Smith: Helping with hires 5 through 10 is high-leverage for seed investors
Matt Smith · Matt Smith from Kickstart on Early-Stage Investing in the Mountain States · May 21, 2025 · at 22:54
Matt Smith, Principal at Kickstart, explains why early-stage VC firms should focus their recruiting support on hires 5 through 10 rather than later stages.
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“Hiring right at the precedency level. Most of the expertise that you need is not in the company yet. Once you read series A, series B, you probably have a fair amount of experience inside the company, and you have more networks inside the company to find, you know, awesome talent. But when there's four of you in the garage, like, grinding out stuff, like, you just don't have that same reach. And so we liked, we leaned in a lot at that level of, like, making, like, Helping with hires like five through 10. We think that's a big leverage point”
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