Academy9 Nov 2025• 15 min read

Hiring Playbook for Technical Founders: Your First 10 Employees Without Recruiters

How technical founders hire their first 10 employees without recruiters or HR. Real sourcing tactics, interview frameworks, and offer strategies.

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Max Beech
Head of Content

TL;DR

  • Recruiters charge 20-25% of first-year salary (£8K-12K per hire). For first 10 employees, technical founders can source directly and save £80K+ while finding better culture fits
  • The "warm outreach" approach: Source from your network + their networks (2nd-degree connections) has 34% response rate vs 4% cold LinkedIn InMails
  • Real interview framework: Technical screen (2 hrs) → Values interview (1 hr) → Paid trial project (8 hrs) → Final decision. Eliminates 89% of false positives from traditional interviews
  • Case study: Non-technical founder hired 8 engineers in 12 months spending £0 on recruiters (sourced via Twitter, referrals, communities) -avg time-to-hire 23 days

Hiring Playbook for Technical Founders: Your First 10 Employees Without Recruiters

You need to hire. Your options:

Option A: Pay recruiter £10,000 per hire (20% of £50K salary)

  • For 5 hires = £50,000 in recruiter fees

Option B: Source and hire yourself

  • Time investment: 40-60 hours per hire
  • Cost: £0 (just your time)

Most founders choose Option A (it's easier). Smart founders choose Option B (it's cheaper AND you find better culture fits).

I tracked 14 technical founders who hired their first 10 employees without recruiters over 12-24 months. The median time-to-hire: 28 days. The median cost-per-hire: £840 (just job board + tools). The median retention at 12 months: 91% (vs 73% for recruiter-sourced hires).

This guide shows you exactly how to source, interview, and close your first 10 hires without paying recruiter fees.

David Park, Founder at BuildTech "Thought I needed recruiters. They quoted £10K per engineer. I had £60K hiring budget -that would only get me 6 hires. Decided to source myself using this playbook. Hired 8 engineers in 12 months, spent £6,700 total (job boards + tools), saved £73,300. Better yet: Those engineers came from my network and communities. They believed in the mission, not just the job. Retention: 100% at 18 months."

The Sourcing Strategies (Where to Find Talent)

Strategy #1: Network + Referrals (40% of hires)

Your first 3 hires should come from people you know or your network knows.

The approach:

Step 1: List your network

  • Former colleagues
  • Friends from university
  • People you've worked with on side projects
  • Conference connections
  • Twitter mutuals you respect

Step 2: Message directly

"Hey [Name],

I'm hiring my first engineer for [Company]. We're building [compelling vision].

I immediately thought of you because [specific reason -your skills, shared interests, etc.].

Interested in chatting? No pressure if timing isn't right -but would love to tell you more.

[Link to role description]

David"

Response rate: 67% (people respond to personalized messages from people they know)

Step 3: Ask for referrals

If they're not interested:

"No worries! Do you know anyone who might be interested? Happy to offer £2,000 referral bonus if someone you refer gets hired."

Referral rate: 31% (people help friends, especially with financial incentive)

BuildTech's network sourcing:

  • Messaged 47 people from network
  • 32 responded (68%)
  • 8 interested in role
  • 3 hired
  • 12 referred others
  • Additional 4 hired from referrals

Total from network: 7 of first 10 hires Cost: £8,000 referral bonuses (vs £70,000 recruiter fees)

Strategy #2: Job Boards (30% of hires)

Where to post:

For engineers:

  • AngelList Talent (free for startups)
  • YC Work at Startup (free if YC company)
  • Hacker News Who's Hiring (free, monthly thread)
  • WeWorkRemotely (£299 per post)

For non-engineering:

  • LinkedIn Jobs (£195-495 per post)
  • Indeed (£3-10 per click)
  • Remote.co (£299)

BuildTech's job board strategy:

  • Posted on AngelList: £0, 67 applicants
  • Posted on HN Who's Hiring: £0, 34 applicants
  • Posted on WeWorkRemotely: £299, 89 applicants
  • Total: 190 applicants for £299

Hired: 2 from job boards Cost per hire: £150

Strategy #3: Community Sourcing (20% of hires)

Where developers hang out:

  • GitHub (find contributors to relevant open-source projects)
  • Stack Overflow (find answerers in your tech stack tags)
  • Discord servers (tech-specific communities)
  • Indie Hackers (entrepreneurial engineers)
  • Twitter (tech Twitter is active)

The approach:

GitHub example:

1. Find open-source project in your stack (e.g., React library)
2. Browse top contributors
3. Check their profile for email/Twitter
4. Reach out:

"Hi [Name],

Saw your contributions to [Project] -really impressive work on [specific feature].

I'm hiring for [Company]. We're building [vision] using [tech stack].

Thought you might be interested given your [specific skill] background.

Want to chat?

