Meet Mo Ahmed: founder of Accelera Talent & former Head of Recruiting at Aptos
Mo has scaled teams from zero to thousands across frontier tech. His approach blends rigorous process design with a high signal for grit and ownership over pure credentials. At Aptos, Mo pioneered a recruiting flywheel that turned rejected candidates into ecosystem contributors, building network effects from the ground up.
Core belief: Once you hire B and C players at a startup, you’ve built a culture that will eventually implode. Funny thing is that most founders who believe in the A player mantra are loaded with B & C players from the top down.
Key Takeaways
Your first 10 hires define your company culture
Early hires are your cultural foundation stones, not just functional assets.
Early hires shape execution speed, product culture, and long-term governance. Founders who treat these hires as box-checking exercises lose leverage before they even ship. What to look for:
- Ownership mindset: history of building without permission or structure
- Collaborative autonomy: functions independently, plays well with others
- Grit over pedigree: hungry CS grad > coasting FAANG engineer
- Crypto-native curiosity: even hobbyist participation in DeFi, DAOs, testnet
Investor Insight: "Your Series A pitch isn't just about your TAM anymore. Smart money is looking at your people strategy just as hard as your product roadmap."
COST OF GETTING IT WRONG:
One bad early hire doesn't just cost you their salary—they'll attract more like them, creating compounding damage that can take years to undo. In Web3, they'll also represent you in community channels where reputation is everything.
The startup hiring loop: lightweight but rigorous
You can run an effective process in three rounds without compromising quality.
- Minimum viable interview process at 15-person stage:
- Round 1: Recruiter screen (or founder if no recruiter)
- Round 2: Hiring manager + technical assessment for engineering roles
- Round 3: Team loop (3-4 people, max 3 hours total)
- Process should never exceed 5 total hours of candidate time in early stage
- Make decisions based on "strong yes" signals – if you're getting lukewarm responses, that's a no
- Red flag metric: If 80-90% of candidates are passing from first to final round, your filtering is ineffective
KEY CRYPTO ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS:
- "Explain Layer 1 vs Layer 2 or DEX vs CEX to a non-crypto person."
- "What protocols have you contributed to—even as a user?"
- "How do you stay current with evolving crypto standards?"
Quick Tip: "Don't waste time peeking under the hood once you have the signals you need. When you've gotten signaling from three to four people that this person is a strong fit – not lukewarm yeses – hire that person. Don't waste time."
Founders should spend half their time hiring (yes, really)
The conventional wisdom of "spend 1/3 of your time on hiring" is actually an underestimate.
- Early-stage founders should dedicate up to 50% of their time to hiring, not the often-quoted 1/3
- Focus founder time on leadership roles that will help you build systems for everything else
- As you scale, establish clear competencies aligned with company values so others can hire consistently
- Delegation works only when you've hired leaders who truly embody your values
- Founders often make the mistake of letting VCs influence hiring decisions too heavily
Warning: "When you start trusting too many VCs on hiring decisions, you're building a company for their intelligence network, not for your mission. Some VCs just want people they know and trust to be there so they can get the inside scoop."
HIRING IS THE PRODUCT BEFORE THE PRODUCT:
In crypto, your initial team will determine not just execution speed but your protocol's governance culture, security posture, and community engagement model. These are existential factors in Web3, not just operational considerations.
Hire senior engineers first, then build downward
First technical hires should have both capability and self-sufficiency.
- The first 2-3 engineering hires should be senior/staff engineers who can build foundational systems
- If budget-constrained, target graduates from top CS programs (Berkeley, Waterloo, etc.) with strong internship backgrounds
- Wait until you have senior technical leadership before adding junior developers (usually 12-18 months in)
- Look for engineers who understand when to build vs. integrate, which is critical for early velocity
- Technical recruiters who don't deeply understand platforms and infrastructure can be a liability
CRYPTO-SPECIFIC CONSIDERATION:
Crypto-Specific Note: In Web3, security expertise isn't a nice-to-have—it's foundational. Your first engineering hires should have experience auditing smart contracts or building systems with adversarial thinking, regardless of blockchain experience.
The Community Flywheel: Turn rejected candidates into users
The most overlooked asset in startup recruiting: The people you don't hire.
- Mo created an innovative recruitment flywheel at Aptos that other Web3 founders or founders of community/developer-based products can replicate
- Each rejected candidate received an invite to download the company wallet and try the ecosystem
- Rejections included links to grants programs for developers who wanted to build in the ecosystem
- When facing 10,000+ monthly inbound applications, this approach created significant organic growth
- This strategy works particularly well for ecosystem and community-driven products
CASE STUDY: THE APTOS APPLICANT FLYWHEEL
After Mainnet launch, Aptos inbounds went from 1,000 to 10,000 monthly applicants. Instead of seeing this as an administrative burden, Mo converted it to an ecosystem advantage: "Every application response included wallet download links and developer grant opportunities. Even with our high standards, we only hired about 1% of applicants—but we converted nearly 10% into active ecosystem participants."
