Redstring

Redstring didn't begin with a breakthrough idea. It began after my first startup failed.

Like many first-time founders, I walked away with more questions than answers. Around that time, I was selected as one of the top 30 founders from nearly 1,000 applicants for 18Startup, an entrepreneurial program at Build3, a venture accelerator. It became the first environment where I was constantly surrounded by founders who were building real companies and facing real problems.

One afternoon, my first co-founder and I were sitting in a coffee shop inside the accelerator, asking ourselves a simple question:

If we were to build another company, what problem is right in front of us?

Almost every startup around us was trying to hire.

Founders weren't complaining about fundraising or product development nearly as much as they were talking about finding the right people. Every conversation somehow circled back to hiring. Some couldn't find engineers. Others struggled to convince candidates to join an early-stage company. Many simply didn't know where to look.

Instead of jumping into building a product, we decided to spend time understanding the problem.

Over the next two months, we spoke with nearly 200 founders. We travelled, met startup teams, interviewed recruiters, and spent countless hours listening instead of pitching. We weren't trying to validate an idea—we were trying to understand why hiring remained one of the biggest bottlenecks for startups despite the number of platforms already available.

A pattern slowly emerged.

The problem wasn't a shortage of talented people.

The problem was visibility.

Founders couldn't reach ambitious people early enough, and ambitious people had almost no way of discovering high-growth startups before they became well known. Existing platforms were built for established companies with established brands. Early-stage startups were almost invisible.

That insight became the first version of Redstring.