swap's startup journey
By Swapnil Agarwal
On a Mission to Fix Tech Hiring
issues
Done for 2021!
We set a goal of placing 100 folks by end of the year. We hit that milestone today. It's pretty overwhelming to type this out.The good part about being bootstrapped is that there's no pressure to grow 10x next year. We can, but we don't need to. 1000 placem...
On Culture
We have a team now. And the first thing we chose to work on was our company culture as it makes or breaks a company.We put down individual points on what matters most to each of us. Everything can be summed up neatly with this tagline "Have fun, Make impact...
Growing the Team
Last month, I hired someone part-time. Things didn't work out. I now realize that I should have given more feedback at the first sign so that it could have been course-corrected early. Communicating this at the end was "hard", as admitting mistakes always t...
Competition
When you're working in a big market, there's bound to be competition. We were already keeping a keen eye on Unacademy after their TapChief acquisition. Today, they announced Relevel - Apply to India’s Finest Companies with One Score. It's not a new idea - w...
Pivot again
Long time no see!If you're following this, you might remember I've been dabbling in the (broken) hiring space for about a year now (with e-commerce and mobility in between). The first time, we were automating the first round of interviews. The last time, we...
Sales first!
As you might remember from the previous updates, we were planning to build a platform to take interviews.I was against the idea of building it out first as I had learnt the hard way that it doesn't work. But my team members had already started building the ...
Defining the USP
So I'm pursuing the idea discussed in the last issue. I have a few friends interested in exploring the hiring space together.One disconnect I have within the team is that the tech folks quickly want to come up with the things to build and start working on t...
Brainstorming #3
Recently, I've been brainstorming again in the hiring space. Hiring is broken. No one wants to give 5 interviews in 10 companies to get the right offer.What if we can standardize the interview process?As a candidate, you give it once and your profile is bui...
Brainstorming #2
I explored the mobility space in the last 2 weeks. Talked to PMs and co-founders of bike-sharing startups in my city and demand prediction came out as a common problem. However, while sizing the market from a business perspective, it did not turn out to be ...
Brainstorming #1
Last week, I was exploring the e-commerce space, to provide search / personalization as a service to small-medium businesses. Then someone told me about vue.ai which does what I was thinking of, and a lot more!This week, I looked into the recruitment space,...
LinkedIn Connections Matter!
So I'm currently validating the need for a ML/AI product in the e-commerce space. To do that, I searched for the relevant people on LinkedIn. To my surprise, the profiles of some of the people in those companies were inaccessible to me; I couldn't reach out...
Startup School Group Session #1
I'm sharing the pitches of the startups in my weekly sessions, with the hope that you get some sparks out of it!Here you go:IncludeSpace is building an online platform that LIST VERIFIED office space.Adblooms: ★ A marketplace for out-of-home advertising. ★ ...
Behind the scenes of designing a card
Let's start, shall we?
Time to get a card!
In my childhood, I saw handing out business cards as being cool and so, I wanted to have one as well. In fact, I created a website on electromagnetism back in school and hosted it on a free domain. It had a quiz at the end (using a little bit of VBScript, i...
Story so far...
I went indie a few months back. It turned out to be more of a sabbatical instead!Surviving on zero income was more of a mental struggle. It HIT me one month after leaving my job - on the “supposed” payday - when nothing got credited into my account. It was ...
The holy grail of passive income
My aim for 2020 is to get to $1k MRR.I really like the subscription business as it provides some sort of a predictable income. I want to own pieces of businesses (diversified 😉) so that I'm not trading my time for money anymore. Increasing income by investi...