Workable could not have hired its first 20 engineers in SF
Nikos Moraitakis · 20 VC FF 024: Raising $33m in VC Funding with Nikos Moraitakis, Founder & CEO @ Workable · Nov 27, 2015 · at 9:48
Nikos Moraitakis is the founder and CEO of Workable. He reflects on how starting in Greece enabled Workable to attract tier-one engineering talent who otherwise would have joined big tech firms in Silicon Valley.
0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 14.0s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“It, it's more the fact that the kind of people that came to join Workable in the beginning, you know, our first 20 engineers, We're the kind of engineers that would probably be working at Facebook or Google if we were in in San Francisco. We wouldn't be able to hire them.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Nikos Moraitakis
Pitch decks are bullshit compared to long-term investor relationships
“People talk about pitches and decks, that's bullshit. You know. The whole thing, it's about the relationship. You know, people, nobody's going to write you a twenty million dollar check if they haven't known you for a while, observed the way you execute, seein…”
Greece is not the place to build consumer tech hits
“Also we were starting in Greece, so, you know, this is not the place to start the new consumer big hit that is going to become fashionable in San Francisco.”
Enterprise software companies selling to Fortune 500 become sales organizations
“We didn't want a company that is going to sell to the fortune 500 companies because these companies tend to be sales organizations in the end.”
Peripheral markets give tech founders a massive hiring advantage
“And the huge advantage when you are in a peripheral market like Greece is that if you have a network there and some reputation you probably have a huge advantage in in hiring. You know, hiring engineers in Greece, there's plenty of them. They're really good. T…”