I know lots of startups that use recruiters, including some YC-backed ones. Recruiting can take a lot of time, particularly if you're expanding rapidly. If you'

I know lots of startups that use recruiters, including some YC-backed ones. Recruiting can take a lot of time, particularly if you're expanding rapidly. If you're the CTO it may not necessarily be the best use of your time to look through hundreds (and yes, you'll get hundreds) of CVs from a post on StackOverflow or HackerNews... Of course, there are some that don't, but it's certainly not unusual for startups to use recruiters.