How She Scaled Howdy From $400 Left to $50M in Recurring Revenue | Entrepreneurship | How We Profit | E11

When Jacqueline Samira started her business, she recognized a massive market inefficiency: U. S. tech companies were struggling to source and retain experienced talent, while skilled professionals across Latin America were being overlooked. She built Howdy to bridge that gap and help companies build dedicated international teams. In this episode, Jacqueline shares how she built Howdy into a $50 million recurring-revenue business, survived a near-collapse during COVID, and scaled the company through strong retention, smart funding, and a simple staffing model. In this episode, Hala and Jacqueline will discuss: (01:36) Howdy’s Core Financial Model (05:20) Revenue, Payroll, and Cash Flow (10:25) Starting Howdy and Surviving COVID (21:15) Raising Capital After $3 Million ARR (31:10) Ideal Customers and High-Touch Marketing (40:08) Retention, Referrals, and Customer Expansion (43:24) Why Psychologists Recruit Howdy Talent (50:57) Expanding Howdy Across Latin America (54:33) How AI Is Reshaping Hiring (57:34) How to Copy This Business Model Jacqueline Samira is the founder and CEO of Howdy.com, an Austin-based company that helps U. S. tech companies hire and manage teams across Latin America. Before founding Howdy in 2018, she built her career in sales and operations, including leadership roles at Y Combinator-backed technology companies. Howdy joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch and has appeared on the Inc. 5000 in 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026. Jacqueline was also named to Inc.’s 2026 Female Founders 500 for leading Howdy’s expansion into Mexico and Peru and establishing a branded office in Guadalajara. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Mindstone - Master practical AI skills without the complexity with Mindstone’s AI Competency Programme. Head to experience.mindstone.com/yap and get 10% off. AT&T Business - Stay connected with reliable, secure internet built for entrepreneurs. Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com. HoneyLove - Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Save 20% off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/PROFITING! #honeylovepod Freshbooks - Manage all your business finances in one place. Right now, my listeners can get FreshBooks for less than $3 a month for your first four months — that's 90% off. Head to FreshBooks.com/podcast to get started. Walmart Marketplace - Reach millions of active online shoppers and get ready for holiday demand. Apply to sell today at marketplace.walmart.com/yap. AG1 - Get a daily health drink that helps maintain energy, support gut health, and support immune health, all in one simple scoop. And for a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at DRINKAG1.com/PROFITING. Resources Mentioned Jacqueline’s Company, Howdy: howdy.com/experts/jacqueline-samira Jacqueline’s Website: jacquelinesamira.com Jacqueline’s Instagram: instagram.com/jac_samira Jacqueline’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jacquelinesamira Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Passive Income, Online Business, Solopreneur, Networking

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hala Taha?

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• 0:45Hala Taha?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  People were just like leapfrogging from like job to job to job to job. And I was like, this is so insane. Like, this is such like a dumb problem for startups to have. I mean, imagine you raised $2 million and you can't hire people. How is that possible? So I was like, this is a dumb problem to have. There's smart people all over the world. Why isn't there a solution? And there was. There was tons of solutions, but it was overseas.

• 1:30Hala Taha?

  Jaclyn Samira is the founder of Howdy, a company helping US businesses build teams across Latin America. Today, we're breaking down how Howdy actually makes money, what global talent really costs.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  We have a 15% margin on everything we do.

• 1:45Hala Taha?

  How much money did you end up raising in total?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  We raised 21 million.

• 1:48Hala Taha?

  Looking back, do you feel like you raised too much money?

• 1:51Speaker 01

  I would say if you have the ability to not fundraise, it's always better because...

• 1:56Hala Taha?

  One of the things that I see you do is billboards, which is really unique.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  The billboards are like [bleep] in dollars a month.

• 2:03Hala Taha?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  For one, like...

• 2:05Hala Taha?

  Really? That expensive?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  We were thinking if we could create this like unique algorithm, this company is going to have this type of like grading based on the type of employees that they want. And then people are going to have this grading based on like the type of employee they are. And we both realized, we're like, well, you're not an ML expert, and I'm not like a psychologist. So our very first recruiter we hired was actually a psychologist. Because especially when you go through the vetting process, you are clearly smart. You clearly know what you're talking about. So failure only happens when there's a...

• 2:37Hala Taha?

  Jaclyn, welcome to How We Profit.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

• 2:41Hala Taha?

  Me too. I was seriously looking forward to this conversation. So we're actually friends. We're in an entrepreneurship peer group. You're somebody who I really look up to. You're one of the smartest women that I know. And when I started this series, I told you about it right away because I was like, you need to be on How We Profit. Because Yapam, she is such a badass. She has grown a company to $30 million in annual run, probably more now. $50 million in ARR, like, oh my God. Like, that is absolutely incredible. And so the company is called Howdy. You're like kind of famous in Austin. Everybody knows you in Austin. But for those of us all around the world tuning in, what is Howdy exactly?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  So we are a company that builds software development teams in Latin America. So we have 11 offices throughout Latin America, from Mexico all the way down to Argentina. And we like to think of them as coworking spaces where we build teams for US tech companies.

• 3:38Hala Taha?

  Really cool. So an enterprise company contacts you because they want like more IT folks on their team. You stand up like a literal team for them in Latin America.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yes. So we stand up... It can be as small as a small startup saying, I need one person to a big enterprise company that's like, I need a team of 50, or I need a team of 100. And we can service them in any of the locations that we're at, or we can even open up a new location depending on the size and volume that they need.

• 4:09Hala Taha?

  So would you consider your company like a recruitment company or a workforce management company? Like, what do you, what do you consider it?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  I consider us full stack. We do everything. So to some people, we are recruiting, we're office space, we're logistics, we're HR. We do it all, end to end. A lot of times, though, when people come to us, they have a problem with one of the things. So they have a problem, they, maybe they set up an office in Colombia, but they can't find the talent that they thought that they could get. Or maybe they just don't even know where to start. So we are a one-stop shop for everyone. And how we help people, it just depends on usually what their pain point is.

• 4:44Hala Taha?

  Okay. So I know you're so smart, so you're probably like, you've got different product offerings in your business. So like, walk us through that in the ease, in the simplest way that you can. Like, what are the different offers that you have?

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Actually, funny enough, we don't have different offerings. We have one main offering.

• 5:03Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  And we designed it so people can hire one person, all the way up to thousands of people. And so the way that we have built it is we make it so that every one person has like a built-in cost. So think about it like, you come to me and you say, I want to build a social media team. Or I want to build a software development team because I've got this idea for this great app. And so we would sit and work with you and say, okay, so probably need this type of person, this type of person, this type of person. And then when we present you a person, we'll show you their all-in cost.

