In short
A candidate with other options is pricing the risk of joining you, so expect questions about runway, investors, what the role owns, a late next round, share options, who they will learn from and why the job is open. Answer each with what is true today and what would change it; the honesty of those answers is most of what a company without a brand has to offer.
Key facts
- What they are doing
- Pricing risk, not comparing logos
- Best answer shape
- What is true now, and what would change it
- Never promise
- Funding, titles or an outcome for options
- Write it down
- Once, so every interviewer gives the same answer
Why the questions are the proposition
Before Series A a company usually has no brand, no career ladder and no salary that beats a large employer. What it can offer is a clear problem, real ownership and people worth working with, and a candidate can only judge those by how the founders answer hard questions.
So the questions below are not an obstacle to get past. They are the moment the candidate decides whether to believe everything else you have said. An answer that is specific and slightly uncomfortable usually does more than a confident one that cannot be checked.
The seven questions and what an honest answer covers
These follow from the risks of joining an early company. They are not a survey of what candidates ask, and a given person may raise only some of them.
| The question | What a truthful answer covers | What not to promise |
|---|---|---|
| How long is the runway? | The month the money runs out on today's plan, the plan it assumes, and what you would cut first if revenue or funding slipped. | A runway you have not recalculated since the last hire. |
| Who are the investors, and what did they back? | Who holds the round, what milestone they funded you to reach, and how involved they are day to day. | Support from an investor that has not been agreed. |
| What does my role own, and who decides that? | The decisions that would be theirs from the start, the ones that stay with a founder, and how a disagreement gets settled. | Ownership a founder is not ready to hand over. |
| What happens to my role if the next round is late? | Which work continues, which pauses, and whether this role is one you would protect. If you have not decided, say so. | Job security the cash position does not support. |
| What are the share options, and under which scheme? | The scheme the grant would sit under, the vesting terms and what happens if they leave. Point them to the scheme's own guidance and to their own adviser. | A value, a multiple or an exit. Options are not salary. |
| Who will I learn from? | The people they would work alongside, what each is strong at, and the areas where nobody in the company has more experience than they do. | Mentoring from senior hires who have not been made yet. |
| Why is this role open now? | The constraint the role removes, what has been happening without it, and whether anyone has held it before. | A version of events that the team would tell differently. |
If two people in the company would answer any row differently, settle it before the next interview, not during it.
What not to do
Each of these gets found out, usually within the first months, and the hire leaves on it.
- Overstating runway or describing a round as closed before it is signed.
- Talking about share options as if they were part of the salary, or putting a figure on what they might be worth.
- Offering a title or a future team that the hiring plan does not contain.
- Answering the runway question with confidence instead of a date.
- Letting the answer change depending on who in the company the candidate asks.
Write the answers down once
The same seven answers serve every candidate for the role, so they are worth an hour before the first conversation rather than improvising them in each one.
Draft each answer in two sentences
What is true now, then what would change it. If an answer needs a caveat, the caveat belongs in the two sentences.
Check the numbers behind them
Runway, hiring order and the cost of this role should come from the same plan. The team planner holds that plan if you do not have one.
Open the team plannerAgree them with everyone who interviews
Co-founders, the first engineers and any recruiter you use should be able to give the same answer in their own words.
Put them in the candidate briefing
The candidate briefing checklist template has a place for the company story, the hard parts of the job and the terms, so the answers travel with the role.
Open the candidate briefing checklist
Common questions
- What will a good candidate ask before joining a Seed-stage startup?
- Expect questions about runway, who the investors are, what the role owns, what happens if the next round is late, the share options, who they will learn from and why the role is open. They follow from the risks of joining an early company, so a strong candidate who does not ask them is still weighing them.
- How honest should a founder be about runway with a candidate?
- Honest enough to give a month, the plan behind it and what you would do if it slipped. Someone who joins on a better picture than the real one is likely to leave when they find out, and that costs more than a slower search.
- Can a Seed-stage company offer share options, and what do candidates ask about them?
- They can, and Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI) is one of the employee share schemes described on GOV.UK, with its rules set out there. The questions that matter are which scheme the grant sits under, how it vests and what happens if they leave. Describe the grant, point them to the scheme guidance and their own adviser, and do not put a value on it.
- Should the answers change for a senior candidate?
- The facts should not. A senior candidate may want more detail, such as the board's view of the plan or the terms of the last round, but what you tell them has to match what everyone else heard.
Sources
Where a fact in this guide comes from a document you can check yourself, it is listed here. We do not cite market statistics or benchmark data we have not published.
Turn this into a brief
Answer six short questions and you have a usable technical hiring brief you can keep improving, print or share internally.
Open the hiring brief builderAny percentages or figures shown in this article are illustrative examples used to explain the model. They are not quoted rates, market benchmarks or salary data.