Sign In

Boris Epstein

Building early engineering teams

Boris Epstein is a seasoned professional with a diverse background in the field of recruitment and finance. He studied Biological Sciences at UC Irvine before embarking on a successful career that saw him hold various key positions in different organizations. Boris was the Founder and Recruiter at 1st10, Head of Talent Acquisition at Robinhood, and Founder & CEO of Binc which was later acquired by Robinhood. He also served as a Board Member, Vice President, and Education Chair at The Pinnacle Society. Prior to these roles, Boris gained experience as a Financial Analyst at PIMCO. His expertise spans recruitment, leadership, finance, and education.

Highlights

Apr 8 · linkedin

After a full first quarter building early engineering teams, here are 10 lessons learned:

  1. Don’t assume immigration will work out. Candidates with immigration needs will naturally associate early stage with more risk and will default to stability (ie later stage) if given the option. I lost an offer because of this.

  2. Overquality commute and in office requirements. Not everything in the same geographic area is commutable. This compounds when the startup has strict in office requirements, the candidate a far drive away and they have other remote options. I got an offer turndown because of this.

  3. Don’t introduce too many candidates until it’s clear the search is calibrated. This will waste everybody’s time and run the risk of full pipeline being evaporated. This literally happened to me yesterday.

  4. AI startups with weak differentiation will get little to no interest from good candidates. The market is saturated with AI and it takes strong differentiation to attract somebody good. 1st10 is working with startups that get great interest and those that don’t. The difference is stark.

  5. Deep specialization in role type, candidate type or company type creates a unique opportunity to provide unique value to those with that specialization. Double and triple down on specialization where possible.

  6. The hardest part about recruiting is knowing who is actually good vs those who may just look good. Referrals and relationships are the hidden secret to uncovering this insight. And especially those who are both good and now open to new opportunities.

  7. It’s much better to say no if there’s risk of poor quality than it is to say yes and do a mediocre job. Your quality is your brand.

  8. There is an insane level of high quality talent in the market right now. The AI revolution is real and everybody from talent to founders to investors want to be involved.

  9. Big tech definitely degraded their talent bar 2019-2022. You can see this from talent who joined during these years vs those who joined prior. Not that the talent who joined during these years is necessarily bad. You can just see the difference.

  10. Passion and correlated personal projects may be the single best indicator of somebody being good for an early startup. Early startups are made up of zealots for the product and space they’re building in. Anybody interested in joining needs to be equally fanatic.

Mar 22 · linkedin

Had a great time last night hosting a TA leader dinner at Dante’s in BH. There were 10 of us enjoying the beautiful LA rooftop chatting it up about everything from hiring, markets, people stuff and everything in between. We didn’t get to the obligatory AI discussion but that’s ok because everybody was way too busy enjoying being out of the house, building friendships, sharing stories and having laughs. It really was amazing time. Thank you so much Findem and Liv Anderman and Allison A. for organizing!!

Boris Epstein
Add to my network

Location

Los Angeles Metropolitan Area