How to source and hire your first engineers and account executives

Executive overview

Early hires define your company's culture, velocity, and trajectory for everyone who follows. Most founders treat hiring like interviewing — the real job is selling.

Hiring is outbound sales: treat sourcing like top-of-funnel pipeline and every outreach like a crafted cold email.

Candidates evaluate three options: big tech (stability, slow pace), growth-stage (predictable upside, structure), or early-stage startup (ownership, high-variance outcome). Know which category a candidate leans toward before trying to close them.

Understanding what candidates want

• Categorise each candidate early: big tech, growth stage, or startup-leaning
• Signals: recent employers, what they say in interviews, whether they're also interviewing at large companies
• If a candidate is uncertain, revisit why a startup is the right move before pitching your company specifically
• Four startup selling angles: mission, equity upside, technical challenge, team and culture
• Pitch one or two angles per candidate — vary the pitch based on what you learn

Finding AE candidates

• Target AEs from companies with the same buyer persona and deal size
• Look for public quota attainment signals: "100% attainment Q3", "140% full year", presidents club
• Consistent attainment within one company (same manager, same team) is a stronger signal than job-hopping for titles
• Prioritise candidates with fast promotion cycles: SDR → AE → senior AE at the same company
• Seek candidates with Series A–C experience; pre-seed is rare but valuable

Finding engineering candidates

• Lead with what makes you unique as a founder — personal background, niche tech, specific open-source relevance
• Strong signal: candidates who have built their own projects or previously founded a startup
• Search GitHub contributors on relevant open-source projects
• Recruit in Slack groups, Discord forums, and open-source communities — only effective if it feels authentic
• Non-obvious candidates (no top-tier school or company on paper) face less competition and can be equally talented

Writing outreach that gets replies

• Personalise every message — know specifically why you're contacting that person
• Multi-step campaigns across email, LinkedIn, and optionally Twitter DMs outperform single-channel messages
• Email is the default: automatable, trackable, and cumulative across multiple steps
• LinkedIn steps must be done manually (ToS); use them as step 3 after two automated emails
• Keep emails short — candidates read on mobile and skim quickly
• Establish legitimacy: customers, funding, growth momentum, recent press
• Include a clear call to action and a booking link in every message
• For AEs: pitch faster career progression and leadership upside
• For engineers: pitch ownership, autonomy, and working directly on hard problems
• The technical co-founder should send all engineering outreach personally

Outreach metrics and cadence

• Target 10–20% reply rate; 40%+ is achievable with strong personalisation
• Interested rate (positive replies only) should be roughly half your reply rate — if not, volume is masking low quality
• Realistic interested rates: ~7–11% depending on role
• Schedule 100+ outreach emails per week; aim for 10 candidate conversations per week
• If you're not hitting 10 interviews per week, scale outreach volume, not shortcuts
• Every founder should be involved — don't delegate the full process to one person
• Block dedicated sourcing time; Sunday evenings work well for preparing the week's campaigns

Interview process

AEs:

1. Round 1 (30 min): sell the company, surface the candidate's motivations and competing options
2. Round 2: candidate demos your product or their current product; you play the customer
3. Final round (on-site): mock demo with both co-founders; include coffee chats with existing team

Engineers:

1. Round 1: sell the company; understand why they took the call
2. Round 2: timed case study (e.g. build a web app in one hour); structure to prevent cheating
3. Final round (~6 hours on-site): system design, sandbox project, co-founder interviews, casual lunch

• The first call is for selling — interview comes second, not first
• Use what you learn about candidate motivations to sharpen your close later

Closing and offer stage

• Speed is your main advantage over big tech and growth-stage companies: close within 7–14 days
• Communicate next steps clearly and schedule them immediately after each stage
• Tailor the offer pitch to the specific selling points that candidate cares about
• Ask a co-founder or investor to reach out with the same message — reinforces the close
• Don't fight candidates leaning toward big tech for stability or comp reasons — move on
• Hiring is a repeated game: candidates who say no now may join 6–12 months later

When to bring in a recruiter

• Founders can run two open roles simultaneously (one each); beyond that, consider outside help
• Contingency recruiter: most flexible, no upfront cost, 20–25%+ of placement fee; best for burst hiring
• Contract/embedded recruiter: fixed hours per week, predictable cost, adjustable; good for sustained moderate volume
• In-house recruiter: full-time employee, base + equity, highest commitment; justified once hiring is ongoing and frequent
• Default: stay founder-led until you're consistently running more than two roles at once

Job description tips

• Keep it short — most applicants won't read a long JD
• At least 30% of the JD should sell the company, not describe the role
• Be opinionated: state what you value and what you trade off — bland values lists attract no one
• Specificity filters in the right candidates and filters out mismatches early