's most counterintuitive tactic is his approach to first interviews. Rather than rushing to assess candidates, he spends the entire first hour selling the vision and mission. The goal: filter for true believers and scare off the rest.

"I spend the first half the first interview just talking about the company...telling them this is the vision. This is what we're trying to do. This is where we're trying to get to.”

This strategic approach serves multiple purposes:

• Binary filtering: Candidates either walk away thinking "not for me" or get deeply excited
• Maximum conviction building: Excited candidates arrive to subsequent rounds ready to give 110%
• Psychological priming: Candidates understand why you're pushing them in later interviews

"It becomes a great filtering mechanism for people who are at different stages of their life. In some cases, they want to build their own thing. And great, do that.”

Singh's process produces two extreme responses: candidates who choose to walk away, and those who say "I'm f**king ready to go" and want to start immediately. There is no middle ground.

Action for founders:

• Stop treating first interviews as assessment-only. Make them two-way conviction builders.
  • Explicitly tell candidates why your mission matters, why the work is hard, and what success means
  • Understand the true motivations of your candidate - their stage of life, financial commitments, personal aspirations and seek to identify their level of self-agency
• Be honest about demands and working style. Let the right people self-select for your culture.

High agency + Great taste: the combination that works

"You are only at the mercy of your best team members."

Singh screens for a rare combination he believes essential for early-stage success: high agency (ability to act autonomously) paired with excellent taste (strong judgment).

"Know what Great looks like. Taste sets the ceiling for you and skill will set the floor, the base for you. We generally want people as far away from just skill and as close as possible to taste."

Why this matters in Web3:

• High agency without taste creates chaos and poor decisions with high confidence
• Great taste without agency requires constant micromanagement and never scales
• Technical prowess alone doesn't predict success in ambiguous market environments

Singh evaluates taste based on:

• Companies candidates have previously worked for
• Their ability to articulate tradeoffs rather than be "maximalist" about approaches
• How they dissect problems rather than jump to solutions
• Comfort with contrarian but well-reasoned perspectives

Action for founders:

• Test for Taste: Present a real problem your team is facing and observe their thought process
  • Check if they've worked in orgs known for strong product taste and execution rigor
  • Red flag anyone who can't articulate thoughtful tradeoffs in their technical decisions
• Test for High Agency:
  • Ask for examples where candidates challenged conventional wisdom but were proven right. Focus on how they navigated against other opinions and successfully got buy-in to execute in the end.
  • Observe if the candidate had demonstrated high tenacity and action-oriented in both personal and work contexts. Don’t leave out personal experiences they’ve had even in their teenage or tertiary days.

The sports team model

One of Singh's strongest convictions is that early-stage Web3 companies should maintain deliberately flat structures modeled after sports teams.

"They've only got two levels: there’s one captain and everyone else holding key roles. They compete in highly competitive environments and they still succeed. Why can't that work in an organizational setting?"

At HQ.xyz, Singh maintains:

• Absolute minimal hierarchy (two levels max)
• No management track or promotion pathway
• No aspirations of building large departments
• Only senior or principal individual contributors

This creates unique screening requirements during interviews:

• Explicitly ask about management aspirations (red flag for HQ)
• Make clear that influence is earned through output quality, not role
• Test for comfort operating without hierarchical direction
• Look for self-motivated people who own entire problem areas

Action for founders:

• Be explicit about your structural philosophy in early interviews
• Screen out candidates who need management structures to thrive
• Set compensation that rewards technical depth not management scope
• Create lightweight coordination systems that don't create implicit hierarchies

Beyond mission: making impact tangible

While mission alignment is critical, Singh balances "mission evangelism" with concrete impact narratives that connect daily work to real outcomes.

"When we f**k up, someone is not going to get their payroll. When we deliver things on time, someone will be able to go out and bring their family on a dinner treat."

This dual approach helps:

• Make abstract missions concrete and motivating
• Connect daily work to real human outcomes
• Avoid becoming too "airy-fairy" (ungrounded in reality)
• Balance long-term vision with day-to-day motivation

Action for founders:

• Create specific, concrete examples of how your product impacts real users
• Connect engineering decisions directly to business/user outcomes
• Balance aspirational mission talk with tangible impact stories
• Ask candidates about the real-world impact of their previous work

First principles over process: the anti-ritual

Singh is deliberately skeptical of standard engineering processes. HQ.xyz maintains almost none of the rituals most engineering teams consider essential.

"We do not do dailies. We never do dailies. We tried it, man. It was just too much overhead for too little value. We had to really be honest with ourselves."

