ABOUT

Drillbit is an AI startup automating office work for home service providers. When Drillbit connected with us, they were a small team of 2 - Alex, the founder, and a single engineer.

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CHALLENGE

Fresh out of YC and with a new seed round, Drillbit needed engineers to meet customer demand

Drillbit's journey took a major leap forward when Alex closed a $3.6M seed round following his time in Y Combinator. Customer interest quickly followed, bringing in their first paying clients and pushing the company toward profitability faster than expected. This success created urgency - they needed technical talent to build out their product and serve their growing customer base.

Like many founders, Alex initially tried working with a traditional recruiting firm. The results were disappointing: the top of funnel was smaller than they needed and Alex found himself lowering the bar just to schedule a few interviews.

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SOLUTION

Our founder-focused process delivered the right candidates in days - not months.

Through a referral from another founder, Alex discovered Candor. With plans to scale the team from 2 to 8 within 9 months, he wanted a recruiting partner who could deliver quality candidates quickly. Our first step was getting crystal clear on Drillbit's needs. Alex and our team developed a profile of their ideal founding engineer:

• Someone genuinely excited about Drillbit's mission to help home service providers
• Experience in early-stage environments (ideally as a founder or founding engineer)
• Technical skills to build and scale customer-facing systems
• Knowledge of modern AI and LLM technologies
• The startup mindset - ready to tackle whatever challenges arose

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Within 24 hours, we began Drillbit’s search, using both our existing community of talented engineers and our email outbound process. We sent Alex his first introduction in just four days, and within 1 week Alex was managing a pipeline of qualified engineers.

The engineers we sent to Alex weren’t just technically qualified. They had the right qualities specifically for Drillbit: they'd built first versions of products as engineer #1, had experience building with LLMs, and deeply resonated with Drillbit's mission.

As a result, they were open to a conversation despite crushing it in their current roles.

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RESULTS

From kickoff to meeting the right candidate in 2 weeks.

Over the course of our search, we introduced Alex to 24 qualified candidates. Each of them went through a meticulous vetting process: initial conversation with Alex → technical assessment with an existing engineer → take-home project → meeting with an investor → final offer.

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Within 2 weeks, we introduced Alex to the candidate he made an offer to — Russ Wirtz. After a week of conversations and a lengthy take home assessment, Alex felt super confident in making an offer to Russ. Russ started getting his hands dirty immediately, working nights and weekends as soon as he accepted Drillbit’s offer  — getting both sides pumped for Russ to join full-time.

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"Working with recruiters can often be difficult as an early-stage founder. So few really understand the unique needs of a startup and require too much handholding. Working with Kelsey (Candor’s founder) has been extremely refreshing - she’s in my same boat and gets it. She gets her work done efficiently and has a unique ability to turn very vague requirements into a game plan."

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Drillbit’s newest hire has been pushing PRs since day 1

Russ, Drillbit’s new founding engineer, is - for lack of better words - a total beast:

• He brings 20 years of experience, including from a telecommunications startup (later acquired by Twilio) and CoinMe in the crypto space, followed by a role at Ninja Trader
• He’s a full-stack developer with a backend focus, comfortable in Java, Scala, Flutter, Dart, and Python.
• At CoinMe, he worked with a small team to rebuild an app from scratch using Kubernetes and CQRS, then carefully migrated customers to the new system.
• Outside of work, he’s experimenting with a side project: a local AI chatbot based on the LLaMA model, integrated with Minecraft as an open-source contribution

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“Working with Candor was a fantastic experience. They took the time to truly understand my priorities and connected me with multiple opportunities that aligned with my career goals. Kelsey’s candid feedback on my introduction was invaluable, and her responsiveness was a huge plus throughout the process. The team truly went above and beyond, ensuring I landed in a role where I’d be both challenged and happy. I’m grateful for their support and can’t recommend them enough.”

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