Dec -- We closed with 103 opportunities published 🧨, ~85% of gigs with applicants within 24hrs ⏱️, 1 in 5 intros ending up in a collaboration! 🎉🔥
Building this in public, curious about your thoughts!
#buildinpublic
PS If you need "get shit done officer" type of people lmk!
Oct -- We started experimenting with direct outreach to recruiters 📣, doubling the # of opportunities posted vs Q3 📊
Nov -- We tested the first partnership with a recruiter 🤝 and expanded our DACH network 🇩🇪🇦🇹🇨🇭
July -- We expanded our UK freelance network 🇬🇧
Sep -- We picked the verticals (geography / skill) in which we had lower applications 🔍 and started inviting selected freelancers from those -- the % of opportunities with no applicants halved ✂️
Apr -- The experiment worked! 🎯 Two of our engineers got hired by a YC Startup 🟡🚀
May -- We got to 6 successful refs and started scaling the experiment into something stable 🏗️, doubling the # of opportunities posted vs Q1 📈
June -- We expanded our US & Canada network 🇺🇸🇨🇦
Feb -- We kept t community invite-only 🔒 but removed the strict rule, getting to ~50 freelancers
Mar -- We moved from referring only gigs from our close network to experimenting with also proposing our talents to people asking for referrals in communities we're part of 🤝
Jan -- We started the alpha with the first 17 people 👥 (under a very strict invitation rule: you could only invite people you had worked with) and had our first successful referral 🎉 in the same month.
The experiment was working but very slowly, so 👇
Corporate refugees are killing #startups.
Scalable infra, strategy decks, enterprise sophistication.
You don’t need that. You need someone who turns chaos into traction.
That's why in 2025 I created a community of freelance startup talents.
What happened in this year🌯👇 🧵
Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 25th
Merry Christmas!
I hope you had fun :)
Go get some well deserved panettone!
Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 24th
Who cares, it's Christmas!
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
📨 Send this to your CTO who's debugging at Christmas Eve
Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 23rd
Stop staring at rich and useless dashboards. Choose a One Metric That Matters and gift it to your team this Christmas!
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
📨 Send this to your co-founder who always gets lost in KPIs
Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 22nd
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
One card every day through Dec 25th.
But seriously, if you were affected by layoffs and you want to try the dark side (freelancing) just feel free to write me :)
Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 21st
La mamma è sempre la mamma.
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
One card every day through Dec 25th.
📨 Send this to your mum 😁
#Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - Dec 20th
It's not the Grinch VC, it's your pitch slap!
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
One card every day through Dec 25th.
📨 Send this to your co-founder who's spamming VCs
Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 19th
Brace yourselves, winter has come.
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
One card every day through Dec 25th.
📨 Send this to your lead investor from the previous round
Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 18th
Don't bother make it perfect, your MVP will suck anyway! 😁
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
One card every day through Dec 25th.
📨 Send this to your co-founder who's vibe coding
#Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 17th
C'mon it's like Rabbit R1 meets an AI friend necklace for cheating on everything!
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
One card every day through Dec 25th.
📨 Send this to the VC who's ghosting you
#Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 16th
There's no such thing as branded socks to keep you warm this Holiday season!
📨 Send this to your CFO and to your designers who are probably fighting over the swag budget
#Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 15th
Money makes you dumb.
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
One card every day through Dec 25th.
📨 Send this to your CFO who's trying to explain your whole team that raised money is not a lottery prize
Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 14th
Discovery habits are hard to break!
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
One card every day through Dec 25th.
📨 Send this to your CPO!
#Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 13th
Get out of the building even if it's freezing outside - inside it's cozy but delusional!
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
📨 Send this to your cofounder who feels uncomfortable running user interviews
@Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 12th
"Sure, I'll give it a try!"
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
One card every day through Dec 25th.
📨Send this card to someone who's watched more customers churn than Santa has chimneys to visit (and probably lost sleep over both).
Startup Advent Calendar 🎄 - December 11th
Murphy's Law: If something can go wrong when you launch, it will.
Counting down to Christmas with Startup Christmas Cards.
One card every day through Dec 25th.
📨 Send this to your CTO who's debugging the demo during the investor call
Validation is a very misleading term.
It's not about showing how good your idea is or how smart you are.
It's about understanding where you're wrong as fast as possible and tweaking until it works.
Be like Linus.
It’s very hard to convince someone to buy a solution for a problem or desire they don’t have.
Yet, I see it all the time. "We just need to explain it better".
Nope, you need a different market.
You GET to choose your ICP!
Make sure they have the problem you want to solve.
‘Fits the profile’ doesn’t mean ‘Feels the pain.’
Don't niche down your product, build up on their problem 👇
✔ A better way to define your ICP:
- Start from the problems you want to solve
- Think of people with behaviours showing that they have the problem
If ideas count nothing and execution is everything, why don't you have an Amazon Fire Phone in your pocket?
"We target young people, they're more likely to adopt innovative products" - aaand that's how I'm 100% sure that a startup has no clue who their ICP is.
People want products that solve a problem or a desire they have, no matter how old they are.
"Every design choice expresses a vision of humanity" - whoever builds AI products knows this.
Either Andreessen doesn't understand that technology doesn't guide itself, or he is in bad faith pretending so.
Tech is not neutral or self-regulating.
Techno-optimism starts from here.
Would you attend a university where 95% of the best graduates are unemployed?
If not, then why are we using the same old methods to select which ideas to transform into products?
Startups with 0 clients: "Let's try with a discounted plan for startups - they have no money, they would prefer a cheaper option to the incumbent and we will get our first MRR"
ok, now does it make any sense to target people with no money?
