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TSE'S STARTUP HIRING BLOG
Startup Recruitment Insights & Hiring Guides
Building a startup from scratch isn't a checklist - it's a series of high-stakes decisions that define your company's trajectory. Our startup hiring blog is where founders get practical, experience-backed guidance on sequencing roles, hiring, and scaling teams, and where candidates get insider insight into how startups actually hire.
Think of it as a recruitment blog for startups covering both sides of the table: a founder hiring guide for building your team, and a startup talent blog for candidates evaluating their next move.
Each article distills lessons from the frontlines of early-stage growth - from go-to-market strategy to technical hiring, funding milestones, and founder leadership.
FEATURED POSTS
Matt Baden
Aug 18
Natalie Adams
Feb 15
Jeremy Macleod
Nov 13, 2025
LATEST STARTUP HIRING ARTICLES
Building a Data Team in the AI Era: Who Should You Hire First?
If you’re building a data team in 2026, the instinct is often to go straight for an AI Engineer. Agents, copilots, automation - it all sounds like the answer, but most of the time it isn’t.
Matt Baden
Aug 186 min read
How to Hire a Really Good Salesperson (When Everyone Looks Good on Paper)
If you’re figuring out how to hire a really good salesperson, the mistake most founders make is focusing on quota %, logos, or industry experience.
Jeremy Macleod
Jun 216 min read
Agentic AI Hiring Strategies: What Founders Need to Know as AI Moves From Thinking to Doing
AI hiring strategies are no longer just about adding AI talent, they’re also about redesigning how work gets done. As AI shifts from answering questions to executing tasks, startups need to hire builders who can design, manage, and optimize AI-driven workflows.
Natalie Adams
Jun 174 min read
Sales Engineer vs Solutions Engineer vs Hybrid: Which Should You Hire First?
The debate around sales engineer vs solutions engineer usually isn’t about titles, it’s about where technical support is missing in the sales process.
Founders need help answering a much more important question:
Where is technical support missing in my GTM motion right now?
Because that’s what this hire is really about.
Matt Baden
May 265 min read
How a Recruiting Firm Helps Startups Hire Top Talent
How a recruiting firm helps startups hire top talent isn’t about filling roles faster. It’s about making better decisions earlier. At the early stage, one strong hire can change the trajectory of your business. while one wrong hire can slow product velocity, impact culture, and burn valuable runway.
Natalie Adams
May 117 min read
Top 5 In-Demand AI Pre-Training Jobs (And When to Hire Them)
Pre-training in AI is the process of training models on massive datasets so they learn general patterns before being fine-tuned for specific tasks. It's the heavy lifting that sits behind most of today's powerful AI systems, and it's one of the main reasons hiring in this area has gone through the roof.
Matt Baden
Apr 156 min read
ERR vs ARR: How Experimental Run-rate Revenue Changes How You Hire
Across startup conversations (especially in go-to-market, product, and technical planning) a term you’re likely hearing more often is ERR, short for Experimental Run-rate Revenue. It’s a way of describing revenue that looks real on paper but is still being proven in practice.
Natalie Adams
Mar 27 min read
Startup Remote Work Policy: What Founders Say vs What Candidates Hear
There’s no universally correct startup remote work policy. But there is a question every founder should answer clearly: Does your operating model align with the talent you want, and the company you’re trying to build?
Yisel De Leon
Feb 235 min read
The 7 Types of Startup Founders (And What Your Hiring Style Says About You)
This isn’t another article about founder personality types for the sake of classification. Instead, we focus on how deep-rooted founder traits shape hiring decisions - and why that has an outsized impact on startup success.
Natalie Adams
Feb 158 min read
Startup RSUs vs Stock Options: What Founders Should Know as They Scale
Most founders think RSUs vs stock options is a finance conversation. It’s not.
It’s actually one of the most important hiring decisions you’ll make as you scale. Here’s the part no one tells you:
Jeremy Macleod
Jan 3010 min read
When to Hire Marketing Talent for Your SaaS Startup (and Why Waiting Costs You)
Most SaaS founders wait too long to hire their first marketer. Here’s how to know the earliest accurate moment to hire marketing talent for your SaaS startup - and the signals that show you’re ready.
Jeremy Macleod
Nov 13, 20257 min read
3 Habits of Founders Who Consistently Hire Top Startup Talent
Hiring in a startup isn’t about putting candidates through a test - it’s about inspiring them to build with you. Today’s top talent isn’t trying to impress; they’re choosing missions, momentum, and founders with clarity. The best early-stage hiring isn’t interrogation, it’s storytelling. Here are three things great founders do differently to attract and keep exceptional people.
Natalie Adams
Oct 30, 20253 min read
Startup H1B Visa: What Startup Founders Need to Know About the September 2025 Changes
For early-stage startups, the startup H1B visa shift is less about immigration law and more about strategic growth risk. If you’re planning U.S. market entry or trying to scale niche technical teams, you need a hiring plan that accounts for these new constraints.
Matt Baden
Sep 26, 20254 min read
How Many Interviews Is Too Many? A Guide To The Startup Interview Process
Long hiring processes rarely eliminate hiring risk, instead, they often create new problems.
Natalie Adams
Aug 21, 20255 min read
Startup Advisors: Just Because They Were Employee #12 Doesn't Mean They Know How To Scale
When looking for potential startup advisors founders often over index on where someone worked and not enough on what they actually did while they were there.
It's a bit like taking financial advice from a lottery winner. They may be incredibly wealthy - but was it because of exceptional judgement, or because they happened to hold the winning ticket?
Jeremy Macleod
Jul 8, 20245 min read
Why Early-Stage Startup Hiring Processes Fail (And How to Fix Them)
In early-stage startups, the quality of the talent you bring on from day one can determine your trajectory. Founders know this - yet even great builders struggle with hiring when scaling from founder-led execution to creating real GTM and technical functions.
Natalie Adams
Mar 16, 20248 min read
Who Should Your First Startup Hires Be? 5 Traits Every Founder Should Prioritize
Choosing the right first hires for a startup isn't about following a checklist. It's about solving the biggest problem standing between your company and its next milestone.
Natalie Adams
Jan 21, 20225 min read
When to Hire GTM for Your Startup (Before Growth Slows Down)
As your startup grows, every customer conversation, demo, partnership and commercial decision still flows through you. Eventually, your calendar becomes the bottleneck.
The challenge isn't whether you should build a GTM team. It's knowing when to hire GTM for your startup before growth begins to slow.
Jeremy Macleod
Jan 25, 20217 min read
Startup Hiring Strategy by Location: How to Build Your First Team
Your startup hiring strategy is still heavily influenced by one decision: where you build. Location no longer determines whether you can build a great company. It does determine the talent you can access, how quickly you can hire, and how effectively your team works together.
Natalie Adams
Mar 18, 20207 min read
The Hidden Cost Of Choosing The Cheapest Recruiter
If you're choosing between recruiters based on who charges the lowest fee, you're probably comparing the wrong thing. Whether you're evaluating startup recruitment costs, recruiter fees or agency pricing, the fee is only a small fraction of the total cost of making a hire.
Natalie Adams
Mar 1, 20208 min read
Startup Hiring
Moves Fast.
So Should Your Insights.
Startup hiring changes quickly. New technologies, funding markets and candidate expectations continue to reshape how companies attract talent.
Our newsletter brings together the insights we're sharing with founders and candidates every week, keeping you ahead of market trends.
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