I agree, if you have 10 hires to make in a quarter then the recruiter fee starts to be eye-watering (better to bring that role in-house), but for your first 5-1

I agree, if you have 10 hires to make in a quarter then the recruiter fee starts to be eye-watering (better to bring that role in-house), but for your first 5-10 engineers (with say 2-4 reqs open at any given time) I found recruiters to be the best source after direct referrals. Note that finding a good recruiter is hard, especially as a very early-stage startup. We spent a long time digging through mediocre resumes until we happened upon some good recruiters. It seems mostly trial and error so I'd recommend re-rolling a few times before making a judgement on recruiters as a general strategy. The benefit of the commission model is that you pay nothing if you make no hires, so that makes it lower risk to try a few interviews from a new recruiter.