It was 2017. Palmer Luckey was standing barefoot outside Anduril’s first hangar, mid-conversation about—of all things—recruiting. The company was barely more than an idea, but I was there to help plan a college recruiting tour. No product, no brand, nothing to sell but conviction. Still, the early team knew the talent they could bring in would shape everything and that building the pipeline had to start on day one. They weren’t just hiring for the moment; they were out to make a lasting impression on the engineers they’d be competing for in the years to come.
Anduril understood early what many founders overlook: recruiting isn’t a support function, but a core pillar of any great company. Yet few prepare for it. Recruiting is one of the most persistent, underestimated challenges founders face once the launch adrenaline fades. Early hires shape culture, define momentum, and steer the entire trajectory. It’s hard, and it’s everything. And it’s why the best founders are almost always great recruiters.
There are two key recruiting questions to ask yourself when starting a company: Who did you need yesterday? And who will you wish you had a year from now? Both matter. Balancing the present and future is the art of building the right team.
Who Did You Need on the Team Yesterday?
Here, recruiting is a game of time and volume. You need a steady pipeline and, like many things in company-building, a good funnel:
It sounds a lot like sales, because it is. But while common sales frameworks like MEDDIC don’t translate perfectly to hiring, the same principles apply:
- You need a sourcing strategy.
- You need to run a tight, well-structured process.
- You need signal on how candidates make decisions.
You need clear expectations set.
Sourcing Strategies
Most early-stage founders start with their immediate network: former colleagues, classmates, and trusted peers. That’s a solid first step. But if you stop there, you’ll risk hiring too slowly or from too narrow a pool. Think about sourcing as a multi-prong strategy, not a single channel:
- First-degree network: People you’d work with again in a heartbeat. Reach out directly. Keep the pitch simple and personal.
- Second-degree network: Warm intros are more likely to lead to better first conversations than cold outreach. Write forwardable blurbs and be as specific as possible with asks from close friends and investors. The more you do this, the easier it is for them to help you and the more help you get.
- Internal recruiter: High leverage when you’re juggling multiple roles and overwhelmed with coordination. This also allows you to build processes and recognize patterns that have compounding benefits long-term. High-slope, young candidates can often be a better fit for startups than those with long tenures at established companies, where hiring is easier. The best startup recruiters are at companies with strong engineers, but no brand recognition—they must be good.
- External recruiters: External recruiters vary in style (sourcing-only, contingent, or retained) and are often expensive. Choose carefully and get references from founders who have worked with them before. Once you’re hiring 5+ people a year it often makes more sense to hire someone in-house. External recruiters can still be very helpful for niche roles.
- Creative channels:
- X (yes, still useful)
- Alumni from strong-but-struggling companies
- Niche Discords or online communities
- University clubs you’re connected to (Formula SAE, rocket clubs, etc.)
- GitHub contributors
- Conference speakers and podcast guests
If you’re willing to dig, there are plenty of strong candidates out there.
Strong Hiring Processes
Interview formats vary widely: pair programming, take-homes, work trials, and more. There’s no single right way to run a process, but the format should reflect your company’s culture and technical challenges. Moreover, the best hiring processes share two key traits: they are fast, and they are hard.
Top candidates want to feel wanted. Move fast, follow up thoughtfully, and show conviction. Speed throughout signals seriousness. Many hiring losses aren’t about compensation or mission, but about timing. If your process drags, you’ll lose great people who never make it to the finish line. That’s a fixable mistake.
Strong candidates are also drawn to strong teams. A rigorous process sets the bar; a lax one lowers it. That doesn’t mean being adversarial, but thoughtful assessments, deeper dives when someone shines, and consistently high standards. Front-load the challenge. By an onsite, you should be 80% sure you’ll make an offer. If rejections are happening late, your early screens are too soft.
After an onsite, you should begin reference checks. You’re still attuned to red flags, but your primary goal is to gather context that will help you close the candidate and support their success post-hire. Think of references less as a final screen, and more as a tool for onboarding and managing effectively.
Here’s how to run references well:
- Ask strong questions. Avoid yes/no prompts. Use open-ended, behavioral questions that invite depth and insight. For example:
- What’s the toughest situation you saw them navigate?
- How do they handle feedback or pushback?
- What kind of environment brings out their best work?
- What should their future manager know to help them thrive?
- Would you hire them again?
- Look for patterns, not anecdotes. Focus on repeated themes across references. One strong or concerning comment often doesn’t mean enough on its own.
- Check your own biases. Reference feedback is inherently subjective. Don’t over-index on style mismatches or charisma. Likewise, recognize that some past colleagues may carry baggage or bias.
- Distinguish reference checks from backchannels. Formal references are often polished and safe. Backchannels—discreet conversations with people who weren’t on the candidate’s list—can provide more candid context. Use them carefully: never risk the candidate’s current role, and lean on your network only when it’s appropriate and trusted.
Ultimately, references are about building a richer picture. They help you close great candidates with confidence and ensure you’re setting them up to thrive from day one.
Understanding How Candidates Make Decisions
Recruiting is never a one-way assessment. As a founder, your role is not just to judge talent but to sell the company and help candidates make clear, informed decisions. That means understanding how they think about career moves; not just what’s on their resume, but what they value and what would make this role meaningful to them.
Ask open-ended questions like:
- Why did you join your last role?
- Why did you leave?
- Where do you want to be in five years?
- What kind of team brings out your best work?
- What would make this feel like the right next step?
People are motivated by different things. Not everyone will care about their job for the same reasons you do, and that’s okay. What matters is understanding why they are interested so you can tailor the process, build real trust, and get to a strong yes or a clear no.
