London, UK, 19th October 2023, ZEX MEDIA, Calyptus, the Web3 HR-tech startup, has announced their new product launch Q1 next year, a global talent marketplace for hiring verified software engineers fast.
To date, Calyptus has helped over 6,000+ senior software engineers boost their employability or find a new job at a Web3 company, for free.
While placing engineers at Web3 employers such as The Graph, Gelato Network and Request Finance, the team solved the time-to-hire problem by building a deep talent pool of specialised software engineers, placing candidates 74% faster than the industry average. The startup’s success led to cash flow positivity since August this year.
However, the startup’s significant user base expansion came with unanticipated challenges. 10-20% of new applicants to the Calyptus community were fake or suspicious and almost exclusively coming from Linkedin Zooming out, the team discovered recruitment fraud had reached $304bn globally since the world of work turned virtual.
When they found out that over 80% of their employer partners were also experiencing the same problem, including 3 partners that had previously hired software engineers that were fraudulent, the team decided to build V2, a new and improved solution to verify and place engineers quickly.
Using a combination of AI automation and blockchain technology, the startup believes they can not only combat the $304bn recruitment fraud problem but ultimately speed up the time-to-hire for candidates by 2x the industry average.
The startup plans to break the endless cycle of candidates having to constantly “prove themselves”, from technical assessments to background checks. Instead, Calyptus will verify the professional’s credentials upfront, one-time and put them securely on the blockchain. The more a candidate verifies themselves, the more they are recommended to employers.
Where verification is typically a hurdle for new user onboarding, the team has uniquely embedded AI recommendation engines and auto-fill technology every step of the user journey to help probabilistically populate information required by either candidate and employer.
To create the new platform, they’ve brought in Ross Kolodyazhnyi. As CTO, Ross had previously scaled the crypto bank & exchange, Wirex, from $0 to 600m in revenue and profitability. Having grown the tech team to 500+ employees, he understood the tech hiring problem inside out for scaling V2 of the product. One of his key initiatives will be the introduction of a B2B SaaS model so employers can make unlimited hires at very low cost.
Having already raised funds from angels at NEAR, Wintermute & MoonPay, the team will now be going out for venture capital funding to significantly scale the company’s sales efforts, marketing operations and expand their platform to all-tech hiring by Q4 2024.
Commenting on the launch is Dan Jones, CEO & Co-Founder at Calyptus:
“Having built up trust with the largest employers in Web3 from Gnosis to Optimism, we are now ready to offer the industry a truly-scalable platform that will drastically accelerate the time to placement between employer & candidate while being 2-10x cheaper than a traditional recruitment firm”
Commenting on the launch is Darren Thayre, Head of Innovation, Global Strategic Initiatives at Google:
“Following Calyptus’ progress from day 0 has been a pleasure to witness. Despite the odds of a volatile industry, they’ve traversed Web3 hiring diligently and managed to thrive…I can see their unique AI & blockchain approach for Calyptus V2 being game-changing for all tech hiring globally.”
