Just another data point, but my experience and tptacek's line up pretty much exactly. None of our first three hires came through job ads. One developer, one pro

Just another data point, but my experience and tptacek's line up pretty much exactly. None of our first three hires came through job ads. One developer, one product person, one bizdev person (we're peculiarly partnership-heavy and the founders are all technical), so it's not even developer-specific thing. Two came from emailing the contact address on our website; one through a referral from a mutual friend. Actually; one of them came from a conversation about whether their company and ours could work together, which weirdly morphed into us offering him a job. Thank goodness for no NDAs/non-competes!