Hooked on Founder-Led Recruiting - Issue 46
“Your company is your people. If you don’t personally get involved in recruiting, you are outsourcing the most important thing you do”. Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb
Recruiting is THE most leveraged thing founders do. If you recruit well, you can do many other things poorly and still thrive. The good news is that who and how you hire are the most predictive and controllable inputs to your company's success. The bad news is that many founders approach recruiting as a series of transactions rather than as a strategic pillar of company building. This leads us to wonder if startup failure rates could be significantly reduced if founders used the power of leverage by focusing half their time on hiring phenomenal people.
What’s going on?
Recruiting was like shooting fish in a barrel at the pre-seed and seed stage. You and your co-founders easily tapped into your networks to build a solid initial team, rarely interviewing anyone because you rationalized most of the “candidates” were friends and former co-workers, known quantities. Now that you’ve raised another funding round, it’s time to scale. You’re hiring 10-15 engineers, product and design folks, and mid-level managers for various functions. You realize that ad-hoc recruiting, even when founder-led, isn’t repeatable, predictable, or scalable, especially when facing the daunting reality that most of your next generation of hires will be net new rather than known quantities, some for roles you have not performed yourself. Even though your pond of known talent has been exhausted, the pressure to move faster and hire more innovative, 10x talent is on, and you don’t know how to pivot. At this point, you might be tempted to hire a recruiter or outsource parts of the recruiting process to team members or agencies. Don’t succumb to this notion. Now is the time to triple down on founder-led recruiting, not hand it off or staff it out.
Why does it matter?
Founder-led recruiting, when executed well, is a predictor of startup success. Founder-led recruiting is a commitment to raising the collective bar with every hire. It means more than just interviewing candidates; it involves the back-breaking work of personally sourcing talent, building relationships, pre-closing, selling, and onboarding. A founder committed to being a world-class recruiter sends a positive message to potential recruits, builds a strong recruiting culture, and actively controls the impact that every hire can make on the trajectory of their company. If you, as a founder, are not leading recruiting in these specific ways, you will accrue talent debt, the silent startup killer. Just ask your team if you don’t believe us.
What do others think?
"Building a successful company starts with building the right team. The individuals you bring on board aren't just employees; they are the foundation and future of your organization. For a founder or CEO, recruiting isn't just a task; it's the cornerstone of growth and success. Investing time in hiring isn't a distraction—it's an opportunity to shape the destiny of your company. Choose wisely, the team you hire is the company you build." Chris Aberger, Co-founder and CEO of early-stage startup, Numbers Station AI
What do we think?
As a founder, you have got to be a phenomenal recruiter. If not you, then who?
People in the early days come to work for and with YOU. No one else but you and your co-founders can attract, offer/close, and build a team capable of grinding it out and driving your startup to every milestone.
Your involvement sends a powerful message to candidates. It shows that you are deeply invested in your company’s future and care about each team member’s contribution. This level of engagement is a significant differentiator, attracting top talent who are excited to work directly with the founders and be part of a cohesive, mission-driven team.
Signals of Strong Founder-Led Recruiting
Founders are intentional and don’t meander. They define the company's culture and recruiting philosophy, discuss acceptable tradeoffs for imperfect candidates, and record feedback using scorecards for everyone on the interview loop. They also carefully spec roles, ensure alignment across the interview team, plan the interview strategy, and agree on tradeoffs they may need to consider.
Founders start recruiting months/years ahead of need. They start sourcing, connecting, and engaging potential candidates 1-5 years before they’ll need to hire them. This means that the day they think they've got a startup idea is the day they start talking to people they’ll want to hire once they get some funding. They share product updates, learning, and feedback loops to engage talent along the journey so that the talent is vetted and invested in their company's success when they are ready to make key hires.
Founders spend half their time recruiting (and pre-closing). From day 1, great founders spend at least 30-50% of their time recruiting. They lead every step of the recruiting process, personally sourcing candidates, conducting interviews, nurturing relationships, selling, and closing the first 50-100 hires and beyond.
Founders hire for the NOW. Recruiting never sleeps, but great founders know exactly when to hit the “hire” button. They bring on board individuals who can power them to the next milestone—typically a funding round within 6-24 months. It's all about timing and making every hire count.
Exceptions to the Founder-Led Recruiting Rule
While founder-led recruiting is non-optional for early-stage startups, there are exceptions where external help might be necessary:
Failure: High decline rates and high turnover signal a slow death for a startup. While getting help from a trusted recruiting partner shouldn’t be the first step, it can help bail water when founders lose control of the situation. The key is to use this support strategically, learn from it, and then wean off. We have found that a seasoned recruiter can help founders manage immediate needs while teaching them how to build a strong, founder-led recruiting process.
Specialized skills: Certain skills or levels of expertise might require a surgical approach for a one-off, deeply technical, or leadership hire.
