I have started a startup and don't have any experience in startups and putting in my own money, $250,000. How do I find the right technical people?

If you're looking for Ruby folks, go where they go - local meetups. Second would be online but you will need to mine Stackoverflow, Github and similar sites and realize that they get approached regularly so start engaging early (at least 3 months before projected start date.)

First, congratulations on your recent funding/recruitment successes! This is an excellent question, and a transaction I have been directly or indirectly involved with numerous times before. Each circumstance can be unique, the two most important considerations to look at as a starting point would be 1) what is the current status of the technical product and 2) what is the current funding or capitalization status of the organization. Generally speaking though, the type of range you could be considering here could be in the mid to high single digits all the way to a nearly equal share in the venture as what you (the original founder) have. My gut reaction, based on your brief description, if that you are looking somewhere on the higher side of the range here (given the candidate, venture status and other data points you offered.) Getting to a firm and real number though will require some more analysis. So our challenge now, in order to answer this correctly, is to dive deeper into a few other details we need to uncover. To name a few: - Are they participating in an initial capital outlay/investment? - Are there any expenses of them joining the venture (moving etc) that they will incur? Who absorbs those costs? - How much familiarity do you have with this person prior to joining your venture? Have you worked with them directly? Have you spoken to anyone who has? - How critical is the tech stack they are supporting to your overall ecosystem now? - Is this CTO going to spearhead and participate in day-to-day development, or just own the roadmap/vision? o Are they a full stack developer? - What is the near and long-term vision for participation from your other employees? Are they going to be moving to FT status at any point in the near future? - What participation, if any, will this person have in the fundraising or sales process? - Beyond the current $40k investment and upcoming cash flow, what other capital inflow and outflow are expecting in the next 12 months? - What are your alternatives if this candidate didn’t work out for delivering the application? Would you pause this priority altogether or need to aggressively explore a new option in order to meet client demand etc? Once you establish these and other pieces of data, you can start looking at comparable plans out there and piece together what your starting/ending point is as far as comp terms you’d like to offer. It’s as important to remember that in addition to extending a number here, these are in fact negotiations and it is in your best interest to know what your strategy is with this candidate so you know how aggressive or passive to be in terms of making adjustments along the way after your initial offer. I would also highly encourage you to research alternative solutions and even engage other candidates right now in the process so that you can have a better sense of what is available in the market to you and also have an advantaged negotiating position since you’ll know to what extent this person isn’t the only game in town to consider. As I said before, there are several details which may dictate or alter precisely how you approach the offer and negotiation process with this new hire. I'd be happy to hop on a quick call to discuss further so we can dive into detail on 1) how important this particular candidate is to your overall scope so that we may 2) identify the appropriate starting point and end point for negotiation purposes and 3) consider alternatives to this plan as your backup plan in case the conversations with the candidate do not go as anticipated (or inversely, so you can have a clearer understanding of how advantaged or disadvantaged of a negotiating posture you need to take.) Reach out and request an appointment so we can connect and discuss further.

The easiest way would probably be to join a recruiter clack group (e.g. https://weirdlyhub.com/peoplepeople-slack-community-recruiters-hr/) and reach out to people there. You could also do a search on LinkedIn for: 'recruiter', and if you have a particular geographic area you want to focus on just include that in the search too. Reaching out to the people you find on those platforms can be done in a couple different ways, and the best one will depend on what it is you're trying to communicate or ask. If you'd like more specific advice relevant to your particular product or service, feel free to send along further information, best, Lee

I'll answer the question two ways: First, a note of caution. The recruiting space is incredibly crowded (I'm an angel investor in a company in this space) and there are already a few companies addressing exactly the pain point you're describing, mostly through social proof, contesting, and other venues. Also, generally, the social recruiting space is *really* hard to raise money post seed. There are so many companies that have raised great A rounds who just haven't lived up to investor expectations in this arena, that there isn't a lot of excitement that people can "beat" the execution of the "best" which haven't been "good enough." So if you're thinking about building a business here and plan on raising venture funding to scale the business, think very carefully about whether this is really your passion and you and your team will be good enough to be the best, keeping in mind that there are some really smart people who have tried before you. Now to answer your actual question: Recruiters, especially technical recruiters, live on LinkedIn. You can easily find them, and I'd literally do a search of the top tech companies that aren't LinkedIn, Facebook, Google & Twitter. They already have such well-tuned machines, that their people, no matter how junior, will talk about their existing systems vs be open to a new platform. Think about fast-growth, billion dollar plus valued companies that are still looking to "fine-tune" their recruiting machine. e.g. Snapchat and all mobile messenger companies, the best and fastest growing eCommerce companies, even Pinterest is still putting together their recruiting engine. Use LinkedIn search to find the recruiters, look specifically for people who have been on the job for less than a year, and then send them contact requests. The more technical your own LinkedIn profile looks, the more likely they are to talk with you. Happy to help in any way I can via a call. I know this space pretty well, and despite all the concerns noted above, still believe there are opportunities to build great businesses.

since most get paid upon a candidates permanent offer most of the hastle comes from finding the right person. knowing how t filter helps a recruiter incrementally over time leading to repeat customers. feel free to call one of us to help you get going or guiding you through hurdles. :)