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Ever wondered what the impact of a true A+ player is especially for early stage startups? In a recent example of mine, over 200% ROI in 90 days, and this is just the beginning. I placed a Head of AI engineering 3 months ago. AI mobile app with an insane growth curve. They had some contractors and junior devs doing most of the work. They asked me to find someone strong to take over their work and hopefully do it better. I placed a killer within 3 weeks, Harvard grad, hardcore builder, insane track record of success to own the entire AI Engineering function. The goal: decrease AI costs, increase speed and accuracy at scale of 6M daily active users. This guy was pricey, he was the over budget and the highest paid person in the entire company. The founder was a little skeptical but decided to play it smart and invest in A+ level talent. Last week I get a call from the founder, ecstatic. He said within 90 days my candidate lowered their AI costs by $50k per MONTH. The Founder also mentioned he wanted clones of this candidate in every function from Product to Marketing to Ops (those searches are in progress if you're an A player DM's are open) At growth stage startups, there is nothing more expensive than cheap labor. Every hire is so important, they can be a direct growth lever or burn you into oblivion depends if you get it right. Invest in talent, nearly impossible to "overpay" for exec or key individual contributor positions close to the money. World-class talent is the ultimate force multiplier.

Anyone that has a B2C app wondering how to boost revenue should look into Monetization Product Managers. They are essentially data driven mad scientists. Extensive A/B testing different paywalls, onboarding flow, and tiered plans etc. They have 1 goal: Maximizing revenue per user On the surface, sounds interesting, but not that pivotal right? Maybe marginal gains? Wrong, A+ players in this role are growth cheat codes. I talked to 2 candidates this week that have boosted revenue by 40-60% in 1 year (multi 7 and 8 figure growth) by simply finding the most optimal paywalls and onboarding flows. Growth is a science.

Have you ever wondered how niche exec search headhunting for growth stage startups is? These are hires that make or break companies. They need top .1% talent in their field. I got a CTO role for an AI powered 3D printing company in hyper growth mode. They need a CTO to help them 4x production in 3 years before exit. There are less than 50 people in North America who have the track record required for this job. And after 2 weeks I know who they are and busted their doors down (professionally) and now we are in late stages. Exec search is the highest value add, deeply challenging and I absolutely love it.

I find it strange many of the candidates I speak with have this outdated sentiment. Big tech= Stable Startup= risky I believe the opposite to be true. Sure a startup with no funding and founded yesterday is sketchy. But Im talking Seed-Series A startups already in high growth mode making revenue. Amazon just laid off 30,000 employees Meta FAIR laid off 600 cracked Research engineers At big tech the exec leadership doesn’t know your name. If profits dip or priorities change they can wipe out sectors without remorse. Regardless of personal performance. On the contrary at growth stage startups, as a top performer, it’s the safest place in the world. The founder knows you personally and knows your impact, you’d be the last one standing, and if the company is growing, the odds of layoffs are significantly lower than big tech. Not sure how many more big tech layoffs we will have to go through before sentiment changes.

Hot take? Hiring founding teams/key positions from purely job postings is a wildly risky play. Early hires at startups can literally make or break early stage companies. 10x growth or burn you into oblivion. Founders are slammed constantly so they rely on job postings of course, quick and easy. But job postings 99% of the time are filled with mediocrity. The best candidates are passive, well paid and taken care of, so they are not out there applying to 100’s of jobs. For low impact hires, job postings are perfect. But for founding engineering, marketing, product, sales or exec hires almost no shot you get top S-Tier talent that will fall in your lap from a posting on Linkedin/Indeed/Ziprecruiter etc. 6 years and 300+ Key individual contributor and exec placements later. I’ve made a total of 0 that came from a job ad.

There’s a new position I’ve seen recently becoming popular. It’s only existed for 2 years and it’s one of the best ROI’s I’ve ever seen for DTC/Ecom startups. TikTok Shop Affiliate Manager. They run the entire channel. Creator outreach, vetting, management, tracking and back office ops side. They source and manage an army of commission only UGC creators. I’ve talked to 2 killers just this week. 1. started the TikTokShop channel from scratch for a small brand. $1M first year, already at $3M year 2 2. Another Took TikTokShop channel from $6M to $35M in under 12 months. TikTokShop is a cash printing machine if you have A+ talent at the helm. If you run an ecom brand, look into this expeditiously

Might get some hate for this. But if you hire for a sales role and the candidate refuses to provide any sort of proof of production (at offer stage) Examples: -W2/paystub -Screenshot of the leaderboard - pic of them at presidents club/awards 9/10 times it’s because they are lying about their production. They’ll claim they’ve never been asked and are offended by the lack of trust. But almost every single time they are just fraudulent. Actual top performers are proud of their achievements and will happily show anyone who asks. If you’re hiring sales talent, get proof of production or risk paying top performer salaries to someone who just got put on PIP.

