Aug 7, 2020 · 20m · top-founders
Param Solutions hits $35k MRR helping People Get Gov Developer Jobs
Anil Kasablada · 11m spoken Nathan Latka · 6m spoken Eric Yuan · 4s spoken Vivek Bhaskaran · 2s spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Nathan Latka interviews Anil Kasablada, co-founder of Param Solutions, to explore how his bootstrapped company scaled to nearly $40,000 in monthly revenue by providing flat-fee recruitment and cleared staffing for defense and government contractors.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 35.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 5.3 Guest teaching 3.5 Guest disagreement 3.7 Nathan pushing back 6.2
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 5:07 Anil defends fee structure against contingency recruiting
Anil forcefully rejects Nathan's framing that clients get burned on the monthly model, contrasting a three thousand dollar total fee against twenty thousand dollar contingency recruiter payouts.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 7:10 Nathan refuses sunk cost framing and demands competitor namesNathan cuts off Anil's attempt to use industry statistics, reasserting that client retainers are pure sunk cost and putting Anil on the spot to name competitors.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 11:36 Anil breaks down government systems integrator restrictionsAnil educates Nathan on why platforms like Toptal cannot operate in this niche due to federal security clearance, public trust, and US citizenship mandates.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 4:50 Nathan dismantles skin in the game assertionNathan demonstrates sharp commercial acumen by catching the loophole in Anil's pricing guarantee, pointing out that discounting future months does not refund already lost capital.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Show Hook and GetLatka Subscription Promotion | 4 | 1 | 2 | 5 | After an introductory ad read, Nathan challenges Anil immediately on whether his business is real SaaS or consulting, and pushes back on industry jargon by insisting Anil say jobs instead of requisitions. | |
| Debating Fixed Monthly Fees versus Contingency Recruiting Models | 6 | 3 | 5 | 8 | Nathan vigorously challenges Anil's claim that his subscription recruiting model puts skin in the game, pointing out that clients lose upfront monthly retainer fees if no hire is made, unlike traditional contingency recruiters. | |
| Democratizing Talent Acquisition and Human-Driven Sourcing | 7 | 3 | 5 | 8 | Nathan cuts off Anil's statistics to insist that upfront monthly fees remain sunk costs regardless of subsequent discounts. Nathan also catches Anil flat-footed when asking him to name direct competitors in the RPO space. | |
| Revenue Breakdown Across RaaS and Government Staffing Clients | 5 | 6 | 4 | 6 | Nathan drills down on the customer breakdown and questions why clients do not simply use Toptal. Anil schools Nathan on the structural requirements of government contracts requiring security clearances and US citizenship. | |
| Team Composition, 2019 Placements, and COVID-19 Resilience | 5 | 2 | 2 | 5 | Nathan audits team headcount and immediately pushes back when Anil classifies a graphic designer as an engineer, forcing Anil to concede they are UI designers rather than coders. | |
| Proprietary Cleared Talent Database and Bootstrapped Growth | 5 | 6 | 4 | 5 | When Nathan suggests freelance platforms can fill these engineering roles, Anil educates him on niche defense cybersecurity roles requiring clearance inside SCIFs and reveals their 400k candidate proprietary database. |
Statements from this episode (12)
Param Solutions charges flat-fee RaaS tiers between $3,000 and $10,000 monthly
“So how we've structured it, Nathan, is essentially it's per requisition cost, right? So the client depends on how many requisitions they have. It's a flat fee. They just pay us a thousand bucks for each requisition. Okay. But we sort of tear it out into three …”
Param Solutions charges $1,000 monthly per job requisition, guaranteeing three resumes
“If you give me 20 jobs, right, and I'm going to charge you a thousand dollars per job per month, again, and I'm going to promise you it's a SLA based requisition model, right? So typically what happens is, let's say you want to hire Five Oracle DBAs. Let's mak…”
Param discounts monthly fees by 10% for each month roles remain unfilled
“Now let's say if you don't hire you know, if I show you three candidates, right, you end up not hiring even a single candidate, right? So we start taking a hit on, on the SLA, right? So we give you a discount from thousand dollars. We drop it down 10% every mo…”
Param Solutions targets Washington D.C. companies hiring 5 to 15 people annually
“The sweet spot that we have right now in the DC market is companies that are, you know, typically hiring between anywhere from five folks to maybe 10 to 15 people, a full calendar year, right?”
Param Solutions serves 11 total clients, with 6 using its RaaS platform
“Right now we have 11 clients. Okay. And six of them are actually on the RAS platform on the recruiting as a service platform.”
Param's government contractor clients exclusively require cleared US citizens
“A lot of our clients are actually government systems integrators. Okay. That means we cannot have H one people. We can't have green card. We cannot have any of those labor categories. We only have to have us citizens. And citizens that are actually clear.”
Param Solutions breaks down its $37,000 monthly RaaS revenue across six customers
“So right now I have one customer is paying us three grand. I have six, four customers who are paying us six grand. One customer is paying us 10 grand.”
Param Solutions employs 17 people across India and the United States
“Okay, so we have six sorry, we have 17 folks. 10 are in India and five are in the US. And two other consultants.”
Param Solutions successfully placed candidates in 76 jobs during 2019
“In last year, we filled 76 jobs.”
Param Solutions worked on over 140 job requisitions during 2019
“Well, actually, Nathan, believe it or not, we worked on probably about 140 plus requisitions just in twenty-nineteen.”
Param Solutions holds a proprietary database of over 380,000 cleared candidates
“And we have grown our own proprietary database system over the past seven and a half, eight years. We have over 400,000 records in that system, right? Over 95% of the records that we have in our system actually have clearances, right?”