Redefining Remote Hiring with Agustin Morrone of Vintti (Part 1)

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. And once again, Rob has got to work on hitting the recording button. This has really been like recently this has been a challenge. This is the Developer podcast, also Building Better Developers. I am Rob Brodhead, one of the founders of DeveloperNor, also a founder of RB Consulting, where we are a boutique consulting company. We sit down with you. We talk about your processes, talk about your procedures, talk about your business and where you are today. And then we work on building a technology roadmap for how do you do things better today? How do you get some of those low-hanging fruit, but also how do you improve your business for success for the future, whether that's six months or six years from now? We do that through simplification, integration, automation, innovation, all of those shuns. But when we get done with it, we help you make the most out of your bottom line and you're one of your most expensive investments, which these days is technology. Good thing, bad thing. You can reach us at rb-sns.com just in case you're checking that out. Good thing, bad thing today, or actually this week in the midst of a very busy week, which is in itself very good, but also very bad. So I'm very busy. Don't have to worry too much about what I'm doing each day, but I am also pretty exhausted by the end of the day. It's also allowed me since I am on a client site this week to be able to work on my digital nomadness a little bit. And it is pretty much working pretty good. Things have been well. I've got the devices and the things I need. I do occasionally forget to charge items so they get close to zero before I have to plug them in. Other than that, I don't have to plug him in, but Michael's going to go ahead and introduce himself. Hey everyone. My name is Michael Molloch. I'm one of the co-founders of Building Better Developers, also known as DeveloperNur. I'm also the founder of Envision QA, where we take test-driven development and apply it to client software testing and helping customers really assess their software stack to make sure that the software that they're using is working for them, be it custom or over-the-shelf software. If it's not, we come in and we help work with you to either determine if you need to buy something new or build something custom to meet your needs. At the end of the day, we help you streamline your processes so that your software works for you, not the other way around. Good thing, bad thing, like Rob, it's also a very busy week this week, which is very good. Bad thing, allergies are kicking me in the butt again. And today we are back to an interview and we're going to be speaking with Agustín Marón. And I'm going to let you go and introduce yourself and share a good, bad thing that you have going on. Amazing. Thank you very much, Rob. Thank you very much, Michael, for inviting me here. Very happy to be here also. As mentioned, my name is Agustín. I'm a co-founder and CEO at Binti. Born and raised in Argentina and actually living in Barcelona. We started Binti three years ago. It's been crazy, bootstrapped since scratch and breaking records month after month. So in terms of good thing, bad thing, what they would think here is that we're still growing. We're still breaking records month after month. And this is amazing. And bad thing, my kid, two years old, is with the flu. So my sleeping hours are a bit tight this week. But here we are. So let's dive right into. So you're in Barcelona, Spain, right? And so you're in Europe, but you're basically placing people in South and Central Americas. What are your primary customers? Are they North America, European, all of the above? Exactly. So Binti is recruiting a staffing agency, right? And what we focus is in delivering talent from Latin America to clients in the US and Canada. Actually, 95% of our clients are in the US and we have a 5% of our clients in Canada. But we focus just on that area. We want to go niche there, understand perfectly what you need and deliver great talent from from the top. Now, we were always interested in startup stories and things like that. And I guess we'll start at the beginning of this. So what was the what was the genesis or what was the thing that got you guys deciding that you were going to build Binti or maybe a little bit like what was your background before you started into that? So it's a bit weird because I came to Spain to study to do an MBA. And after that, I always wanted to start my own company. It was my dream since since I got out of school. I got out of school from college. And as soon as I finished my MBA, I started working for a startup called Avacom, where they they provide the software and the that they were automating all the financial panel and analysis part of startups. And I was in charge of well, actually, I was on a sales role selling that software to Latin companies. And at that point, I realized that there was a big pain to to find talking with all the entrepreneurs, with finance managers, CFOs, I discovered that there was a big pain to to finding talent for work to those startups, which also are US startups and startups that are in North America. And I realized that it was very hard not just to automate all the finance part, but also to find talent that that were good and that can add value and that have experience in in the US market. So at that point, I said, OK, this is the moment I have. There is an opportunity. There is a clear path and there is a clear need for finance and accounting teams to to to build our team of short. Right. It's known that there is a bit of a shortage of accountants in the US and the and that career is sort of struggling in a way in terms of generating more more