• 5:36Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  So I'm just going to do round numbers here for it. Let's just say it's $100,000. Now, the amount of money that that person gets is usually roughly around 60%.

• 5:47Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  And then about 25% of the $100,000, so let's just say 25,000, goes to supporting the individual, and then 15,000 goes to Howdy, like specifically.

• 5:57Hala Taha?

  Got it.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  And then that scales up and it scales down. So if you only need one person, we'll put them in a coworking space. And part of that coworking space is they get a desk, they get equipment. If you want a big office build out, well, it's like, okay, we'll, we'll front-load the costs ourselves. But we are anticipating making a certain amount of money over a certain period of time.

• 6:14Hala Taha?

  Got it.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  That's it. And that's like the all-in, everybody gets the same type of thing, rather than...

• 6:19Hala Taha?

  So whether it's one employee or like a full-scale team?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:23Hala Taha?

  That's really cool. And so you were just kind of talking about the way that you make money on the deal. Go deep on that. Like, how do you actually make money at Howdy?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  So my background, taking it a couple steps back, has always been in sales. And for me, one thing that I always felt I didn't align with companies on was if they did these like long-term contracts with companies. And so the sale would be very aggressive, and it would basically to get them to the point where you're handcuffed into an agreement. There's big enterprise companies that people sign up with all the time. I'm thinking of Salesforce, like off the top of my head. And it's like, you're locked into a two-year agreement or a three-year agreement. And it's like, you get six months into it or 12 months into it. If it's not working for you, you're stuck, and that sucks. And like, there's no onus on the company to make sure that they're still delivering exceptionally well. So what I wanted to do was make it so it was easy in, easy out.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  If they wanted, there was no front-load, like, there was no cost to start recruiting, there was no cost to sourcing, there was no cost for you if you were hiring with me. But my goal was whoever you hire, you're going to love them. And then we are going to support you in the background, so much so that you never say, you know what, Jaclyn? We love this person that you found for me, but we no longer want to work with you anymore. Like, we need to be able to provide so much value to you that you think of us...

• 7:44Hala Taha?

  Don't cut you out.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, they don't want to cut us out. And so I designed it like that. And we started very small with the idea that like we had to earn your business every single day.

• 7:53Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  And continue to earn your money every single day. So how we actually make money is, yes, like, if you look at the, if you look at the scale of things, we always tell people upfront, it's 15% to us.

• 8:04Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Like, we have a 15% margin on everything we do. And if you are not happy with the value we provide and everything else, then like, you don't have to work with us. Now, of course, there's other things we do in the background. So 25% goes towards the individual. And of course, there's economy of scales. If we build out a big office, maybe there's health insurance discounts we can get once we hit 100 people. Or there's equipment perks or laptop perks. Like, buying brand-new MacBook Pros in South America is 50% more expensive than in the United States because of all the import taxes. But there are some vendors that will cut us a deal, and they'll help pay us for some of those import taxes.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Like, they'll, they'll carry the burden if we have a certain volume with them.

• 8:51Hala Taha?

  Nice.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  And so our business ends up making, if we do it right and if we scale at an appropriate size. But that's, you know, some of the levers we're looking on in the background, too.

• 8:59Hala Taha?

  Oh, my gosh, there's so much to dig into.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  There's so much.

• 9:03Hala Taha?

  Okay, so let's talk about how much money you're making. Break down how much money you're making a month, and how much revenue is actually going to pay all the workers that you source for companies? And like, what that means logistically?

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:20Hala Taha?

  Like, do you pay them first? Do you get paid first? Like, how does that all work cash flow-wise?

• 9:24Speaker 01

  So cash flow-wise, we...

• 9:28Speaker 01

  We charge people, we charge our customers every Friday for the work done in arrears for that week.

• 9:34Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  So it's a weekly payment that they pay us. And we did that in the beginning to help with cash flow. So the idea is like, if we get paid on Friday, hopefully it enters our bank account Tuesday. And depending on the country, most people in Latin America get paid on the first of the month of every month. So it's just once a month payment. It's cultural down there. We explored in the early days, do you want to do bi-monthly? Do you want to do weekly? Do you even want to do daily? Because there were some payroll providers here in the United States that had this concept of, hey, earn your paycheck every day.

• 10:07Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  And so I thought that might be a unique differentiator for us down there in the market is to do some sort of different things with payroll. But it turns out, in a lot of places we operate, people like to get all of their money on the first, pay their rent, pay their bills, and then everything left is what they would consider their spending money.

• 10:23Hala Taha?

  Hmm, okay.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  And so that's, that's how it works for them. As far as like the money that we get from customers, usually, we, we're in a place where our working capital swing is, is something where we raised a lot of venture capital.

• 10:38Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  So we have enough in the bank to always pay people. And we're just constantly making sure that our accounts receivables is paid on time. Luckily, we have a payment by credit card option. And even though we take a 3% hit by doing that, it, it's okay. Like, we would rather take the 3% hit, but make sure we get guaranteed payment.

• 10:57Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Than doing any kind of net terms. The only time we agree to net terms is if it is a publicly traded company, and it is just one of their like, hey, if you're working with us, you have to agree to this.

• 11:08Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  And in those scenarios, they'll be more flexible by putting down a deposit. So if they ever miss it, then we can pull from the deposit.

• 11:14Hala Taha?

  Got it. And net terms, for those who don't know, is basically saying like, they have 30 days to pay you once you send an invoice or something like that.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so in those scenarios too, we might even pre-bill them for the, like, on the first of the month, so that we get paid by the 30th.

• 11:28Hala Taha?

  Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, very interesting stuff. Let's go back to actually how this all started. So you started the company in 2018. You had a really great sales background. Did you have IT experience? Like, why did you start with IT team?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  That's a great question. So, no, I wouldn't say I have direct tech experience whatsoever. My mom's a computer engineer, though. And my uncle owned a computer store. So I would say that I had a strong affinity for technology, and I knew a lot about it. And I was raised with it. I was very comfortable with computers, but I just didn't ever have the passion. I was going to go into investment banking. I graduated university in 2008, and so that all imploded. And I decided to just get a job in sales while the markets were recovering, and then I was going to go back into banking. And I ended up really liking sales, because I realized, especially enterprise level sales, they have these complex problems. And selling was really just providing a solution for them based on what you had.

