Hiring

Look for the shortest and most direct path to hiring. This is typically hiring from your network and applicable forums first. If you can hire someone you already know and quickly assess for aptitude and potential, you will hire good people faster.

Don’t batch hire. Focus on filling your highest priority role and move on to the next once you have filled that role.

OCV recommends hiring workers in the United States. Exceptions are made for critical hires. Companies typically have two or fewer key employees outside the US. A critical hire is someone who has extensive experience with your open-source project and can make significant contributions to your company's success.

First hires

First hires are almost always engineers. Here are a few specific attributes to screen for when hiring early engineers:

1. Product-driven versus working on interesting technical problems

2. Can operate in an environment with high ambiguity

3. Proactive and independent in managing their work

4. Uses AI in their day-to-day workflow

Network recruiting

Begin your talent search within your professional network. Who are the smartest people you've worked with in the past? Who were the smartest people you went to school with?

This approach is particularly valuable for finding exceptional raw talent before they become "proven" in their careers. These individuals are often more motivated, less expensive to hire, and have tremendous growth potential. When evaluating these candidates, optimize for aptitude and slope—their natural abilities and how quickly they can learn and improve.

Leveraging your network creates two advantages. It expedites the recruiting process because you have privileged insights about these candidates, and it streamlines interviewing since you've already established their competence and compatibility with your working style.

Hiring advisors

We don’t recommend bringing on external advisors except for project authors and key maintainers. People in both the startup and open source communities often just want to be helpful, without requiring compensation as a formal advisor.

Project author/maintainers

If you are not the original author or maintainer of the open source project, we strongly recommend making them an advisor. Their involvement promotes community trust, endorsement, and smoother collaboration (e.g., PRs, roadmapping). Even with limited availability, their influence, credibility, and connection to the community are high-value assets.

Domain experts and contributors

In rare cases, it may make sense to bring on a non-author advisor who offers material support to the business.

Example contributions:

• Reviewing or vetting technical candidates

• Making customer introductions or opening sales channels

• Offering visibility and credibility in the OSS community

If you think there’s a need to meet with somebody on a regular basis where it would be fair to compensate them, discuss in office hours.

Advisor compensation

Formal advisors typically receive equity in the company to compensate for their time and effort. Equity allocation depends on the advisor’s level of active contribution, time commitment, and stage of the business.

Advisor equity guidelines

Minimum of 0.25%, maximum of 2.5%. Vesting period of four years (48 months), six-month cliff.

Criteria assessed:

1. Original author of the project (assuming a single author): + up to 1.5%

2. Time commitment to advise the company on monthly basis: + up to 0.25%

3. Active involvement in building the business (i.e. contribute to brand building, customer introductions, recruiting, etc.): + up to 0.5%

Merge requests improving the open source project are not considered to be active involvement in building the business.

Time commitment-based compensation example

Time-commitment allocations

1. Quarerly: 0.1%

2. Monthly: 0.25%

3. Weekly: 0.5%

Founder-Advisor Standard Template

Advisor compensation and scope of services should be outlined clearly in the Advisor Agreement. Standard advisor agreements can be found in the Company’s drive under the Toolkit folder, which can be adapted as needed.

Advisor equity compensation is based on the advisor's commitment and performance. Advisors need to fulfill both the time commitments and actions associated with their performance level. Use the Founder Institute’s Founder Advisor Standard Template (FAST) to generate a document for signature.

Hiring contractors

Contractors are self-employed individuals or companies that are hired to perform a specific job or service for a company. They are not employees of the company and are not entitled to receive employee benefits or protections, such as workers' compensation or unemployment insurance. Contractors are responsible for paying their own taxes and are typically paid a fixed fee or by the project. Find specific details on worker classification guidelines and payment terms for contractors here.

For U.S.-based contractors engaged on a part-time basis or for a limited scope of work, founders should use the standard consulting agreement located in the company’s Drive under ToolKit > Legal Forms. This contract will include an IP clause approved by the company’s legal team.

Contractors are not eligible to receive equity.

Hiring relatives & partners

We advise against hiring an individual who has a close relationship with the founders or another employee to avoid accusations of favoritism and blurring the lines between work and personal life. The appearance of nepotism can impact a workplace’s culture, creating complications at work with other employees. Managing relatives and romantic partners can also open up unnecessary liabilities and human resources risks.

Visa sponsorship

Due to the expensive and time-consuming nature of visa sponsorship and renewals, OCV companies do not provide visa sponsorship or transfers for team members. The only exception is executive relocation support for CEOs and CTOs. In these cases, OCV partners with an Employer of Record (EOR) to assist founders with visa transfers.