📶 Signals from the Market
Founders are adjusting. The conversations we're having and the data we're watching show a shift in priorities:

• Lean hiring is the norm. According to Carta, headcount across early-stage startups remains below pre-2022 levels. Founders are prioritizing high-leverage hires, people who can do the work and help shape the path forward.

• Product-led growth is king again. In a down-cycle, the best marketing is a product that sells itself. We’re seeing a spike in demand for engineers and product marketers who can drive user adoption from day one.

• Talent still moves fast. While companies are slower to pull the trigger, top candidates are still seeing multiple offers. The best operators aren’t waiting around. They're getting picked up by teams that know what they need.

• Fractional is gaining ground. From GTM to Finance to People, founders are plugging gaps with experienced fractional leaders. This model provides access to seasoned judgment without the overhead of a full-time hire.

🔍️ What This Means for Talent
The hiring bar is higher and narrower. With fewer roles and more scrutiny, every hire carries more weight. Here's what we’re seeing across early-stage teams:

• Values-aligned > pedigree. Skills are necessary, but mindset is decisive. Founders are prioritizing people who are values-aligned, adapt quickly, and thrive in ambiguity, not just candidates who look great on paper with prestigious companies, top schools, impressive titles.

• Founders are spending more time on hiring. Whether they like it or not, hiring has become a core part of the CEO job again. Candidates want facetime, and alignment early on is key to retention.

• Comp conversations are getting sharper. From equity dilution to setting up comp bands, founders are being pushed to have a more structured, transparent approach, even at small scale.

• Culture is a survival skill. In small teams, one misaligned hire can slow everything down. Founders are thinking hard about how to define and protect the culture they’re building.

❓️Questions Worth Asking Now
In this kind of market, there's no playbook, but there are better questions. These are the ones we’re partnering with founders and CEOs to ask, the ones that lead to clarity, focus, and smarter decisions:

• How do I balance hiring for today vs. building the team I’ll need tomorrow?

• Am I spending my time in the right places, or avoiding hard people decisions?

• What roles actually need to be in-house, and what can I outsource or delay?

• Is my current team set up to win, or are we over-indexing on loyalty over performance?

Right now, talent is expensive, expectations are high, and the margin for error is razor-thin. More than ever, asking the right questions is a true competitive advantage.

💬 Final Thought
In a noisy, resource-tight, AI-fueled market, clarity is currency. Founders and CEOs who define the problem they’re solving, get brutally honest about the gaps in their team, and make focused, confident hires, especially functional leaders who act as impact multipliers and roll up clear-eyed insights, will move faster and smarter.

The bar is higher, but so is the payoff for teams that execute with precision.👍️

Mina Rozenshine
Managing Director, Executive Search & HR Consulting
[email protected] | dkrecruiting.com