Sleeping in Parking Lots to $250M+ Revenue: How Handshake Built Gen Z's Career Platform, Inside its Fast Growing AI Data Labeling Business, Scaling a Three-Sided Marketplace, How AI Changes Hiring

Garrett Lord is the Co-founder and CEO of Handshake, the career and social network for Gen Z, connecting a million employers, 1,600 universities, and 18 million students and alumni.

We talk through the explosive growth in Handshake’s human AI data labeling business, how AI is changing the job market and careers, advice for scaling a three-sided marketplace, and Garrett’s approach to hiring executive-level talent.

We also get into the early days of Handshake, tapping out his dad’s retirement account to fund the first years, driving across the US landing the first customers, sleeping in McDonald’s parking lots, sneaking into careers fairs, and inside Handshake’s first fundraise that took over seven months.

Shoutout to Jeff Richards, James Alcorn, Ilir Sela, and Ben Christensen for helping brainstorm topics for Garrett.

Thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Get your $250 here.

Timestamps:

(3:44) More Gen Z than LinkedIn

(7:11) Helping frontier labs label AI data

(14:43) Masters and PhD students flock to Handshake

(16:52) Why Handshake will win in AI data labeling

(19:24) Growing to $250m+ Revenue

(21:56) KPIs in recruiting marketplace

(24:45) How AI will change careers

(33:57) How to build a Seal Team Six AI team

(37:06) Interning at Los Alamos

(40:00) Breaking into Silicon Valley from Michigan

(44:19) Helping friends get jobs at Palantir

(48:13) Driving across the US sleeping in McDonald’s parking lots

(54:52) Funding early days with his dad’s retirement account

(57:37) Handwriting letters to get the first six customers

(1:03:06) Early product failures and iterations

(1:11:01) Fundraising, crashing on couches for seven months

(1:17:07) Finally closing a Seed round

(1:20:05) Moving from Michigan to SF with no money

(1:23:38) Importance of sequencing new features

(1:29:10) Handshake’s exec recruiting process

(1:32:01) Building a company with your best friends

Referenced

Try Handshake

Careers at Handshake

Gumloop

Peter Thiel Startup School

Paul Graham’s blog

Follow Garrett

Twitter

LinkedIn

Follow Turner

Twitter

LinkedIn

Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.