talent. So US companies, US firms are going outside to the Philippines generally to find talent. And we believe that finding people in Latin America based in the same time zone, which are also culturally aligned and also they can they can have really, really good English skills. And they are really good professionals, right, which is the most important thing. And that's why we focus just in the time. And that's what kicked me off to start. Now, you actually address one of them was what are some of the the selling points of the resources and things like that. But now, are you especially in the financing sector in that? I wonder, do you run into any issues where companies are concerned with having offshore resources dealing in that area? I know sometimes we run into it in the software world. I would expect that finances would be one where they struggle with that. And how do you address it? Exactly. So data security is one of the most important points and concerns of our clients. So what we do there is we don't we don't access that data. We just provide the equipment and we let our clients to do whatever they want with the computer, just put their softwares, their security measures, and we let them do what they need to do so that relationship can work. And also we have a pretty thorough and privating a how to say process where we we do a criminal background background check contacting the police entities in the specific country where they can with the candidate is being hired. We ask for a ref like free for reference checks from previous jobs. We we make sure that the person that we are hiring is is privated at the end. Right. And they have good records. They are good people. And in that in that way, we I mean, we have never had any any any issue regarding this. Do you do you have are these do you guys have employees as Venti have employees that you guys are sending out to these customers or are they contractor basically just subcontracting through you primarily or a little bit of both? So we have a little a little little bit of both. Right. Depending on the country, depending on what our client wants. But most of them are contractors. Right. So we we include them below Venti. We we we coach them, we train them, we help them succeed with our clients. We that's sort of also our value added. And mainly depends a lot of what the client wants. But 80 percent, 85 percent are contractors. Now, do you because that's a lot. It sounds like you guys invest a lot in your your contractors. So are you able to them able to keep them busy for a long period of time, maybe roll from one customer to another, because now you know them, you've vetted them, so you don't have to repeat that process with someone new. So generally how we work is we try not to have people on the bench or people. We won't push anyone to one of our clients because it's on the bench of our company. What we try to do is we try to understand exactly what our clients want and then go out to the market and find that perfect profile for them. Culturally aligned, technically aligned, we do several interviews before we even introduce them to our clients. So we don't like to have like a pool of candidates hired by Venti ready to jump in because I don't believe I mean, I believe that any each of our customers, they have their own culture, they want to do specific things in each candidate. And I want to find the best the best cultural fit there, because when we find it's the most difficult thing to find is culturally aligned, it's cultural alignment with our clients. Right. Technical technical skills. It's also difficult, but it's easier to find them. Culture, that's the big challenge. And I can not have people on the bench and try to force them to be what our clients want. Right. I need to find them and bring the the the best fit for them. So given that most of these are contractors and you're dealing with a lot of financial companies, I'm assuming, given the particular market you're going after, are you running into any Sorbonne, Oxley or government securities that these companies need additional security for your contractors or specific like logins or special security for them to even be able to work with your customers? When they are dealing with so in terms of taxes, our generally our clients do not outsource taxes to outside the US because if not legally, you have to disclose that to their own clients. So generally what they they they do is just they outsource the accounting part or the financial planning part or whatever. When it's everything related with FP&A of a company, security measures are lower because it's super important, but it's not that sensitive in terms of personal information. When it's regarding accounting, it's they are a bit thorough in terms of the analysis that they do for who are they hiring and the softwares that they want to install in the equipment that the people are going to be using. You can see everything, you have clients that are super strict, which ask us to include them in our in our insurance. And also they they request to install a software where they will be recording the screen of the candidate and taking pictures of the candidate so they are not so they can they can assess if they are doing other things or not, if they stand up and they live. So there are lots of softwares to evaluate attitudes of the candidates. And now with AI, that's even easier because you can detect if they are using their phone to take a picture of the screen or it's easier to detect strange or weird attitudes from from the candidate. Gotcha. So you your company doesn't really have that infrastructure. It's your customers that have that infrastructure and your contractors essentially go through them and their security protocols for what they need. OK, I was curious because