Stop trying to hire your entire leadership team from your network
Early hires usually come from your circle. They’re trusted friends and old colleagues who believe in your vision. And that works for a bit. But once you hit Series A, and your product starts gaining real traction, you’ll need to hire multiple specialized leaders who can help you scale
And you quickly realize something uncomfortable: none of these people are in your LinkedIn connections.
The problem with hiring in your network
Early on, you’ll notice a shift. You’ve validated the idea. Users are finding value without you pushing it. You raise institutional money and start building something that looks less like a project and more like a company.
This is where many founders fail to evolve how they think about leadership talent.
The instinct is to keep doing what worked before: hiring through your network, taking investor recommendations, and bringing in people one degree away. It feels safe, it’s fast, and sometimes it works.
But your network has blind spots.
The people you know often share the same backgrounds and ways of thinking. That’s fine when you’re building version one with five engineers. It’s a problem when you’re scaling functions you’ve never led.
Where do you even start?
You need a recruiter
The most important reason to hire a recruiter for key leadership roles is simple: you want the best person in the market, not just the best person you happen to know. There’s a big difference.
You might have a job description in mind, but your recruiter will help you refine that into an ideal candidate profile. Once you’ve defined that, your executive recruiter will map the market by identifying every qualified candidate who fits your scope and location. If you’re looking for a sales leader who has scaled from $5M to $20M ARR, transitioned from PLG to SLG, and understands your ICP, the pool quickly narrows. Add a three-day in-office requirement, and you’re left with a short, actionable list.
A great recruiter also gives you market calibration. Before you even start interviewing, you’ll learn what excellence actually looks like in this role, what top performers have in common, what separates good from great, and what you should really be optimizing for. This calibration alone is worth the fee because it prevents costly mis-hires who appear strong but aren’t the right fit.
Finally, the right recruiter brings pattern recognition you don’t have. They’ve placed dozens of similar leaders, seen what predicts success, and know which resumes look great but fail in practice. They understand how certain backgrounds translate to specific environments. That filter is invaluable.
Finding the right recruiter
Not every recruiter works for every role at every stage. At N47, we maintain a map of recruiting partners because we've seen how much the right match changes outcomes.
What matters most: specialization in your domain and stage.
You need recruiters who've placed technical leaders at early-stage venture-backed startups if you're hiring a VP of Engineering, not generalists who do executive search across all industries. The best ones know the players in your space and understand what it means to scale at your specific stage.
Look for senior partner involvement, not a bait-and-switch where partners sell you and then junior associates do the work. Ask about their methodology for vetting candidates and get specifics on their track record. For leadership roles, choose retained search over contingency. It costs more upfront but delivers better outcomes because the firm works exclusively on your search with real commitment.
Working together effectively
Once you've chosen a recruiter, treat them as a true partner. Immerse them in your culture beyond just sending a job description.
Invite them into your world: share your origin story, the company’s mission and values, and the traits that make your best people successful. Let them meet team members, sit in on meetings, or shadow internal events so they can see your communication style, pace, and tone firsthand.
Map the candidate ecosystem together to find sources beyond obvious competitors. Stay deeply involved throughout the search process, reviewing candidates thoughtfully and making decisions quickly.
The best searches happen when builders invest 30-40% of their time in the process. You can't delegate leadership hiring and expect magic. Your recruiter handles sourcing, vetting, and logistics, but you own the strategic decisions, cultural fit assessment, and backchannel references.
Do your due diligence
When you hire from outside your network, you can't rely on the three references a candidate provides. You need to do the work yourself.
For leadership hires, plan to conduct 3-5 in-depth backchannel reference conversations personally. Leverage your recruiter to find contacts, but do these calls yourself rather than delegate to anyone else. You need to hear directly from people who've worked with this candidate, especially people they didn't select as references.
Ask questions that reveal what formal references won't: "How was this person perceived by others on the team?" "If this person joined the executive team of a company you're considering, would that make you more or less excited?" "What haven't I asked that you would want to know if you were in my position?"
These conversations surface patterns about leadership style, team dynamics, and cultural fit that never show up in standard reference calls. The difference between a candidate who looks impressive in interviews and one who'll genuinely excel often lives in these backchannel conversations. Your recruiter can help identify who to call, but you need to make the calls. This is where you learn what you're really getting.
Conclusion
If you want to build a world-class company, you need world-class leadership talent. That talent rarely just appears in your network at exactly the moment you need it.
The builders we partner with understand this. They recognize that the approach that worked for the first 15 hires won't work for hires 16 through 50. They invest in recruiting as a strategic capability, not an expense to minimize. They find great recruiters, immerse them in the business, and work alongside them to identify leaders who can scale the company.
Your product spoke, and the market listened. That’s why you’re here. Now it’s time to build the team that turns momentum into scale. Finding them isn’t luck; it’s strategy.