Here’s a simple way to think about common candidate motivators:
- Mission: They care about the problem and want to work on something that matters to them.
- Technology: They are drawn to the technical challenge or want to work on cutting-edge problems.
- Career growth: They want more scope, faster learning, or a path to something bigger.
- Team: They care about the people. Trust, chemistry, and shared values matter more than the job title.
- Compensation: They want the offer to reflect their risk tolerance, personal responsibilities, or financial goals.
There is no right answer, just alignment. Once you know what matters most to a candidate, you are in a much better position to build conviction on both sides and close the right candidates.
Aligning Expectations
Tangentially, misaligned expectations are one of the most common and costly reasons early hires don’t work out. Founders often attribute these departures to culture fit or performance, but in many cases, the root issue is a hiring process that failed to clarify the role. In an early-stage company, even one mis-hire that results in attrition can stall momentum and drain morale. Setting expectations clearly and early is how you avoid that.
Most founders cover the basics (compensation, location, hours), but often overlook two critical areas: role scope and growth trajectory.
- Role scope: A strong early PM might join expecting to lead Product, only to find a co-founder is still deeply involved. That tension could have been avoided with a clear conversation upfront about ownership and boundaries.
- Growth expectations: Early engineers often expect to grow into leadership roles over time. But as the company scales, you often need to hire more experienced leaders. Be upfront about this possibility. Involve early hires in those processes, and prioritize bringing in senior hires they respect and can learn from. That alignment can turn a potential source of resentment into a shared sense of progress.
A simple best practice: one month in, ask every new hire, “Is this job what you expected?” If their answer is significantly off, your hiring process likely needs adjustment. Startups evolve quickly. That’s expected. But it’s your job as a founder to communicate clearly and update expectations as things change.
Who Will You Wish You Had a Year From Now?
Most founders focus on putting out fires, and that makes sense—those fires are obviously real. But asking, “What kind of team will I need a year from now?” shifts you from reactive to strategic hiring.
Work backward from your 12 to 24 month milestones. What roles will matter as you move from prototype to product, or from early traction to repeatability? For niche or technical positions like RF engineers or security leads, you’ll need lead time. Top candidates rarely respond to cold job posts. To do this well, get clear on what great looks like in each role, and start building relationships with those people now, before the need becomes urgent.
Becoming Fluent in “What Great Looks Like”
One of the easier traps founders fall into is feeling confident hiring for roles they don’t fully understand. It’s hard to admit when you’re out of your depth, especially when you’re the one building the rocket ship. But the best founders are the ones who can, and then close that gap quickly. It’s possible to ramp fast. Start by tapping your network (investors are great for this!) to meet people who deeply understand the function. Ask them questions like:
- Who are the best people you know in this space?
- What makes someone exceptional in this role, especially at the early stage?
- How do you evaluate that in interviews?
- What’s a must-have skill now versus later?
- What mistakes have you seen with early hires in this function?
- What are the strongest green flags? The clearest red ones?
These conversations sharpen your judgment and help set a clear quality bar. Avoid obviously weak intros if you can—beyond being not a good use of time, they can actually cloud your lens. Refine your instincts and when the right person shows up, you’ll know to move fast.
Make Time to Recruit Even When It Feels Optional
Once you know what great looks like, the next step is simple but often skipped: start early. It won’t feel urgent yet, but recruiting should be a weekly habit, not a last-minute scramble. Track your time. Stay accountable. If you know a role is coming, lay the groundwork now.
Take the RF engineer example. Whenever you’re talking to someone adjacent (a founder, investor, or engineer) ask, “Who’s the best RF engineer you know?” Get the intro or reach out cold saying you have heard great things. You’re not pitching a job, just starting a conversation. Stay in touch. If a handful of great candidates are tracking your progress, the close later will feel natural. This slow-drip approach won’t show up on a dashboard, but it pays off. When the role opens, you’ll have momentum instead of a scramble.
Why do founding team members join?
Yes, the memes about “Why would anyone ever be a founding engineer?” are everywhere. But beneath the jokes lies a legitimate concern: Why take founder-level risk without founder-level equity?
It’s a fair question. And yet, as highlighted, your first few hires will define your company’s speed, culture, and technical trajectory. The best early engineers are typically convinced for three reasons:
- They believe in the founder. Your experience, skills, network, and reputation make success feel almost inevitable.
- They feel valued. Their work is respected, and they’re rewarded fairly for the risk they’re taking.
- They see the long game. They believe this role will help them grow the capabilities and connections they need to reach their own career goals.
Great founding hires come in a variety of flavors. Some are looking to build the experience, skills, and network they’ll need to eventually start something of their own. Others already have what it takes to found a company, but prefer to keep operating; they love building, just not from the CEO seat. Then there are the high-agency builders who crave more ownership and impact than their current role allows. And finally, there’s the group that’s been burned before, risk-aware but still motivated and looking for the right combination of leadership, mission, and upside.
And in case it isn’t obvious at this point, the quality of your early hires defines your company’s slope. Great people build great products, attract other top talent, and inspire confidence. Plenty of startups are hiring in “hot” sectors, often backed by the same top firms and in these competitive markets, talent is effectively zero-sum. Your real advantage is not a flashy product or massive market, but you as the founder and, soon after, your team. The best people join teams that feel inevitable.
Recruiting isn’t something you do after figuring things out; recruiting is how you figure things out. It’s not a side task. It’s the company. Founders who treat it that way are the ones who build lasting companies.
