Salim Chowdhury

Senior Advisor, ETFuels · 1 appearance on the record.

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Saalim Chowdhury is the co-founder and former CTO of SkillBridge, an elite freelance talent marketplace acquired by Toptal. He later served as Managing Director of Techstars London and Partner at 500 Startups, and previously worked at ScanSafe prior to its Cisco acquisition.

11statements → 6claims → 1claims resolved → 3.73/5average certainty → 1.36/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

6 assertions · 2 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Salim argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
PwC and Deloitte entered the freelance consulting space by 2016
“PwC have just entered the space. Deloitte have an entry in the space.”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 14:02 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Salim Chowdhury on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Salim Chowdhury said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Chowdhury argues modern consulting firms should be built as digital platforms
“If you were to build either of those businesses today, you'd probably not build them with fancy offices and sort of, ah, you know, rainmaker partners. You'd probably build them as a platform. And in many ways, that's what I think TopTel are doing. They are bas…”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 17:43 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?
Insight
Chowdhury says five-star rating systems fail for elite management consultants
“Management consultants can't really be ranked on a five-star rating. Have you ever met a Harvard business school grad that would generally think, yeah, five stars. That's how I'd rate my work. Does not work in the slightest.”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 2:17 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chowdhury notes that Toptal accepts only 3% of developer applicants
“Literally, they only have, they genuinely only take the three percent of people that apply for them for their developer, for developers.”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 12:00 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?
Disclosure
SkillBridge charged a flat 20% take rate on all consulting work
“We basically took a 20% flat fee on any on, on any work that was conducted through the platform.”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 6:37 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
SkillBridge had roughly 1,000 clients place projects on its platform
“On, in total, I think there's been just about a, there were about a thousand or so thousands of people who've, who've placed projects on the platform.”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 8:01 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?
Disclosure
SkillBridge raised less than $2M prior to its acquisition
“It's less than, it's less than two million.”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 9:37 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
SkillBridge reached nearly $500,000 in posted projects in March 2016
“If I remember correctly, there were roughly I think just under half a million dollars of projects posted on the platform.”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 13:23 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?
Assertion Supported
PwC and Deloitte entered the freelance consulting space by 2016
“PwC have just entered the space. Deloitte have an entry in the space.”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 14:02 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?
Disclosure
SkillBridge reached a peak team size of just seven employees
“So we, the company had a peak team size of seven.”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 5:47 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
SkillBridge consultant pay rates ranged from $100 to $250 per hour
“Pay rates can be anywhere between a hundred to 250 dollars an hour, depending on the seniority.”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 10:34 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
SkillBridge average project sizes ranged from $5,000 to $10,000
“I'd say it's sort of the average project size is roughly two K five to 10,000 dollars.”
Salim Chowdhury Jun 23, 2016 ▶ 10:50 EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why?

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
EP 314: He Just Sold His Company SkillBridge.co, But Why? Jun 23, 2016 12m
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