I’ve been on a train of recruiting for hyper growth Mobile app founders. I’ve placed key positions in Engineering, Marketing and Product for 6 different apps the last couple months, all with over 1M users. And nearly all of them pay their CMO/Head of Marketing just as much if not more than their CTO/engineers. SaaS and B2B Engineers typically make significantly more than marketing talent. There’s a lesson in there.

Method to finding real world class engineering talent: 1. Poach from companies with notoriously talent dense eng teams. Engineers who have been there 2 years and got promoted. Certified cracked. 2. Go in depth on interviews to what they contributed as much details as possible. Do this with 2-3 interviewers separately. If they are lying they will start to miss details in their story. 3. Reference check and back channel if possible 4. Pay above what they are asking as truly cracked engineers will have 4 other offers AND get massive counter offers when they try to leave It’s not easy, but it is simple.

It’s almost impossible for startups to “overpay” for A+ level Sales/Marketing talent. Emphasis on A+, it’s 100% possible to Overpay for C or B level talent. I’ve placed marketing talent that has 4x’d company revenue within 12 months. I’ve placed sales talent that have brought in 8 figures of revenue in less than 24 months. You’re squeamish on paying a $200k+ Base or big equity to someone with an undeniable Track record printing multi 7 figures? Best ROI out there. At early stage: Talent Density> Everything else

Have you ever wondered how niche exec search headhunting for growth stage startups is? These are hires that make or break companies. They need top .1% talent in their field. I got a CTO role for an AI powered 3D printing company in hyper growth mode. They need a CTO to help them 4x production in 3 years before exit. There are less than 50 people in North America who have the track record required for this job. And after 2 weeks I know who they are and busted their doors down (professionally) and now we are in late stages. Exec search is the highest value add, deeply challenging and I absolutely love it.

Hot take? Hiring founding teams/key positions from purely job postings is a wildly risky play. Early hires at startups can literally make or break early stage companies. 10x growth or burn you into oblivion. Founders are slammed constantly so they rely on job postings of course, quick and easy. But job postings 99% of the time are filled with mediocrity. The best candidates are passive, well paid and taken care of, so they are not out there applying to 100’s of jobs. For low impact hires, job postings are perfect. But for founding engineering, marketing, product, sales or exec hires almost no shot you get top S-Tier talent that will fall in your lap from a posting on Linkedin/Indeed/Ziprecruiter etc. 6 years and 300+ Key individual contributor and exec placements later. I’ve made a total of 0 that came from a job ad.

Anyone that has a B2C app wondering how to boost revenue should look into Monetization Product Managers. They are essentially data driven mad scientists. Extensive A/B testing different paywalls, onboarding flow, and tiered plans etc. They have 1 goal: Maximizing revenue per user On the surface, sounds interesting, but not that pivotal right? Maybe marginal gains? Wrong, A+ players in this role are growth cheat codes. I talked to 2 candidates this week that have boosted revenue by 40-60% in 1 year (multi 7 and 8 figure growth) by simply finding the most optimal paywalls and onboarding flows. Growth is a science.

I’ve been on a train of recruiting for hyper growth Mobile app founders. I’ve placed key positions in Engineering, Marketing and Product for 6 different apps the last couple months, all with over 1M users. And nearly all of them pay their CMO/Head of Marketing just as much if not more than their CTO/engineers. SaaS and B2B Engineers typically make significantly more than marketing talent. There’s a lesson in there.

