At Founders Connect, we’re more than recruiters; we’re partners in growth. Born from our shared journey at Wilbur Labs, we’ve built a company focused on aligning early-stage startups with the talent that drives innovation and impact. We believe that every hire has the power to shape the future, and our mission is to connect ambitious founders with transformative, culturally-aligned talent.
Jonny Leighton is a seasoned talent acquisition leader with nearly a decade of experience, specializing in recruitment strategies that drive growth for startups. At Founders Connect, he combines a data-driven approach with deep industry insights to connect early-stage companies with transformative talent, from foundational hires to executive leadership.
Jonny and his co-founder, Dane, met while working as recruiters at Wilbur Labs, a prominent startup studio, where they honed their expertise in scaling talent solutions for a diverse portfolio of companies spanning multiple industries. Together, they implemented strategic, data-focused hiring practices that streamlined recruitment processes and ensured precise cultural and skills alignment for high-growth teams. Their shared experience and complementary skills laid the foundation for Founders Connect, where they now partner with startup founders to bring the right talent to companies poised for growth.
Earlier in his career, Jonny distinguished himself at Robert Half, where he achieved President’s Club status as the top-performing manager nationwide. Leading a team that drove over $5 million in revenue, he developed a keen eye for high-impact candidates and built a collaborative, high-performance recruitment culture.
Jonny’s approach to talent acquisition is grounded in the belief that every hire is an opportunity for transformative growth. At Founders Connect, he combines strategic foresight, operational efficiency, and personalized candidate engagement to help startups achieve their hiring goals with confidence. Jonny is passionate about partnering with founders to build teams that drive innovation, resilience, and long-term success.
Dane Bolte is the President and Co-Founder of FoundersConnect. As a dynamic leader with a unique blend of expertise in research, talent acquisition, and business development, he excels at identifying market trends, building strategic partnerships, and fostering high-performing teams. He works with his team to define the problem, formulate a hypothesis to test and deliver a clear analysis for their decision making process.
While serving as the Founding Recruiter at Wilbur Labs, he brought on Jonny to co-build the talent management division for the organization. Here at this prominent startup studio, they researched, tested and executed shared learnings to scale talent solutions for a diverse, industry agnostic portfolio of companies. He was set up for success from his previous position at Premier Talent Partners, leading remote recruitment and account management for the organization's Vendor Management Program.
Dane was an early adopter of LLMs at DuPont Pioneer and directly influenced data collection, manipulation and modeling for predictive crop models. Leading teams across all business verticals for the organization, he developed a strict discipline for process and execution. With this level of exposure to the real world application of data and the rise of talent intelligence, he brings a strong complimentary skillset to the leadership team at FoundersConnect.
He’s had firsthand experience placing organizational development leaders at early stage startups who went on to scale large teams who focus on revenue growth. He believes that by following a data-driven approach to talent, companies can move beyond intuition, delivering measurable and repeatable success in attracting and retaining top-tier talent. This alignment between data, process, and outcomes sets a foundation for sustainable growth and resilience in an ever-changing talent market for FoundersConnect.
December 5
Jonny was a tremendous partner in our engineering hiring process. His ability to identify high quality candidates and get them excited about the role was second to none.
He maintained a strong level of communication with both myself and the candidate, helping move things along in a fast-paced recruiting process. I would highly recommend Jonny to anyone seeking to add a high-performer to their recruiting team.
August 14
I had the pleasure of working with Dane as the enterprise business development lead for our incubated Advertising Program at SkySlope, which has been a game-changer for our organization.
His exceptional ability to identify and cultivate high-value partnerships has significantly expanded our market presence. He provided invaluable insights into enterprise customer needs, directly informing our product strategy. His talent for articulating our product's business value has improved our win rates and helped secure landmark deals.
Additionally, Dane's cross-functional collaboration with product, marketing, and customer success teams ensures a cohesive approach to client acquisition and retention.
Overall, his contributions have been pivotal in shaping our growth in the enterprise space, making him an invaluable asset to our team.
December 1
I highly recommend Jonny as an excellent recruiting partner. What sets Jonny apart is his range of capability. I led HR at just one company in a portfolio of several that Jonny led recruiting for.
His ability to succeed in recruiting roles that span a wide range of industries, departments and job functions is far above what I would expect of anyone. Add to his recruiting acumen the fact that he’s simply a joy to work with and you have an excellent team member.
Ready to accelerate your growth with the right talent? Get in touch with us today, and discover how our strategic, data-driven approach to recruitment can transform your hiring process. We’re here to answer your questions and guide you toward building a team that propels your vision forward.
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