Startup Hiring Roadmap: Your First 10 Hires After Funding

You just closed your round. The money's in the bank, the board wants growth, and your LinkedIn inbox is full of recruiters asking if you're hiring.

You are. But who do you hire first?

After working with 400+ funded startups, we've seen the hiring order that works — and the one that burns runway. Most founders hire based on gut feel or whoever they happen to meet first. The startups that scale fastest hire strategically.

Here's the roadmap.

The Wrong Way to Hire

Before the right order, let's talk about what we see go wrong:

Hiring a VP too early. You don't need a VP of Sales when you have zero AEs. You don't need a VP of Marketing when you don't know your ICP yet. VPs manage and scale — there's nothing to manage or scale at hire #3.

Hiring friends. Your college roommate is great. They might also be terrible at sales. Hire for skill, not comfort. Friendship and reporting lines don't mix well at startups.

Hiring for the company you want to be, not the company you are. You're not Google. You don't need a Head of People at 8 employees. You need someone who can do three jobs adequately, not one job perfectly.

Hiring too slowly. Every week without your first AE is a week of revenue you'll never get back. Speed matters more than perfection for your first hires.

The Hiring Order That Works

This isn't gospel — your specific situation matters. A deep tech company hires differently from a SaaS company. But across 400+ startups, this pattern wins more often than it loses.

Hires 1-2: Account Executives

Why first: Revenue. Your investors didn't give you money to think about revenue later. They gave you money to prove you can scale it now.

Founder-led sales got you here, but it doesn't scale. You need 2 AEs (always hire in pairs — you need comparison data) to start converting pipeline while you focus on everything else.

What to look for: Startup experience, ability to self-source pipeline, comfortable selling a product that's still evolving. Not enterprise AEs who need an SDR team, a playbook, and a brand name to hide behind.

Typical cost: €50K-€70K base + variable in Europe, $70K-$110K in the US.

Timeline: Hire within the first 30 days post-funding.

Hire 3: Senior Engineer or Lead Developer

Why next: Your product needs to keep up with what your AEs are selling. If your technical team is just you and a junior dev, things will break as customers increase.

What to look for: Someone who can own the technical roadmap, mentor junior developers, and make architecture decisions. They don't need to be a CTO — they need to be a strong builder who can lead a small team.

Typical cost: €75K-€100K in Europe, $130K-$170K in the US.

Timeline: Start searching in month 1, hire by month 2.

Hire 4: Marketing / Growth Lead

Why now: Your 2 AEs need pipeline. Founder network and cold outreach only go so far. You need someone building inbound — content, SEO, paid acquisition, partnerships.

What to look for: A generalist, not a specialist. At this stage, you need someone who can write a blog post on Monday, set up a Google Ads campaign on Tuesday, and build an email nurture sequence on Wednesday. Specialists come later.

Typical cost: €55K-€80K in Europe, $80K-$120K in the US.

Timeline: Month 2-3.

Hire 5: Customer Success / Account Manager

Why now: Your AEs are closing deals. Who's making sure those customers renew? At most startups, the founders handle this until it becomes unsustainable — usually around customer 15-20.

What to look for: Empathy, organisation, and enough technical understanding to triage issues without escalating everything to engineering. Bonus: someone who can identify upsell opportunities.

Typical cost: €40K-€55K in Europe, $55K-$75K in the US.

Timeline: Month 3-4, or whenever your churn starts ticking up.

Hire 6-7: Two More Engineers

Why now: Your product roadmap is getting ambitious. Your lead developer is drowning. You need to ship faster without sacrificing quality.

What to look for: One backend, one frontend (or two full-stack, depending on your stack). They should be mid-level or senior — you don't have time to train juniors right now. Look for people who've worked in small teams and are comfortable with ambiguity.

Typical cost: €55K-€85K each in Europe, $100K-$150K in the US.

Timeline: Month 3-5.