• 12:31Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  And so it felt like it was a puzzle that I had to put together. It felt like fun game theory, if I do this, and they do this, and they do this. And so I ended up staying in that. And I ended up in Austin, Texas. And in Austin, this was 2011, there was this emerging tech scene happening. And I thought, I was like, you know what? That's cool. I can like, marry my experience with sales, with my affinity and relationship with technology, and start leading sales at tech companies in Austin. So a couple of years later, I joined a mid-size tech company, and I was leading their sales team. And when I was in it, I went from that company to another smaller startup. I started to notice a trend.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  And that trend was that the teams were really bifurcated in this like, people that were super grateful for the job, super grateful for the perks, and then people that like, they could just leapfrog to new opportunities, because so much capital was coming to the city, so much money was coming to the city. And there was just like, infinite demand for senior software developers. And especially like, the dedicated senior software developers on the team, like, you would have some that all of the work would fall on their plate, because other people were like, oh, I'm gonna leave at 3:00, or I'm gonna go and find another job, or, you know what, like, I didn't get a big enough raise this year, so I'm just gonna go take this other opportunity.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  And so it's like, it was, it was hard for startups to keep long-term technical talent because of how much money was coming in, and how many opportunities were coming in. People were just like, leapfrogging from like, job to job to job to job.

• 14:11Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  And I was like, this is so insane. Like, this is such like, a dumb problem for startups to have. I mean, imagine, you raised $2 million, and you can't hire people. Like.

• 14:21Hala Taha?

  So ridiculous.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  How is that possible?

• 14:22Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  So I was like, this is a dumb problem to have. There's smart people all over the world. Like, why isn't there a solution? And there was. There was tons of solutions, but it was overseas. It was in India, it was in Asia, it was in the Middle East, it was in Eastern Europe. I mean, it was literally everywhere but in our time zone at the time. This was 2017, 2018.

• 14:42Hala Taha?

  So Latin America, international hires, although it's like, pretty popular now, back then it wasn't very popular.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Back then it was not very popular. And if it was popular, it was more on like, the freelancer marketplace. It was like, oh, I've got a guy that I found on Upwork, or I got a guy that I found on TopTal. But tech companies needed teams, and they needed dedicated members of their product team that wanted to not be like, a mercenary. Freelancers had this more like, mercenary, like, I'll come in, I'll do this thing, and I'll leave, or I'll keep doing it for you. But like, I'm my own person. And so I was like, surely, there's gotta be like, a whole, this is like, a missed opportunity that we're not, we're not looking into. So that's when I jumped into it, and, and just started.

• 15:31Hala Taha?

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• 16:14Hala Taha?

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• 17:38Hala Taha?

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• 18:44Speaker 01

  Any money? We were bootstrapped. I, I had saved $150,000 from my sales, my previous sales career. I was 32 at the time. And 100% of that money went into the business. And we were growing steadily, but it was February of 2020, and we had just gotten a couple like, really big, let's just call them orders, right? It was like, to build a team.

• 19:09Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  And my co-founder and I, we were so excited. We weren't paying ourselves really anything yet. I was living off of that $150,000. It was also my savings account, so I was living off of it a little bit too. And so we got these couple orders in, and I was like, yes, this is gonna be awesome. Like, I'll finally be able to start, like, maybe taking a little bit of a paycheck.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  And then COVID happened in March. And everything went, like, everything was put on pause. And so all of those like, orders for the teams, basically just disappeared. And then the, the few people we did have at the time, the companies that were employing them, basically told us like, hey, we might, we might need to pause operations.

• 19:53Hala Taha?

  Oh, man.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  We don't know what's gonna happen. And so not only did we not get the orders, we also had like, existing, and, and so that was like, it all went away. Like, all the money went away. Everything went to like, keeping this business afloat. And it was May 3rd when I had my son. But I remember, oh God, I'm gonna like, cry thinking about this. So I had a baby shower planned for the end of March that got canceled.

• 20:17Hala Taha?

  Oh, no.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  And, and I was like, they're like, oh, you know, because we were thinking things were gonna reopen back up. And, and it didn't. And they're like, oh, maybe we'll do it later, we'll do it after the birthday. I called one of my friends, and I called my mom, and I was like, I really hate to be this person, and I'm so embarrassed, but I like, really need those baby shower gifts. Like, I don't have anything for the baby, and I don't have any money to buy anything for the baby. Like, can you please just like, tell everybody that was gonna come? If they could still send the gifts, I would be super grateful for that. And so it was like, a very like, embarrassing like, ask, but like, of course, my friends showed up, and like, everything was.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Happened and then I had my son and and then fast forward to June. Then it was like it was like the lowest low. And then going into June, everything, I think people realize like, we're not going back to the office.

• 21:12Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  We're locked down. We've been doing this remote work for three months. It hasn't hurt us. Our business hasn't imploded. Maybe remote's where it's at. And then it was almost as if like, everybody that paused their business, everybody that paused their orders, came back with like a vengeance. And we like, it was, it was crazy June. We started to like, just take off.

• 21:32Hala Taha?

  I'm so proud of you and that you were able to stick it through, through that really hard moment. People don't realize, like, when you're an entrepreneur, a lot of people work for entrepreneurs. Right? And they don't realize like, how much risk the owner took to create that business. Like, you put all your money in the company. I did the same thing with Yap Media. I paid myself $60,000 for, for many years. I actually am buying an office and I had to look at my like, I had to send tax returns for 2023, 2024. And you can even forget as an entrepreneur, how little you made, right? In 2023, I reported like $100,000 personally. And then the next year was like 900,000.

• 22:13Hala Taha?

  It got so much, it's like, it's like, if you're just, if you just like, wait a little longer, you know, it just skyrockets. So it's, it's just so like, it probably feels so good to just look back and be like, man, I'm so glad that even when it was so hard, I did not throw in the towel.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. It was, it, yes, 100%. And I think being pregnant, being nine months pregnant, helped me not throw in the towel because I'm like, who's gonna hire me? I'm about to go on maternity leave.

• 22:42Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Like quitting wasn't an option because I didn't even know where I would go at that point. And so I was like, well, I, I didn't even consider the option of throwing in the towel until like, maybe it would have been like three months post, postpartum.

• 22:56Hala Taha?

  Well, thank God you didn't throw in the towel. And look at you now. How much is your company valued at? A hundred and how much million?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't even know. We.

• 23:05Hala Taha?

  Like a hundred and something million?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  I don't even know. I mean, does anyone want to pay for that? No, I'm teasing. I think I would say like 150 easily. That's three X revenue, which is a very, very modest valuation.

• 23:18Hala Taha?

  Absolutely incredible. So you ended up raising VC money.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:22Hala Taha?

