How to find & hire great remote freelancers

.. and hire them as full time employees

I just finished my onboarding week at OnDeck and am just astonished by how bad my fellow founders and friends in general are at hiring (this is not just me saying it, they say it themselves).

Hiring is obviously critical and I do not believe that you need to hire in person. From a cost perspective, hiring in San Francisco (or any tech hub for that matter) is a terrible idea. Instead, if done right, you can get a full time super talent, for $10k a year.

Here’s my view: there are thousands of extremely talented people in the world who just don’t have a US passport and are actually struggling to find a job just because they don’t have the network and because the place they live in relies mostly on diplomas to hire (can you feel the arbitrage opportunity?).

What would your company look like if you had a couple of incredible developers and designers who’d cost you less than your current intern?

In this guide, my goal is to share and distill the dozens of conversations I’ve had with friends and founders who asked me for advice on the matter so that you can utilize it too. Hiring super smart and cheap talent is both a vital need for your company, but also a real duty we owe to the giants who came before us and made it possible for less lucky people born in poorer countries to reach their full potential and earn a great salary for them and their family.

Here’s my approach to finding and hiring those people.