Before founding Fulltilt Talent, Sophie Tung spent over 15 years as a recruiting leader inside high-growth startups like Slack and Calm. She was often the first recruiter brought in, tasked with making a company’s earliest and most important non-technical founding hires.
That means she wasn’t just hiring to scale a team. She was building it from the ground up, often with little structure, no formal hiring process, and high expectations from the executive leadership team.
In this interview-style feature, Sophie breaks down what it means to be a founding recruiter, what makes a great “first-of” hire, and how early-stage founders can avoid the common traps of reactive hiring.
Roger: You’ve been the founding recruiter at multiple startups. What does that actually look like when you walk into an early-stage team?
Sophie:
You’re walking into a company that’s still defining itself. Usually there is no interview rubric, very little process, and no tools in place. Sometimes there isn’t even a clear idea of who the team is looking for. The expectation is to build from scratch, do it quickly, and ultimately do it right-ish. There is no safety net.
You’re also balancing inputs from the founders, early investors, cross-functional leaders, and sometimes the customers. Everyone is moving quickly, and hiring has to meet the moment. Often hiring is already playing catch-up when you arrive. You’re not only recruiting; you’re absorbing context, spotting gaps, and helping shape the entire talent strategy before it even has a name, all while doing it at breakneck speed.
Roger: What makes hiring at the earliest stages so different from later-stage hiring?
Sophie:
Later-stage hiring is about slotting someone into an existing well-oiled machine that is ready to be optimized. Early-stage hiring is about bringing in someone who can build the systems and machine from scratch when there are no baselines to anchor against. The roles are unstructured-ish. The company is still evolving and figuring out its voice and who it is going to be. You need people who are builders but who can also lean in and be operators. It is a totally different profile.
You are not just looking at résumés. You are looking for signs of ownership, creativity, and resourcefulness. You are looking at the person’s timeline and previous experience to understand if they can move without a playbook. Can they operate in ambiguity without getting lost in it? Are they willing to roll up their sleeves and be in the trenches to make this thing work? If not, they are not going to thrive. You do not want a passenger on your mission. You want someone who will take action and buy in to achieve the goal.
Roger: How do you approach hiring when there’s no precedent? No job description, no comp bands, no structure?
Sophie:
That is where calibration comes in. Most founders come in with a rough idea of what they need. They might say, “We need a marketing person to grow more deliberately,” or “We need someone to expand our sales-led GTM,” but it is rarely specific enough. And sometimes, at this stage, it is not meant to be.
It starts with understanding the business. How did they get here? What is currently happening? What is not happening? Where do they see themselves in a few months? From there, you start to identify the business pain points and how to structure the role’s requirements and responsibilities. We collaborate on job description iterations until we land on the right one.
Then I research the talent market and identify different target profiles. We calibrate by reacting to real candidates, not hypotheticals. I always leave space for the founder to talk through whether a specific person’s experience feels like the right fit or not. That helps us gain clarity quickly and pivot without wasting time talking to the wrong people.
Roger: You talk a lot about “first-of” hires. What defines a great one in your experience?
Sophie:
A great first-of or founding hire is a strategist and a doer rolled into one. They know how to zoom out and think long term, but they are also in the weeds making things happen from day one. They do not need a roadmap. They build one. Building from zero to one excites them.
Now, that is easier to describe than it is to find. Honestly, it is a bit more art than science. The best way to describe the sourcing process is a combination of signals. You are looking at the candidate’s job trajectory velocity, the stage of the company when they were there, what they are doing now, and what their responsibilities look like. Add a few layered search strategies on top, and that is how you find a founding hire.
Beyond that, first-ofs are also culture carriers. So there is no skipping the initial conversation. Just like meeting someone for 15 to 30 minutes, if you ask the right questions, you can get a sense of how they show up, communicate, and solve problems. That is the intangible that sets the tone for how they collaborate and how future hires will operate. They build the foundation that others will walk into. Having a strong one is often the difference between exceptionality and proficiency.
Roger: What red flags do you look for when evaluating someone for a founding role?
Sophie:
If someone needs a lot of structure, they are not ready. If the conversation is overly focused on hierarchy, titles, or processes that do not exist yet, that is a red flag. Wanting to build a team right away and steering the conversation toward managing before executing is another common one.
I also watch for candidates who are too reliant on credentials. Having a strong background is great, but it does not mean you can operate in chaos or build from zero. I am looking for builders. Not just people who were on the ride at a previous company, but the people who helped build the ride.
Roger: Is there a trait or behavior you see in top founding hires that people do not talk about enough?
Sophie:
Pattern recognition. The best founding hires know how to zoom out, see what is working, and connect the dots. They can take limited information and still make confident, high-leverage decisions. That only comes from experience and reps.
They also do not get paralyzed when things are imperfect. They are not phased by constant changes. They embrace controlled chaos and make progress with what they have. They know how to move in ambiguity without needing constant validation or direction.