  Uh, but that was after you were already like $3 million ARR. So why did you decide to raise that VC capital? Was it so you could have money to pay the employees?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was the, we were, so we were at a place in our business where the working capital swings were starting to get scary. And so we thought, we're like, do we take a little bit of money? Do we take venture? What do we do? And so my co-founder and I, we're like, you know, I feel like there's a really big play here that we could just go big with this company. And, but we kind of let fate decide for us. So we applied to Y Combinator. We had applied to Y Combinator the year before. We didn't get an interview and we're like, you know what? Let's just do one last, like, one last application and see how it goes. And if we get in, then we'll, we'll go down the venture rat route. And if not, we'll continue to make it a lifestyle business and we'll just be, we'll just try and save up more and more money as po, as much as possible,

• 24:17Speaker 01

  or not, or intentionally not grow as fast. And so we applied to YC. We got an interview, we got in. And so that, that, that decision chose that life for us, I guess.

• 24:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah. It's so funny. I don't really know much about YC. So it's like, what does it stand for? Y Combinator?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Y Combinator.

• 24:34Hala Taha?

  Y Combinator? Okay, what is the benefit of, of being in that?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Oh, man, mostly fundraising.

• 24:40Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Mostly fundraising. So they have created such a beast, a machine. They're, so they're a venture firm. They kind of rewrote the rules for tech companies way back when Paul Graham and Jessica, his wife, started it.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  I'll try and give like the simplest way to describe it. They make such good bets on companies that they are the best performing venture capital firm. Because people think of them as an accelerator, they're a venture capital firm.

• 25:10Hala Taha?

  Oh, okay.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  They are five X better than the next best one you can think of. And, and Paul Graham calls it black swan farm, black swan farming. Where he'll put, he'll bet on 10 companies or 100 companies, assuming one of them are going to be the anthropic of that ba, of that batch. And just be worth like billions and billions of dollars. And they've gotten so good at identifying the companies that so many businesses, so many investors, just invest in every single YC company. So just by going through their program, going through the accelerator, being accepted. And then, of course, they teach you, they teach you how to market, they teach you how to go to market, they teach you, they know what is like,

• 25:51Speaker 01

  they have their finger on the pulse of, of how consumers and how investors and how everybody's thinking. That even going through the process, you learn so much. But at the end of it, they have this pressure cooker where they have this thing called Demo Day. And you're basically put in front of 4,000 plus investors. And then those investors get to have the opportunity to invest in you. So at the end of YC, at the end of our three months, I had 93 investor meetings.

• 26:15Hala Taha?

  Wow.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Which is crazy.

• 26:16Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  I never would have had anything like that if I didn't go through. I mean, I was trying to get investor meetings prior to getting into YC. No one wanted to talk to me. The moment people even heard I got in, then all of a sudden, like, my email was blowing up.

• 26:28Hala Taha?

  So you just, so like, there was some sort of application and interview process to get into YC?

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they have an application form. It actually hasn't changed, I don't think. I don't think it's changed. And you go through and it asks you a bunch of different questions. It's actually a really great exercise. Like, if you want to get very clear on your business, do the YC application. You don't have to submit it, but it like, really gives you clarity on your message, your market, what you're trying to do. And then there's a video, a demo video that you have to do and then.

• 26:57Hala Taha?

  Very cool, very cool. So how much equity did you give up?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  It's the same deal for everyone. So it's 7%.

• 27:03Hala Taha?

  Oh, that's not bad at all. That's the only amount of money that, and you, how many, you got?

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I have, no, for YC.

• 27:09Hala Taha?

  Just from YC?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Just for, so you give up 7% for YC. They give you, I think our deal was 125,000 or maybe it's 150,000.

• 27:16Hala Taha?

  But how much money did you end up raising in total?

• 27:18Speaker 01

  We raised 21 million.

• 27:19Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  So we did, uh, 2.9 million out of YC. And then a year later, we did another, uh, 18 million.

• 27:27Hala Taha?

  And so how much equity do you own now?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  So I have roughly 35% of the company. And my co-founder has like 23%.

• 27:36Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  So we started 60/40 before we did anything.

• 27:42Hala Taha?

  Looking back, do you feel like you raised too much money? Are you happy with the money that you raised? Do you have advice to people tuning in in terms of when they should raise money and when they shouldn't?

• 27:51Speaker 01

  I'm happy. Like, I don't regret anything that we did. And we still have nine million bucks in the bank, which is what helps us like, as we grow. If we want to make like, big bets or big investments. We are now cash flow positive. We were cash flow positive before YC. And then we took all this money and we invested it a lot. And then, and then now we're just back on the other side of being cash flow positive. Now, uh, do I regret doing it? The thing is, when you raise money, easy in, easy go, like, easy out. You, you make bets, you make investments, you do things, you hire people. And I think you, you make decisions that a, a non-venture backed business would make, that sometimes work, but most of the time they don't work.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  So I would say if you have the ability to not fundraise, it's always better because you just make better business decisions.

• 28:43Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Like, and especially in this day and age, like, people are raising a bunch of money so they could do a thing and so they can sell. We were never.

• 28:54Hala Taha?

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• 29:35Hala Taha?

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• 29:53Hala Taha?

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• 30:37Hala Taha?

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• 30:53Hala Taha?

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• 31:37Hala Taha?

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• 31:49Speaker 01

  Tech companies with a senior technical leader who has been around the block.

• 31:55Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  So they've been a leader for 10, 20 years. They know how... It's just they have this knowledge and confidence of what they're looking for and what they know. So they really see the value that we provide. And then when they are interviewing the teammates and when they're interviewing the people, it's just there's so much clarity. And so we love them. And they usually come with more of a team-based approach. They'll say, "We need to build this team of three," or this or that. Now, of course, they can always come and say, "We just want one person to see how you do there."

• 32:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  But they just have a lot of experience, and with that comes wisdom, and that really works well for us.

• 32:33Hala Taha?

  And how are you typically finding that client? Like, what are the ways... One of the things that I see you do is billboards, which is really unique.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  What the billboards have done for us is they have elevated our brand in a way that, like, we're huge. We have 11 offices. We have over 600 people, but people don't know we exist. And when we started doing the billboards, they started to realize, "Oh, wait, you guys are big. You guys are capable." Because what would kill me is I would go on a sales call, and it would be a company that would be a perfect customer.

• 33:11Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  And they're like, "Yeah, but we need to go with someone with a little bit more experience, or we need to go with someone with a little bit bigger." And they would name a company, and I'm just like, "Gosh, I know their talent is not there." And so that would kill me. And so one of the things that me and my head of marketing were talking was, "How do we build up our brand..."

