How to get referred at Series-B startups (the playbook FAANG advice gets wrong)

At a Series-B startup, skip the application portal and go to the person. At 80 to 300 people the hiring manager is often a founder or one of the first ten hires, there’s rarely a recruiter in the way, and a short, specific message lands on the desk of someone who can actually say yes. Most generic referral advice is written for FAANG, where the process is the opposite. Below is what changes at this stage and the templates that fit it.

This is part of our referral playbook. For the large-company version, see how to get referred at FAANG, which runs on portals, structured loops, and a referrer’s justification field. Series-B runs on none of that.

What’s different about Series-B

A Series-B company has usually found product-market fit and is hiring to scale, but it hasn’t built the recruiting machine yet. That gap changes everything about how a referral works. Here are the five differences that matter most.

1. The hiring manager is often the founder

At a 150-person company, the Head of Engineering or VP Eng is frequently a founding-team member or one of the earliest hires. They’re both the decision-maker and the person who’d see your referral. There’s no layer of recruiters and HR generalists insulating them from inbound, so a direct, well-aimed message reaches the right person on the first try. That’s the whole advantage at this stage. Use it.

2. Referral bonuses are smaller or absent

Plenty of Series-B startups have no formal referral bonus at all, and the ones that do pay less and track it loosely. So the employee’s reason to refer you isn’t the money. It’s reputation: they want to be the person who brought in someone good, because at a small company a bad hire is felt by everyone. Don’t frame your ask around their payout the way some scripts do. Lead with relevance and fit instead. (If you want the full picture of how bonuses work across company sizes, we wrote why employees say yes.)

3. The process is faster but idiosyncratic

FAANG loops are standardized: four to six rounds, structured interviews, a calibrated debrief. Series-B hiring is quicker, often two to three weeks end to end, but it varies wildly by company. A founder might do a 30-minute call, decide they like you, and skip half the loop. Or they might hand you a six-hour take-home. Check Glassdoor and the team’s own posts for hints, and match your outreach to how they actually operate rather than assuming a big-company cadence.

4. Equity is the real conversation

At Series-B, your equity grant can matter more than base salary, and the numbers are hard to read from the outside. A referrer who’s already inside can give you signal on how the founders think about equity for your level, what the last funding round implies for the strike price, and whether the option pool is generous. That context is often more valuable than the referral itself, so don’t leave it on the table once you’re in a real conversation.

5. Culture fit is overweighted

Series-B companies are still defining their culture, and founders often hire on a gut read of whether they’d want to be in the trenches with you for the next three years. Strong technical fit with a weak human read can lose to a slightly less qualified candidate who clicks. Your outreach should signal both: competence and a real person behind it, not just a list of credentials.

Why the referral still beats applying

None of this changes the underlying math: a warm introduction outperforms a cold application at companies of every size. When someone inside vouches for you, you skip the part where your resume sits in a queue, and a human who trusts the referrer reads it directly. Applicant-tracking vendor Ashby, looking at its own customers’ funnel data, found referred candidates advance through interviews at a markedly higher rate than people who apply cold (their referrals report has the breakdown). LinkedIn’s own hiring guidance makes the same point from the employer side: referred candidates are hired faster and stay longer, which is exactly why a small team leans on referrals before it builds a recruiting function. At a Series-B, the referral and the hiring manager are frequently the same conversation, which only sharpens the effect.

The contact priority order at Series-B

The ranking is almost the inverse of how people instinctively job-hunt. Don’t start with the application form and hope it floats up. Start at the top of the org and work down:

1. The founding team or C-level. CEO for any role, CTO for engineering, CPO for product, Head of Design for design. At 150 people these people are not unreachable, and LinkedIn or a direct email both work.
2. The hiring manager or VP. Often named in the job posting or easy to spot on LinkedIn. At this stage hiring managers actively read inbound and reply.
3. An IC on the team.Find them on LinkedIn or X, and their referral carries real weight even without a formal program, because they’d be the one working alongside you.
4. An investor or advisor.If you know anyone on the cap table, that’s the strongest card you have. Investor referrals at this stage land hard, because founders take their investors’ talent recommendations seriously.

Notice who’s missing: the recruiter. Most Series-B companies don’t hire a dedicated recruiter until later, and the HR person, if there is one, is usually a generalist who routes applications but doesn’t decide. Aiming your energy at a recruiter who isn’t there is the most common wasted move.

Three templates that match the stage

Steal these and swap in your details. Each fits a different starting point. The common thread: a single credible line about you, the exact role, one piece of evidence you understand their problem, and one small ask. No life story, no resume attached before they’ve agreed to anything.

Template 1: direct to the founder or CEO

Use this for a small enough company that the founder is plausibly the hiring manager. The hook is their own public writing.

Hi [Founder], I’m a senior backend engineer (Go, distributed systems, 6 yrs) interested in the role on your platform team. Your post on the shift to event-driven architecture is exactly what I led at [current company] last year, where it cut downstream coupling by about 60%. Quick write-up here: [link]. Less a “refer me” ask than a 90-second pitch. If it’s a fit, I’d happily do a short call this week. If not, no worries, and thanks for the public writing.

