Gino Ferrand Podcast Transcript
Gino Ferrand joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast.
Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Gino Ferrand. Gino Ferrand is the founder of TECLA, an AI driven talent matching platform connecting top developers across the Americas with US companies. Over the past 12 years, he’s helped businesses worth over 10 billion in aggregate scale. Their engineering teams globally a hands-on leader who still codes.
He brings deep expertise in both technology and cross-border business. Having immigrated to the US at 12, his experience of starting over instilled a relentless drive and sharp instincts, qualities that continue to fuel his mission to unlock global talent and create opportunities that transcend borders.
Well, good afternoon, Gino. Welcome to the show.
Gino Ferrand: Thanks for having me.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. You hailing in the same time zone today? Austin, Texas. I’m in Kansas City, so do appreciate that. Normally I’m traversing somewhere in the country or around the globe, but thank you again. And Gino, jumping into your first question, you’ve described yourself as a founder who still codes, how has staying hands-on with tech shaped the evolution of TECLAs AI driven talent matching platform?
Gino Ferrand: Yeah, I mean it’s, you know, when I started the company, I, I didn’t, uh, go to school for computer science or, you know, learn programming sort of the traditional way. And getting into this business, I, I definitely immediately realized that it was super important to know how everything works. And yeah, then I started teaching myself how to code.
And I still am hands on and work with our technology team on our platform and, and new features and stuff like that. I’m not. Coding anymore, like week to week. But it definitely made a huge, huge difference. And I think that our clients also really appreciate being able to talk to, to technical people and, and most of our team is technical.
I mean, the recruiters and everyone really has that background. So yeah, I think it made a, a big difference.
Brian Thomas: Thank you and I started out as a developer as well, Gino, so I can relay a little bit here. But staying kind of in the trenches keeps you sharp on your skills, but also having that other foot on the other side of the business so you can understand customers and, and their requirements to be able to speak to them in more of a business type of way has been very helpful.
So I appreciate that Gino. TECLA is built on the belief that talent is everywhere. What inspired you to bridge US companies with developers across Latin America? And what gaps did you notice early on that others may have missed?
Gino Ferrand: Yeah, I, I moved back. I’m originally from Lima, from Peru, and, and I’ve been in the, in the states since I was 12, so I’ve been here for more the, actually, yeah, the vast majority of my life now.
And I moved back to Peru in 2013, and that’s when TECLA sort of got started and just realized that, I mean, at that point, of course, it, it was. Really a, a super interesting time for hiring developers, right? I think it was like the, the apex of you couldn’t find a developer if you were starting a, a tech company.
And, and, and hiring was super difficult. And of course, still finding very talented, very senior engineers is, is always something that is important for companies and top priority. But back in the day when, when things got started, just realized that with the language. And the time zone in, in Latin America being, you know, very similar to the US a lot of the companies that we were working with early on were just getting really, really great results.
And, and even before starting TECLA, you know, I always worked on. Entrepreneurial projects where I would have team members all over the world, not just Latin America, but you know, Eastern Europe and and India. And I just always got great results. And obviously when you’re focusing on being lean and, and staying profitable and bootstrapping, it really makes a huge difference up, you know, to the point that you’re able to then maybe diversify some of your hiring and, and of course.
Most of our clients have team members in the US and they also leverage our team members in, in Latin America. So yeah, I mean, really noticed that early on. I mean, especially, you know, working back in the day it was, it was a lot tougher of course, to, to work remotely. I mean, even the internet was, was so much slower.
But now, you know, with infrastructure being everywhere, it’s every single day. It just gets easier and easier to work remotely, especially for these engineering roles, which is mostly what we look at.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And sharing the story. Obviously from Peru originally moving to the States and then back and back to the States, it was helpful.
Obviously you saw some areas where there were some opportunities to develop this and of course Latin America being near shore as they call it, is very helpful for being in the same time zone, but also there’s some value there. Obviously there’s some great talent in Latin America to help augment teams that are in the us.
And again, it is a global economy now because of the way the infrastructure and internet is interconnected around the globe, so I appreciate that. Gina AI is central to TECLAs platform. How do you use artificial intelligence to go beyond traditional staffing and make smarter, faster, and more human centric talent matches?