Roger: What is a mistake you see founders make over and over when hiring for early roles?
Sophie:
There are quite a few, and each one could be a deeper dive, but here are the ones I see most often:
Misunderstanding of recruiting and the talent function
Uncertainty around what they are actually hiring for
Unstructured interview processes
Misunderstanding the state of the talent market
Relying solely on inbound applicants
And one of the most common, waiting too long to hire in the first place
Let’s dig into a few of these.
One of the biggest gaps I see is when founders treat hiring as a transactional function instead of a strategic one. Recruiting should be a partnership. When it works well, both sides are invested in the outcome. The recruiter is not just there to check boxes. They are there to help shape the company by bringing in the right people who move the business forward.
Then there is timing. Most founders wait until the need is urgent. By that point, they are in reactive mode. They post a job, hope the right person applies, or lean heavily on referrals without clarity on what they are solving for. That rarely leads to the best outcome, and it is time consuming.
The hard truth is that the candidates you probably want are not applying at all. The broader state of the market has many experienced operators being more selective about how and when they engage. They are not spending time on job boards or submitting cold applications. They are waiting for the right opportunity, introduced by the right person, at the right time.
Another common assumption is that the most well-known or widely recommended recruiting partners are the best fit for every stage. For early-stage startups, that is not always the case.
Larger recruiting agencies often carry a heavier operational footprint, and their pricing models reflect that. Set retainers, layered fees, and processes built for scale can slow things down. Those incentives do not always match the urgency or specificity of an early hire.
Smaller, specialized recruiting partners tend to operate more like startups themselves. They are lean, focused, and tightly aligned with outcomes. You are working with someone who understands the weight of each hire and is embedded in the process with founder-level context and urgency.
It might seem like a smaller bet on paper, but it’s often the one that creates the most leverage (shoutout Annie Duke). Just like startups, lean teams with the right expertise can outperform the big players—especially when speed, alignment, and clarity matter most.
Roger: What does your calibration process look like when the founder is not sure what they want?
Sophie:
I touched on this earlier, but let’s go a little deeper.
It is perfectly normal for founders to be unsure of what they are actually looking for. Even if they think they are locked into a profile, I find this process helps tease out the intangible attributes. The reality is that most founders have not hired for every function before. My job is not just to find candidates. It is to help them figure out what they need.
My calibration process is anchored around 20 or more profiles that I bring to the table early. Some might be more senior, others more scrappy. Some from similar industries, others from well-known companies that have scaled through the stage we are in.
The conversation that unfolds from reviewing actual people helps the founder say, “This is closer,” or “That is not what I had in mind.” It allows me to dig into why they are leaning a certain way and build the mental profile I am already forming. Now we are not guessing based on a generic job description. We are stress testing real experiences and assumptions early, which saves us from months of wasted cycles later.
Roger: What should founders be listening for or asking about in interviews with founding hire candidates?
Sophie:
Ask about something they created that outlived the initial need. That could be a framework, a process, or a way of thinking that the team continued to use long after the original problem was solved.
You are looking for candidates who think in systems, not just tasks. Can they identify a gap, build something meaningful, and leave behind a structure that helps the team move faster or make better decisions? That kind of thinking creates momentum across the company.
Just as important is looking for grit. Founding hires will hit roadblocks. Things will break. The question is whether they know how to keep going. Ask about something that failed or did not go as planned. That is a fairly standard question, but the key is in the follow-up. What did they learn? What did they do next? Look for signs that they are not easily discouraged, that they have pushed through hard situations before, and that they know how to reflect on failure in a way that turns it into progress. Nothing should be wasted at this stage. Even missteps should create momentum.
The strongest founding hires are not just high performers in the moment. They build in a way that other people can learn from, scale with, and evolve over time. And they do it with the resilience to keep showing up when things get messy. That is how early work becomes foundational, not just functional.
Roger: You have said before that hiring early-stage is like building the plane while flying it. What is your best advice to founders trying to get it right?
Sophie:
There is no one right way of doing things. There is no secret sauce, because every company is different. But you should think of hiring like your product. Start earlier than when you think you are ready. Do not wait for perfection before you begin your search. Define the role loosely, calibrate quickly, and refine as you go.
And do not do it alone if you do not have to. Founders should focus on building the business, not spending weeks trying to guess what kind of person they need. Work with a recruiting partner who knows how to find signals fast, who has seen these roles evolve, and who can help you make a hire that actually compounds your growth.
The final say
Founding hires are different. The way you find them, evaluate them, and bring them into your company needs to reflect that.
Sophie’s experience building teams from zero gives her a unique lens to not just place talent, but to shape how startups think about early-stage hiring. It is not about ticking boxes. It is about finding the right person who will define what “great” looks like for everyone who comes after them.