Hire 8: Operations / Finance Manager

Why now: You're at 7 people and growing. Payroll, compliance, contracts, bookkeeping, office management (if you have one), vendor relationships — someone needs to own the chaos.

What to look for: A generalist who can handle finance basics (bookkeeping, AP/AR, budgeting), HR admin (contracts, onboarding), and general operations. In the Netherlands, understanding Dutch employment law is critical. In the US, state-by-state compliance matters.

Don't hire a CFO yet — you need a doer, not a strategist.

Typical cost: €45K-€65K in Europe, $60K-$85K in the US.

Timeline: Month 4-6.

Hire 9: Third AE or SDR

Why now: Your first 2 AEs are (hopefully) hitting quota and your marketing lead is generating pipeline. Time to add fuel. Either a third AE to handle more deals or an SDR to prospect and feed your existing AEs.

The SDR vs AE decision: If your AEs are spending too much time prospecting and not enough closing, hire an SDR. If they have plenty of pipeline but can't handle the volume, hire another AE.

Typical cost: AE: €50K-€70K base in Europe. SDR: €35K-€45K base in Europe.

Timeline: Month 5-7.

Hire 10: Product Manager or Designer

Why now: Your engineering team is at 3-4 people and your lead developer is spending half their time deciding what to build instead of building it. A product manager takes over the "what" and "why" so engineering can focus on the "how."

What to look for: Someone technical enough to have credibility with engineers but customer-focused enough to prioritise ruthlessly. At a startup, a PM who can also do basic design (wireframes, user flows) is worth their weight in gold.

Typical cost: €60K-€85K in Europe, $100K-$140K in the US.

Timeline: Month 6-8.

The Hires That Can Wait

Resist the urge to hire these roles too early:

Head of People / HR — Not until you're past 25 employees. Before that, your ops person and founders can handle it. Yes, culture matters. No, you don't need a full-time person for it at 12 people.

VP of Sales — Not until you have 4-5 AEs and a proven playbook. The VP's job is to scale what works, not figure out what works.

VP of Marketing — Not until your marketing generalist is overwhelmed and you know which channels actually drive pipeline. Hiring a VP of Marketing to "figure out marketing" is an expensive experiment.

Data Scientist / Analyst — Not until you have enough data to analyse. At 10 people, your data fits in a spreadsheet.

Legal / In-house Counsel — Use a good startup law firm on retainer instead. In-house legal makes sense at 50+ employees.

Budget Planning: What Your First 10 Hires Cost

Here's a rough budget for a European startup (adjust +30-50% for US):

Add 25-30% for employer costs (pension, social charges, benefits) in Europe. Your first 10 hires will cost roughly €750K-€1M per year fully loaded.

Recruiting costs on top: At traditional agencies (20% of salary), recruiting these 10 people costs €120K-€160K. At Funded.club's fixed fees, it's €35K-€55K. That's €80K-€100K saved — enough for another hire.

Three Rules for Your First 10

1. Hire for the next 12 months, not the next 5 years. Your first hires need to be doers. Leaders and specialists come later. Every early hire should be comfortable doing work that's "beneath" them.

2. Speed beats perfection. An 80% fit hired this month beats a 95% fit hired in three months. You can't afford to run perfect processes when you're burning €60K/month in runway. Move fast, trust your gut on culture, and verify skills with practical exercises — not 6-round interview gauntlets.

3. Hire in pairs where possible. Two AEs, not one. Two engineers, not one. Pairs give you comparison data, redundancy, and built-in collaboration. Solo hires at early-stage companies either become single points of failure or have no one to learn from.

How Funded.club Helps

We help funded startups make their first 10 hires without burning through their recruiting budget. Fixed fees from $4,900 per hire — not 20% of salary.

We've seen this movie 400+ times. We know which hires to prioritise, what "good" looks like at each stage, and how to move fast without cutting corners.

First candidates in 7 days. Shortlist in 14.