I've seen that with I've seen it with different contract companies where they have their own and they have to go through a different type of thing. So I was just curious how you guys have been set up. In regards to your contractors and that what's your overall turnover with your contractors? So when since you have all this growth right now, are you finding that a lot of your clients are hiring your contractors on after a period of time or are they keeping them as contractors through your company? Depends a lot on the type of company. What we have seen is like companies with a more startup mindset, they tend to start with the like with the classical staffing model. And once they realize this is a good fit, they execute the buyout and they bring the person under the payroll. And then you have like more SMBs or accounting firms like from zero to 20 people. They leave the staffing model and they leave the contract in that way. They don't want to deal with the payroll. They don't know. They don't understand. They are afraid of how features are done in Latin. So they prefer us to take over and that's it. So when you go when you approach these customers and you're looking for new customers, how are you going out and attracting them? Are you like through online marketing or are they coming to you through? I'm just kind of curious how you're finding these customers to basically, you know, match your contractors with your customer. That's that's the the like the biggest challenge, right? How how we can grow at the end. And we do lots of things. My background is in sales. So starting this, what was not that difficult in terms of putting systems like doing outbound call calling, outbound email, reaching people out for LinkedIn. Now we are scaling more with a marketing perspective, investing a lot in in in quality information that positions us as experts in the in the industry. And we are trying to participate a lot in communities, flying to the US to to conferences, being there. And so this is how we are trying to to to scale at the end. Right. And this is the way we bring clients. And then obviously, we we go out to the market and find the time. It's for them. So based on that, can you give me an example of where you've been really successful with that and where you've run into challenges as a business? Running into challenges as a bad experience is what trying to find customers. So what have worked really good for us is a like doing outreach called outreach for them. Like we have an amazing team of VDRs, which are experts in in in the fields of our clients. Like if we are we have a team that is reaching out to to accounting firms. So there are people that have they don't have background in accounting. But we train them to understand and to speak the same technicalities with their clients. And in that way, that's the way we found that these people are these VDRs are being able to get positive responses for them by talking them in the in the in their same, let's say, language. Right. So outbound call outreach through email, LinkedIn and cold calling has been a good channel for us. And where we are struggling a lot is in in in all the in paid media and paid ads in Google ads. To be honest, that's a channel that in these three years, we tried everything. Like whatever you can imagine, we tried and nothing works. The sad part is that I see our competition that they have things that are working and it's desperate. But I don't know. I don't know what we are doing wrong. We tried with different agencies, with different people. And I don't know why we are not keeping the target. So now being a since you're you're in Spain and you're dealing with U.S. companies, do you have essentially boots on the ground? Do you have people that are located in the U.S. that you do where you have to do in person, you know, meetings and things like that with your customers? Or have you found that this has worked really well, that you can use Zoom and tools like that and do virtual meetings and be able to really haven't really had any problem finding customers that way? So we say we sell online talent. Right. So and we sell also people that sell for our clients. So at the end, we need I'm a true believer that we can we can generate, we can sell and we can do things only online. Having said that, I know that there are lots of strategies working out for people in in place, organizing dinners, organizing community events, things that are working very good in terms of growth. We are starting to do that. Also, I have I have gone to the U.S. last year a lot this year, I have done a lot. Next year, my plan is to go two or three times per month to meet clients, generate community, do networking. Those are the things that are helping companies like ours scale and our strategies is going that way. After the pandemic, everything during the pandemic, everything went online. But after the pandemic, the online trend has been going down and people want to go out, wants to be in person, they want to meet. And what we have discovered is that when we play there and when we have either me or my sales leads or someone from the marketing team, we go on the ground. Our our success rate in terms of meeting 20 people and getting two free leads. It's huge compared to calling outbound or the conversation that we have online. Right. And that makes sense because there's I think there's still that level of people like to meet somebody face to face, especially when you're doing something like this, when you're dealing with something that's sensitive data, like your financial systems and stuff like that. Even if you aren't meeting face to face necessarily the person that's doing the work, I think having somebody like yourself that's the representative, that it's somebody they can trust, they say, oh, okay, I