You don't have a head of talent. You don't have a recruiter. You have a runway, a roadmap, and the suspicion that your next hire will define the next year. We do the screening so you spend your time on the three people who matter.

"I spent two days last week reading CVs. Did not ship. Did not raise. Did not sell. This is not what investors paid for."

"I cannot afford a recruiter. I cannot afford a bad hire. The space between those two facts is where I lose sleep."

"I hired our first eng manager off vibes and a referral. Six months later we had to part ways. I should have had a rubric."

A structured discussion of a time they shipped without permission. We score for concrete examples, scope, and what they would have done differently.

How clearly do they understand the difference between a fifty-person company and a four-person one? Scored on specific operational instincts.

Can they zoom from a spreadsheet to a Slack message to a code review? We probe the breadth, not just the depth.

Specifically why your company, this stage, this team. Not "I love the mission". The actual investment thesis.

Can they read a cap table and an offer letter without panicking? You don't want to discover this on offer day.

Whatever you actually need. Region, working hours, equity expectations.

$1.4k

Average spend per first hire

4.1h

Founder time per hire

94%

Still at company after 12 months

$0

Recruiter fees

"Our first engineer came through Picked. We could not have afforded a recruiter and would have hired worse without one. It's a real wedge for early-stage."

"I'd been putting off our first non-eng hire for six months because I didn't know how to assess for stage fit. The Picked rubric just hands you that."

"We hired our head of engineering through Picked. Best decision we made all year. I would have hired a fancier CV without it. He's the one who taught the rest of us to ship."

"I run a one-person company. I posted, went to dinner, came back to three candidates. That's the only experience I want from a hiring tool."