Hiring great executives is one of the most important — and most difficult — responsibilities for startup founders. In the early stages, you don’t have a brand, you may not yet have product-market fit, and you're often operating with limited resources. Yet somehow, you're supposed to convince top-tier talent to join you on the ride.
To demystify the process, I sat down with Adam Ward, an executive recruiting expert who scaled teams at Meta and Pinterest and now helps founders through his firm Growth by Design Talent. What followed was a masterclass in early-stage hiring. Here are some of the most powerful takeaways every founder should internalize.
Founders Should Spend 50% of Their Time on Recruiting
According to Adam, early-stage founders should expect to spend half their time recruiting. “That doesn’t mean you’re in interviews all day,” he explained. “But the activities around recruiting—scoping roles, building your network, refining your pitch, evaluating talent-those should take up 50% of your time.”
This time investment is not just a tactical necessity, it’s a strategic one. The people you hire in the early days set the foundation for everything — your product, your culture, your velocity. If you get those first few hires wrong, it’s difficult and costly to course correct. That’s why the best founders treat recruiting not as a side task, but as one of their primary jobs.
He breaks it down into three buckets:
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Scoping: Get clear on what you actually need. “Why did I start this company? What’s unique about our product? How will this role change the slope of the company’s trajectory?” Answering these questions upfront helps determine the right level of the candidate, improves your outreach, and gives you a better signal during interviews. The better you understand the impact of this role, the more precise and compelling your recruiting process will be.
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Always Be Recruiting: Think six months ahead. If you’ll need a marketing lead soon, start talking to great marketers now. Building a warm network before you need it ensures you’re not starting from zero when a hire becomes critical. Proactively identifying gaps in your network helps you avoid delays in scaling your team.
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Develop Good Assessment Skills: Founders must develop the ability to assess talent effectively — not just through interviews but also through targeted reference checks and thoughtful evaluation of both skills and values alignment. Developing a clear sense of what great looks like is key to building a high-performing team that truly fits your culture.
Avoid These Two Classic Early-Stage Hiring Mistakes
Adam sees two common pitfalls again and again:
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The “Unicorn” Hire: Founders often overstuff a job description with everything they wish they had in a team — turning one role into three. “You either wait forever to find that person, or you hire someone and set them up to fail,” Adam said. His advice: Stack rank your needs and draw a hard line at five “must-haves.” Anything beyond that adds a month to your hiring timeline.
This mistake is understandable — early-stage teams are resource-constrained and often tempted to solve multiple needs with a single hire. But this can backfire when expectations are unrealistic and the role becomes impossible to fill. Instead, focus on the most pressing business problem and fill around the edges with advisors, contractors, or part-time support.
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Hiring in Your Own Likeness: Many founders favor candidates with similar backgrounds — the underdog, the ex-consultant, the Ivy Leaguer. But that narrows your range of problem-solving approaches. “You’re optimizing for comfort, not results,” Adam warned.
Diversity of experience, thought, and background is essential in the early stages. If everyone on your team thinks the same way, you risk blind spots and missed opportunities. Be intentional about incorporating perspectives that challenge your assumptions and broaden your perspective.
Framework to Scope Roles
To avoid those mistakes, Adam recommends a simple but effective rubric: a two-by-two grid with “Must Have” and “Nice to Have” on one axis and “Experience” and “Characteristics” on the other. Write out the key attributes and experiences you want, then force yourself to limit the “Must Haves” to five in each category.
This exercise creates clarity and discipline in the scoping process. It helps you separate essential requirements from preferences, which expands your pool of potential candidates while still keeping the bar high. Perhaps more importantly, it creates a shared language for your hiring team to evaluate candidates objectively.
And remember: Characteristics matter more than experience. “The difference between a good and great hire is usually found in traits like grit, clarity of thinking, or how someone communicates under pressure — not just what’s on their LinkedIn profile,” Adam said. Many people can show up well on paper — your job is to determine who will actually thrive in your company’s environment.
Build a Culture of Recruiting — Not Just a Function
At Sierra, we often tell founders that recruiting isn’t just a job. It’s a mindset. Adam echoed that and laid out a blueprint for building a culture of recruiting across your team:
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Everyone should know the pitch: “Anyone in your company should be able to answer: What do we do? Why am I here? And what roles are we hiring for?”
Employees are ambassadors. When they’re at a conference, a coffee shop, or catching up with former colleagues, they should be equipped to pitch your company. This starts with internal alignment — making sure every team member knows the company’s mission, vision, and current talent needs.
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Everyone has a role: From scheduling interviews to welcoming candidates to referring great people, recruiting is a team sport.
Creating a great candidate experience isn’t just on the hiring manager. Everyone in the company contributes — through referrals, warm introductions, and the small moments that make someone feel valued during the process. The more people who are involved, the more momentum you’ll generate.
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What gets measured gets done: Recognize and reward employees who refer strong candidates, conduct great interviews, or raise the talent bar.
If you want recruiting to be part of the culture, treat it like any other core function. Track it. Celebrate wins. Create visibility around what success looks like, and acknowledge the people who help make it happen.
When to Layer Your Team (and How to Do It Right)
As companies scale, the original leadership team often can’t scale with it — and that’s not a failure. “It’s a sign of success,” Adam explained. The company has outgrown any one person’s ability to lead all functions.
But layering over loyal early employees is an emotionally tricky moment. Adam urges founders to handle it with care. “You don’t want to lose their impact or institutional knowledge,” he said.
Options include:
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Moving them into specialist or principal roles
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Assigning ‘Swiss army knife’ leaders to high-impact projects or chief of staff roles
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Supporting graceful exits for those who thrive in early-stage chaos and want to do it again
Founders should focus on preserving access to information and impact for these early hires, even if they’re no longer the right person to lead at scale. Thoughtful transitions can maintain morale and continuity — and signal that your company values contribution, not just titles.
Know When to Bring in External Help
So when should you bring in outside recruiters?
Adam splits the answer into two lanes: executive hiring and IC hiring.
For executives, ask:
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Have we hired for this function before?
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Do we have the right network?
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Do we have the time and bandwidth?
If the answer is “no” to any of those, especially for non-technical roles like your first sales or marketing leader, it’s likely worth engaging a boutique search firm.
For ICs, define clear swim lanes. “Don’t randomize an agency by throwing them five completely different roles,” Adam said. “Have them focus on one function where they can go deep.”
External recruiters can be incredible partners — if used thoughtfully. Define their scope clearly, align on what success looks like, and make them an extension of your team, not a replacement for it.
Recruiting Is Time Well Spent
Adam closed with this reminder: “It’s time well spent. Yes, it’s hard and time-consuming, but the upside of a great hire is transformational. Think of the people who changed your company’s slope, not how long it took to find them.”
He also encouraged founders to ask for help. “You have strong investors and networks. Don’t be afraid to lean on people who’ve done this before. We all benefit when the ecosystem gets better at this.”
Whether you’re making your first executive hire or building out a recruiting function from scratch, Adam’s advice is clear: Be intentional, build a culture of recruiting, and never underestimate the power of one great hire.
For more information from Adam Ward, visit Growth by Design Talent or reach out to him on LinkedIn.
