When Neil Patel left his recruitment job in the UK a couple of months ago, to start his own agency, inkorp, he knew exactly what he wanted: to recruit for early-stage tech startups in the US. But he had to build his client base from scratch.

Vercel's explosive growth (80% year-over-year revenue increase, surpassing $100M ARR last year) is impressive but unsurprising when you consider how they power much of your internet activity.

They're modernizing software in construction, a massive $12 trillion industry that, surprisingly, remains stuck in the past. Most construction companies still rely on siloed, decades-old software systems.

Many people stumble into recruiting. Josh Berger always knew this was his path. At 19, when other teens were still figuring out their futures, Josh was interning at leading executive search firm Korn Ferry.

Faire, a wholesale marketplace connecting independent retailers to small brands, has built a $5 billion business over the last 8 years. Founded in 2017 by ex-Square employees, they've grown to serve over 700k independent retailers and 100k brands as of March 2024, shaping modern retail culture by empowering rise of “shoppy shops”.

When they were introduced to Paraform, Chase was skeptical. As a former VC, he had seen countless recruitment automation tools fail. But after using Paraform, both he and Will became strong advocates for the platform.

When Areeb decided to give Paraform a try last October, he was stepping into uncharted territory. Most of Areeb’s recruitment experience was in Finland, EU and Middle East regions. He had never recruited for U.S. companies and didn’t know whether this new platform would live up to the buzz.

Before Paraform, Apriora’s team believed working with external recruiters was a risky investment. Their co-founder Aaron had dedicated significant time into building different relationships and searching for the right recruiter, with no guarantee of success until months in.

“Don’t work at Anduril. It’s hard work, on hard problems, on hard mode. If that isn’t for you, then Anduril isn’t the place for you. But if you’re ready to transform U.S. military capabilities with advanced tech, we want to hear from you.”

They've built a $300M+ ARR business. They were valued at $12.3B in 2022. The Brex Mafia is already a thing, and they're not even 10 years old. Their success stems from building an excellent corporate banking product, but also to the talent strategy that founders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi wove into the company's DNA.

Tony, Carma’s Head of Engineering joined me on a Friday to talk about how he discovered Paraform, what it’s like to wrangle a two-sided marketplace in the automotive repair world, and—most importantly—how he managed to hire their founding software engineer, Elliott.

DeepSeek’s R1 model outperformed OpenAI’s o1 on multiple reasoning benchmarks.

Figma is known for many things, like powering the design systems of today’s most innovative companies. Or their product’s strong collaboration features. Or their passionate community of Makers and advocates.

Olga has done it all. From scaling ClassPass to tripling Chief’s headcount, she’s been at the forefront of talent acquisition for some of the most exciting and high-caliber companies out there.

When Johnny Wang took Statics, his early-stage AI startup, out of stealth mode he did what most founders do: relied on external recruiters to source top-tier talent. It’s how he recruited for highly specialized roles in the past.

While Silicon Valley panicked about remote work killing productivity, Spotify ran a simple experiment: What if we didn’t treat our employees like children?

Anthropic is one of the world’s leading AI research labs. But compared to Google, Meta, and OpenAI, they’re actually the new kid on the block.

Most companies say they only hire the best. Coinbase actually means it, and they've structured their talent strategy to live up to it.

The startup death spiral follows a predictable pattern: churning users, constant crashes, running out of runway. Most companies never escape this vortex. But Notion did something rare – they not only survived, but emerged as a $10 billion company.

As a solo recruiter running his own agency, Jose faced a common challenge: spending more time on active sales and company prospecting than actually recruiting. That changed when he discovered Paraform.

Ken Smith runs a small recruiting business with his wife, handling everything from sourcing to contract negotiation. As a team of two, finding new clients and balancing administrative tasks was always a challenge—until he found Paraform.

Banquet Health had a problem most growing startups face: they needed strong engineers, but their recruiting process was eating up too much time and delivering subpar results.

When Spatial Labs launched their retail store, they had an emergency: They needed to ship an update to get the retail location to work and ship it now.

Vellum's co-founder Akash: “If you know your role isn’t going to be filled, you should probably call the Paraform people.”

One of their tactics was adopting async videos in unconventional ways, using using videos to give candidates more personal attention, not less.

Paraform lets Will’s agency focus on what they do best without the business development grind. It makes it easier to place candidates at their dream companies without needing to spend months networking.

For UK-based recruiter Cam Farmer, Paraform has opened doors to top U.S. startups, delivering fast client responses and trusted logos that make his hiring process faster and more productive.

Why you should hire oddballs and ask weird questions

The talent secrets behind the $78 billion delivery app

And the "learner's organization" Shopify created in Canada persists even after going 100% remote.

Shreya's working on 10-15 active roles per week, on a client portfolio that would've taken years to build independently. She shares the story of her quick start on the platform.

Paraform helped Harmonic secure and manage a consistent pipeline of high-quality candidates, all on one platform.

Grecia Martinez loves being a full-time agency recruiter. But she also loves using Paraform to fill roles for clients she's interested in and expand her talent network.

Nick Kimball uses Paraform whenever he wants to spend a few hours sourcing talent for interesting companies, while maintaining long-term clients at his agency.

David's high-touch, relationship-driven approach is not fast. It's not easy. But it works. And Paraform amplifies David’s skills by connecting him to clients he’d be best suited to help.

90% of his Sachin's clients are from Paraform. Instead of spending his time trying to get new clients, Sachin can focus on what matters: making the right matches.