a16z: Why Web3 Startups Should Hire Recruiters Early
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a16z: Why Web3 Startups Should Hire Recruiters Early
Finding a recruiter who is passionate about the company's mission is crucial for long-term development.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Aurora Petracca, External Startup Advisor at a16z Crypto
Translation: Luffy, Foresight News
When startup founders achieve product-market fit and secure funding, investors and advisors often offer the same advice: hiring the right people will lay the foundation for growth. Conversely, making poor hiring decisions can undermine all your company’s efforts.
This advice is absolutely correct—but it lacks concrete implementation steps because there's no practical guidance on how to execute it. Learning how to recruit effectively is a full-time job in itself. That’s why founders should prioritize bringing on skilled recruiters early. In this article, I’ll share how to do exactly that.
In fact, your recruiter should be among your first 10 employees. This may seem counterintuitive: if founders desperately need technical talent, why prioritize hiring someone else first? Having helped scale Airbnb (joined when it had 50 employees) and Coinbase (joined when it had just 7), and advised countless other startups, I can attest to the critical importance of having a dedicated recruiter early. When I joined Airbnb, I was the company’s third recruiter; at Coinbase, I was the second.
Recruiters Save Massive Amounts of Time
The process of sourcing candidates, conducting multiple interview rounds, and ultimately landing the right hires is extremely time-consuming. Saving time is crucial—especially in crypto. The pool of professionals with relevant expertise is limited, and top candidates are often evaluating multiple opportunities simultaneously. While it might seem feasible for a founder to personally engage 100 candidates, you also have numerous other priorities—and eventually, something will break. The real-world consequences include poor candidate experience, missed hiring opportunities, and reputational damage. A negative candidate experience can quickly erode your competitive edge—not just with one individual, but across your entire pipeline.
Hiring simply takes a lot of time. If it doesn’t, your startup’s recruiting process is likely too shallow, or you’re growing so fast that you’re risking team dysfunction and attrition. Remember: as a founder, your time is your most valuable asset. Hiring a professional recruiter allows you to focus on higher-leverage activities and allocate your time more strategically. You’ll still participate in hiring, but only at key decision points—making the process more efficient and impactful.
I often see new founders trying to hire their first engineers. They may have strong networks, but timing rarely aligns perfectly. Perhaps they manage to close a few hires through warm intros, but then need to proactively reach out to others. This creates a new set of challenges: How many people should you contact? Should your startup use targeted outreach or broad-volume recruiting? Most startups need a hybrid approach. Both methods require significant effort, depending on the role.
Sourcing top-tier technical talent is inherently time-intensive. Statistically, you may need to contact 50 to 100 people to land one hire. Every message to a candidate must be thoughtful. Response rates from candidates to recruiters average around 30% at best (slightly higher if the founder or tech lead reaches out).
Suppose your company aims to hire just two engineers. You might bring 30 candidates into the funnel, each going through 2 to 5 interviews. That means scheduling and managing 60 to 150 interviews in a short period. As a founder, you're also likely leading product, engineering, marketing, fundraising, customer support, daily operations, and regular advisor check-ins. Even with good intentions, candidate experience will inevitably suffer. Negative experiences quickly surface on Glassdoor—and future candidates read those reviews.
A skilled recruiter working closely with hiring managers can alleviate these issues. In Coinbase’s early days, I collaborated with engineers and leaders like Brian Armstrong, Rob Witoff, and Varun Srinivasan to build teams. I’d source what I believed were the strongest candidates, conduct initial outreach, coordinate phone screens, and manage the end-to-end process. This partnership worked exceptionally well—Coinbase hired many outstanding individuals as a result.
Founders Are Talent Magnets
Founders play a pivotal role in early hiring: articulating vision and mission, defining cultural values embedded in the hiring process, and evaluating top-tier talent. Once a strong recruiter is onboard, they can design and run a rigorous hiring process—allowing founders to engage only at strategic junctures. Founders should participate in every interview until leadership establishes consistent hiring standards.
Founders also serve another vital function. Top engineers want to work alongside other exceptional engineers building innovative products. Technical founders should invest time explaining the novel technical projects they’re building and why these matter to fellow engineers. These narratives become powerful recruiting assets. Share them via tweets (and ask friends to amplify); post in Farcaster, Discord, Signal, and Telegram channels; publish on LinkedIn and company newsletters; distribute across your network. In doing so, founders dramatically increase their ability to attract talent.