• 33:29Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  "...so that people don't question our size and our capabilities?" And one of them was billboards. And then the other thing is, you see billboards all the time, and it just is noise. It's just noise that you bypass. And so we just thought, "Well, we don't need to sell our message. We've got a great domain, howdy.com. We just need people to go to the domain and see what we do."

• 33:50Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  And so we're like, "How do we get people to go to the domain by looking at our billboard? Well, let's have fun with the billboards. Let's put jokes or do something that's a little bit shocking so that people would be like, 'What does this company even do?'"

• 34:02Hala Taha?

  It's so smart, and I'm guessing you do it in cities that are tech hubs.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yes. So right now, our main focus is Austin, because we're in Austin. We are going to do a big billboard play in San Francisco, but, I mean, Holla, the billboards are like $90,000 a month.

• 34:19Hala Taha?

  Oh, wow.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  For one.

• 34:21Hala Taha?

  Really? That expensive?

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Think about it. So every single tech company is kind of hyper-focused in the Bay Area.

• 34:29Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  And then all the people that... So if you're servicing a tech company, you want to advertise to tech companies, so they're all right there. And then 200... So YC, just to go back to the YC example.

• 34:39Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  They accept 250 companies, roughly. They don't have a number that they do, but it's roughly 200 to 300 companies every batch. They do a batch every quarter. So every quarter, there's 200 to 300 companies that are getting $500,000. So it's like... And then they're getting all the other investor money, right? So there's just so much capital flowing, and then they're all competing for these, like, billboards are trying to, like, "Hey, we exist, and we do this thing."

• 35:05Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  So it is a hard market to market in.

• 35:10Hala Taha?

  It's a hard market to market in, but the billboards, in my opinion, is genius, especially if you can put the billboards exactly where your target audience is, because then you just seem bigger than you are. I have a great example of marketing to a very niche audience as well. So for me, with my podcast network, I'm looking for the biggest podcasters in the world. So what I did is I created a... I think I told you about this in our peer group, but I basically created this newsletter that would only go out to the top 1,000 podcasters in the world, and I scraped their emails, and I sent them an opt-in. And I was like, "Hey, do you want to get industry knowledge from me? I own a podcast network. People kind of know who I am in this industry, too." And it's like, "I'm not going to publish it publicly. You'll only get it if you opt-in."

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:55Hala Taha?

  And then people would opt into my PodFlash newsletter, and I would just tell them how to monetize, like, all those growth secrets that I had. And then I'd have people like Alex Tramose and Ed Mylett opening up my email 10 times.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 36:08Hala Taha?

  I feel like any way that you can make yourself just seem bigger by directly getting in people's email, like, being on the billboard, is just so powerful.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 36:19Hala Taha?

  How else are you marketing and getting clients?

• 36:22Speaker 01

  So traditional outbound, that's another way. I would say our biggest growth hack in the beginning was word of mouth.

• 36:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  It's not anything that we did that we could do. It was just if we did a good job, our customers liked us, they told other people. So like, one tech founder was like, "Oh, I've built this great team with this company, Howdy", told another, told another, told another. And that's how we grew so quickly, was inbound. Once we started to want to invest more on top of it, we did do meta. We tried to do meta. It was horrible.

• 36:49Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Like, I make this joke that I would have done a better job if I would have just taken $80,000, because that's how much we were paying on these digital platforms, put it in a warehouse, light it on fire, film it, put it on YouTube, and then market that. Like, that, I think, would have done better than our stupid...

• 37:07Hala Taha?

  Ads are really tough.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  They're so... Especially for our business. Like, we... Yeah. So that was not good. So we started doing hyper-targeted campaigns. So the first thing we started to do was events. We got a suite at the Moody's Center in Austin, and we started targeting our ideal buyers and offering them tickets to our suite. And then some people would take us up on it, and when they would come, we purposely and intentionally did not do business. We would just say, "Hey, we're just here to host you. We want to just make sure you guys have a good time." And then, of course...

• 37:38Hala Taha?

  So smart.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Psychology. Like, people are like, "Wait, but I should probably at least hear you guys out." And so a lot of people would then give us the opportunity. Our whole thing is, we just want people to hear what we have to do. If you can just hear, give us two minutes for us to explain what we do. If you're interested, great. If not, it's not... We don't need to sell you on anything. Either you want to work with us, or you don't.

• 37:58Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And the Moody's Center, if you guys don't know, it's a place where, in Austin, there's concerts and things like that. So you've got a private suite.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:05Hala Taha?

  That's like, kind of like, everybody wants to be in one of those suites in Austin, and you host them and wine and dine them.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  It's so hard... I mean, it's so hard to turn down. Like, imagine Tim McGraw's coming up, right?

• 38:15Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Big-time guy. And it's like, "Hey, Holla, do you and Plus One, or you and Plus Three want to join me to go see Tim McGraw?"

• 38:23Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  It's... Yeah. So that was big, and that ended up working out well. So then, we got a suite at Oracle Stadium for the Giants, San Francisco Giants. And that's like our big sweet play in San Francisco. We were trying to do the Chase Center. We were trying to do a couple of other things. But, I mean...

• 38:42Speaker 01

  It's very, very, very pricey. So those are our two kind of business development plays that we're doing right now. And then traditional outbound, so LinkedIn outbound, email outbound, outbound cold calling. We also would host like what we would call like bespoke micro events where, for example, our next one, I'm only thinking of the future, we're bringing in this like big ahi tuna. And then we're having a chef from I think Uchi come and do this like special like cutting of sushi.

• 39:13Hala Taha?

  Oh, very cool.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  And so there's 10 seats and we'll.

• 39:15Hala Taha?

  It's like very like high touch fancy events, basically, that you're doing for your clients. So interesting.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  We did, we also did hog hunting out of a helicopter.

• 39:24Hala Taha?

  Oh, yeah, you told me about this.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  So that was another one. So we do like these crazy, unique, high end, expensive events to really bring in the folks that we want to talk to. Again, no pressure, like just so that they can give us an opportunity to hear what we have to do. And then also we're doing, we just launched what we're calling a CTO studio and a CEO studio, where it's like an in studio, not a podcast, it's more of an interview for how they're building in the age of AI. And that's been lovely because we're getting just insight, market intel. That's been great and helps us move with the industry. But then also it builds relationships with the people that we're talking to as well.

• 40:01Hala Taha?

  And you're filming them like super high quality film that then they can use in their own marketing and things like that.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  And we'll give them, we give them all the raw footage. We cut it and clip it and do it and we show it to them too, because we don't want them to like, be like, ah, actually, I don't want them, I don't want you guys to publish anything about this.

