2022 Golden Gate Recruits - Who's Hiring?

Early stage startups

Still hiring! VC funding for seed (even Series A) has certainly not dried up. Funds still need to deploy their capital —> early stage startups need to grow in order to have any shot at surviving and building product-market-fit. So we’re actually noticing a lot more seed/Series A startups coming to us for help
Focus on a strong leader and executive team that you are confident will “do the right thing” when times are both good and bad.

Mid/late stage startups

Where we’ve noticed the largest slowdown. Companies worth $1-10B with 100-1,000 employees who previously had planned to IPO or SPAC in late 2023 or early 2024 are now pushing their timeline to 2026/2027/20. And they’re unsure whether they will be able to fundraise without big check-slingers like Softbank and Tiger writing hundreds of millions of dollars checks and a risk of taking a down-road. So they’re conserving cash and have stopping hiring or are making cuts.
Focus on profitable (or at least close to cash flow positive) businesses that may not have needed to raise in last few years + companies that have recently raised fresh capital where you are confident that the business fundamentals are solid.

Public companies

More desirable recently for lots of candidates because the equity grant values have been adjusted with stock market revaluations (whereas most private startups have not adjusted valuations) such that candidates are able to come in with relatively strong economics on the upward growth.
Focus on “startups within larger companies” or hiring managers coming from entrepreneurial environments where you can avoid the bureaucracy and slow-moving pace of lots of larger corporations.