Rapid scaling ahead: This is not an exception to the founder-led recruiting rule but a milestone for how founders’ roles as recruiters evolve over time. Once companies hit ~100 hires and their trajectory indicates headcount growth of 3x-10x, it signals that it’s time to hire a talent director (who reports to the founders, not to a G&A function) - someone to build their vision of a recruiting machine that operationalizes their culture, philosophy, hiring bar, assessment methods, selling, closing, and onboarding processes.
What do YOU think?
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Take ACTION
1. Be Intentional and Structured.
Define Your Culture and Philosophy: Sit down with your co-founders and clearly articulate your company's culture and recruiting philosophy. Discuss and agree on the non-negotiable traits and values you are looking for in candidates.
Use Scorecards: Develop scorecards for the interview process and ensure that every member of the interview loop uses them to provide consistent and objective feedback.
Specify Roles and Strategies: Carefully outline each role you need to fill. Align your interview team with the expectations and strategy for each role. Plan your interview process and agree on acceptable tradeoffs for imperfect candidates.
2. Start Early and Build Relationships.
Create a Wish List: List 50 people you’d love to recruit over the next three years. Give them free access to your product and include them in newsletters, blogs, and other communications.
Engage Early: When you have a startup idea, reach out to potential candidates. Use platforms like LinkedIn, industry events, and personal networks to start conversations.
Share Updates: Regularly update these potential candidates with news about your product, company progress, and industry insights. Use newsletters, blogs, and social media to keep them engaged.
Provide Value: Create opportunities for potential hires to engage with your company. Invite them to events, seek their feedback on your product, and offer mentorship. This keeps them invested and interested long before you’re ready to hire.
3. Dedicate Time to Recruiting.
Prioritize Recruiting: Allocate 30-50% of your time to recruiting activities. Block out specific times in your calendar each week dedicated solely to sourcing, interviewing, and nurturing candidate relationships.
Work the Wish List: Reach out to one person on your wish list every week. Ask for their feedback on your product, personally invite them to your talks and events, and show an interest in their career by offering mentorship.
Lead the Process: Personally lead every step of the recruiting process for your first 50-100 hires. This includes sourcing candidates, conducting interviews, following up, selling the vision, and closing deals.
Stay Engaged: Constantly expand your network by attending industry events, joining professional groups, and leveraging social media to find potential candidates. Always be on the lookout for top talent.
4. Hire for Today.
Identify Immediate Goals: Hire individuals who can achieve your next critical milestone within 6-24 months, aligning each hire with immediate business goals like securing the next round of funding.
Make Every Hire Count: Be strategic about when to extend offers. Only hire when you identify a candidate who can significantly contribute to your short-term objectives.
Assess Fit: Look for candidates with the necessary functional expertise and a track record of success in similar or transferable roles. Ensure they can hit the ground running and deliver immediate value.
5. Create a Recruiting Culture.
Lead by Example: Your team takes its cues from you. Make sure everyone hears your recruiting pitch and talk tracks regularly so they can mimic and apply that message to their interactions.
Encourage Evangelism: Everyone in the company can be an evangelist. Foster an environment where team members take pride in their work and represent the company, making the organization magnetic to potential hires.
6. Listen up, Talent! While this post is written for founders, we want to acknowledge ALL the people in the ecosystem. If you are a talented person who craves early-stage startup life, remember to optimize your career by joining companies where the founders are doing all the recruiting. If your first conversation (in any format - DM, email, phone) with a Seed or Series A company is not with the founder, that’s a bright red flag. The rare exceptions are specialty roles (see above) and executive recruiting, where the founder has enlisted a retained search partner to help them take a strategic approach to a delicate candidate pool.
Tools, Events & Insights
Startup Failure Rate Statistics, courtesy of Exploding Topics
Hooked on Pre-Closing - Delaying these conversations often leads to heartbreak.
Talent-dense companies have had founder-led recruiting at their core since day zero.
Hooked on Paying Down Talent Debt - Talent debt can be a real drag on growth.
Hooked on Talent Density - Every hire you make impacts the company trajectory.
Hooked on Hiring for the NOW - Your startup isn't just scaling—it's evolving.
Hooked on Role Specs - Why cut corners when creating the right team?
Hooked on Executive Search Partners - Nurture these important relationships.
Founded and Funded: Linda Lian of Common Room, Building a Team of Co-Founders
About Madrona
Madrona is a venture capital firm that helps entrepreneurs build companies of consequence.
Hooked, by Madrona is a series about startup talent, careers, and founder stories, interpreted by a curious and skeptical VC + playbooks, tools and templates…and other stuff company builders need to know about how to hire.
Who creates Hooked?
The Talent Team @ Madrona Venture Group
Shannon Anderson, Talent Director
Audra Aulabaugh, Company Builder and Talent Partner
Matt Witt, Company Builder and Talent Partner