• 40:15Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  And so, but it's, it, it, it starts from like a journalistic standpoint. Like, we want to know what you're doing, how you're doing it. This industry is moving so fast, things are happening so fast. How are you doing it?

• 40:29Hala Taha?

  Okay, so we talked about your kind of high touch marketing play. Retention is really important to you and referrals and expansion. This is like your framework for product market fit, basically. So help us understand, how are you ensuring that you're expanding with customers? That they stay with you a long time, that they're telling their peers about you?

• 40:55Speaker 01

  So we have on the backend of our business, so once you hire someone and they start working with you, we have two people that support every single account. One of them is called an engineering, well, we call it technically an engineering manager. Internally, we call it an engineering mentor. These guys were former technical leaders at US tech companies that are based in our offices throughout South America. And then we of course have an account manager. The technical mentor is really there, working one on one with the engineer to support them. Because what we've realized is it's not a technical gap that they have, but it might be a cultural gap or a communication gap, or the way that certain companies work in the US is just so foreign to other places.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  And so it's there to help them bridge the gap. But then also, turning around on the customer side of things, they have almost like an extension of their team, like an extended leader that they can kind of debrief with. So for example, say like I'm the engineering manager at Howdy and you're the technical leader at your company, and you're frustrated with your team. Rather than just being frustrated with your team, you could come to me and say like, hey, I'm frustrated with my team. I feel like they're not delivering fast enough. I feel like I gave them these expectations three different times and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? I have the direct relationship with them. You also have the direct relationship with the engineers, but I'll go in the, in the background and see what's going on. And it turns out, oh, there's this third party product manager

• 42:22Speaker 01

  that's injecting all of these like tasks that you weren't even aware about. And so it's like, it's this like helpful added element that allows you to share like your thoughts and your concerns, while also like having someone on the ground to support both sides. So that works really, really well. And I will say that people will tell me like, they'll be like, these engineering mentors are your secret sauce. What, you should tell people about it. And we try to, but the problem is when we introduce it early in the conversation, people are like, no, no, but I don't want manager.

• 42:53Hala Taha?

  We don't need that.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  We don't need that. Like, I'm the manager, I'm going to manage the team. I'm like, yes, you're, you are, but like, think of us as like your technical therapist. I don't know. Trust me, we, we, it's not an added cost, it's there is a benefit. People really value that. And then on the account manager side, of course, then it's just like your go to contact for anything as it relates to your account. And then any other support that you want. So yes, with that, they, they share with their friends. And also too, with like the developers themselves, like if they're feeling that they weren't, I don't know, like received well or taken care of, or they feel like they're getting taken advantage of from the customer. Those are things that we can help navigate so people aren't living in this like isolation, which it can feel like that when you have distributed teams.

• 43:39Hala Taha?

  Yeah. Well, that's really awesome. It sounds like you really care about the experience and making sure that the teams perform and that your clients are happy, so they tell their friends and so they keep hiring more with you. That's ultimately the goal.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  That's ultimate, yeah.

• 43:52Hala Taha?

  So part of it is, is hiring on your side, good people.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:56Hala Taha?

  And you guys are really picky about who you hire. You have a really extensive process. From my understanding, your recruiters have like a psychology degree or something? Talk to us about the recruitment process and why you have recruiters that are also psychologists.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's a people business, right? And when we were first starting out the business, my co-founder Frank and I were thinking, we're like, you know, we should create this algorithm. And this algorithm will be like, okay, this company is going to have this type of like grading based on the type of employees that they want. And then people are going to have this grading based on like the type of employee they are. Because there's some people that like, I just want to go to a job and I just want to get all my tasks and I want to do my job and I want to leave and other people want to be. So there's just like, there's so much nuance, right?

• 44:38Hala Taha?

  Yes.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  And so we were thinking if we could create this like unique algorithm that we could do it and match it. And, and we both realized, we're like, well, you're not an ML expert and I'm not like a psychologist. So our very first recruiter we hired was actually a psychologist. And we were like, hey, her name's Millie, we're like, Millie, help us with this.

• 44:54Hala Taha?

  Was she also a recruiter or she was literally a psychologist?

• 44:57Speaker 01

  She was a psychologist. She had just gotten her degree in psychology and we're like, hey, instead of going into that, she was a friend of one of our first engineers. And, and so we got, we had an opportunity to talk to her, we're like, can you help us with this? Can you help us? We'll teach you how to recruit, but can you use your expertise to really understand and identify and build out a profile of the person so that we can match them correctly to opportunities that we're getting on our side? And so it started with one and it worked so well that ever, everybody since then has been psychologists that we trained to be recruiters.

• 45:30Hala Taha?

  That's absolutely incredible. And so what is the benefit of that? I know, I know you're getting like, like why is personality, I guess, so important to you when you're hiring?

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Because, you know, there, we, especially when you go through the process, when you go through the vetting process, you are clearly smart. You are, you clearly know what you're talking about. So failure only happens when there's a personality mismatch. And there are some people that want to feel like they're in a pressure cooker when they're working. There are some people that absolutely don't. And so knowing that and knowing people's motivations and knowing how people work well together, it, it helps for the longevity of their relationship at a partner.

• 46:18Hala Taha?

  And you also have physical locations. How important is that for all the employees that you hire? And are you actually hiring them or like what, how does that work? Like, are you hiring them or are the companies hiring them?

• 46:30Speaker 01

  So we're hiring them. So we have physical, we have physical locations. It was, surprised me. When I first started the company, we had physical locations because this was 2018, 2019, when everybody had an office, you know, just not having an office was not really a thing. And so, but then when COVID happened, everybody got out of their leases. And we had actually signed to start like two more offices, but we put them on pause as well. And because with everything else that was going on pause. But then when things turned back around, I, I asked all of our engineers at the time, their thoughts on it. And so we had this like astounding response where they wanted to have an office. And the reason being is because, especially in South America,

• 47:15Speaker 01

  the culture is they have smaller homes. Like they don't have these big mansions on these big lots like we do in America. They live in condominiums, they live in apartments, they live in like big city centers. And so like, having just like 500 square feet extra to like put an office in is not like a luxury a lot of people have. So they want to go out, they want to leave, they want to go and have like an office space they can go to. And of course, some people do, some people have their own office. But we wanted to basically give people the option to be able to leave their homes so they weren't stuck and cooped up in their small tiny apartment or small tiny condo. So we ended up doubling down on office space in COVID as a benefit

• 47:57Speaker 01

  to say like, hey, especially in these places, we're COVID safe, here's how we're doing it. But this is what we're going to do and we're going to do these meetups. And we ended up changing the design of our office where we had more of like a communal meeting place, where it's like, we're going to have great coffee, we'll have great after hours, we'll have Xbox, we'll have all these things so you can come and you can work on your laptop in a little corner. You can go into like a phone booth. But at the end of the day, if you want to just be around people, because we're also like cooped up, you can be around people.

