'The Founding Five' is a new blog series highlighting the first five hires founders have made after securing funding. As a firm that focuses solely on leading pre-seed and seed stage deals, we meet with teams in the earliest stages of their journey—many of whom haven’t yet expanded beyond the founding leadership. I often hear that the majority of initial hires are technical but in practice this varies depending on the company’s domain, the expertise of the founders, stage of growth, and go-to-market strategy.
In this series, we’ll explore the world of pre-seed and seed-stage hiring, looking closely at who the first five hires were, the sequence in which they were brought on board, and the key takeaways from each founder’s experience.
For the second installment of this series, we sat down with Valentina Ratner, CoFounder & CEO of Allspice, a collaboration and automation platform for teams developing hardware.
Prior to founding AllSpice, Valentina worked at Amazon as a PM, managing infrastructure projects and internal productivity tools. Valentina holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University, an M.S. in Engineering (Computer Science), and an MBA from Harvard.
Who were your first 5 hires and can you describe their roles?
Our first five hires were carefully prioritized to align with our product and market needs. The first hire was a senior-level Engineer, a clear choice to start building the product, followed by a junior-to-mid-level Engineer to accelerate development. The third hire was a Marketing Manager, which we prioritized over sales due to our focus on SMBs and an inside sales model that relied heavily on product-led and inbound lead generation. The fourth hire was another Engineer, marking the start of specialization within our team, particularly in back-end development and infrastructure. The fifth hire was a Hardware Infrastructure Engineer, a hybrid role combining customer success, technical writing, product marketing, product management, and product expertise to ensure users had the support they needed to succeed.
Early on, we focused on full-stack engineers to build the foundation of our product, shifting to specialized roles as our needs evolved. Front-end engineering came later, as much of the UI/UX was already established through our open-source project, allowing us to concentrate on back-end development initially.
If you can remember, were any of these hires different to what you had initially forecasted on your hiring plan when raising capital? If so, what influenced the change of mind?
When we raised capital in early 2022, the hiring plan was developed during a period of "grow, grow, grow." However, as market conditions shifted with a stronger emphasis on burn rate and extending runway, we significantly adjusted our strategy and scrapped many of the originally planned roles. For example, we initially intended to build a sales team, but instead, I chose to take on founder-led selling. Admittedly, I had no prior sales experience, and there was nothing I wanted more than to hire someone to take on this responsibility. However, I realized it was essential for me to deeply understand our customers, sales processes, and the nuances of our market before scaling a sales organization. While the macro environment forced this shift, in hindsight, it was the right decision. Being the first salesperson across SMB, enterprise, and expansion opportunities was invaluable and gave me the foundation needed to build a stronger, more informed sales team later on.
How did you find and recruit them?
The majority of initial hires came via our network or Hacker News. While Hacker News job posts don’t generate a high volume of applicants, they tend to attract highly motivated and well-suited candidates, making it an effective channel for early-stage technical roles. For go-to-market hires, we utilized Bowery, LinkedIn, and Wellfound.
Pro tip for prospective candidates, we always add a small note to our job descriptions asking candidates to apply by emailing a specific address and typically candidates who do this make it to the top of our applicant list.
At what point in your pre-seed journey did you bring them onboard?
Our first engineer began working with us on a contract basis before we started fundraising and transitioned to a full-time role once we secured funding. Over the following six months, we hired five additional team members, averaging roughly one new hire per month.
How did you approach onboarding and training with limited resources?
With limited resources, I took a hands-on and resourceful approach to onboarding and training. For the first two go-to-market hires, I focused on shadowing and one-on-one discussions to provide real-time, practical learning experiences. Additionally, I leveraged my highly organized and detailed Notion workspace (a strength of mine!) to document processes and key information, which proved invaluable for smooth handoffs and providing tangible materials to support new hires.
Over time, I’ve refined our onboarding process to include structured schedules and ramp plans tailored to each new hire. I also curate bespoke learning resources, such as industry-specific podcasts, webinars, and newsletters, to help team members quickly get up to speed. This balance of structure, personalization, and accessible documentation has been key to onboarding effectively with limited resources.
If anyone didn’t work out, can you share why, specifically what went wrong?
In cases where a hire didn’t work out, it typically came down to stage fit—they required more oversight or infrastructure than we could provide at the time. On the go-to-market side, we were fortunate that our hires, while not experienced at this stage of the business, had transferable skills from owning their own business, working for small boutique agencies, or being contractors. These experiences made them more self-directed and comfortable with the chaos and ambiguity of an early-stage startup. While I wasn’t intentionally screening for these traits initially, I realized that they were critical differentiators for success. Now, assessing a candidate’s ability to thrive in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment is an integral part of our hiring process.
Anything that we missed that you want to share regarding learnings with early stage hiring?
One key learning with early-stage hiring is to approach the interview process as a two-way street. While I focus on thoroughly screening candidates for the skills we need, I also aim to give them an honest flavor of what the role will entail, allowing them to decide if it’s truly what they want. For interview exercises, I don’t use hypothetical scenarios or random questions; instead, I present them with a recent real-world problem (with anonymized data) to provide a realistic preview of the work.
Another important takeaway has been the value of having a clear and well-defined set of criteria for the role. If a candidate doesn’t meet all the requirements, I’m cautious about taking risks in more than one area of uncertainty. This helps ensure we bring in people who are ready to succeed in the specific demands of an early-stage environment. Balancing transparency, realism, and rigor has been instrumental in building a strong and capable team.
If you liked “The Founding Five: Valentina Ratner of AllSpice" and want to read more content from the Bowery Capital Team, check out other relevant posts from the Bowery Capital Blog.
