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Saalim Chowdhury, a man who\\u2019s out to build the future of online talent sourcing. Saalim was CTO at Skillbridge - a premium talent-sourcing company that was acquired last week by Toptal. Listen in to hear Nathan and Saalim talk about why Skillbridge was keen to be acquired, how the human cloud economy works for high-level talent, and why sometimes you just need to keep going.

Famous 5:

Favorite Book? \\u2013 The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? \\u2014 No
Favourite online tool? \\u2014Thingthing keyboard
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?\\u2014 No
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be?\\u2014 I wish I knew the value of persevering no matter what

Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:10 \\u2013 Nathan\\u2019s introduction
01:50 \\u2013 Welcoming Saalim to the show
02:00 \\u2013 Skillbridge is an online platform that brings management consultants to people who need them.
02:40 \\u2013 \\u201cHow do you make the human cloud economy work for people whose skills can\\u2019t be broken down into a 5-star rating?\\u201d
03:10 \\u2013 Skillbridge breaks down what a company needs people to do, and then connects them with the people who have those skills
03:35 \\u2013 Founded in 2013; went to market in 2014
04:30 \\u2013 Saalim was the second customer of Skillbridge and found the exact person he needed there
05:50 \\u2013 Skillbridge\\u2019s peak team size was 7 people
06:35 \\u2013 Makes money from a 20% flat fee charged to the buyer
07:55 \\u2013 Have been a total of 7.5k people listed; 1k people looking for skills
08:30 \\u2013 Raised an angel investment round
10:00 \\u2013 A typical project involve consulting, for example in the equity space - perhaps a week to 2 week project
11:00 \\u2013 Typical project size is $5k-10k
11:50 \\u2013 Deliberately high-quality, curated skills service
12:40 \\u2013 In March 2016 just under $500k of projects placed on the platform
13:55 \\u2013 Why sell the business?
14:15 \\u2013 \\u201cWe could either raise money and play catch-up, or we could sell to these guys and go in together\\u201d
15:10 \\u2013 \\u201cEverybody was very happy with the deal\\u201d
16:00 \\u2013 How is a business like Skillbridge valued?
18:02 \\u2013 \\u201cToptal are essentially building the future of on-demand talent\\u201d
18:20 \\u2013 Connect with Saalim on Linkedin or via email
20:00 \\u2013 The Famous Five

3 Key Points:
Sometimes it\\u2019s best to join the people ahead of you instead of trying to play catch-up
Persevere. Work through the hard times.
The human cloud economy is complex - the platforms that manage it and connect people need to be able to handle the complexity of people\\u2019s skills and histories.
Resources Mentioned:
Host Gator \\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Leadpages \\u2013 The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
Audible \\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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