Tom Nguyen flew nine hours during the December holidays to our Markprompt HQ in San Francisco for a hiring trial. The next day (on Christmas Eve!), we made him an offer—and he signed!

We don’t hire fast, but when we do, it’s the kind of people we’d bet on a thousand times over. Watching them bring their A-game even before writing a single line of code only helps us build stronger conviction and excitement.

One thing we’ve learned over the years is that great talent rarely falls into your lap—you have to go out and find it. That’s why we spend a lot of time doing outbound, working in close collaboration with our incredible recruiting partners, Steph Stopani and Eric McLintock , to identify exceptional candidates and reach out directly. In Tom’s case, I proactively messaged him through Y Combinator Work at a Startup (we’re part of the W24 batch).

This hiring playbook was a decade in the making. At my previous venture, we scaled our team to 50+ ML researchers and engineers, working on complex, privacy-respecting voice AI, which ultimately led to an acquisition by Sonos. From day one, hiring was our top priority—and one of our greatest challenges. While technical excellence is table stakes, what’s truly difficult is finding people with agency and grit, who ship fast, and thrive in the trenches, solving customer problems day in and day out.

This experience shaped how we hire at Markprompt today. So now, when we spot great talent, we go all in. We fly them down to our HQ, where we have space for visiting engineers. These in-person days give us a window into their mental models and whether we share the same work ethic, customer empathy, and striving for excellence.

Here is a picture taken on December 23rd during Tom’s trial, hacking with our Founding Engineer Elliot Dauber on a very exciting new Grafana integration!