Should I hire full-time employees, contractors, or an agency first?

The short answer

For core product and anything that IS your business, hire people who own it, contractors and agencies are great for well-scoped, non-core work but rarely build lasting capability or culture. Use freelancers to test a function or fill a temporary gap, then convert what's essential to full-time. Don't outsource the thing that makes you special.

Go deeper, your way

2 hand-picked resources, 2 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

📄 Article

✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Why we picked it YC's full curated body of hiring wisdom, from when to hire to how to close and evaluate early employees. The best free, high-signal resource for founders hiring for the first time.

Hiring & Recruiting (YC Startup Library collection)

From YC Startup Library by Y Combinator Curated essays + talks

Wait longer than feels comfortable to make your first hires
Hire generalists with high slope, low ego, and comfort with ambiguity
Use paid work samples and honest reference checks over trivia interviews

Open ycombinator.com →

📄 Article

✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Why we picked it Battle-tested YC advice on landing your critical first engineering hire, from founders who've done it at scale. It reframes hiring as a founder-led sales and persistence problem.

How to hire your first engineer (YC Startup Library)

From YC Startup Library by Y Combinator (Greg Brockman, Harj Taggar) Essay

Treat hiring like fundraising: personalized outreach and relentless follow-up
Leverage your personal network before generic job posts
Generate inbound with content and a crisp mission

Open ycombinator.com →

People also ask

When should I make my first hire? Hire later than feels comfortable, the best YC companies wait, because employees add cost, complexity, and communication overhead you can't easily ... Beginner 2 resources → How do I hire my first engineer when nobody's heard of my startup? Treat hiring exactly like fundraising: personalized outreach, a compelling pitch, and relentless persistence, no one great responds to a generic jo... Intermediate 2 resources → What kind of people should my first ten hires be? Generalists who are fast, low-ego, and comfortable with ambiguity, your first ten hires ARE your culture, so hire for slope over intercept and valu... Intermediate 3 resources → How do I compensate early employees with salary and equity in India? Pay a fair, honest salary you can sustain plus meaningful ESOPs from your option pool, early employees take real risk and should share the upside. ... Advanced 3 resources → How do I interview and evaluate candidates when I've never hired before? Skip trivia and whiteboard theatre, give a paid, real-world work sample that mirrors the actual job and watch how they think, communicate, and foll... Intermediate 3 resources → How do I write a job description that actually gets good people to apply to an unknown startup? Stop copying corporate JDs. Lead with the problem you're solving and the specific impact this hire will have in the first 90 days, not a laundry li... Beginner 2 resources →

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