Personally, when it comes to companies with < 30-50 employees (early stage, seed fund or a series A), I have had a massive amount of success cold-contacting the CEO or CTO (if VERY small, < 10 employees) or the hiring manager (once somewhere is large enough to have one) directly.

I actually have never had a job that I did not get in this manner, contract or full time.

Edit: This is with the added addendum that I research the company beforehand, and know their business model and products as well as any engineering stuff they have published/blogged about.