How She Scaled Howdy From $400 Left to $50M in Recurring Revenue | Entrepreneurship | How We Profit | E11
episode
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha: Entrepreneurship and Self-Improvement Podcast
57 min
1 speaker
6 chapters
transcribed
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What is Howdy and how does its business model generate recurring revenue?
People were just like leapfrogging from like job to job to job to job. And I was like, this is so insane. Like this is such like a dumb problem for startups to have. I mean, imagine you raised $2 million and you can't hire people. How is that possible? So I was like, this is a dumb problem to have. There's smart people all over the world. Why isn't there a solution? And there was, there was tons of solutions, but it was overseas.
Jacqueline Samira is the founder of Howdy, a company helping US businesses build teams across Latin America. Today, we're breaking down how Howdy actually makes money, what global talent really costs. We
have a
15% margin on everything we do. How much money did you end up raising in total? We raised $21 million. Looking back, do you feel like you raised too much money? I
would say if you have the ability to not fundraise, it's always better because one of the
things that I see you do is billboards, which is really unique. The billboards are like
a month. Oh, wow. For one. Really? That expensive? Yes. We were thinking if we could create this unique algorithm, this company is going to have this type of grading based on the type of employees that they want. And then people are going to have this grading based on the type of employee they are. And we both realized, we're like, well, you're not an ML expert and I'm not a psychologist. So our very first recruiter we hired was actually a psychologist. Because especially when you go through the vetting process, you are clearly smart. You clearly know what you're talking about. So failure only happens when there's an
Jacqueline, welcome to How We Profit.
Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Me too. I was seriously looking forward to this conversation. So we're actually friends. We're in an entrepreneurship peer group. You're somebody who I really look up to. You're one of the smartest women that I know. And when I started this series, I told you about it right away because I was like, you need to be on How We Profit because Yap Bam, she is such a badass. She has grown a company to $30 million in annual rent, probably more now. $50 million. $50 million in ARR. Like, oh my God, like that is absolutely incredible. And so the company is called Howdy. You're like kind of famous in Austin. Everybody knows you in Austin. But for those of us all around the world tuning in, what is Howdy exactly? So
we are a company that builds software development teams in Latin America. So we have 11 offices throughout Latin America, from Mexico all the way down to Argentina. And we like to think of them as co-working spaces where we build teams for US tech companies.
Really cool. So an enterprise company contacts you because they want like more IT folks on their team. You stand up like a literal team for them in Latin America. Yes. So we stand
up. It can be as small as a small startup saying I need one person to a big enterprise company that's like I need a team of 50 or I need a team of 100. And we can service them in any of the locations that we're at or we can even open up a new location depending on the size and volume.
Very cool. So would you consider your company like a recruitment company or a workforce management company? Like what do you consider it?
I consider us full stack. We do everything. So
to some
people, we are recruiting, we're office space, we're logistics, we're HR. We do it all end to end. A lot of times though, when people come to us, they have a problem with one of the things.
So they have a
problem. Maybe they set up an office in Columbia, but they can't find the talent that they thought that they could get. Or maybe they just don't even know where to start. So we are a one-stop shop for everyone. And how we help people, it just depends on usually what their pain point is.
Okay. So... I know you're so smart. So you're probably like, you've got different product offerings in your business. So like walk us through that in the simplest way that you can. Like what are the different offers that you have?
Actually, funny enough, we don't have different offerings.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is Howdy and how does its business model generate recurring revenue?
0:00–11:16
2
How does Howdy’s core financial model work and what margins does it achieve?
11:16–22:04
3
How did Jacqueline survive the COVID‑19 shutdown with only $400 left?
22:04–32:44
4
Why did Howdy raise venture capital after reaching $3 M ARR and how was it used?
32:44–44:02
5
Who are Howdy’s ideal customers and what high‑touch marketing tactics attract them?
44:02–54:45
6
How does Howdy ensure client retention, generate referrals, and expand accounts?
54:45–57:40
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha: Entrepreneurship and Self-Improvement Podcast
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