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Ask HN: How do you find early stage startups to join

44 pointsgavino23 comments

Curious how others find early stage startups to join. Thinking first engineer that a startup is hiring to maybe first 20 employees.

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I think the most relevant is through your network, mainly because it’s generally a trust matter on both ends. It’s best when the deal is a known quantity vs looking over “who’s hiring monthly HN posts”.

I had 10-15 people i was working with (not all employed) at my last startup and they all came through my network either directly (ex colleagues) or through trusted parties.

Again it’s mostly a trust thing more than anything.

I think a good strategy is to get close to the kind of startups you care about without (before) direct intent to join. It’s easy to hang out (or at least it used to be) through various events, meetups or co-working places.

Many startups I didn’t join and could have been good, I’ve met through open-source (Hadoop, HBase, Mesos, etc.) these are companies like Cloudera, DataBricks etc. when they were tiny. I still miss that crowd, years later.

So it’s mostly a matter of being close to what’s happening, able to filter and ready to jump when opportunity arises.

Y Combinator and other accelerators have job boards: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

A lot of VCs also have job boards, or they will list their portfolio companies and you can reach out directly:

https://jobs.a16z.com/jobs

https://jobs.sequoiacap.com/jobs

https://kindredventures.com/portfolio

etc

Adding to this, the YC jobs portal is also on: https://www.workatastartup.com/

There are also plenty of early stage startup job offers on the Ask HN: Who is hiring threads (here’s the latest one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44757794)

The above can be hard to navigate, but there are some recommended tools in there that scrape the listings and make them searchable

Lastly, you can also try this CLI tool that uses AI to match your resume and preferences to job listings scraped from HN and a couple of other sources: https://github.com/nicobrenner/commandjobs

Oh, and you can also attend startup meetups, a lot of times you can meet the founders in person and they might be looking to hire (that’s how I first got into an early YC company)

Just do the stuff in the same space, either by aligning your current work or shipping hobby projects, writings, opinions on social media. You will quickly “map” the people in the area you are interested in and your only task is getting on their radar. Then you can expect them to reach out. This solves all the tediousness of cold outreach or interviews, etc. Worked well for me for the last two decades.

I'm curious as to why startup would be a goal specifically vs the job itself at any company? Lifestyle, company size, career growth, equity, something else?

You have a lot more control in an early stage startup vs a later stage one where lots of design decisions have already been made before you arrived and you're kind of stuck with them. If you like having an influence on the design of the product, tools, even implementation languages the earlier you get in, the more influence you have.

1. AI is past the inflection point. Startups are best positioned to accelerate on this. I don't mean AI products, but just hiring people who are good at cursor and don't have this mental block. They're able to get to a more optimal 1 engineer per PM ratio without the demoralization of firing a whole bunch. These companies are growing a lot faster and earlier than before.

2. Late stage funding is dry, early stage funding is cheap now. It's been three years of "winter is coming".

3. Even without the equity, you're positioned to be in a good place with the right growth.

To me, it's just riding the wave instead of complaining about the wave.

I’ve had luck finding early-stage startups through a mix of places:

HN “Who’s Hiring” threads (great for early opportunities straight from founders).

AngelList / Wellfound for more structured job boards.

Direct outreach - if you see a product you like, email the founder. Early teams usually respond well to proactive people.

It’s less about waiting for a job post and more about finding projects you’re excited about and reaching out early.

Watch funding announcements and reach out directly, preferably with a warm intro if you can get one. Recently funded startups are often under pressure to hire ASAP and if you convince them to hire you, they’ll do anything to close the deal (i.e. they’d rather beat a high counter-offer than restart their interviewing cycle).

This should be the top comment. Nailed it

Didn't work for me. Many still emphasize culture over fast hiring. It also doesn't change that they're hiring in an employer's market - they can be picky, and I've been rejected such a company after doing some kind of MBTI test lol.

