☄️ How to Persuade 10x Employees to Join Your Startup

To become a unicorn, your startup needs world-class talent. Unfortunately, most of that talent already has a job.

Why would a highly compensated, high-output leader leave their comfortable position for your chaotic startup?

Because exceptional people suffocate in comfort. They crave impact over stability, ownership over options, and the chance to build something that matters, not just optimize metrics for the next quarterly review.

Everyone wants to believe in something that’s bigger than themselves. Especially, the best of the best.

Here are 4 strategies to get the best candidates to join your team:

The Mission-First Approach

Drew Houston couldn't match a Google engineer's $300k package in the early days of Dropbox.

Instead, he showed engineers his own laptop.

It was filled with conflicting versions of files across email, USB drives, and various folders.

"This is the mess we're fixing," Houston said.

All engineers shared this same problem. They had to manually and painstakingly sync files between computers (before Dropbox at least).

This was also why Ilya Sutskever left Google to co-found OpenAI.

In 2014, OpenAI was just an idea.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman wanted to recruit Sutskever — Google Brain's star researcher who was already making $500k+.

They didn't send a recruiter. They invited him to dinner and laid out the vision over the meal:

An open-source, non-profit AI lab that would democratize artificial intelligence. No corporate overlords. Just pure research for humanity's benefit.

That sounded more exciting than being part of Google’s empire.

The lesson: Sell a vision to shape the future.

The Customer Champion Strategy

When starting out, Canva couldn't afford an experienced designer.

Canva’s founder, Melanie Perkins, found a unique solution: target designers who were already creating tutorials and templates on how to use Canva for free.

These power users understood Canva better than any FAANG designer she could have hired.

She reached out to them personally and asked: "You've helped thousands use Canva. Want to help us build it?"

Several joined, including their current Head of Design (who initially started as a community volunteer).

The lesson: Your best hires might come from your existing users.

The BBQ Pipeline

Ben Silbermann (founder of Pinterest) couldn't compete with Facebook's recruiting machine when building Pinterest.

His hack was hosting weekly BBQs at his house in Palo Alto.

Every Saturday, he'd invite great people to grill burgers, meet the team, and play with Pinterest.

No job postings. No formal pitches. Just low-stakes, casual social settings and a fun product to tinker with.

Many attendees returned week after week, eventually asking how they could get involved with the team. Those barbeques led to some of Pinterest’s best early hires.

The lesson: When you build genuine relationships with candidates, you get employees who genuinely care for your company.

The Equity Conversation

10x talent isn’t just employees — they’re partners.

You can't match FAANG salaries. But you can offer something more valuable: ownership.

Here’s the tried-and-true formula successful founders use:

• Be transparent about risk: "We have 18 months to prove product-market fit. Here's our path to growth and next our raise."

• Explain the upside: "Your 2% could be worth $XX M if we hit our ambitious goals."

• Frame it as a partnership: "You'll shape and execute our vision and product strategy."

The lesson: Don't pitch them a job. Offer them a chance to be a founding member of something big and important.

Your 10x Recruitment Playbook

1. Lead with the mission

• Write a one-page manifesto about the future you're building

• The mission should be bigger than you or the company

2. Deploy your champions

• Invite candidates to spend time with your team

• Introduce them to your power users

• Connect them with your investors

3. Design "partner" packages

• Share potential equity upside scenarios, while being transparent about risks

• Be open to creating custom roles that leverage their strengths

The Truth About 10x Recruiting

You don't need celebrity investors or mansion meetups. You need conviction, clarity, and a vision.

Because great people don't leave great jobs for marginal improvements. They leave for step-function opportunities to impact the world.

Your job is to convince them that staying in their current role is the real risk — the risk of missing the chance to build something extraordinary.

As one founder put it, "I don't recruit employees. I recruit co-conspirators."

And your unfair advantage lies exactly there. It’s not about funding or pedigree, but your ability to do what big companies can't: solve big problems at a very high speed with a small team of high agency people.

Until next week,

David Lobo Head of Growth, Workmate

P.S. What's the boldest move you've made to recruit someone? The best stories might make next week's newsletter.

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