Some startups agonize over finding good software engineering talent. Here’s an idea that worked well for us at blist and it might work well for your startup too.

In February we started drawing up sketches and narratives of what blist is and what it would become. To turn these diagrams into a working service, we needed a few really good software engineers. By now hopefully you know one thing that all programmers love is free food! We scheduled what we called an “Inception Mixer” for the early evening of Friday, March 2. Then for the rest of February I networked, recruited and met with as many qualified candidates as I could. I conducted an informal, introductory meeting with each one. In that meeting I painted a little of the vision for blist and told them we’d be hosting an inception party to share more details. It was by invitation only. Good engineers only. We arbitrarily set the limit at 20 guests.

Leading up to the event on March 2, a real frenzy started happening. Software engineers heard through the grapevine that we were a “startup to watch” and they wanted to come, too. I told them the event was by invitation and for qualified engineers only and asked if they could meet me for an informational discussion. That last week leading up to the event I met with another 12 or 14 engineers. One local reporter, two VC’s and one distinguished local entrepreneur all got wind of the event and asked for an invite. Nope. It’s by invitation and only top notch engineers are invited.

We rented out the back room of a pizza restaurant. I told the restaurant folks to keep the pizza and salad coming and the beer flowing. I brought a half dozen bottles of wine from home.

The event was a huge success. We had about 30 engineers show up. Believe it or not I ran through a 179-slide presentation in less than 15 minutes in a style that would make Dick Hardt of Sxip proud. We unveiled our logo, about the only thing we had to show that we existed.

The event worked great in a few ways:

1) An artificial deadline forced those we’d already interviewed to act. We actually hired two engineers before the event, including one at 4:00 p.m. the day of. The enticement was “c’mon, you know there’s going to be some really strong engineers there who are going to get really excited. Don’t you want to be employee #1? Wouldn’t it be great to introduce you to the crowd as the guy with the courage to jump in?”

2) The event fueled the fires of the others to make a declaration. The event ended around 10:00 p.m. and between 10 and 4:00 a.m. I received 6 emails saying “I’m interested. How do I go to the next step?” 30 engineers are smart enough to recognize that a startup can maybe swing hiring a few of them. It created a reverse auction for the few slots.

3) It filled our long term recruiting pipeline. A good 1/2 of the engineers left there excited by our vision, but didn’t have the stomach lining to have an employee # less than 10. A growing company needs good engineers at different stages and it requires very little effort to ping these folks every 6 weeks or so to check in.

The entire night cost us about $300 - way cheaper, way more effective and way more fun than hiring a headhunter. If you’re starting a company and need good software engineers, think about hosting an inception mixer.