Founders Interviews: Valerio Rossi of Workfully
Our Founders Interview this month is with one of Workfully’s co-founders, Valerio Rossi.
Workfully is a revolutionary online marketplace that connects companies with top freelance recruiters, empowering innovation-led companies to hire and upskill talent anywhere in the world.
First, can you tell us about your professional background and the path that led you to Workfully?
We started an NGO back in Italy about 10 years ago, and what we would do in a suburban area of Rome — it was a pretty bad neighborhood — we would take European money and do training courses for young people that were unemployed and then we would try to place them into local businesses. We grew that to 200 volunteers, and it worked pretty well. It gave us a sense of fulfillment. After that, we realized that we did have to make some money in life, so I came to Barcelona and became a recruiter. I then became a Talent Acquisition Manager for Technology in several startups until my last job in Chicago as a Director of Talent Acquisition for a Series B startup. My co-founder went on to work at Google in Dublin, in Enterprise sales. We always knew we would start something together, because we knew the feeling of starting something from our joint experience at the NGO. Anyways, at my previous job, I was hiring from 40 countries, and I couldn’t find a recruiting partner who would help me in all these countries. So, we saw the opportunity in this market and decided, let’s start.
When you decided to kick start this process, how was Workfully born?
It was probably during the pandemic. I was working In Atlas in Chicago, which by the way is a competitor to Remote. The company had just raised 200 million and was growing super fast, adding a bunch of people. All our customers would ask for recruiting services in multiple countries and with an agency model you just can do that, right? Everybody was saying it was a bad idea to start a company after the pandemic, but I just couldn’t wait any longer. So, I went to the CEO of the company and I told him about it. I told them to fire me so I could get the severance money and unemployment benefits, and here in Spain you can capitalize that money, meaning they give it to you all together if you need to start a company. So essentially, I got fired, got the money, and started the company.
That’s very nice of him, isn’t it?
Yeah! He’s a great guy. Today he’s an advisor of Workfully and also a customer. We continue to do good business together to this day.
How is your product different from others in the market? What makes it unique?
I think one of the most important things to understand is that 8 out of 10 companies, at some point in their life, need to work with recruiting agencies, and 8 out of 10 companies hate recruiting agencies. That’s clearly an opportunity. The reason why they hate them is because there is zero transparency of what you’re buying. It’s in the air whether you’re going to get the results and whether you’re going to get them on time and on budget. If you’re working in different countries or in different verticals, you need multiple agencies and therefore multiple bad experiences. How Workfully is different is that essentially for the customer it’s a completely digital experience that is 100% transparent, so they can pick recruiters that have the right background, go through the talent these recruiters already have on Workfully, and also the feedback of other customers. You know exactly what you’re buying, the results you’re going to get, when you’re going to get them, and the experience is much more pleasant also because being fully digital we can seamlessly integrate into a company’s system.
Nowadays, modern companies often need to hire in multiple countries. Imagine a company raises 20 million and needs to hire in five different countries, traditionally they would manage five different recruiting agencies outside their systems. With Workfully, you have just one partner with vertical specialization in any country, any technology, any field. That has been game-changing for most of our clients.
Do you have any tips or advice for someone who’s just getting started on their entrepreneurial journey?
You’ve got to pick something you’re really passionate about because it’s going to be much harder than you think. If you’re not passionate about it, it’s going to be essentially impossible to make it happen. Also, I would say that you should really work on your network early on in your career because it is going to make the difference in the early days of your company — whether you’re going to be alive or you’re going to die.
Do you care to elaborate a bit on that second point?
I mean if you’re a B2B business, at the end of the day at the very beginning your first 10 customers are going to be people you source through your network. At the very beginning, you’re going to be selling something that is awful, that is not working properly, and you don’t really know what you’re doing. You’ll be trying things out and having that network to rely on is super important. At the end of the day, the early days of a B2B business are really about your network and your ability to expand that network. If I had known that earlier, I would have taken care of building my network and keeping relationships going from much earlier on. So, if you’re thinking of starting a company at some point, but you’re not ready just yet, start working on your relationships and on your network today.
What can we expect from Workfully now that you have raised a €1.2M seed round?
What we have done already is we built a sales team with three people, we have four engineers in our engineering team, and we’re now hiring for a couple of more positions. I would say that the main focus now is to go from founder-led sales to a more repeatable sales approach. So just circling back to my point, it is super difficult going from founder-led sales to team-led sales, because you have many more moving pieces. However, what you get out of it when it works is that you have a repeatable system. Then you just put the gas in, and they produce more revenue. So, we are very focused on that. On the product side, we are relaunching a new version of our core product at the end of February, which is something we’re really excited about. By the end of the year, we think we’re going to have something that is much stickier and that adds much more value to the talent acquisition process, both for companies and for recruiters.
Lastly, what has been the most challenging part of growing your business? And the most fun part?
The most challenging part is that there’s really no one that knows exactly what you need to do, and you don’t know either, because you’ve never done it. There is a constant search for product market fit and that requires a strong mindset, touching many doors, many channels, and figuring out what works. That’s the hardest part. So you need to have enough resilience and peace of mind to constantly be in that strong mindset. Even if it takes getting hit in the face 10 times a day, you’ll eventually get that yes that you’re looking for. You’re going to finally find that thing that works which is going to be just a little step on your path to finding product market fit. In my opinion, finding the resilience within you to go through that struggle is the hardest part.
The most fun part has to be looking back and seeing all the steps that you already accomplished. The collection of things that went really well and brought you to where you are. You have to remember to have fun because you’re constantly in that mindset, which can sometimes be frustrating and very hard on your both your mental and physical health. So, take a moment to step back and remember to have fun with your team, with your co-founder, with the people you have them board, that’s just as important.