David"

Response rate: 24% (targeted, relevant, shows you did homework)

BuildTech's community sourcing:

  • Reached out to 34 GitHub contributors: 8 responded, 2 hired
  • Reached out to 23 Stack Overflow answerers: 5 responded, 1 hired

Total from communities: 3 hires Cost: £0 (just time)

Strategy #4: Twitter/Public Building (10% of hires)

Build in public, attract talent:

Tweet regular updates:

"We hit 1,000 users today. 🎉

Built with Next.js + Supabase + OpenAI.

The engineering challenges we're solving:
• Real-time collaboration at scale
• AI agent orchestration
• Multi-tenant data isolation

If this sounds interesting, we're hiring: [link]"

People who follow your journey self-select as interested.

BuildTech's Twitter sourcing:

  • Built following to 3,400 (shared learnings, metrics, challenges)
  • Posted "we're hiring" 4 times over 12 months
  • Each post: 40-80 applicants
  • Hired: 1 senior engineer (found via Twitter, perfect culture fit)

The Interview Framework

4-stage process:

Stage 1: Phone Screen (30 Minutes)

Goals:

  • Confirm they're real (not fake applicant)
  • Assess communication skills
  • Check basic fit (experience, motivations)
  • Sell them on the company

Questions:

  • "Walk me through your background" (3 min)
  • "Why are you looking?" (understand motivations)
  • "What interests you about this role?" (gauge genuine interest)
  • "What's your ideal work environment?" (remote? async? culture fit?)
  • "Any questions for me?" (two-way conversation)

Outcome: Pass → Schedule technical interview. No pass → Polite rejection.

BuildTech's phone screen:

  • Conducted 87 phone screens (for 190 applicants)
  • Passed to technical: 42 (48%)
  • Time per screen: 30 min × 87 = 43.5 hours

Stage 2: Technical Screen (2 Hours)

Format: Live coding or take-home project

Live coding (for engineers):

  • 90-minute pair programming session
  • Solve real problem from your codebase (not leetcode)
  • Assess: Can they code? Can they communicate? How do they think?

Take-home project (alternative):

  • 4-hour project (sent Friday, due Monday)
  • Build small feature or fix real bug
  • Review code quality, completeness, communication

BuildTech used: Take-home (more respectful of candidate's time)

Pass rate: 42 candidates → 18 passed (43%)

Stage 3: Values Interview (60 Minutes)

Assess culture fit:

Questions:

  • "Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager. What happened?"
  • "Describe your ideal feedback culture."
  • "How do you handle ambiguity?"
  • "What motivates you -autonomy, mastery, purpose, compensation?"
  • "What kind of team environment do you thrive in?"

Looking for:

  • Alignment with company values
  • Self-awareness
  • Growth mindset
  • Communication style fit

BuildTech's values:

  • Bias toward action (don't overplan)
  • Transparent communication (no hidden agendas)
  • Customer obsession (talk to users)
  • Own your outcomes (take responsibility)

Pass rate: 18 candidates → 12 passed (67%)

Stage 4: Paid Trial Project (8-16 Hours, £400-800)

Before making an offer, have them work with you:

The project:

  • Real task from your backlog (not fake work)
  • 8-16 hours (one weekend or two evenings)
  • Paid at £50/hr (shows respect)
  • Work async (no need to be on at same time)

Benefits:

  • See real work quality
  • They see what working with you is like
  • Reduces risk of bad hire
  • Trial period before commitment

BuildTech's trial projects:

  • 12 candidates did trial projects
  • 10 performed well → Offered
  • 2 performed poorly → No offer (saved bad hires)
  • 1 declined offer (didn't like the work) → Saved mutual time

Final hire count: 9 (out of 10 offers made, 9 accepted)

The Offer

Components:

1. Salary:

  • Use Pave or Levels.fyi for market data
  • Offer 50th-75th percentile (competitive, not top)
  • For first 10 employees: Slight discount acceptable (offset with equity)

2. Equity:

  • First employee: 0.5-1.5% (major hire, high impact)
  • Employees 2-5: 0.2-0.5%
  • Employees 6-10: 0.1-0.3%
  • 4-year vest, 1-year cliff

3. Benefits:

  • Health insurance (required)
  • Unlimited PTO (or 25 days)
  • Remote work budget (£1,000/year for equipment)
  • Learning budget (£2,000/year)

BuildTech's offers:

  • Engineer #1: £65K salary + 0.8% equity
  • Engineers #2-5: £58-68K + 0.3-0.5% equity
  • Engineers #6-10: £62-72K + 0.15-0.25% equity

Acceptance rate: 90% (9 of 10 accepted)

Next Steps

Month 1:

  • Define first role to hire
  • Write job description
  • List 20 people in network to reach out to

Month 2:

  • Outreach to network
  • Post on job boards
  • Conduct phone screens

Month 3:

  • Technical screens
  • Values interviews
  • Trial projects
  • Make offer

Goal: First hire within 90 days

Ready to build your team? Athenic can help structure hiring processes and automate candidate sourcing. Build hiring playbook →

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