I’ve been in the room when founders announce their funding round. I’ve watched their LinkedIn inboxes explode with thousands of connection requests within hours. I’ve seen the dopamine hit that comes with raising £3-5 million.
It’s intoxicating. And it’s exactly when you’re most likely to make terrible hiring decisions.
After years in SaaS sales and now working with early-stage founders on their go-to-market hires, I’ve seen this pattern play out again and again. You raise money, the pressure mounts, and suddenly you’re hiring the wrong people for the wrong roles at the wrong time.
Here’s why it happens and how to stop it.
The money changes everything
Before you have money in the bank, you’re resourceful. You delay hires, skip the new laptop, avoid the company off-site. You must be careful with every decision.
But when you’re sitting on millions? Everything becomes easier. New phone? It’s only a grand. New laptops for everyone. Suddenly every expense feels insignificant.
The problem isn’t just having resources. It’s having pressure and resources at the same time. That’s a dangerous combination.
The 24-month countdown starts immediately
When you raise, you’re typically raising with 24 months of runway in mind. Every month that goes by out of those 24 months feels significant. If you sit on the money and don’t make a hire for three or four months, that’s a massive chunk of your timeframe gone.
And venture capital requires high growth. Your investors won’t want the money sitting in your account doing nothing. They’d rather it be in their account than yours if it’s not being deployed. So naturally, they’ll push you to hire.
The inexperienced interviewing the impressive
A lot of times, SaaS founders haven’t hired a £100k person before. So, when one shows up and looks impressive it can seem like an easy yes.
But what gets missed is crucial:
- They came from a bigger company where the systems were completely different
- Their last role was 100% inbound; your role is 100% outbound
- They haven’t been successful at their last company
- They’re just really good at interviewing
I spoke to a founder recently who’s replacing somebody. In the interview process, they forgot to ask that the company this person came from was 100% inbound, and in their role, they need 100% outbound. They’ve just lost 12 months because this person spent three years doing a completely different job.
Most people in GTM SaaS come across well in first-stage interviews. There’s a certain polish about them, especially at the £100k level. It’s an unfair playing field if you don’t know how to interview them.
The ways founders mess up post-raise hiring
It can take six months to figure out if the person you hire is the right fit. That’s half a year of runway burned before you know if you made the right call. That’s why you need to get it right. But this is where founders often go wrong:
- Hiring too senior or too junior – You don’t know what level of experience you need, so you guess wrong.
- Hiring from bigger companies – That person from the scale-up with established systems won’t thrive in your chaos.
- Not knowing how to interview – You don’t have the questions to assess whether someone can do the job.
- Hiring the wrong function entirely – I’ve seen founders hire partnerships people they didn’t need or copy what their mate’s company did without understanding if it’s right for them.
- No way to measure success – You hire without clear metrics for what success looks like.
The checklist: How to hire properly post-raise
1. Plan before the money lands
Be ready to make the hire before cash hits your account. When you’re going through terms and have term sheets, you know where the money’s going as you pitched it to investors.
If you’re raising £3 million with 30% to GTM, that’s £900k. Know exactly how you’re deploying it:
- £60k account executive
- £60k marketing manager
- £40k SDR
Map it out month by month because a proper recruitment process takes time:
- One month to recruit properly
- One month notice period
- Onboarding and training
Wait until money lands and you’ve lost four months of your 24-month runway. That’s significant.
2. Feel the pain first
You should feel a little bit of pain in that function before you hire. If you look forward 90 days and imagine you had that person in seat, it should be clear what they were brought in to do.
After you hire the person, you should not be able to live without them. Examples of real pain:
- You’re great at converting leads but need more top of funnel → SDR
- Your ICP resonates well with micro-events → Events marketer
- You need a proper content strategy → Content person
3. Build job descriptions
You should only make the hire when it’s abundantly clear what the job description is. If you can’t build a JD and you can’t define how to measure that role, don’t make the hire yet.
It’s better to wait a month or two until you really figure things out than to go to market, hire someone, and burn nine months realising it was wrong.
4. Take a breath after you raise
Slow down for that week post-raise. Take a couple of days off if you can.
You’ll make impulse decisions when money is in your account and shiny candidates are reaching out. You feel powerful. Everyone wants to talk to you.
5. Start small and test
Build the smallest team possible. Hire as few people as possible and test first.
Going from five to 15 employees changes everything. You suddenly need HR tools, structured onboarding, operational support. The more people you add, the more the dynamic shifts.
Start small, test, then scale.
6. Hire people who can pivot
There isn’t always a particular stage where it makes sense to bring in specific roles. It’s not about hitting a revenue milestone and then hiring. It’s about where you feel the pain.
- Do you not have enough top of funnel?
- Do you have too much top of funnel?
- Are you converting well but need more leads?
- Are you having partner conversations with momentum?
Hire people with a bit of entrepreneurial mindset. Things might change, and people can pivot into different roles. I’ve hired founding account executives who became partner managers because they were brilliant at longer-term relationships. That’s only a good thing.
What success looks like
There’s no universal playbook for when to hire which role. But these principles work:
- Clarity over speed – Better to hire one month later with total clarity than rush into the wrong hire
- Pain over pattern-matching – Hire where you feel actual pain, not where other companies hired
- Measurement over gut feel – If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it
- Small teams over big teams – You can always scale up; it’s harder to scale back down
Hire for growth
The fundraising high is real.
But 12 months of runway burned on the wrong hire, a founding team that doesn’t work, and a GTM function that needs rebuilding creates can kill a business.
You’ve worked hard to get that money in the bank. Don’t waste it by hiring badly under pressure.
The money isn’t going anywhere in those few extra weeks.
But the wrong hire? That’ll cost you months you can never get back.
Author Bio: Matthew Codd
Matthew has 15 years of commercial leadership experience, helping VC-backed B2B technology companies scale revenue and transition from founder-led sales.
He now uses his experience to help early-stage start-ups with GTM expertise, sales best practice, and hiring insights.
Matthew co-founded Cosmic Partners in 2022, a SaaS sales recruitment specialists for VC backed B2B tech companies.
