SDR hiring playbook for early-stage startups

You need a basic ICP, a CRM, and an owner who will review call recordings weekly. Without that infrastructure, SDRs create noise and churn in under a quarter, and you will end up blaming the hire for a sequencing mistake.

If founders are still the only closers and the product is unfinished, fix the bottleneck first. A founding AE who can run a full cycle is usually the right seat before an SDR. SDRs amplify a working motion; they rarely invent one.

Prefer startup-caliber hustle and coachability over big-company SDR titles. Look for high-activity outbound evidence, quantified dials, sequences built from scratch, demos booked without a playbook handed to them. Clean progression and a short job gap matter less than evidence of output.

Illustrative Seed/Series A bands often land base near $55K to $80K with OTE above that and equity commonly in the 0.02% to 0.15% range depending on stage. Calibrate with Market Data before you publish a number so you are not anchoring below market in a competitive SDR pool.

The most predictive SDR screen is a live cold-call exercise: give the candidate a one-page product brief and a persona, put them on the phone, and see how they open, handle objections, and attempt to book next steps. This is exactly how Vektor vets SDR candidates before they reach your loop. You see stress-tested sellers, not rehearsed storytellers.

Layer in a discovery critique (show them a weak email sequence and ask them to improve it) and a values screen on learning speed. Score activity realism and coachability over polish. Plan 30/60/90 ramp metrics before day one, a wrong SDR poisons territories and brand in market, and the replacement cost in time exceeds any placement fee.