The entire company can reuse these materials in external outreach. Don’t forget to regularly refresh content as new developments emerge. This approach also benefits founders directly: imagine saving energy by creating compelling content instead of manually emailing and chasing candidates for every open role. Of course, founders still need to close some early hires personally. But the goal is to spend time more strategically—focusing on high-impact roles.
Early Investment Saves Money in the Long Run
All of this sounds great—but isn’t hiring a recruiter too expensive for an early-stage startup? After all, cash is tight for every new company.
Allocating capital to someone who accelerates team growth is a smart investment. Delaying product launches by months due to slow engineering hires could allow competitors to capture market share. Over time, this costs far more than the salary of an early recruiter.
Airbnb prioritized culture assessment and candidate experience even with just 18 employees. They brought on an external recruiter early to ensure seamless ownership of the hiring process and prevent any candidate from falling through the cracks. Similarly, when I joined Coinbase as the first internal recruiter, the company had only 7 employees—but had already invested heavily in recruitment. With just 4 employees, the founders partnered with an early technical recruiter because they recognized the sheer volume of work involved. Once hiring demand became consistent, that person transitioned to full-time; when scaling accelerated further, I joined.
Both Airbnb and Coinbase prioritized recruiting talent—whether internal or external—to support long-term growth.
How to Identify a Strong Recruiter
How do you distinguish great recruiters from weak ones? Here are some guiding principles:
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They proactively meet with hiring managers to brainstorm creative sourcing strategies.
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They act immediately on those strategies.
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In urgent situations, they escalate compensation discussions with founders/hiring managers rather than risk losing candidates by delaying action.
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They’re willing to meet candidates “after hours”—even at 9 PM or on Sunday afternoons, if needed.
They’re not just charismatic—they’re operationally excellent:
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They have robust systems to ensure no calls are missed.
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They know exactly whom to contact.
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They keep the hiring team focused on delivering feedback and drive process momentum through summaries and follow-ups.
If a recruiter lacks systematic organization, the hiring process will fail.
Qualities of a Great Recruiter
Top recruiters often begin their careers in competitive sales or agency recruiting. Others come from customer support roles at companies known for high hiring bars.
When sourcing from agency recruiters, I look for candidates who stayed at their firm for at least a year—this signals adaptability to internal processes and culture. However, based on years of hiring experience, I value adaptability, humility, eagerness to learn, and resourcefulness even more—traits that enable sustained success.
Beyond these core qualities, seek recruiters with experience in:
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Fixing broken processes;
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Solving data-related challenges;
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Navigating complex relationships with hiring managers;
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Designing creative talent strategies.
They should be able to leverage startup equity (a mix of cash, options, tokens, RSUs) to attract candidates and know how to position valuation as part of the narrative.
Finally, find a recruiter who is genuinely passionate about your mission. Many recruiters have experience selling different products and visions, but for them, it’s just a job. Seek someone who truly believes in what you’re building—their authentic enthusiasm will shine through in conversations with candidates and inspire them. In most startups, early employees are driven by mission; without that shared belief, surviving tough early days becomes much harder. In crypto, mission alignment is essential for weathering industry uncertainty.
The ideal recruiter deeply believes in your mission, feels ownership over the company, and protects what you’re building. I’ve heard people say Airbnb was like a "cult." If so, I was fully part of it. As a recruiter, my energy had to be contagious—otherwise, I couldn’t convince others to join. When I joined in 2011, many doubted Airbnb would ever succeed, dismissing it as a half-baked idea. In that environment, near-religious conviction was almost required to succeed.
I felt a similar obsession with Coinbase and crypto’s power to change the world—this kept me focused during crypto winters. Moreover, as early stewards of company culture, recruiters play a vital role in long-term success as the company scales.
How to Recruit Candidates in Volatile Environments
Web3’s regulatory landscape may concern some candidates, especially amid negative headlines. Fairly speaking, we saw similar sentiment when Airbnb faced public scrutiny. Any company aiming to transform how we live—like Uber or OpenAI—will encounter such challenges.
Airbnb and Coinbase both used a proven method: storytelling. We emphasized the strength of our mission and narrative, and highlighted our proactive regulatory preparedness. Similar approaches can help other Web3 companies.
A unique aspect of Web3 is market volatility and bull/bear cycles. Showing long-term trend charts of Bitcoin and Ethereum (5–10 years) helps candidates contextualize current challenges. I often supplement this with articles written by industry experts to strengthen the narrative.
