RECRUITING AND PEOPLE OPERATIONS FOR EARLY STAGE STARTUPS.

At HigherPeople, we help founders hire exceptional talent, build scalable people processes, and create cultures where people thrive. We partner with startups from Pre-Seed to Series B to recruit, reskill, and retain high-impact teams, moving with the speed, depth, and intensity early-stage companies require.

Speed and Precision in Startup Hiring

About Us

From Pre-Seed to Series B, we cover every hiring need, including Founding Individual Contributors, Player/Coach leaders, VPs, as well as specialists in Go-To-Market (GTM), Operations, and Engineering.

Positions We’ve Filled

PRODUCT DESIGNER

Roboflow / Series B
Developer Tooling
GV
HEAD OF ENGINEERING

Tellen / Pre-Seed
AI in Accounting
Blumberg Capital, Array Ventures
FULL STACK ENGINEER

CivilGrid / Seed - Series A
Construction Tech
Afore Capital
Founding AI Engineer

Rely / Pre-seed
Multifamily Diligence Technology
Better Tomorrow Ventures
Account Executive(s)

Loop / Seed - Series A
Restaurant Tech
Alumni Ventures
Founding Account Executive

Artie / Seed - Series A
Data Infrastructure
Pathlight Ventures, YC
Customer Success Manager(s)

Seel / Series A - B
eCommerce Technology
Lightspeed Venture Partners
Content Marketing Manager

Kaipod Learning / Seed
EdTech
YCombinator
Head of Growth

Zuma / Series A
Multifamily PropTech AI
Andreessen Horowitz

What We Do

1

Recruit the best.

Full-cycle recruiting across marketing, sales, engineering, design, product, operations, and more.

2

Reskill your team.

We work with you beyond the hire. We can help you build out onboarding, ongoing training and development, plan your off-sites, and map career development.

3

Retain your people.

We help you invest in people long-term, improving performance, engagement, and culture from the inside out.

why founders call us:

Every Hire is Critical

We understand your urgency and need for rapid iteration. We work on your schedule (live, async, slack, shared docs) - because you need a recruiting partner that moves as fast as you do.
We ONLY work early stage roles. Hustle, grit, ownership + autonomy are table stakes. From founding engineers to your first sales hire or VP, we know what startup-ready looks like.
We turn candidates into fans. With thoughtful communication, a deep knowledge of your positioning, and rejection handling, your brand reputation stays intact.
You get full access to our ATS, notes, and funnel. No need to buy tools! We provide LinkedIn Recruiter and everything else.
We’ll own the process to make sure you win. We help you backward-plan from start date, write case studies, and manage a tight, fast-moving process with depth.
More than placements. We’re your thought partner in talent - coaching in best practices, strategy, and honest feedback that set you up for current and future hires.

Book A Call

We combine speed with precision, transparency with partnership, and excellence with empathy.

We move fast. We communicate clearly. And we treat both founders and candidates like people, not transactions.

How We Work

What Clients Are Saying

Max Mangum, Co-Founder & CEO at Pivotal Health

“HP is the best. The more we work with you and other recruiters, we realize how grateful we are for you and your team. You work fast, you get us, and you’re actually affordable.”
Jessica Heinzelman, Co-Founder & CEO at Throne Labs

“While there are many candidates that have the skills to fill a role, HigherPeople helps us find the *right fit* by screening our mission alignment and culture.”
Sheryl Linsky Adam, VP of Field Operations at Galileo Learning

“Working with HigherPeople felt like working with the most committed colleagues you have. They were incredibly invested in our goal. They communicated frequently, transparently, and directly about the process and brought humanity and understanding to the work.”
MK Kang, BizOps at Artie

“HigherPeople’s communication has been by far the best of any recruiter I’ve worked with. I also really appreciate the creativity they bring to the creative process — from personalized videos to thoughtful follow-up emails that help close top candidates.”
Annie Slater, COO at Kaipod Learning

“Nikki was absolutely exceptional. It felt like she could read my mind. She understood exactly what I was looking for in terms of experience, skills, soft skills, and personality. Anytime she forwarded a candidate, I was 99% confident I’d like them (and almost always did!). She also consistently helped protect my time by minimizing unnecessary meetings. Truly a dream to work with.”
Gavin Seelig, Head of Customer Support at Toolio

“We had a very broad vision of who we wanted to hire when we first started working with HP on our job listing. Their team really helped us narrow it down to a few candidate profiles which made the hiring process much more efficient. Any feedback we give is directly applied to the next batch of candidates. Truly a pleasure to work with them!”
George Matelich, Co-Founder at Rely

“The way you all are building a brand is great and goes a long way. I’m having to fend off hungry recruiters every few hours, everyone else is so slimy.”
Josh Mackanic, Co-Founder & CEO at CivilGrid

“HigherPeople crushed it! I’ve had mediocre recruiting experiences in the past; this was a breath of fresh air. The structure they provided, the competency of their team, and effectiveness of the outcomes were outstanding. They are now an embedded partner and we couldn’t be happier!”
Jacqueline Cheong, Co-Founder & CEO at Artie

“I promise this is the only recruiting agency that you won’t hate.”
Fletcher Wilson, Co-Founder & CEO at Throne Labs

“It’s hard for me to put in words just how much these 3 new hires have helped our organization level up. They are a huge reason we were able to raise Series B funding and why we are now back to hire more!”
Matthew Antoszyk, Founder & CEO at Herald

“HigherPeople has been instrumental in our growth. From hiring our Technical Business Analyst Abhi, to bringing on Eldar for sales, to new sales roles that we are now working on together, they just get it. They are smart, take the time to learn about our distinct business needs, find great candidates, and they plug in seamlessly to our process. It’s a no-brainer that you should partner with HigherPeople!”
Bill Liu, Co-Founder at Seel

“I am working with HigherPeople on a few different roles from individual contributors to functional owners of the company. This is the most hands off experience I have ever had with a recruiting firm since they have ownership over the hiring results instead of just sending candidates and hoping we hire one of them.”