One of the most valuable aspects of partnering with Stackpoint is gaining access to our expert studio team. Each member brings deep functional expertise in their respective areas, from product and design to marketing and engineering. For our portfolio companies, this means having experienced professionals who can not only contribute directly to building your company but also help establish robust hiring processes and high standards from day one.
Finding and hiring top engineering talent is one of the most difficult early-stage challenges, especially for non-technical founders. The wrong hire can set a company back months, while the right one can be a game-changer. We source candidates from our extensive network, ensure a high bar for technical and cultural fit, and guide our founders through a structured hiring process.
Our Engineering Hiring Process
We follow a rigorous three-step process to identify the right technical talent for our portfolio companies:
Phone Screen - This initial step assesses the candidate's technical background, problem-solving ability, and communication skills. It's not just about checking off a list of programming languages—they need to demonstrate a structured approach to problem-solving, familiarity with full-stack architecture, and the ability to collaborate effectively in a startup environment. We use a structured rubric that evaluates candidates across key dimensions including technical expertise, collaboration skills, and system design thinking, ensuring consistent evaluation across all candidates. Examples:
Take-Home Exercise - Candidates who pass the phone screen move on to a take-home project, where they work on a real-world coding challenge relevant to the role. This gives us a deeper understanding of their technical ability, coding style, and approach to structuring scalable software. Our evaluation looks at everything from code clarity to error handling and system design. We've found this approach to be particularly effective as it simulates actual work conditions rather than theoretical exercises.
75-Minute Technical Interview - The final step is a live technical interview, where candidates discuss their take-home assignment, complete a live coding challenge, and answer technical and architectural questions. This session is designed to assess not just coding skills but also the ability to think critically under pressure and collaborate in a team setting. What sets our process apart is that we evaluate both technical depth and the candidate's ability to communicate complex concepts clearly—a crucial skill in early-stage startups. Examples:
Why This Matters for Non-Technical Founders
For non-technical founders, having access to this proven hiring process and experienced technical interviewers is invaluable. It means you can build your engineering team with confidence, knowing that candidates have been thoroughly vetted across all the skills needed to succeed in an early-stage startup environment. Our portfolio companies consistently report that this structured approach saves them weeks of time and significantly reduces the risk of making a poor technical hire.
Beyond the interview process itself, we leverage our extensive network to source high-quality candidates and can help guide compensation discussions based on current market data. Our goal is to help portfolio companies build strong technical foundations that can scale as they grow.
If you choose to co-found with Stackpoint, you're not hiring alone. You're leveraging a proven process to get the right technical talent in place from the start. See here for a more detailed overview of why you could co-found your next company with Stackpoint.
