What is Jules?
Jules is a staffing and recruiting service for Latin America. We help US companies find, hire, and pay top 1% Latin American talent for about 70% less than US equivalents.
Why Launch a Recruiting Firm?
Recruiting is something we need internally at Verne, our software holding company. People are core to every business. Over the years, we’ve hired folks worldwide and were happiest with the results from Latin America.
So we hired recruiters in Argentina and became our first customer.
Then, I had requests from friends and readers with recruiting needs and started taking on clients.
From there, it has continued to scale up and looks to be a great lifestyle business.
Why Not Buy a Recruiting Firm?
Perhaps I should have bought one. It’s always a pain going from 0 to 1. But services are easier and cheaper to launch than a software company. With software, there is a good amount of code to write to get off the ground. Some spend millions building a fancy product to find product market fit.
With services, you can launch with a tweet and cash flow from the first client. You have to build out all the processes and team, but we had most of them already from our hiring and recruitment.
Why Launch a Latin American Recruiting Firm Now?
Jules is taking advantage of some significant tailwinds: remote work, worldwide talent, and a labor shortage.
Remote work - Covid accelerated the remote work trend dramatically. Many companies are hiring remote employees for the first time. They are also realizing they can hire outside the country and need help doing it.
Worldwide talent - We are on the rise of a global workforce. The quality of candidates in Latin America is impressive, and the cost is substantially lower. Their cost of living is significantly less than in the US.
Building remote teams isn't just about cost savings. It's also about expanding your talent pool. You can choose from thousands of people in your immediate area. Or choose from a billion that share your timezone. Better talent. Better value.
Labor shortage - Companies need help to fill their open roles in the US. If every unemployed person in the country found a job, we would still have millions of open jobs unfilled. We have an aging workforce, a stagnant population, and declining workforce participation.
Why Should US Companies Hire From Latin America?
Timezone, cost, and culture are the biggest reasons.
Timezone - Latin America is just south of the US. Argentina & Brazil are one hour apart from New York. People across the world say they are ok staying up all night working our time zone, but it takes a toll. They sacrifice sleep, and their work and life quality suffer.
Cost - You can build high-performing remote teams for around 70% less. Argentina had 161% inflation in 2023. A US dollar goes a long way there. You can find great employees starting at $1,000 - $1,500 / month.
Culture - Latin American employees are similar to a local hire. They speak and write excellent English. They proactively bring you issues and aren't afraid to discuss them. Folks across the world have a huge culture gap.
What Does Jules Charge for Pricing? What’s the Reasoning?
It is free to interview to make it a no-brainer offer to try us.
Most clients start with our staffing model once they find someone great, and we take care of everything for this. The client just pays us with any easy Stripe link (with a markup on the salary) and we take care of all the messiness of paying the employee in their home country. Sourcing, hiring, onboarding, payroll, etc. And we will find a replacement if they need one at any point.
This makes it dead simple and low-cost to hire in a new country. US companies don’t have to figure out any background checks, payments, etc. They just have to do the final interviews on Zoom like any other hire. No messy taxes or fees to deal with. Everyone is a full-time independent contractor.
We also offer a buyout clause if they want to convert to handling the process themselves. Some clients opt for this right away if they are well-versed in hiring and just want to use our headhunter service.
This is the pricing I’d want to pay as a business owner. Many of the other flat-rate agencies have egregiously high and unsustainable margins to me. I like transparent margins and paying for an expert to do work on my behalf. Staffing offers an excellent done-for-me option as well.
Why This Approach? Why Not the Philippines?
I have been circling around this idea for years. I talked about it back on a podcast in April of 2021 (21-minute mark): “I’m obsessed with the idea of humans being underleveraged” and how every American worker should have a virtual assistant.
I actually launched the first version of a recruiting firm back in 2020. The model then was a flat rate with a high margin for a managed virtual assistant in the Philippines. I got a couple of customers, then shut it down. I talked with some smart investors who thought the space was too crowded and would come with too many people problems.
Since then, we’ve continued hiring people from around the world at Verne. Then I came back with Jules. I looked at doing a headhunter service for the Philippines. But I found most people wanted a more managed service. So I talked with some folks about returning to a flat fee, but some savvy founder friends thought the markup was too high.
Then we had some bad experiences with our Filipino employees sacrificing their sleep which was impacting their work and their personal lives. I decided I didn’t want any part of a business that caused sleep deprivation, even if employees swore it was fine.
So we pivoted to a Latin America-only offering. And I was thinking through what would make the offer way lower risk. A “no-brainer” offer. That’s where the free interviews came in. And the staffing model gives us recurring revenue in exchange for way less money upfront. I’m willing to make that trade. I prefer the calmness of a recurring revenue business, and staffing accounts naturally expand over time if you treat customers well.
That’s how we arrived at a business model and offering that seems to resonate.
3+ years of noodling, zig-zagging, and flipping a project off and on.
Fall in love with your problem, not your solution.
Want to try hiring in Latin America? Reach out at Jules and we’ll find someone great for you.