Taggar: Elite Founders Nurture Relationships for Years to Hire Individual Engineers
Harj Taggar · The Startup Playbook for Hiring Your First Engineers and AEs · Y Combinator · Nov 7, 2025 · at 40:06
Y Combinator partner Harj Taggar discusses long-term recruiting habits of successful founders on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast.
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“I think some of the elite founders that I've worked with throughout the YC career, they are essentially, in a sense, always recruiting, but they're always looking to meet people who they think are really smart and interesting, whether they're available or not. And it's so common to hear stories from them of, hey, actually, I hired this person after, like, catching up with them and doing coffees and lunches for two years. And I think you assume, it's easy to assume that's just for these, like, Executive level hires once you're a big company, but I actually think the elite founders just do that from day one, even for, like, individual engineers that they really want to hire.”
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