Windley's recruiting business lost 75% of revenue at COVID-19 onset
David Windley · He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M · Nov 25, 2025 · at 2:06
David Windley discusses the immediate financial shock and staffing response at his executive recruiting firm when the COVID-19 pandemic started.
0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.3s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We dropped. 75% of the business. I put people on furlough, which was ended up being a good move instead of laying them off completely.”
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 David Windley
Windley: Internal Executive Recruiting Teams Are More Efficient Than External Search
“All my tech companies that I worked for, we hired internal staff, even at executive recruiting, because it was just a more efficient, better model”
Windley: AI sourcing will eventually match or exceed human recruiting quality
“As AI gets better and better I think there will be a time where you can say that AI will be as good and maybe even better in quality.”
Windley: Traditional search firms charge a 33.3% fee per search
“And what you've pointed out is my theory of why there hasn't been as much change in this industry as in others, because it's such a good model for the hydrogen struggles, for the corn fairies, charging 33 and a third percent. Per search, right?”
Windley: Building a software startup inside a services firm drains P&L
“Because we were investing in a software startup within a. Professional services company, and it's a drain on the P and L right.”
Windley: Human-in-the-loop is the optimal AI agent architecture today
“We've designed our application to make sure the human is still in the loop, so the recruiter or the user, because of, for qualitative checks, right, and judgment calls, we believe that's the best state of design for AI applications and AI agents today”