Ask HN: How do you find early stage startups to join

I’ve had luck finding early-stage startups through a mix of places:

HN “Who’s Hiring” threads (great for early opportunities straight from founders).

AngelList / Wellfound for more structured job boards.

Direct outreach - if you see a product you like, email the founder. Early teams usually respond well to proactive people.

It’s less about waiting for a job post and more about finding projects you’re excited about and reaching out early.

It’s a technique that will favor those skilled in BS — or more charitably, those skilled in social persuasion. And this is a risk for the founders, but there are plenty of cracked engineers who are also persuasive. The problem is they have little motivation to join a company with instability and looming uncertainty. So if the founders aren’t careful they’ll end up hiring someone more skilled at BS than any technical competency.

I’ve been the founder in this position, and I’m confident in my ability to judge talent, so I don’t worry too much about the risk of hiring a BSer. I know that if I want to hire someone then they’re qualified. But at what price? Once I’ve decided I want to hire them, the cost of passing — and restarting the cycle — is too high to push back on high counteroffers, especially when the investors are pressuring us to hire fast.

(fwiw, my next startup I will avoid raising any money until we have product/market fit… or at least I’ll tell the VCs pressuring me to hire too early to pound sand… this rushed hiring was a big contributor to the soft failure (acquihire), but I am proud we built a very strong team. For all our missteps and failures, hiring was not one of them.)