Template 2: direct to the founding engineer or VP Eng

Use this when engineering leadership is clearly the decision-maker for the role. Lead with relevance, end with a 30-minute ask.

Hi [Name], applying for the Staff Engineer role on the platform team. Quick relevance: 8 yrs in Go, the last 3 building the deployment platform at [current company]. The JD mentions cost-attribution work, which I built something close to last year, and I have a strong (and I think aligned) take on the Pulumi-vs-Terraform call you’ve written about publicly. Would you be open to a 20-minute chat? Happy to send a one-pager first if that’s easier.

Template 3: to a current IC on the team

Use this when you can find someone who’d actually work with you. A specific reference to their work does the warming.

Hi [Name], saw your talk at [conference] on the team’s migration to event sourcing. I’m applying for the Senior Backend role on your team, currently at [company] doing parallel work on the orders subsystem. Would you be open to flagging my application internally, or pointing me to the right person? Resume here if it’s useful: [link].

Signals that matter more here than at FAANG

At a large company your resume is screened on keywords before a human sees it. At a Series-B a founder reads the actual message, so different things move the needle:

• Public technical writing. A blog post or talk in their problem space does a lot of work for you. Founders read, and they remember who gets the details right.
• Open-source contributions to tools they use. Check their stack from job postings and GitHub. If they run Temporal, your Temporal PR is worth more than a paragraph of claims.
• Specific knowledge of their product.“I’ve been using it for three months and noticed [specific thing]” signals real interest. Generic praise signals nothing.
• Adjacent-stage experience. Having shipped at another Series-A through Series-C company tells a founder you can operate without process. That often beats a bigger logo, because the fear is a big-co engineer who freezes without a scaffolding around them.

What kills your outreach at Series-B

The failure modes are specific to the stage. Most of them are habits carried over from applying to big companies:

The stronger play: build the relationship earlier

The highest-converting Series-B referral strategy isn’t outreach the week you apply. It’s being a known name before you need anything. Engage thoughtfully with a founder’s posts, show up to their events, contribute to their open source, and let them recognize you. When a role opens, your message isn’t cold, it’s a familiar name with a track record they’ve already watched. That long game is its own topic, and we wrote it up in build a referral pipeline before you need it. If you only have days, not months, the templates above are the fast path. The pipeline is the better one.

Doing this without losing a weekend per company

The slow part is the legwork: finding the founder or hiring manager at each target company, digging up their public writing, and drafting a message that doesn’t sound like a form letter. That’s the part Rolewynhandles. It surfaces the right Series-B contacts for a company, founders, hiring managers, and ICs, alongside the context you’d otherwise hunt for, then drafts a message in your voice from your resume and the job description. You still write the human bits and you still press send. Built-in referral discovery is the point of the product, not a bolt-on.

Keep going

• The full referral playbook
• Getting referred at FAANG
• How to ask a stranger for a referral
• Networking templates by tech role

Frequently asked questions

Is it okay to message a founder or CEO directly at a Series-B startup?

Yes, and it usually works better than going through HR. At an 80-to-300-person company the founder or a VP is often the hiring manager for the role, reads their own inbox, and decides fast. Keep it to a 90-second, role-specific pitch that references something they have actually built or written. Vague 'I'd love to connect' messages get ignored at every company size.

Do Series-B startups pay referral bonuses?

Some do, many don't, and the program is usually smaller and less formal than at a large public company. That means you should not lean on the 'you'll get a bonus' angle in your ask. The reason an employee refers you at this stage is reputational: they want to be the person who brought in someone good. Lead with fit, not their payout.

Does startup experience help more than FAANG experience for a Series-B referral?

Often, yes. Founders worry that big-company engineers will struggle with ambiguity, missing process, and wearing several hats. Having shipped at another Series-A through Series-C company is a direct signal you can operate without a scaffolding of process. FAANG pedigree still helps, but at this stage builder-energy and adjacent-stage experience tend to carry more weight than the logo.

Who should I contact first at a Series-B startup?

Work from the top of the org down, not the bottom up. Start with a founder or C-level person for the function you're targeting, then the hiring manager or VP, then an individual contributor on the team, then anyone you know on the cap table. Most Series-B companies don't have dedicated recruiters yet, so there is rarely a recruiter to route you the way there is at a large company.

What makes a Series-B founder take my outreach seriously?

Evidence that you understand their specific problem. A blog post or talk in their space, an open-source contribution to a tool they use, or a concrete observation about their product all beat a polished generic resume. Adjacent-stage experience and a track record of shipping under ambiguity also rank high. Pedigree and credentials matter less here than proof you can build the thing they need built.

How do I find the right person to reach out to at a small startup?

Start with the company's team or about page, then LinkedIn filtered by company and seniority, then the founders' own posts and the job description, which often names the hiring manager. For engineering roles, the CTO or a founding engineer is usually findable in a few minutes. Rolewyn can surface these contacts for a target company automatically so you don't piece it together by hand.