Instead, the team:

• Rigorously evaluates any new process before implementation
• Requires team-wide agreement that a process delivers clear value
• Limits meetings to those with demonstrable ROI
• Encourages direct 1:1 communication instead of group syncs
• Maintains only a lightweight retro with team kudos

Action for founders:

• Challenge every "standard" process before implementing
• Ask: "Would we create this process if it didn't already exist?"
• Create a high bar for adding any recurring meeting
• Train teams to solve problems directly rather than in meetings
• Be explicit that process-light doesn't mean accountability-light

Annual recommitment: the relationship reset

Perhaps Singh's most interesting retention strategy is his annual "re-contracting" conversation with all team members. Every June/July, he sits down with each person to discuss their commitment level for the next 1-2 years.

"I will have to sit down and ask you one simple question, which is, are you willing to commit for the next year or two? If you're not, I need you to go find a new place."

This approach:

• Creates explicit renewal of commitment
• Provides clean exit paths for those ready to move on
• Avoids declining performance from divided attention
• Maintains team energy and focus
• Humanizes normal career transitions

If someone is ready to move on, Singh offers to write recommendation letters and make introductions, creating a supportive off-ramp rather than a cliff.

Action for founders:

• Schedule explicit commitment check-ins at regular intervals
• Create a culture where changing priorities is discussed openly
• Formalize "recommitment" rather than assuming continued alignment
• Provide supportive transitions for those ready to move on

Lead by influence, not authority

HQ.xyz's approach to organizational influence goes beyond simply having a flat structure. Singh expects all team members to earn their influence through consistently valuable contributions rather than position.

"You need to deliver things. You need to be on time. You have to be disciplined about things. And only then the team appreciates your input. Otherwise, you will not be effective."

This creates:

• A meritocratic system where the best ideas win, not the loudest voices
• Healthy debate based on contribution quality, not politics
• Rapid implementation of good ideas from anywhere in the team
• Clear expectations that impact comes through quality work

Action for founders:

• Make explicit that influence is earned through output quality
• Create systems for visibility of work quality and impact
• Recognize and celebrate those who lead by example
• Avoid letting title or tenure become proxies for decision authority

Metrics & signals:

Hiring:

These are the metrics Singh uses during recruitment and selection:

1. Time to start: Committed candidates typically start within 1 week (a strong signal of mission alignment)
2. Binary reaction to first interview: Candidates either walk away or become highly enthusiastic (no middle ground)
3. Energy assessment during interview: Does the candidate bring energy to the conversation or drain it?
4. First-principles thinking: How well can they dissect problems from first principles rather than pattern matching?
5. Ability to discuss trade-offs: Can they articulate nuanced technical trade-offs rather than being dogmatic?
6. Mission resonance: How deeply do they engage with and understand the company's mission?

Post-hiring team metrics:

These are the metrics Singh tracks after someone joins the team:

• Energy contribution: Are they consistently bringing energy to the team or draining it from others?
• Pushback quality: How often and effectively do they challenge leadership's thinking?
• Implementation speed: How quickly can they move from idea to execution?
• Mission alignment maintenance: Has there been any drift in their belief in the mission?
• Annual recommitment: Do they enthusiastically recommit during the formal check-in conversations?
• Culture contribution: Are they exemplifying and strengthening the intended culture?

Action for founders:

• Create simple energy and engagement monitoring systems
• Watch for declining passion as an early warning sign
• Track quality of debate and pushback as a team health indicator
• Implement lightweight commitment renewal mechanisms

Hard lessons & adaptations

Singh's approach has evolved significantly, with some painful lessons:

From manager to founder mindset

"Back in the day, I was hiring to manage — I'm the director, hiring people to manage to succeed. Now as a founder with 15 million things to deal with, I cannot manage."

Deliberate scarinessBad hires taught him to be intentionally intimidating in first interviews to filter out those who won't thrive in their demanding environment.

From credentialism to energyMoved away from credentials or past company prestige to focus almost exclusively on energy, mission alignment, and first-principles thinking.

Letting good people goLearned that even competent people need to leave if they drain team energy or lose faith in the mission.

Advice to founders

Singh's direct advice to Web3 founders building early teams:

On ego:

"You want to get people who are better than you. That really requires you to put that ego aside. Smart people smell it. The right people will smell it and they'll be like, 'I don't want to work with this company.'"

On first principles: "Prioritize the ability to think deeply about a problem, to be able to dissect a situation and understand or get to the relevant questions."

On the hiring mindset: "Approach the interview process with humility. Humanize it with the aims to uncover the best that they can give."

On technical assessment: "For engineers, prioritize being able to discuss tradeoffs more than understanding one technology."

On firing: "We tend to fire very fast. You'll sense within a month or about six weeks whether this person is bringing energy into the team."

Next steps: how to apply the Headquarters playbook

1. Overhaul your first interview to be 80% you selling the mission and 20% assessment.
2. Implement a "sports team" org model with minimal hierarchy and clear expectations about earning influence.
3. Schedule annual "recommitment" conversations with each team member to explicitly discuss their 1-2 year commitment.

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