Realizing we were selling to students with limited funds, we shifted our focus to building a product for companies to help them identify the right developers based on skills.

Hiring marketplaces have become popular as traditional hiring methods have become less effective, allowing for quicker hires.

Manually doing processes yourself in the early stages of building a marketplace is crucial to understanding what needs to be built, rather than automating everything too soon. When we started onboarding cleaning professionals, we asked them numerous questions over the phone and in person, followed by a test clean. This process led to an acceptance rate of only three to five percent, meaning many candidates never made it onto the platform.

We got our first customer by leveraging LinkedIn to connect and understand their needs better.

When using hiring marketplaces, be proactive in reaching out to candidates, as demand for good engineering talent exceeds supply.

As a startup founder, prioritize exhausting your personal network before exploring hiring marketplaces, and treat job boards and meetups as a background process.

Personal networks are the best place to hire engineers, especially for early-stage startups, as you can assess both skills and compatibility more effectively.

I prefer to hire for talent, ambition, and hard work rather than just expertise, especially when building something new.

The best source for hiring is personal referrals from people you already know, as most successful tech companies have been built this way.