Getting a job at an early stage company is hard.  Actually doing the job after getting hired is even harder, like getting elected president of Haiti. We are a seed-stage company, we have an exciting mission, are going after a big market and, now that we have raised some outside capital, are actually doing some hiring.  

Startups at our stage usually do not have established hiring practices.  We may not even know for which roles are are hiring.  We often do not have “jobs” pages and even more often don’t post jobs on job sites, even the startup-focused job sites.

FeeFighters is in the market for a great marketing / BD person.  Recently we had two people express interest in that sort of position.

One, a guy who had been following us for a while, has gone out to coffee or beer with me a few times.  He always talks about how interested he is in the business, how it excites him, how he thinks it could be huge.  In his past he has done some consulting work that is relevant and has decent results, which he likes to talk about, and usually does some name-dropping.  Once I asked him to do us a small favor and he politely declined.

The other guy came to us more recently.  We have never gone to coffee or beer.  Instead he volunteered to help us solve a specific problem which he does in his spare time.  The project has gone well and in the process we have gotten to know each other.  Recently he expressed interest in joining the team full-time.  Along with that expression of interest he wrote a detailed job description for the role he would like.

We won’t hire the first guy.  While we haven’t fully figured out the hiring plan at FeeFighters, the second guy is pretty damn appealing.  I recommend that approach to anyone looking for a startup job.