Current Team + Hiring Plan

Part 6 in the "Navigating Diligence: The Bling Capital Playbook" Series

This is Exercise 5 in the Bling Capital Diligence Playbook.

In the previous exercise, you built a financial model that shows how much money you need, over what period, to achieve which goals. Now it’s time to understand what team you need to build to achieve those goals. To do that, we need to know the current team and hiring plan.

The post below will outline:

• Why understanding the current team and hiring plan matters
• What we ask for and why
• Signals we look for
• The Bling Capital approach

Why It Matters

Understanding your current team and aligning early on your hiring plan is a key part of right-sizing your raise and building confidence in the execution plan.

When we think about the current team and hiring plan, these are the key questions we aim to answer together:

• What is the current team structure and capabilities (including LinkedIn profiles)?
• What key hires are needed in the next 12-18 months:
  • Role + brief description
  • Cash and equity ranges
  • Example dream candidate LinkedIn profiles
  • Equity grant totals (we often sum them: e.g., 6.33%, or 7.33% including CXO)
• Timing: When do you plan to make each hire and why?
• Tradeoffs: Which hires are most critical, and which could flex depending on traction or market conditions?
• Whether any hire is effectively a co-founder-level addition (especially for growth or technical leads)

The hiring plan isn’t just a headcount list — it’s how we understand:

• Who will build the product and deliver the value proposition
• Who will drive go-to-market execution (if applicable)
• Whether there’s the right balance of functions to achieve the plan
• How much equity you plan to grant and whether it aligns with the raise size and stage
• If the team structure supports hitting 18-24 month goals

It also surfaces tradeoffs — whether hiring is optimized for speed, product quality, or depth of GTM execution.

Early alignment reduces surprises and helps founders think about capital efficiency and equity allocation from the start. The hiring plan also feeds into your financial model, which you previously completed, and is a pre-requisite for the product roadmap.

This is the template we will be using for the exercise.

What We Ask For

Here’s what we typically review together to ensure alignment on team structure and hiring priorities:

Component	Why We Ask
Current team members’ LinkedIn profiles	Understand the full current team’s composition and strengths.
Key hires required in the next 12-18 months	Align on hiring priorities. For each role, we review: Brief description, cash comp range, equity range, timing, and 2-3 LinkedIn profiles of dream candidates.

Additional Details We Request

Sub-component	Why We Ask
Role and Brief Description	Assess how you’ve defined responsibilities and outcomes for each hire.
Cash ranges	Sense-check compensation expectations vs. market.
Equity Ranges	Understand cumulative dilution from the hiring plan (e.g., ~6.3%–7.3%).
Timing	Validate sequencing relative to business revenue milestones and cash runway.
Example candidate profiles	Visualize experience level and seniority for target hires.

The Bling Capital Method

We recommend structuring the current team and hiring plan exercise in a shared Google Doc to allow faster iteration and collaboration.

We aim for short, direct answers — the best examples read like field notes.

Let’s do this together: Use our template and answer the questions:

1. Who are the current team members and what are their LinkedIn profiles?
   The goal is to understand the full current team, their strengths and experience, and any obvious gaps.
2. What are the key hires required in the next 12-18 months?
   The goal here is to make sure there is alignment on the hiring plan, and how it impacts when and how we reach our milestones.

The output from this exercise should be inputted into your financial model’s hiring plan tab.

After you close your fundraise, we highly recommend tracking your hires in this current team and hiring plan template. Why? It serves as a single source of truth for your company — the approved hiring pipeline, and salary and equity ranges across various employees and roles.

Signals We Look For

Signal	What It Tells Us
Clear connection between hires and roadmap	The team being built matches the product and GTM goals.
Reasonable equity planning	You’ve planned grants thoughtfully, leaving room for critical hires while avoiding unnecessary dilution.
Appropriate balance of seniority and cost	The plan isn’t top-heavy or underpowered — it shows thoughtful tradeoffs between budget and capability.
Hiring sequence and timing	You’ve considered the order of hires and when they’ll join relative to key milestones.

Common Mistakes

Unrealistic Timing

Assuming that key hires will be made immediately or that new hires will have an instant impact — leading to execution delays.
Fix: Build in buffer time for hiring and ramp-up, and pressure-test whether your timeline realistically supports your roadmap.

Hiring Ahead of Needs

Sequencing hires too early (e.g., hiring a Head of Sales to manage the team before proving a repeatable acquisition strategy with 1-2 AEs).
Fix: Hire for what’s required to achieve your next 18–24 month milestones, not for distant future needs.

Not Filling Critical Gaps in the Team

Founders often try to do everything themselves or may have blind spots.
Fix: Plan early to hire someone 10x better than you in roles critical to the company’s success.

Top-Heavy Org Structure

Building an executive-heavy team without the builders needed to ship product or drive early GTM (which will also likely significantly increase your burn).
Fix: Hire for slope and ensure roles are weighted towards execution.

Misaligned Candidate Profiles and Equity Levels

Targeting senior candidates whose expected equity or compensation doesn’t match the proposed ranges.
Fix: Hire for slope (e.g., SWE that can also manage and perhaps grow into a leadership position) and not current position, and calibrate comp and equity bands using example profiles that realistically match your stage and budget.

Late or Clustered Hiring

Placing most hires in the last months of runway, which compresses onboarding and delays impact.
Fix: Sequence hires to match roadmap milestones and expected time-to-impact.

Final Takeaways

• The hiring plan helps us align on how the team will execute against product and GTM goals.
• It ensures the raise is right-sized to support hiring without over-dilution.
• It also connects directly to your financial model and product roadmap — the two things that are most directly impacted by who you hire and when.
• Hiring plans are living documents — clarity at the start sets up smoother execution later.