🌊 Coastal Recruiting: New Compensation Calculator

Hey friends 👋

It's been a minute! Coastal's recent months have been intense—Asher and I dove deep into operations, with rewarding results thanks largely to our energizing work with you.

The startup market's needs have been wildly dynamic. As your companies evolve, we've adapted to match pace. Here's what we're excited to share:

What We Know

Reflecting on our journey since last time, I'm reminded of a core belief: growth happens at the edges of comfort.

While engineering talent remains our foundation, serving founders and VCs has shown us how great companies evolve—starting focused, mastering their core, then expanding thoughtfully from a solid base.

We're following that same playbook.

Data-Driven Decision Making: Our Compensation Calculator

One of the most common questions we get from founders and VCs is straightforward but complex: "What should we pay for this role?"

We've always believed that transparency leads to better decisions. That's why we're thrilled to announce our new Compensation Calculator—backed by real offer data from hundreds of placements we've made.

Unlike other compensation tools that rely on self-reported numbers (which are often inflated or outdated), our calculator draws from actual offers accepted by candidates in the past year. This gives you a realistic view of the current market, helping you make competitive offers without overpaying.

The best part? It's free for our partners. Because we believe good data leads to good decisions, which ultimately leads to good hires.

Two New Chapters in Our Story

While scaling our core engineering recruitment practice, we've launched two new business lines that leverage our existing network and expertise:

1. Coastal Executive Search

We've assembled a team with 50+ years of combined recruiting experience to identify transformational leaders for Seed to Series D startups. These are the executives who will help you navigate pivotal growth moments—the kind of leaders who don't just fill roles but catalyze entire organizations.

2. GTM Recruiting

Our new Go-To-Market practice focuses on the teams that bring your products to life in the market. We're placing key leaders across sales, growth, customer success, and marketing—with special expertise in SaaS, Fintech, Martech, and AI-driven companies.

The pattern? We're connecting good people with good opportunities. It's what we do.

The Flywheel Effect: Good People Newsletter

Speaking of good people, our candidate community has found its footing and is running with pace. What started as a simple idea - sharing the best startup opportunities with engineers who build great products - has evolved into something much larger. Introducing Good People, our candidate focused brand within the Coastal family:

• 30,000+ elite engineers (with a 55% open rate!)

• Weekly deep dives on the most innovative startups

• A curated selection of opportunities at elite companies

The newsletter has become a powerful flywheel for our business. More great candidates leads to more successful placements, which attracts more great companies, which in turn draws more talented people to our community.

If you're interested in being featured in our Deep Dive series or sponsoring job postings to reach thousands of top-tier engineers, just reply to this email or reach out to [email protected].

Let's Grab Coffee in NYC

I'll be in New York from May 2-9 with our team. Nothing beats face-to-face conversations for sparking ideas.

Coffee, drinks, lunch — whatever works. Just reply to this email and let's make it happen. I promise I won't just talk about recruiting the whole time (only like 65% of the time, tops).

Quick Thanks

Building anything worthwhile is a marathon disguised as a series of sprints. Your trust has been the fuel that's kept us going and growing.

As we like to say: "Good people know good people". We're building for the long term, and we're grateful to be on this journey with you.

Until next time, David