Case Study: "After Mainnet launch, Aptos went from 1,000 to 10,000 monthly applicants. Instead of seeing this as a burden, we converted it to an ecosystem advantage. Even with our high standards, we only hired about 1% of applicants—but we converted nearly 10% into active ecosystem participants."
The Web3-specific recruiting challenges no one talks about
Crypto recruiting has unique dynamics that standard tech recruiting wisdom doesn't address.
Unique Dynamics
- Talent from failed projects (e.g., FTX) becomes "untouchable" regardless of individual merit
- Market cycles dramatically shift talent supply
- Approximately 90% of applications for technical roles in 2022-2023 were unqualified and ~50% were fake/fraudulent candidates
- Deepfake interviews are common and will only increasingly become so with advancements in AI
Red Flags and Solutions
- Recently created LinkedIn profiles with few connections and non-major city locations
- Combat fraud by incorporating on-chain verification into your application process
- Ask candidates to sign messages with their wallet or reference past contributions to open-source crypto projects
Maintaining standards: don't compromise for fundraising optics
The fundraising urgency trap leads to expensive hiring mistakes.
- Many founders hire unqualified people just to "show faces" for fundraising
- If you must choose between building more slowly with the right people or faster with mediocre talent, choose quality
- Be wary of confidential executive searches that undermine existing leadership
- Question when VCs push specific candidates – they often have ulterior motives beyond your success
- VCs sometimes use portfolio company placement as intelligence gathering mechanisms
Reality Check: "I meet founders who are just like, 'I need faces to show for a fundraise.' I swear to God, I'm not even joking. If you're looking for a face for a fundraise, this is the person. But just know, this person won't build for you. They're going to manage, and that runway is going to disappear fast."
TOKEN ECONOMICS CONSIDERATION:
Remember that in Web3, your team isn't just building a product—they're designing tokenomics that might need to last decades. The people making these decisions need deep crypto-economic understanding that can't be faked or learned overnight.
Metrics that matter for early-stage crypto recruiting
The right recruiting measurements change as you scale.
- Early-stage (<20 people): Focus on core competency match and values alignment over formal metrics
- Growth stage indicators to watch:
- Pass-through rates between interview stages (target 50% or lower)
- Percentage of candidates receiving strong yes signals (should be selective)
- Time from first interview to decision (should be consistently under 2 weeks)
- Use data to identify bottlenecks but don't let it replace judgment
- 2 common mis-hire signals: Engineers taking too long to ship production code; hiring ex-founders from YC because they will naturally have “ownership” qualities
WEB3 HIRING DASHBOARD:
Track not just traditional metrics but also candidate-to-ecosystem conversion: How many rejected candidates join your Discord? How many start building with your tools? How many become community champions?
Key takeaways
- Hire for growth trajectories, not résumés: Someone who's hungry to learn will outperform the experienced but complacent hire
- Your recruitment process is a product: Every touchpoint should reflect your company values and draw people into your ecosystem
- Process should match your stage: Lightweight but rigorous is the early-stage balance; add formality as you scale
- Core competencies matter more than experience: Define 3-5 qualities that every hire must have
- A players hire A players: One mediocre hire will attract more mediocre talent, creating compounding damage
Pro tips
✅ The "we'll figure out HR later" approach costs more than hiring an experienced Head of People early. But you won't see that cost on your P&L - you'll see it in your turnover rate and your Glassdoor reviews.
✅ Founder intuition needs structure to scale. Most technical founders spend more time evaluating their cloud services provider than their hiring process. Your team isn't something you can just git pull.
✅ In Web3, community is an extension of your team. Design your hiring process to create advocates, not just employees or rejected applicants.
✅ Fight the urge to hire for exact experience matches in frontier tech. The skills that built the last wave rarely build the next one.
Day one actions for crypto founders
- Define your non-negotiable competencies - Identify 3-5 core qualities that every hire must possess, regardless of role
- Create your lightweight interview process - Implement the 3-round structure with clear ownership and evaluation criteria
- Build your rejection-to-ecosystem pipeline - Set up automated systems to funnel rejected candidates into your community
- Establish your hiring metrics dashboard - Start tracking the key indicators even before you have volume
- Develop your founder pitch beyond the product - Craft a compelling narrative about your mission, vision, culture, and goals that will attract the right talent
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