I built a B2B talent and recruiting service connecting high-quality, remote-ready professionals with international companies.
I had access to exceptional talent, but the recruiting industry was structurally broken. I wanted to see if I could design a more thoughtful, data-driven, and ethical alternative.
Stage: Zero to first clients, full-stack service, iterative discovery over ~1 year.
Context: the insight came from the supply side
It started while running the first cohorts of the remote work program.
As students joined, a pattern became impossible to ignore:
- The profiles were very strong
- Senior, thoughtful, international-ready
- People I would personally hire or recommend
That raised a simple but powerful question: How can I connect these people more effectively with companies? This was a supply-first insight.
First attempt: partnerships with recruiting agencies
My initial approach was deliberately asset-light. I spoke with recruiting agencies and industry contacts and proposed that you bring the client, bring the talent, and we split revenue. On paper, it made sense. In practice, it didn’t work.
Conversations were positive, but nothing closed. I learned that in recruiting, getting clients is harder than getting candidates. Agencies were unwilling to share margin. This invalidated my first hypothesis.
While those conversations stalled, I kept doing something important: collecting talent data from my audience with trust, consent, and context
Within the first six months:
- Thousands of profiles joined
- Eventually growing to ~7,000 profiles
- Across ~35 digital roles
- From ~45 countries
The realization: I had to build the full business
If the bottleneck is the client, I have to build the entire business.
This meant:
- No longer being just a talent provider
- Owning sales, pricing, positioning, and delivery
- Taking full responsibility for outcomes
Designing the value proposition
I asked myself:
- What do recruiting agencies do poorly?
- What do I understand deeply from being a candidate, hiring manager, and product leader?
- What could I offer without existing logos?
The differentiation I chose:
- Deep, data-rich candidate profiles
- Strong understanding of cultural fit
- Context beyond resumes
- Direct trust-based access to talent
I was not going to compete by price.
I made a deliberate decision not to use Tiene que haber algo más. I needed to reach a different audience, language (English), and different buying behavior. That’s how Build with Talent was born.
Website and sales materials: building before delegating
I initially considered hiring a designer. Then I realized: I couldn’t delegate something I hadn’t figured out yet. So I did it myself.
What I did:
- Chose Webflow (new stack for me)
- Started from an agency template
- Wrote all copy myself
- Defined structure, messaging, and visuals
- Iterated directly on the site
In parallel, I built a commercial deck aligned with the website:
- Value proposition
- Process
- Pricing logic
- Used in meetings, then sent as PDF
This was a massive iteration effort, but necessary.
Early sales attempts
Hypothesis 1: network-driven sales
Inspired by real estate, I tried a high-touch approach:
- Reached out to ~300 international people in my network from scholarships and jobs
- Weekly goals and accountability with another founder
- Focused on value and referrals
I got conversations, but minimal real traction. Having a network does not mean having demand, and timing matters more than access.
Hypothesis 2: outbound with candidates
Next, I tried sending anonymized candidate profiles to companies with open roles.
Hypothesis: If they see the talent, they’ll want to talk.
I got a low response. I understood that context matters more than quality, and the recruiting industry is saturated with stretchy messages.
Hypothesis 3: content for hiring managers
In parallel, I tried long-term positioning:
- Weekly English newsletter: The Leadership Path
- For hiring managers building international teams
- Published consistently for 4 months
- Promoted via LinkedIn
- Started publishing bilingually
Result:
- Good content
- Personal clarity
- No short-term revenue
Insight:
- Content is long-term leverage
- Not a short-term sales engine for services
Learning to sell: SPIN Selling and discovery discipline
At this point, I got help from friends and mentors and started applying SPIN Selling.
Over ~1 year, I ran dozens of discovery calls, focused on:
- Understanding the real problem
- Assessing readiness to hire
- Detecting misalignment early
- Deciding whether an external partner could actually help
Over time, I became much better at qualifying:
- Fake urgency
- Vague roles
- Misaligned incentives
- Structural blockers
What discovery revealed about the market
Undefined roles
Many companies didn’t have clear job descriptions, looked for “generalists”, decided what they wanted after interviews. This made sourcing inefficient and unfair.
Candidate readiness gaps
I saw cases like candidates interviewing in English without sufficient fluency, candidates disappearing mid-process, and drop-offs after interviews
Client-side instability
Some of the hardest moments: A large US client reached the offer stage, then realized they needed higher seniority. I renegotiated and restarted the search, but the role was paused anyway
Another case: Month-long contract negotiation, the agreement was signed with a deposit scheduled, but the CEO canceled at the last minute due to cost
Unrealistic expectations
Repeated mismatches between role scope, seniority, and compensation
In some cases, I beat 3 agencies to win the account, only to discover the real expectations were far higher than stated
In those cases, I chose not to run the search.
