Recruiting at Seed/Series A stage startups

Hiring at a seed-stage startup is a race against time. These lessons are sharpest for a five-person seed team; a Series A company can usually afford more specialization.

Source

• Start with your network. Tap into yours and your employees’ networks—nothing beats great referrals.
• Build an engineering brand. Excite builders with the problems you're solving every day. For example, I like how deeply technical Cursor's engineering blog posts can get.
• Use external recruiting firms when necessary. They can help after you’ve exhausted your own networks or need to fill a specialized role quickly.

Assess

• Build a lightweight process. Define a clear interview loop, document it, make sure everyone understands and follows it, and iterate.
• Speed matters. Don’t let great candidates slip through slow cycles. Make it frictionless to talk to the CTO or CEO. Get on text and be accessible.
• Require clear evidence for the hire. If nobody can explain why a candidate should succeed in the role, pause. Urgency should not turn a lukewarm signal into a yes.

Close

• Be generous with time. Help candidates visualize the journey. A compelling vision backed by metrics and results is how you win. A visual offer letter like Complete's can go a long way.
• Hire for the role you actually have. At a five-person startup, you need evidence that a candidate can already handle the core of the job. You can bet on their growth, but not on inventing the fit after they join.

At seed stage, recruiting is not merely one step in company-building: each hire changes what the company can attempt. Design the funnel deliberately, move quickly, and let evidence—not urgency—set the bar.