Hire an SDR
Cheap to hire, expensive to hire early.
The timing question comes before the hiring question
- Retained recruiters.
- LinkedIn Recruiter seats.
- Keyword-matched resumes.
- Templated InMails.
The standard failure is hiring an SDR to discover product-market fit. It does not work: they have no context to adapt the pitch, no authority to change the offer, and they burn a list that was your best shot at the market.
The right moment is later and specific: founders have closed enough to know which message lands, there is more top-of-funnel work than they can do, and someone can actually coach the hire daily.
After that, the hiring problem is real but narrower. You are looking for coachability and work rate rather than experience, and both are hard to read from a CV where everybody claims both.
How the agent runs an SDR search
It reads for trajectory, not tenure
Promotions, ramp speed, moves to harder products. Early-career signal is about slope, and the agent writes down what it sees.
It surfaces people from outside sales
Some of the best SDRs come from hospitality, recruiting or teaching. The agent finds them and explains why the evidence transfers.
Outreach that sells the ladder
Good SDRs choose based on what happens after eighteen months. The message says what the path to closing looks like and who would coach them.
Screening on coachability
Your questions go out early: the feedback that changed how they work, and what they do when a sequence stops working.
Questions.
Answered.
Founders have closed enough deals to know the message, there is more outbound work than they can do, and someone has time to coach daily. Missing any of the three usually means it is early.
For a first SDR, coachability usually beats experience, and a strong first-job candidate is cheaper and more mouldable. The agent surfaces both and labels which is which.
Some teams do, because it creates a comparison and shares the coaching load. It also doubles the cost of getting the timing wrong.
Worth considering, and honestly an agent doing sourcing and first-touch outreach covers part of the same ground for recruiting. For sales pipeline, agencies exist, though quality varies sharply.
Hire a Founding Account Executive
Your first salesperson has no playbook, no brand and no pipeline. Most AEs have never worked without all three.
Hire a Founding Salesperson
The first GTM hire who sells the vision and closes the deal.
Hire a GTM Engineer
The role that replaced hiring three SDRs, and the reason your first revenue hire might be an engineer.
Find your SDR.
Tell us what your founders have already closed and the agent will find people who can carry it.