Building the team: hiring under uncertainty
Team building in this business was reactive and demand-driven. Hiring decisions were triggered by live client needs, not long-term planning, which made continuity fragile.
First hire: trusted referral, fast execution
My first recruiter came through a close friend who had run a recruiting agency. We worked well together and delivered successful searches quickly. She had strong judgment, clear communication, and ramped fast due to prior experience. The limitation was structural: she later took a full-time role elsewhere, and the service could no longer be her main focus.
Second hire: partial fit, execution drift
When she left, she referred a colleague. The interview was solid, but execution never fully clicked. Output quality was inconsistent, and I didn’t invest enough time in close supervision while juggling multiple priorities. In a service business, quality degrades quickly without tight guidance. The collaboration ended because she left.
Third search: skill compression under pressure
At that point, I had overlapping client demands: a technical role for Argentina and a marketing role for a US client. I needed someone who could evaluate marketing profiles, operate in English, understand technical roles, and work across time zones. This compressed skill set was rare. After many interviews, I found a candidate who met the bar and moved forward.
Market context (2024–2025): why timing mattered
By 2025, conversations with CTOs, HR leaders, and founders showed a clear pattern: hiring decisions were slowing, not accelerating.
- Role confusion driven by AI:
Many leaders lacked clarity on what to hire. AI adoption created uncertainty about future team structure, leading to vague job definitions, hybrid roles, and delayed decisions. Recruiting often started without a stable role definition, increasing churn and late-stage reversals. - Post-layoff market dynamics:
Layoffs flooded the market with senior talent. Internal recruiting teams had higher supply and could fill roles faster without external help. Demand for third-party recruiters dropped. - Compression of recruiting margins:
AI tools reduced sourcing costs and lowered barriers to candidate access. Traditional recruiting margins flattened. Agencies faced smaller margins, longer sales cycles, and heavier competition. - Structural entry constraints:
I entered the market selling internationally from Argentina, without a US presence or a narrow vertical focus, in a trust-based industry during a slowdown. This increased friction: longer trust cycles, higher proof requirements, and resistance to premium pricing.
5. Product implications:
This context explained slower sales, shifting client priorities, mid-process changes, and pricing pressure. The key insight was structural: some issues were market-driven, not execution-driven. Recognizing this prevented forcing growth against unfavorable conditions and shaped a more realistic evaluation of the business.
Managing risk in a fragile service business
One of my first client engagements became a turning point.
The client came inbound. I ran the full recruiting process and reached final negotiations with a candidate. At that point, the company owner decided not to hire anyone. I had not charged a deposit. Result: full delivery effort, no hire, no revenue.
This exposed the core risk of recruiting. Too many variables must align at once: client readiness, budget, internal alignment, role stability, candidate availability, and market conditions. If anyone changes, the process collapses. Without risk-sharing, the recruiter absorbs the downside.
From the second client onward, I changed the model: I charged a deposit before starting any search. No client objected. Serious buyers understood immediately. Conversations became more honest, scope clearer, and commitment explicit.
Up next: Expanding the business through YLAI
In 2026, I was selected to participate in YLAI (Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative), a U.S. Department of State program that supports entrepreneurs and business leaders across the Americas.
YLAI focuses on leadership development, business growth, and cross-border collaboration through mentorship, training, and a professional network across Latin America and the United States.
My participation is part of a deliberate next step: expanding the business with a stronger international presence, deeper exposure to U.S. markets, and a more robust network of founders, operators, and decision-makers.
After testing multiple business models and understanding the structural limits of operating from outside the U.S., YLAI provides a framework to refine strategy, validate positioning, and scale with a better market context.
This is an expansion phase informed by real execution, market feedback, and clearer boundaries about where I create the most value.
Conclusion
This case study is about entering a hard, unglamorous industry, seeing where theory breaks down, learning where trust actually lives, and understanding why many recruiting businesses fail quietly.
Building Build with Talent forced me to learn sales from zero, redefine success beyond deals closed, and develop judgment I couldn’t have gained any other way. It’s one of the hardest products I’ve worked on, and one of the most formative.
What this taught me about team design in services
This experience fundamentally reshaped how I think about teams in service businesses.
Key learnings:
- Hiring ahead of demand increases risk
- Referrals reduce risk, but never remove it
- Context transfer is critical and time-intensive
- Service quality depends on founder involvement longer than expected
- Client volatility directly affects internal team stability
In this model, team design couldn’t be separated from sales timing, client commitment, or market conditions. Ignoring that coupling is what breaks many service businesses at scale.