THE SEARCH EXPERTS
Meet the Startup Recruitment Team Behind
Our Hiring Success
Behind every great startup hire is a recruiter who’s been there before - scaling from zero, building in ambiguity, and connecting founders with talent who turn early traction into repeatable growth.
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Our startup recruitment team at TSE brings decades of hands-on experience partnering with early-stage founders across SaaS, AI, developer tools, and other high-growth technologies. We've worked alongside companies through every stage of scaling, seeing firsthand how hiring decisions can accelerate growth.
The guidance we provide is grounded in experience, shaped by hundreds of startup searches, and informed by the realities founders face every day.
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Our team is made up of senior recruiters who specialize in scaling the earliest revenue generating, technical, and design functions for venture-backed startups. Every founder we partner with works directly with a specialist, ensuring context, speed and trust in every search.
SPECIALIST MARKETS. ONE HIRING PHILOSOPHY.
Why Founders Choose TSE Recruiters
While each recruiter brings deep expertise within their market, they all follow the same hiring philosophy: understand the business before the role, prioritize long-term outcomes over short-term placements, and represent every founder with professionalism, curiosity, and care. It's an approach built on transparency, disciplined execution, and a genuine commitment to getting critical hires right.
DEEP EXPERTISE
startup hiring across AI, SaaS, DevTools, Cybersecurity, and emerging technology.
STRATEGIC ROLE DEFINITION
Role scope, organizational planning, and hiring sequencing before the search begins.
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DISCIPLINED EXECUTION
Structured searches that balance speed with rigorous candidate assessment.
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SENIOR PARTNERSHIP
One senior partner, weekly progress updates, live search visibility, and complete transparency.
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TRUSTED BY FOUNDERS & LEADERS
Decades of success in building high-impact GTM, Engineering, Product, and Design teams.​
THE SEARCH EXPERIENCE
How We Hire For Growth
Every search follows a structured process designed to reduce hiring risk, maintain momentum, and give founders complete visibility from briefing through to offer. We invest time upfront to define the role, understand your business, and align on what success looks like before approaching the market.
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STRATEGY & KICKOFF
Align to your business goals, stakeholders, hiring needs, and ideal candidate profile before launching the search.
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PROCESS DESIGN & CALIBRATION
​We'll define the interview process, success metrics, compensation benchmarks, to ensure competitive positioning
03
MARKET MAPPING
& OUTREACH
We map the market, benchmark talent, and engage high-caliber candidates aligned to your stage, product, and growth goals.
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INTERVIEWS & ITERATION
We'll handle coordination of interviews, manage stakeholder feedback, and continuously refine the search as market feedback evolves.
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OFFERS & ONBOARDING
Supporting you through offer strategy, negotiation and onboarding so you can secure and retain top talent.
SCALING STARTUP TEAMS
Every Hire Shapes The Next
From first go-to-market hire to senior revenue, product, and engineering leadership, we partner with founders to build GTM, Technical, and Design teams that scale with the business and supports your next stage of growth.
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As startups grow, hiring decisions become increasingly connected. The profile you choose for your first engineering leader influences the product team you build. Your sales strategy shapes the marketing capability you need. Every decision creates constraints (or opportunities) for the hires that follow.
We work with founders to define the capability the business actually needs, establish the right level of seniority, and sequence hiring across GTM, Engineering, Product, and Design so the organization grows with purpose rather than reacting role by role.
Our clients are usually navigating periods of rapid change: after funding, entering a new market, rebuilding a function, or preparing for the next phase of scale. They need experienced judgment, clear market insight, and a hiring process that keeps pace with the business.
YOUR TSE HIRING PARTNERS
Meet Your GTM, Technical &
Design Hiring Partners
From revenue to demand gen, we build the teams that drive growth and scale
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Yisel De Leon → ​​
​​​Technical leads, securing the engineering, data and product talent that shape core technology and long-term roadmap for early stage and high growth tech companies.​
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Design specialist, recruiting first creative hires and build design-led cultures that strengthen brand, product, and user experience from day one.
Dan Chalklin →
LEADING FROM THE FRONT
The Leadership Team
Our startup recruitment experts bring deep expertise across GTM recruitment, technical search, startup growth, and brand strategy. Together, they bring decades of experience partnering with venture-backed founders through the hiring decisions that shape companies from their earliest stages through to scale.
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Natalie Adams and Jeremy MacLeod co-founded The Search Experience in 2019 with a clear vision: to build a recruitment firm designed around how startup founders actually hire. Paul Dixon joined later in 2019 as Founding Partner, bringing more than a decade of experience recruiting go-to-market talent and further strengthening the firm's leadership team.
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As founder demand evolved, so did the business. In 2023, Matthew Baden joined as Managing Director of Technical recruitment to establish the firm's dedicated technical search practice, responding to the growing need for a specialist partner across engineering, product, and design.
In 2025, Jessica Graham joined to lead Marketing and Brand, strengthening The Search Experience's positioning, content strategy, and educational resources for founders while continuing to build a brand that reflects the caliber of the companies and leaders the firm represents.
FAQs
What areas of recruitment does The Search Experience team specialize in?
We specialize in early-stage GTM, technical and design hiring: - sales, marketing, customer success, engineering, product, and design roles for Seed to Series C startups. Each search is led by a specialist who's placed similar roles before, so founders get market context and calibrated candidates from the first conversation, not a generalist working outside their depth.
What experience does the team bring to venture-backed startup hiring?Our recruiters have scaled teams for VC-backed companies across emerging tech, SaaS, AI, DevTools, and Cybersecurity, from first hires to post-Series C leaders. That range means we've seen what breaks as startups grow: role scope that shifts too early, hires made without a clear mandate, or comp that falls out of step with the market. We bring that pattern recognition to every search.
How does the TSE team support founder-led companies?We act as embedded advisors, not order-takers. That means guiding founders on how to sequence hires, refine role scope, and benchmark comp before a search even launches, so every placement drives commercial impact rather than filling a headcount number. Founders get one senior partner throughout, with weekly visibility into candidate pipeline and search progress.
What types of investors or ecosystems does the team usually partner with?We partner with leading VCs and accelerators across the US who back B2B SaaS, AI, and deep-tech founders. Many of our searches come through referrals from investors who've seen how we work on a prior portfolio company hire, which means we typically understand a founder's board dynamics, growth targets, and runway constraints before the first call.
How can I connect with the right recruiter at The Search Experience?
Explore our startup recruiter bios above to find the specialist aligned to your function, whether that's GTM, technical, or design. Prefer a direct match? Contact us and we'll connect you with the recruiter who understands your market, stage, and hiring priorities, no hand-offs or generalist screening calls along the way.
People Also Ask
Who are the best startup recruiters for early-stage founders?
The Search Experience team specializes in VC-backed startup recruitment from Seed to Series C.
How do I find a startup recruitment team I can trust?
Look for founder-aligned partners who offer transparency, market insight, and hands-on delivery without hand-offs.
Why should I work with a specialized startup recruitment partner?
The Search Experience offers speed, focus, and accountability - no layers, only startup specialists who own results end to end.
What makes The Search Experience the right fit for founders?
We combine startup experience, founder empathy, and commercial rigor - operating as embedded partners, not external recruiters.
How long does it take to hire through TSE?
Most searches complete within 4-8 weeks, depending on role scope and candidate availability.
Can I work with the same recruiter throughout the process?
Yes - there are no hand-offs. The same specialist runs your search from intake to placement.