There’s something I have to admit. There’s a topic I consistently geek out on… Hiring for early stage startups.
Luckily I’m not alone. And there’s some great content out there. In late 2023 Lenny’s Newsletter broke down How, and when, to hire your early team.
I love this infographic (below) with the first 10 hires for top B2B startups. The newsletter then goes on to detail how to find them, and how to actually sell people to join you.
I wanted to break down some of the key takeaways and add some of my own thoughts.
Some things went as expected
- Over 2/3 of the startups hired an engineer as their first employee
- Every company on this list hired at least 5 engineers out of their first 10 hires
- For some companies engineers were the majority of their early hires; Snyk hired 9 engineers out of the first 10 employees and Ramp’s first 8 hires were engineers
And some things that definitely stood out
- Coda’s 1st hire was a Head of Recruiting
- Figma hired HR/Recruiters as hires 5 and 6
- Only Amplitude and Figma hired Marketers in their first 10
- Sales is the 2nd most common hire after engineering but it’s not nearly as prevalent. Zip and Gong hired the most in Sales with each of them bringing on 3 out of their first 10 hires
Hiring Recruiters early warms this recruiter’s heart, but it was definitely surprising to see this. I’ve typically seen recruiters brought on full time closer to the 20th employee mark, coupled with sustainable upcoming hiring needs. But the key is understanding the needs of the specific business, how much time is being spent on running recruiting processes and where help is truly needed.
If you don’t require a full time recruiter but need help building recruitment pipelines, this could be a perfect time to bring on a fractional recruiter. If you don’t have the budget for either, be prepared to commit a ton of time to DIY. We’ve put together a quick sourcing guide to help early founders recruiter via LinkedIn without the support of a recruiter.
How you can find your amazing next hire
The 3 top source of hires were:
1. Your Network
2. Cold Outreach
3. Job Boards
Personally I think early teams lean a little too heavily on the founder’s network. You might be able to get people who are committed to working with you, but are they all truly the best for the needs of the roles and will they have the largest possible impact on your business?
The magic truly happens when you can sell your vision to someone outside of your network who is perfect for the job at hand.
Additionally once you have your cold outreach & conversion process built out it’s a much more repeatable framework to rely on as you continue to scale the team.
I’m not surprised to see job boards further down the list but it’s great to see that they are making an impact. If you’re a new startup you tend to not have the advantage of brand recognition which leads to less applications. However, the founders highlighted having success via AngelList, Triplebyte and VCs internal job boards. Piggy backing on the brand recognition of your VC partners is a great way to punch above your weight when it comes to job boards.
Selling the dream
Finding the right person means nothing, if you can’t convince them to join you. 3 of the top suggestions from founders were something that literally anyone can do: Captivating vision, Put in the Time, and Love bomb.
Assume that if you’ve gotten to final stages, your leading candidate has other options. Sell your mission, Build Excitement and Momentum with candidates in every step of the process and when you realize you want to hire someone, GO ALL IN.
About WithAgility
We are THE Recruiters for B2B Marketing & Product teams. WithAgility provides executive search, fractional recruiting and talent consulting to the fastest growing technology companies in the world. For help hiring your next leader or scaling your team, contact us today. We look forward to working with you.