• 48:23Hala Taha?

  And so when you hire somebody, are they typically working for one company? Or are they like moving from company to company? And like, how long do you typically want them to work with you or, or hope that they work for you?

• 48:35Speaker 01

  We, our mission is to make it be the last job that a person's ever had to get and so that they can work for the rest of their lives with us. Uh, we have them as dedicated resources to one company.

• 48:47Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  And we don't ever pull them. So our agreement with a US tech company is, once we find a resource for you, that's your resource. Now, if that resource doesn't want to work for you anymore, they have free will. They can quit, you know, they don't have to work for you. And vice versa, you do too. Like, you don't have to keep them employed. So, but it's, it's the employee's decision or the professional's decision whether or not they stay or leave.

• 49:08Hala Taha?

  Now, if they get fired, do then they go on another, to another company? Or do they get some sort of evaluation with you guys first before you bring them on to a different company?

• 49:18Speaker 01

  So, uh, we, when they get fired, they stay, they move over to what we call our roster. But in that period is when we evaluate. Um, most of the people that we hire, we deem, hey, this is, these are Howdy engineers. Now, if there's anything that happened throughout the relationship with the customer that makes us question, then of course, like, we put them under more scrutiny. But for the most part, the goal is, it doesn't work out to no faults of their own, and then we find them a new home.

• 49:50Hala Taha?

  Got it. And then, when you get a new client, um, are you always proactively hiring in these areas to like have people ready to go? Or like, how does that work? How are you projecting how many hires you're gonna need?

• 50:04Speaker 01

  These are like, the tough levers that we're always looking at. But I would say that there are a few core competencies and job roles that everybody's always looking for.

• 50:15Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  And so, we always have open pipelines for those, and we're always running those. And then, we basically have what we would call like Howdy-approved developers. And at any given time, we have like a pool of people that are not hired with Howdy, but are ready to be placed with open opportunities that they match with.

• 50:32Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And you recently, maybe not recently, but you acquired like a Brazilian company, right? Tell us about that.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, we acquired in 2023, a Brazilian talent marketplace called Geek Hunter.

• 50:42Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Very impressive company. They have over 400,000 software developers on the platform, and they were servicing 13,000 Brazilian companies.

• 50:50Hala Taha?

  Wow.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  They got hit really hard by COVID, and they were not that, uh, capital-y backed. And so, unfortunately, we kind of like saved them a little bit, and, um,

• 51:02Hala Taha?

  So you got a good deal.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  So we got a great deal. And they got a great deal too, because, uh, it was a mutually great exchange, I would say. And, uh, so now we have this platform. It's not in the US yet. We're hoping to bring it to market soon. Um, but we, it, it's still primarily a Brazilian-focused market, but we do use it to source in Brazil.

• 51:24Hala Taha?

  Nice. Okay. So, let's talk about expansion for Howdy. Do you think about other markets? Like, are, are you like totally set on Latin America? Or is there more to go in Latin America in terms of like other pockets of Latin America where you can focus?

• 51:39Speaker 01

  All. I mean, there's other pockets in Latin America we can expand to. We can get bigger in our existing markets. And so, right now, we have one office in every city that we operate in. My dream is that we have multiple offices.

• 51:50Hala Taha?

  And where, where are you operating in right now?

• 51:51Speaker 01

  So, we are, oh my gosh, we're in so many places. So, we're in Uruguay, we're in Argentina, we're in Brazil, we're in Chile, we're in Colombia, we're in Mexico, we're in Peru.

• 52:00Hala Taha?

  And are you renting the offices there? Or are you buying these properties?

• 52:03Speaker 01

  I wish we owned them. No, we're renting.

• 52:05Hala Taha?

  I was gonna say, you could be like in the McDonald's real estate business.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  I know. Could you imagine? I wanted to be.

• 52:10Hala Taha?

  I was wondering, I was like, damn, if she owns all those properties.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Could you imagine? I know. I would, I, I think if we were, uh, still bootstrapped, that would have been a path we would have gone down. Uh, we did end up buying the office space we're in, in Austin.

• 52:23Hala Taha?

  Got it. Beautiful, beautiful place.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  And we presented it to the board. The board agreed with it. They, they feel like owning outside of the US is a little risky.

• 52:31Hala Taha?

  Hmm. That makes sense.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:32Hala Taha?

  And then, what about other product, like, other niches in terms of like, right now, you do IT teams, but what about like, marketing teams, or finance teams, or HR teams? Do you ever think about other business lines that you can support with?

• 52:47Speaker 01

  So, we do all of it. We, we-

• 52:49Hala Taha?

  Oh, you do that?

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, we staff any role that can be behind a computer, we can staff. Uh, I, but we, what we, so, a couple of years ago, in 24, we changed our marketing approach. We changed our website, and we made it look like we could do every single role. But then, when you're all things to all people, like, you become nothing to no one.

• 53:08Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  And so, what we realized is, I would say about 12% of our staff is non-technical. And, uh, like, our, our staffed employees are non-technical. And that is mostly through our existing partners, that we inform them that we can do it. So, it's kind of like that land and expand approach.

• 53:24Hala Taha?

  Yeah, that, that upsell, like, that's, that's what you upsell to, but your core thing is IT, and that's how you get your foot in the door.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 53:30Hala Taha?

  That makes a lot of sense.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  And then, vice versa, sometimes when we're doing outbound, and they're like, oh, I don't need help on this. I mean, they show their jobs, what they're looking for. And we'll say, oh, well, you know, you're looking for, uh, EA, or you're looking for this, or you're looking for that. Like, we can also help with that. And, and sometimes, they let us work with them in that capacity too, from that way, so.

• 53:49Hala Taha?

  So, I learned a bit about your philosophy in terms of scaling businesses. And I loved it. It was nail it before you scale it. Tell us about that.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  So, when I started the business, I, we started very, very small. And my philosophy has always been nail it before you scale it, because I had been a part of big tech companies that they're like, oh, it's fine. Like, let's just build the plane while we're flying, and let's just duct tape it. And what ends up happening is implosions. And whole, whole product lines can get, uh, turned off, because someone just didn't consider these like small, tiny things. And so, we very intentionally did that with Howdy. We only hired one person for one company, another person for another company. We didn't even tell people that we were doing this, because I wanted to make sure that like, all the payroll was going through, that there was just no unknown things. So-

• 54:37Hala Taha?