It’s a technique that will favor those skilled in BS — or more charitably, those skilled in social persuasion. And this is a risk for the founders, but there are plenty of cracked engineers who are also persuasive. The problem is they have little motivation to join a company with instability and looming uncertainty. So if the founders aren’t careful they’ll end up hiring someone more skilled at BS than any technical competency.

I’ve been the founder in this position, and I’m confident in my ability to judge talent, so I don’t worry too much about the risk of hiring a BSer. I know that if I want to hire someone then they’re qualified. But at what price? Once I’ve decided I want to hire them, the cost of passing — and restarting the cycle — is too high to push back on high counteroffers, especially when the investors are pressuring us to hire fast.

(fwiw, my next startup I will avoid raising any money until we have product/market fit… or at least I’ll tell the VCs pressuring me to hire too early to pound sand… this rushed hiring was a big contributor to the soft failure (acquihire), but I am proud we built a very strong team. For all our missteps and failures, hiring was not one of them.)

I think we shouldn't over think this kind of stuff. Just obssessed with being so good at what you do, occasionally go to clubs or events in the fields you are interested, and people will notice you if you're good.

In my case, I was simply invited by people who already know my ability. I don't even actively find it.

1. Twitter: Founders and employees of early stage startups are often on twitter.

2. Portfolios of great angel investors and VC firms.

3. Emailing people you admire, eg investors, founders, or engineers.

4. Write down your friends and past and current colleagues who you think are a) most likely to be successful and b) you’d most enjoy working with. Or even just who you most like, trust, and admire. Then see where they work. And ask them about other companies they know. The simplest version of this is go on LinkedIn, and browse your network, and click to check out the companies all of your past classmates and colleagues work at.

5. Go to events that would have interesting technologists in your field (ie the areas where you have skill and taste, so you can pick who you admire), and ask them where they work, and which startups they’ve been impressed by. Talks, conferences, meetups, maker spaces.

6. Biased self-promotion: I’m kind of obsessed with interesting startups and sometimes share lists of startups, eg https://x.com/chrisbarber/status/1957834156794343730 and https://x.com/chrisbarber/status/1957446016950816866

7. HN who is hiring thread: there are lots of interesting ones there, you’ll just want to dig through to find them.

8. Look up university career fair company lists to see which companies are hiring, if they’re hiring new grads and interns then they’re very likely hiring senior engineers too.

9. Podcasts: some technologists have great podcasts, so do some investors and VC firms.

10. Search for startups founded by alumni from your school, you’re more likely to have alumni second degree connections there.

I’ll note that investors get many bets, employees get one at a time. So you need a higher bar. Meeting in person is particularly high signal.

My tip for filtering companies is to spend as much time as possible in person with the team before accepting an offer, ideally at least on 3+ separate occasions, with 3+ separate people. If there’s doubt, skip. This is also why it’s so good to start by identifying your most impressive friends and colleagues and see where they work, because you start with that high trust filter.

For startups that have an open-source component, GitHub is a good channel. That's how our first hires came to marimo.

Look for startups that interest you and then email the founders. Follow up every two months until you hear a hard no. Things are absolute chaos at an early startup and it's rare that the job board (if even there at all) is up to date.

Source: I work at an early stage startup.

This should be the top comment. Nailed it.

I've personally had the most professional success leveraging my network or friends' network. Also just going to parties and social events where the expectation isnt to meet professional folks. You can get to know people in a bit more genuine sense

In the four early stage startups I've gotten into: 1) Found it through an agency (this was in the late 80s, though). 2,4) I knew someone who was already working there. 3) I knew someone who knew someone who worked there.

So basically through your network.

Look at your favorite VC’s websites and they usually list their portfolio companies. Find some companies that interest you.

Then go to the company’s website and look for postings or email them and tell them you're interested.

I joined 3 seed->Series A startups where I didn't know one of the cofounders. I would never recommend it. Only join early startups if you have worked with at least one of the cofounders before.

Young startups often use third party recruiters. Whenever I am looking for a job, I go through my email archives looking for their cold emails and reach out to them.

Wellfound.com

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