E47: Bootstrapping for Life - Recruit CRM is here to stay

Cache Flow

Join us as we explore the incredible journey of Recruit CRM, a company that successfully built recruitment CRM software for India's steep job market. We learn how they pivoted from providing recruiting to companies needing delivery drivers to creating a CRM for staffing firms. Despite initial skepticism, they achieved exponential growth without raising any venture capital or debt, and overcame challenges through a winning team and focused financial metrics.

Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.

• They began with a different product called My Stuff, targeting large logistics and delivery companies.
• After realizing it wasn't working, they pivoted to focus on staffing software for staffing firms.
• Staffing firms in India typically employ less skilled recruiters who handle low-level positions, making it difficult for them to implement software solutions without management support.
• Making the decision to focus on Recruit CRM as the last company they will ever start.
• Go-to-market teams should be available in the language that customers need.
• Managers are essential for team growth and development.

Resources:

• Recruit CRM
• Curotec

Connect with Shoanak Mallapurkar:

• LinkedIn

Connect with our host, Brian Dainis:

• Linktree

Quotables:

• 24:46 - This is the last company that I'm ever gonna do. I'm pretty clear I want to keep growing this till the day I die. Now we might do more products and we might buy companies at some point and we might do more than staffing and recruitment in eight years or 10 years or 15 years or whatever. But this is, I'm never going to start something from zero again. I'm never gonna sell this.
• 48:23 - You need to have more money in your bank, like the number in your bank account when you refresh the app on the first of every month needs to be more than it was the first of last month. Like that's the most core KPI we have. Which it is. Our bank balance has gone up every single month since we've been in existence.
• 31:11- So you're not telling someone to get the job done. You're telling someone what KPIs they need to do and then they get the job done through a bunch of other people. And the moment you can get to that stage, the leverage increases exponentially. 'cause the moment you're a manager or managers, you can be, you can have multiple, you can add as many layers as you want, as long as you've set up the company the right way.
• 42:44 - See most other companies cannot do this 'cause it's too much of a time investment. Like, it's just too much time. Like this, this stuff takes like, like the first year we did this, we literally spent over 50% of every single person's time in the company doing either hiring or training kids. 'cause like kids need a lot of attention. And you can only do this if like, I'm gonna run this company till I die. Right? So I'm looking at this from like a 50 year horizon
• 5:55 - I love when people build businesses that scratch their own itch as opposed to like, you know, in the tech world there's so many tech people that just go in and build companies and niches they know nothing about just 'cause they think it's a cool niche and there's money there. I think the most successful companies are companies that the founders understood a specific market wedge or a pain point and went into a market very intentionally because they understood the market.