  I love that. And I do something similar with my company, but instead, I'm the guinea pig. So, we have like a marketing, uh, basically company, a digital media agency. And so, anything that we do, we first nail it with my account. It's like, can we make Hala go viral doing this? Does Hala's account grow doing this? And we don't offer it to our clients until we do it for me first.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  That's amazing. And then, of course, then you can just prove it. And you're like, look, look at how we did it.

• 55:00Hala Taha?

  Here's the social proof.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, amazing.

• 55:02Hala Taha?

  I do want to talk about AI.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:04Hala Taha?

  Do you feel like AI is disrupting your model in any way? Like, do you feel like people are hiring more slowly, or they're hiring differently? Um, and I, I already know that you're, you know, doing things related to AI to kind of even expand your offers, just because I know you personally. But talk to us about what you're doing, because AI is here now.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Man, so I went through like a stage of depression when it first came on, because I was like, is my-

• 55:32Hala Taha?

  Yeah, everything's going away.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  -business gonna implode? Because like, coding is obsolete. And, uh, I, fast forward six months, I was like, no, like, yeah, maybe AI can do the code, but it's just like when Microsoft Excel was invented, right? Just because like, it can automatically do mathematical equations, like, doesn't mean we don't need accountants. We need more accountants now than ever before.

• 55:51Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  And so, what I realized was, oh my gosh, we've just empowered so many, like, we've unlocked the barrier to entry. More people can create, more people can build, more entrepreneurs can exist, more people can start businesses, because they can ideate without having to get investment.

• 56:06Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  And so, it's like, wow, there's gonna be so much. But there still needs to be people in the background that are more like, the puppeteers, or the architects, or like, security. There's so much with tech that it is, there still needs to be management of it. Uh, so, I feel like what has changed with our business is the type of person that they're looking for. And they are a lot picky, a lot pickier with who they hire, because it's one person doing the job of 10 now.

• 56:36Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  And so, like, that one person has to like, really know. Uh, but we've gotten a tailwind from it, because people, even though they are hiring one for 10, it, they still have a budget for 10. So, they just expect 10 people to do the work of 100 people.

• 56:52Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  So.

• 56:53Hala Taha?

  That makes a lot of sense. And then, you're also upskilling-

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:57Hala Taha?

  -your high, your, what do you call them?

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Uh, we call them our Howdy professionals, and then our shorthand for it is HPs.

• 57:03Hala Taha?

  Okay, HPs. So, how are you upskilling them with AI?

• 57:06Speaker 01

  So, we hired, uh, PhD, we hired a professor. Uh, he has his PhD in machine learning and quantum computing. And he was teaching at a university. And what we, so he works for us full-time, and he builds modules and courses. And he's just constantly running them, and he's constantly building new programming. And we are teaching people, one, how to like, use AI agents to build, but then also, like, how do you even build small language models yourselves? And how do you do like, proper harness engineering, and eval engineering, and all this like, very like, heavy technical stuff? And it's just constant.

• 57:43Hala Taha?

  Now, uh, one of my last questions to you, if, if somebody's tuning in, and they want to copy your business, maybe not in IT, but standing up teams internationally. I have people in Nigeria, and India, and Algeria. We have, you know, and I found a lot of success with international hires. Now, if somebody wanted to start like a similar, like, agency, what advice would you have for them?

• 58:08Speaker 01

  I would say, go to the country that you want to build in. Uh, one thing, so, God, thank goodness, there are things like Claude and ChatGPT now, because it is just a wealth of information that we did not have back then. But we learned so much, just being on the ground, across the table, from an accountant in Uruguay, from a lawyer in Colombia. Like, when you're meeting people in person, the, the scariest thing about doing something like this is the unknown unknowns. It's, it's, you have all these preconceived notions of what you need in, in the United States, but every country operates differently.

• 58:40Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  And so, they will bring up things that you will never even think to consider or ask when you're in person, rather than doing a call or a Zoom. It, it, there, there, there's just more exchange that happens. I think people are a lot more guarded when they're over, um, a virtual.

• 58:57Hala Taha?

  Yeah, totally.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  So, go in person, talk to people. People are so friendly, and they're so grateful. If you're willing to make the investment, if you're willing to go there. And, uh, it's, it's fun too. You could experience a different culture. You have a deeper understanding too of the people that are there, what motivates them. Do they like this? Do they want an American company coming in? Most people, yes, but you'd be surprised. Some people are like, no, like, don't bring your money here. So.

• 59:19Hala Taha?

  Really? I love this business, because I feel like it's actually something that you can start quite small.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. You can.

• 59:25Hala Taha?

  Like, you could start it virtually.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:28Hala Taha?

  You don't have, like, I, I agree with you. Like, eventually, if you're gonna scale it, go there, figure out where you're gonna open up your office, and, and all that. But like, you could start this slowly, and it's like, such a great way to build like, a really successful business. So, really cool stuff.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Especially too, if like, you are an expert of something, you're gonna recognize who else knows that skillset. And so-

• 59:46Hala Taha?

  And what the gaps are in terms of hiring in the US.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:50Hala Taha?

  Oh my gosh, there's so many more questions that I want to ask you, uh, but we don't have a lot of time. So, I'm gonna end this with, uh, one simple question. What is your secret to profiting in life? And that can be beyond just business.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Mindset.

• 1:00:03Hala Taha?

  Mindset.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Mindset. You have to believe it to achieve it. Because if you don't, it's not gonna happen.

• 1:00:11Hala Taha?

  I totally agree. Jaclyn, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  You can find me on LinkedIn, Jaclyn Samira, or on Instagram, or X, at Howdy Jaclyn.

• 1:00:22Hala Taha?

  Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us on How We Profit.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:00:26Hala Taha?

  And that is how Jaclyn and Howdy profit. Today's big lesson, in a recurring revenue business, getting the customer is only the beginning. Howdy makes its model work by continuing to add value long after the hire is made. That focus in retention has helped turn a 15% margin into a scalable business, doing roughly $50 million in annual revenue. And as AI changes how companies hire, Jaclyn isn't betting against it. She's adapting, upscaling Howdy's talent, and preparing for a future where companies may hire fewer people, but expect each person to deliver far more. The real opportunity is not just finding global talent. It's building enough value around that talent, so customers want

• 1:01:09Hala Taha?

  to stay and tell their friends. Thanks for listening to How We Profit, the Young and Profiting series, where real entrepreneurs share real numbers, real margins, and the real stories of how their businesses actually work. I'm Hala Taha, and I'll see you next time.