Product | People | Potential feat. Hollyhires.ai

Introducing Jacob C. and Boris Gordts, the founders behind Holly – hollyhires.ai, an innovative AI-driven recruitment platform. We explore their strategies for scaling their team without compromising on quality, their approach to achieving product-market fit, and their insights on securing investment.

Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or intrigued by the future of recruitment technology, this conversation promises to offer insights and inspiration. Join us as we dive into the story behind Holly.ai and the innovative minds steering its success.

In a snapshot, what is the story behind the origin of your business and Service / Product?

Jacob and I have always been passionate about connecting talent & opportunity in a more effective way. We started out building a marketplace to connect companies with freelance recruiters, agencies and job boards. When ChatGPT was released and we started integrating it in our product, we realized how powerful it would be in the various parts of the hiring process that we decided to double down and pivot the company to building Holly: an AI recruiter. She helps with the repetitive parts of hiring so recruiters & candidates can focus on the hard stuff.

On ‘People’, what challenges have you faced, are facing, or are anticipating around scaling and growing your team? Any tips you could share?

Our biggest challenge is not giving in to the pressure of needing someone ASAP and making that lower the bar for what we’re looking for. The way we keep that in check is making sure that in our interviewing process, we have at least 4 ‘strong yes’ evaluations of the 5 interviews we do. 2 ‘just yes’ in a row makes us not move forward with a candidate. Early employees are so important that you have to be super excited about them, otherwise it won’t work out.

On ‘Product’, what has been your approach to understanding and implementing product market fit or sales cycles?

We’ve focussed on iterating quickly and not implementing any feature before we have validation that it’s trying to solve a problem people care about. We build together with customers, use no-code where we can and make sure to timebox bold new bets.

On ‘Potential’, what challenges or barriers have you had to overcome, and do you have any piece of wisdom around best approach to secure investment?

Best tip around investment: get your clients to invest as angel investors. This shows other investors that what you’re building is truly appreciated.