Guides for founders hiring their first team
Vouch finds and vets founding engineers and first go-to-market hires for seed and Series A startups. You meet a short list and pay only when you hire. These are plain answers to the questions founders ask before a first key hire, with the public sources behind every number.
Hiring your first team
- How to hire a founding engineer
How to hire a founding engineer at a seed or Series A startup: what to write down first, where to look, how to interview, and what to pay.
- How to hire your first GTM hire
When to make your first go-to-market hire, who it should be, what to pay a first account executive, and how to interview for it.
- What a recruiter costs a seed or Series A startup
Contingency, retained, in-house and per-hire recruiting compared, with public numbers and a worked example for a $180,000 hire.
- Founding engineer salary and equity
The median founding engineer base is about $195,000, and Carta's median first engineer gets 1.54% equity. Seed and Series A pay, with every source linked.
Hiring by city
- Hiring a founding engineer or first GTM hire in San Francisco
What it takes to hire early engineers and GTM people in the San Francisco Bay Area: the pay, the competition for talent, and California's pay range law.
- Hiring a founding engineer or first GTM hire in New York
Hiring early engineers and go-to-market people in New York: local pay, the size of the startup scene, and the city and state pay transparency laws.
- Hiring a founding engineer or first GTM hire in Boston
Hiring early engineers and GTM people in Boston and Cambridge: local pay, the funding picture, and Massachusetts' 2025 pay transparency law.
- Hiring a founding engineer or first GTM hire in London
Hiring early engineers and GTM people in London: ONS pay data, the Skilled Worker and Global Talent visas, and the size of London's tech scene.
Ways to hire, compared
- Vouch vs a traditional recruiting agency
How Vouch compares with a contingency recruiting agency on fees, who screens candidates, and what you see before you meet anyone.
- Vouch vs hiring an in-house recruiter
When a seed or Series A startup should hire its own recruiter, and when paying per hire costs less.
- Vouch vs AI sourcing tools (Juicebox, Dover, Paraform)
How Vouch differs from Juicebox, Dover and Paraform, and how Paraform and Juicebox differ: who searches, who screens and how each charges, from their own pages.
Interview the few worth meeting.
We run the search and the first interviews. You spend your time on the two or three people who could be the hire.