Startups – do yo need marketing help?

I'm a web marketer by trade in the Bay Area. I'm often contacted by recruiters for web marketing jobs for start ups.

I have to think that if these start ups are willing to give up 1 year's salary to a recruiter to find a marketer to hire, then they're having a very hard time. After all, with Linkedin it's pretty darn easy to contact people yourself who look like a good fit and pitch them on a job (that's all the recruiters seem to be doing).

So my hypothesis is that start ups have a major pain point around not being able to hire marketers 1) because it's hard convincing someone to bet their job on your start up and 2) because start ups require jack of all trades marketers, further reducing the candidate pool.

If that's true, I'd love to come up with some kind of software to alleviate some of this pain -- potentially automating a lot of the marketing that I would do if I worked for a start up.

So can anyone chime in on their experiences trying to hire marketing people for their start up? Or how you handle marketing if you haven't hired someone? Can you let me know if my thoughts are off base?