FINDING FRANCO
Our Story
Discover how Near's story began and continues to evolve as we grow and redefine the future of recruiting and remote hiring.
Back in 2020, I started a venture studio with Michael Girdley. I’d previously worked for him as an Associate, and we decided it would be a fun project to build a venture studio together. Just a few months later, we'd see the beginnings of the best hiring platform for LatAm talent.
The idea behind our studio was simple: experiment and identify exciting opportunities that we could quickly turn into remote, internet-native businesses. One example was an acquisition strategy for old PC video games. The plan was to find old PC games on Steam that had small, but dedicated, audiences. We'd purchase the rights and create new multiplayer experiences under a subscription model.
We were really excited about video games and wanted to make more progress. We had some other experiments going at the same time. Naturally, it was time to bring another team member on board.
We started the search and received over 250 applications! Ex-investment bankers, VCs, MBA grads, startup employees. We were flooded with some solid resumes.
But one stood out in particular.
It was from a guy named Franco. He lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina and was working as a financial analyst at a Brazilian ecom startup. Franco was desperate to get into the world of entrepreneurship.
We had a few interviews, shared some laughs, and most importantly shared the same vision for the studio. We took a chance on Franco and gave him an offer to join the team.
His first task? "Figure out how we can pay you." Turns out it was a bit more complicated than we thought. After a few weeks, Franco managed to figure it out --we even paid him in bitcoin in the meantime!
We gave our new teammate a shoutout on Twitter. What happened next? Requests pouring into our DMs asking: "How can I hire a Franco?"
We helped out a few companies for free. Then a few more. And then it was too much. We had the "aha" moment that every entrepreneur has when they land on a new business opportunity.
We were spending more time helping companies find remote LatAm talent than we were on our other projects.
We didn't want to build just another recruitment agency. We set out to create a scalable business with a modern tech stack. We initially focused on building a platform to hire financial analysts from Argentina.
Then... our lucky break. Franco recruited over 2000 candidates over a single weekend with a viral thread on Twitter.
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It was time to go 100% in on Near. We spun up a job board overnight in May 2020 and the rest is history.
Since then, our business model has evolved to become a holistic solution. We are a full-service partner to streamline talent acquisition, hiring, onboarding, payroll, retention, and compliance.
We've helped startups, public companies, large enterprises, agencies, law firms, VCs, and more hire hundreds of incredible candidates from Latin America for remote roles.
At Near, we help companies hire the best, pre-vetted, highly-skilled talent from Latin America in under 21 days.
We’ve helped developers, marketers, salespeople, financial analysts, accountants, ops leaders, and more land incredible remote jobs at US companies.
Interested in hiring remotely?
Scale your team faster
We source top remote talent that are the right fit for your open roles in under 21 days. We boast a 97% placement rate across all positions.
Achieve rapid and sustainable growth
Hiring highly-skilled nearshore talent unlocks cost savings of 30%-70% compared to comparable US-based professionals.
Gain a competitive advantage
Harness untapped talent pools to hire top performers, a growth lever your competitors are yet to utilize.
Reduce turnover
Our rigorous pre-screening ensures we present only motivated candidates aligned with your culture and professional needs, boosting employee retention.
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Hayden Cohen
Co-Founder of Near
What Leading Enterprises Say About Near
Near was a great extension of our internal recruiting team—efficient, communicative, and delivered top-tier candidates quickly.
Near was a game-changer for our business hiring strategy. We reduced our burn rate and quadrupled our team skill level with marketing talent from LatAm.
Near’s team gave us confidence that we’d hire great talent quickly. They did a deep dive into our requirements, asked the right questions, and communicated our needs and goals back to us. They advised us on compensation, different talent markets, and our hiring process.
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The experience was nothing short of exceptional. From start to finish, the entire process was remarkably smooth, and the team at Near played a pivotal role in making our hiring journey a success.
The time savings and quality of candidates have been outstanding. Communication was also seamless, making it easy to work with Near.
It really just felt like Near was embedded in our team. It felt like we’d hired an in-house recruiter. This made my job really easy.
Working with Near has been very helpful. It’s difficult when you’re one person doing all the initial screenings and sourcing. Near took a lot of that “workout” for me and provided great candidates quickly.
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Near takes care of the entire hiring process for us. All we have to do is interview the best 3 candidates and decide.
Partnering with Near has been a major win. The speed, the talent pool, and the overall quality have not only met but actually raised our hiring expectations.
We were pleasantly surprised with all the candidates we interviewed, especially about how well-rounded they were and how much experience they had. We were blown away by the talent that existed that we just kind of weren't aware of.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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