With Nearly $1,000,000 In Funding, Robert Kowalski Is Transforming the Recruitment Process

Name: Robert Kowalski

Company: Gyfted

What are you building, and who benefits most from it?

It’s a next-gen recruiting assistant to help you hire easily for role and culture fit, especially if you’re a founder, team leader, or recruiter at a growth or mid-market tech company.

What is one of your startup’s most impressive accomplishments?

Counting from start to finish (contract signing), we hired a customer success manager for a high-growth startup in 12 days. That felt awesome, and they were delighted!

What has been the biggest challenge so far, and how did you overcome it?

B2B sales is a grind when you’re pre-seed although we sold a Fortune 1000 enterprise HQ team-wide deal in two months in December 2022, so I guess we’re not that bad after all. We focus on personas and intent/need that’s as close to urgency as possible—that always makes the sales cycle faster.

What tool or app could you not live without and why?

ClickUp—it makes life so easy and manageable for our remote team!

What marketing strategies have worked for you?

SEO is #1; we’re at 10,000 organic users/month.

Can you share any financial data about your startup?

We have 25 customers/pilots (not single end-users in companies but roll-outs with hiring taking place).
We’re reaching $1.5 million GMV less than 10 months after we started going to market.
We raised <$950,000 (Reported on March 14, 2023.)

What has been your biggest business failure to date? What did you learn from it?

Messaging is super important if you’re building a SaaS-enabled talent marketplace.

What’s the best specific piece of advice you have for other entrepreneurs?

Concentrate not just on product but also distribution and always focus on the team— delegate, do regular one-on-ones, and zero in on culture.

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