Field note · August 2026

Why One Signal Isn’t Enough

“Series B SaaS company” sounds like a target market. It isn’t one. A company that raised eighteen months ago and hasn’t touched its engineering headcount since is a Series B SaaS company. So is one that closed a round last month and posted four senior engineering roles the same week. The label is identical. The urgency is not.

Funding alone tells you a company has money. It doesn’t tell you they’re spending it on engineers, or spending it now. A round can go to sales, to marketing, to eighteen months of runway extension with headcount frozen. Treating “recently funded” as the whole filter means most of the list was never going to reply, because most of the list was never actually hiring.

A funding event tells you a company can hire. An open role tells you they are.

The fix isn’t a bigger list. It’s a second condition on the same list — funded, and a live, confirmed opening for the specific role you’re routing for. Two facts that are each individually weak evidence, stacked into one that’s hard to argue with. A company that both raised recently and is actively posting for a senior engineer isn’t a guess about intent. It’s intent, observed twice.

The pattern holds outside recruiting too, but it’s sharpest here because the two signals are so cheaply confused for each other. “They have money” and “they are hiring” get treated as the same sentence when they’re not even the same fact.

— Faris Abbas connects funded, actively-hiring tech companies with the recruiters who specialize in exactly the roles they’re posting.