know him. He's great. I trust that he's doing the things that he needs to do to, you know, to vet these people. So if he says they're good, then, you know, they're good. So I totally get that. Now, I do want to shift gear a little bit on with this is like that you mentioned actually already a couple of things that have been your struggles as you've been growing. But outside of, you know, obviously the marketing, which I think in itself, we've totally with you on that is that marketing seems to be there's a lot of options out there. And it seems like everybody's got their own niche and it's finding yours is always a challenge. But what are some of the other struggles that you've had as you've grown? And it sounds like you've grown fairly quickly. So what are some of the things that you've run into, maybe particularly the ones that you didn't expect when you started this out a few years ago? For me, I mean, it's a bit paradoxic for having a recruiting film. But for me, finding eight players and really the people who I need to help me to bring Binti to the next level, which is at the end, my team, it's been a big challenge because it's very difficult to find someone that fits with the culture, that understands you, that wants to go to your rhythm and also that understand and knows the technical skills. So for me, that's the finding good players has been a challenge, especially when you start growing fast and you need to feed the machine quicker. Because at the beginning, you have one or two hires and then you can take time and you can do interviews and you are just one or two and it's easier. But now that you have to onboard, I don't know, five, six per week and you have to do 20 interviews, you start driving crazy. And I like to at least get to know everyone that enters Binti. And it's like getting half of my agenda. So that's the challenge that I'm facing right now. That's my biggest issue today is how to solve finding great players, pre-betting them and onboarding them to Binti. And a second one is how to... I'm a bit obsessed with systems, processes, and I want to have everything documented and everything understand perfect how it works and how the process goes from marketing to sales, sales to operations, operations to our clients. And when you get bigger and bigger, things get a bit... You start losing control of lots of things and you have to start trusting a lot your team. So the second challenge for me to try to impart to my team to keep doing things the way I think are going to help us to get to the next level, which is having SOPs super clear. So when we onboard people, it's easier. Those things have been also a challenge. Now, did you start... Because you said this is something that's actually you're sort of obsessed with that you enjoy doing that. So did you start with the idea of having to have SOPs and that from the beginning or is this one of the things that sort of became more of an awakening as you got further in the organization when you realized, oh, shoot, we got to go back and we got to make sure that we have these there so we've got this documented so we can grow those processes? So technically, I always knew that it's key to have everything documented and for everyone to be able to access all the information and access how the process are done in any area of the company. But the reality is that when you start and you are iterating like crazy and trying to find different ways to grow, then you find one client and you adapt to that client, then you find another one and you adapt to that one. When you start growing, things get crazy. And the reality is that you cannot document everything because 99% of the things that you are documenting don't even work. So the challenge was when we start discovering things that were working, start to transport that knowledge and put it in paper and having everything really good. So I knew that I had to have that, but I didn't do it since the beginning because it was impossible. That makes sense. It's that you have to figure out what works before you want to or it makes most sense to figure out what works before you start documenting it and saying, okay, now this is the path we're going to go back a little bit to your other problem. Have you found any processes or common things that you can do as part of trying to find those A players or is it really sort of a, does it tend to be sort of like each case is just trying to find that person, interview them and figure it out? Or are you starting to find some sort of a process procedure, an automated approach, a streamlined approach that you can get to gather those people? So how we are handling today's, I try to interview everyone at least at that last stage for the recruiting process. So when the hiring manager, they say, Hey, this is the person technically I want them culturally. They can work with me. Then I do the last interview because I think that as CEO and co-founder, I'm sort of the guardian of the culture of the company and it's my responsibility not to add any rotten apples in the team. Right. So even in all the life of Binti, I learned a lot how to discover the people that will succeed within Binti. Right. So now I try, I at the beginning, it was a one hour interview going deep in their personality, in their technical skills. Now I do a 15, 20 minute interview where I go right to the bone asking free for questions and trying to understand where their ambition is, where their view is, where, how they are. And I try to hire good people with a lot of ambition. I think that that combination has worked amazing for us. And that wraps up part one of our interview with Augustine Marrone. I just want to thank him. We will thank him again in part two and then a little bit more. 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