Ever wondered what the impact of a true A+ player is especially for early stage startups? In a recent example of mine, over 200% ROI in 90 days, and this is just the beginning. I placed a Head of AI engineering 3 months ago. AI mobile app with an insane growth curve. They had some contractors and junior devs doing most of the work. They asked me to find someone strong to take over their work and hopefully do it better. I placed a killer within 3 weeks, Harvard grad, hardcore builder, insane track record of success to own the entire AI Engineering function. The goal: decrease AI costs, increase speed and accuracy at scale of 6M daily active users. This guy was pricey, he was the over budget and the highest paid person in the entire company. The founder was a little skeptical but decided to play it smart and invest in A+ level talent. Last week I get a call from the founder, ecstatic. He said within 90 days my candidate lowered their AI costs by $50k per MONTH. The Founder also mentioned he wanted clones of this candidate in every function from Product to Marketing to Ops (those searches are in progress if you're an A player DM's are open) At growth stage startups, there is nothing more expensive than cheap labor. Every hire is so important, they can be a direct growth lever or burn you into oblivion depends if you get it right. Invest in talent, nearly impossible to "overpay" for exec or key individual contributor positions close to the money. World-class talent is the ultimate force multiplier.

There’s a new position I’ve seen recently becoming popular. It’s only existed for 2 years and it’s one of the best ROI’s I’ve ever seen for DTC/Ecom startups. TikTok Shop Affiliate Manager. They run the entire channel. Creator outreach, vetting, management, tracking and back office ops side. They source and manage an army of commission only UGC creators. I’ve talked to 2 killers just this week. 1. started the TikTokShop channel from scratch for a small brand. $1M first year, already at $3M year 2 2. Another Took TikTokShop channel from $6M to $35M in under 12 months. TikTokShop is a cash printing machine if you have A+ talent at the helm. If you run an ecom brand, look into this expeditiously

I find it strange many of the candidates I speak with have this outdated sentiment. Big tech= Stable Startup= risky I believe the opposite to be true. Sure a startup with no funding and founded yesterday is sketchy. But Im talking Seed-Series A startups already in high growth mode making revenue. Amazon just laid off 30,000 employees Meta FAIR laid off 600 cracked Research engineers At big tech the exec leadership doesn’t know your name. If profits dip or priorities change they can wipe out sectors without remorse. Regardless of personal performance. On the contrary at growth stage startups, as a top performer, it’s the safest place in the world. The founder knows you personally and knows your impact, you’d be the last one standing, and if the company is growing, the odds of layoffs are significantly lower than big tech. Not sure how many more big tech layoffs we will have to go through before sentiment changes.

Might get some hate for this. But if you hire for a sales role and the candidate refuses to provide any sort of proof of production (at offer stage) Examples: -W2/paystub -Screenshot of the leaderboard - pic of them at presidents club/awards 9/10 times it’s because they are lying about their production. They’ll claim they’ve never been asked and are offended by the lack of trust. But almost every single time they are just fraudulent. Actual top performers are proud of their achievements and will happily show anyone who asks. If you’re hiring sales talent, get proof of production or risk paying top performer salaries to someone who just got put on PIP.

Method to finding real world class engineering talent: 1. Poach from companies with notoriously talent dense eng teams. Engineers who have been there 2 years and got promoted. Certified cracked. 2. Go in depth on interviews to what they contributed as much details as possible. Do this with 2-3 interviewers separately. If they are lying they will start to miss details in their story. 3. Reference check and back channel if possible 4. Pay above what they are asking as truly cracked engineers will have 4 other offers AND get massive counter offers when they try to leave It’s not easy, but it is simple.

It’s almost impossible for startups to “overpay” for A+ level Sales/Marketing talent. Emphasis on A+, it’s 100% possible to Overpay for C or B level talent. I’ve placed marketing talent that has 4x’d company revenue within 12 months. I’ve placed sales talent that have brought in 8 figures of revenue in less than 24 months. You’re squeamish on paying a $200k+ Base or big equity to someone with an undeniable Track record printing multi 7 figures? Best ROI out there. At early stage: Talent Density> Everything else

The war for talent is HEATING up. I’ve talked to 3 candidates in the last week that are FRESH out of university. That have jobs at Top Research Labs or Founding Eng roles at hyper growth startups. For $300-500k CASH comp. Not even 6 months out of college. To be fair these kids were absolute phenoms. Princeton perfect GPA, Math Olympiads etc. This is a trend I’ve seen with my own startups I recruit for as well. Young Cracked Devs down for crazy hours > 15YOE Staff Eng that wants work life balance. Would you pay $300-500k for a cracked dev 6 months out of college?