Does the Recruiter (or Candidate) Need Crypto Experience?
Must your recruiter be a Web3 expert? I prefer passion over prior experience—as long as they possess the traits mentioned above and have worked at a company with high hiring standards.
What about the talent pool? When I started at Coinbase in 2014, there were no candidates with “Web3-native” experience. Many considered “crypto-native” often sought short-term projects, lacking the staying power we needed.
Instead, I looked for engineers with expertise in payments, infrastructure, scalability, and security—combined with genuine interest in Bitcoin, decentralization, and its values. Their experience helped build a solid engineering foundation. Our biggest wins came from exceptional Web2 engineers who were actively building side projects in crypto.
If you can’t find long-term-oriented Web3 talent, hire individuals with these traits:
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Analytical ability
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Intellect
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Creativity
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Open-mindedness
How to Hire a Great Recruiter
Recruiters are typically strong interviewers—which makes sense. So how do you differentiate great from average?
I prefer behavioral questions to assess their experience tackling real recruiting challenges, collaborating with hiring managers, and engaging candidates. These three areas define a top recruiter. By asking them to describe specific past experiences solving problems in these domains, you gain insight into their thinking, creativity, and resilience under pressure.
You can also test their conversational skills through live role-play interviews. Strong recruiters should excel here. Additionally, observing how they handle non-traditional, high-pressure scenarios reveals how they adapt to the unexpected—a key trait.
How to Evaluate a Recruiter’s Performance
Once you’ve hired a recruiter you trust, what should you expect? How do you know they’re succeeding? They should:
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Own the end-to-end candidate journey and drive hires to completion.
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Build structured, consistent, and organized hiring processes.
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Meet weekly with hiring managers to review progress, identify blockers, and refine strategy.
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Deliver excellent candidate and hiring manager experiences.
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Maintain detailed records of compensation offers, collaborate closely with finance leads to track trends (e.g., drop-offs due to pay), and use data to ensure offers remain competitive.
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Use an ATS to manage recruiting operations and maintain clean data. They should generate concise reports for leadership and use insights to diagnose bottlenecks and implement fixes.
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Integrate company values into hiring to ensure new hires reflect cultural principles.
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Help you think through diversity in hiring. Lack of diversity harms product quality. If ignored early, achieving a diverse workforce later becomes exponentially harder. While early startups may need to prioritize skill over diversity, a strong recruiter can help navigate this tension and execute your preferred strategy.
Depending on workload, these responsibilities may be split across multiple people.
What Else Can a Recruiter Do Beyond Hiring?
But what should a recruiter do after completing initial hires?
First, remember: anyone unwilling to find ways to add value shouldn’t be at your company—especially in a startup, where early employees must wear multiple hats. Beyond hiring, recruiters can contribute significantly in talent and HR functions. However, if you plan to hire someone for dual recruiting and HR duties, ensure they have the right skills and interest in HR work.
General recruiters can assist with onboarding or managing HRIS systems. But if you need help with performance management, career development conversations, terminations, employee relations, or offsites, you’ll need someone with direct experience. In startups, HR tasks are often assigned to unqualified individuals—avoid this pitfall when hiring recruiters.
Second, this “dual role” may be temporary for fast-growing companies until a dedicated HR hire joins. For slower-growing startups, combining recruiting and HR may be a sustainable long-term model. Eventually, each of these areas will require specialized expertise as the company scales.
These are also the most natural extensions of a recruiter’s role when hiring slows. When recruiting ramps up again, they return to their core strength.
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Talent branding: attend conferences and events to build public visibility; collaborate with engineering leaders to create engaging technical blog content for recruitment; partner with Developer Relations to showcase work to potential candidates
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Onboarding, offboarding, and terminations
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Managing HR systems to track employees and internal mobility
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Performance review cycles
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Employee career development
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Team-building activities—especially important for fully remote companies, where quarterly in-person gatherings are critical for building connection and trust without daily face-to-face interaction
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Culture ambassador: beyond embedding values in hiring, regularly reinforce them across the company
Summary
The sheer volume of work involved in hiring often surprises people. Ask any seasoned founder, and they’ll tell you that attracting, managing, and retaining top talent is one of the hardest parts of the job. When considering what will make your company succeed—and what will lay the strongest foundation for scale—consider hiring a professional recruiter early.
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