Gino Ferrand: Yeah, so we, you know, early on we developed a platform that helped us. I mean, we’re a tech enabled company. We’re not, you know, a self-serve platform where clients come in and they can just look through a database of candidates. I mean, this is a sort of a white glove managed service that we offer, but early on we knew that it was really important to develop a platform where we could make things a lot easier.
For both sides of the companies that we’re working with that are hiring, but also candidates. And today we have over 50,000 registered users on our platform and, and most of them are engineers. I mean, we have, of course, you know, data scientists. I mean, many different profiles in software development. So not just programmers, but definitely the majority are in the software development.
Field. And so, you know, when we started getting thousands and thousands of users, it became super important to leverage AI to be able to make connections much faster, to be able to really match companies with the right candidates and be able to just, you know, look through so much more data quickly. And of course.
I mean, most of the reason why companies come to us is of course, you know, they wanna hire in Latin America and the time zones, the, the communication barriers being lower, like I mentioned, but also because they’re looking to hire fast. And you know, sometimes a hiring process can take 4, 6, 8, 10 weeks. You know, we’re talking about three months to get someone in the door.
And yeah, we just really realized that with ai we’re able to, you know, present candidates in a matter of days. Most of our clients are interviewing candidates. Within three days, and we wouldn’t be able to do that without Yeah, leveraging definitely APIs and, and our own automation and ai, but also of course, everything that open AI and, and all of the big companies are doing and, and building.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Gosh, it’s just been an explosion, proliferation, as I call it, of AI. But I like the fact that you did have that vision though. You were forward thinking on making the platform better, more efficient, that better customer experience, both on the candidate side, but also on the company side.
Leveraging AI to match the best talent with specific company requirements is hard to do when you have that many users on your system. You know, you mentioned 50,000, but having that faster turnaround to present candidates within days versus months was a game changer, I’m sure. So I appreciate your share on this.
Gino. Looking ahead, what’s next for tech led and how do you plan to continue unlocking global opportunity through technology and talent access?
Gino Ferrand: Yeah, I mean even though we’re, you know, talking about AI and of course like the technology side of things is gonna keep moving really fast and we’re working a lot on different tools and features that are gonna help candidates and companies, you know, find each other faster and, and make better matches really.
We’re also working on the human side. I mean, what we do is essentially bring on team members for companies that are. I think more than ever, very focused on getting results. They’re hiring people and they, of course, the AI and how we do it and all of that is interesting. But at the end of the day, what they’re looking for is someone that is highly productive, great communicator, and can really fit into the team and be a successful hire.
And so. We’re actually investing a lot in, you know, success management and really helping both companies be able to onboard engineers in, you know, the right way or the most effective way. And then also helping engineers who are coming onto a team and be able to ramp up really quickly and be successful.
So, I mean, it’s. We’re investing a lot in technology, but also just in our processes and making sure that we’re, we have a 97% success rate that still, like when we do have problems that we know how to, that we can improve on those scenarios and, and we can get, I. Teams to stay with companies for many years.
’cause I think that’s what most companies really want. And then, and then we’re also trying to be a lot more closer to our clients. So we’re putting together networking events and just dinners for different people in the tech space. And yeah, just trying to, you know, give a little bit to the community and, and like you said, we’re pretty focused on, on Austin, that’s where I’m based and that’s where, that’s where some of our US based team is based.
And so, yeah, trying to not do sales, but rather just. Build the community.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. Appreciate that. And I like how you, again, with your vision, looking ahead while you are leveraging some of the latest emerging technologies, you really focus on getting results while providing that human-centric touch for a better customer experience.
Of course. All while streamlining that process, that onboarding process, I like how, and I wanna highlight that 97% success rate, how you’re always looking at that. There’s always ways to improve, right? There’s always a little bit of room for improvement. So I appreciate that and I like that you’re really out there building that community around the developers and companies that are interested in that type of work.
So that’s awesome. Appreciate that. And Gino, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Gino Ferrand: Yeah, thank you so much.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Gino Ferrand Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
