Cool and Creative Serial Entrepreneurship: 99Designs and DeveloperAuction Co-Founder Matt Mickiewicz (Part 7)

Sramana: What kind of numbers do you have? How many engineers apply to be on your platform?

Matt Mickiewicz: We typically have 2,000 to 3,000 engineers apply every month. Of those, we accept the best 150 or so engineers. We take care of the upfront vetting. We look at their intent to switch jobs as well as their skill level. We look for people who have been in their job for two to three years and are ready for the next challenge. Our intense screening allows employers to conduct a dozen interviews in a single day.

Sramana: Are you doing this only for engineering talent?

Matt Mickiewicz: Yes. I think this model is applicable to markets where there is inequality between supply and demand. This is applicable in enterprise software sales, life sciences, hedge fund and finance industries and other areas.

Sramana: You are talking about flipping the model around. You are moving it towards a talent-driven market. I think the market is talent driven for really good people. Even at the executive levels, you would have tremendously valuable offers. Executive contracts are much larger. How do you scale your business? What are the challenges of scaling this model?

Matt Mickiewicz: The challenge is to maintain the quality bar very high. As we add more and more candidates, we are adding more and more auctions in each geography. We have to start segmenting by skill set. We need to allow companies to get really, really targeted to allow match making to happen more efficiently.

We thought that the biggest challenge we were going to face would be to get engineers to buy into this model. It turns out they were so fed up with the status quo that they were really ready for us. The talent potion has been the easy part. The employers have been the more difficult part, which was a surprise. We have found that HR departments have been a bit more conservative to new ways of recruiting. That being said there have been more than enough early adopters who are happy with the platform that we were encouraged to move forward.

Sramana: You are a very creative entrepreneur.

Matt Mickiewicz: Thanks! I think this is a much bigger opportunity than 99designs and much more impactful. People spend a third of their lives at their jobs, so matching people to their opportunities is incredibly important. We are going to start focusing on matching computer science students from the top 20 schools. At the moment, only the biggest companies are able to send on-campus recruiters. You have fantastic, smart kids going to Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook or Google as opposed to startups. I think leveling the playing field there will be beneficial. I think that is a very interesting opportunity. Not only do we help students get their first job after school, but every two to three years as they upgrade their career opportunities they will likely come back to us.

Sramana: You are doing some very exciting stuff. Congratulations on your well-deserved success. I love the way you think and work, and I look forward to following your continued success.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Cool and Creative Serial Entrepreneurship: 99Designs and DeveloperAuction Co-Founder Matt Mickiewicz
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