Ilya Brotzky - CEO, VanHack

Welcome to another CEOism podcast. We have Ilya Brodsky with us today. He's the founder and CEO at VanHack since 10 years. That's a long track record, uh, worked with a bunch of cool companies including, uh, Brex, 1Password, Deloitte, Deal, Neo, um, and yeah, you're, you're building Vana as well. Favorite tech recruiters, I've spent a lot of time, uh, Talking with AI HR founders, you seem to have massive traction though. 2,000 hires done since that 10 years that you started the company. Yeah, 22 million in annual salary. It's a lot of money. So Ilya, welcome to Upbound. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you're building.

Yeah, thanks, Charles. It's super cool to be here. Um, so yeah, I'm Ilya. I'm the CEO and co-founder at VanHack. We're a tech recruiting company We've been around for about 10 years, will be 11 years, and gone through a lot of iterations at the company. And most kind of recently, we've launched Vana, which is our AI recruiting agent. But maybe taking a step back, we actually started VanHack as an English school to teach developers soft skills. I used to live down in Brazil, met a lot of great engineers who are super good coders but not so good at communication, created an English school for them, which then morphed into a recruiting business, and then that's kind of now become this hiring AI native business that we can talk about as well. So been a long journey, a fun journey, and still feel like we're just getting started. So yeah.

The English school is a massive pivot. I love it though. It's wild. VanHack, I thought you were like, I don't know, a van life company, you know, these van life companies. Why keep the VanHack name?

Yeah, I love how you're jumping right into it, Charles. This is actually an internal debate right now we're having. What are we going to do with the brand, right? We bought vanna.com, V-A-N-N-A.com, that anyone, you know, can go and it actually still redirects to vanhack.com, which is our landing page for the Vanna Agent, vanhack.com/vanna. Anyway, we're trying to figure out what to do. Honestly, the company started, I didn't think it would be anything more than a side project. I had started a lot of stuff that didn't work out in my early 20s, and I thought this would just be one more thing in that line, to be, you know, frank. Um, so I didn't put too much thought into the name. Um, I actually really did like FanHack because it's a 7-letter.com, easy to spell, easy to remember. Uh, and our members really like being called VanHackers, and there's got a lot of— there's got a lot of, you know, 10 years of build and trust. So I don't know if we're changing the name fully, or maybe we just have Vanna as like the front-facing brand and VanHack is more like the community of tech talent that we have. So we're still playing around with that. I'm not a branding expert, but at this point I'm just letting things flow and the right answer will appear over time. But yeah, that's where we're at.

Let's talk about your asymmetric journey. I didn't mean to jump into that one, just needed to get out of my brain. Mountains for mom. Uh, that was your, your first one, right? Like, tell me about this one. It seems you juggled between, uh, marketing and sales jobs after that. But yeah, tell me about like your asymmetric background. It's, it's— I rarely see like that, uh, and I mean it in a good way.

I appreciate that.

Um, I'm curious what you mean by asymmetric, but, uh, you go from, you go from founder to job to founder to job to English school in Brazil, and then you built that very successful company finally. So I want to dissect your brain, sort of.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess in some ways I've always wanted to be a founder since I was a little kid. So, you know, with Mountains for Moms, that was one of the first things I started, um, and it wasn't really a company, it was just a club at Cornell, um, it was just a university club. And I, you know, I didn't really start a business, uh, it was nonprofit charity fundraising climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Um, so I had seen an alumni of our university do kind of a similar fundraising climb for cleft lip surgery, uh, and I had won a scholarship to do volunteer work abroad during my senior year at Cornell, um, and this group called— through Cornell, it's called Cornell Tradition— and so I wanted to put that money towards, uh, doing a trip abroad and doing volunteer work. And so I created Mountains for Moms, which was a fundraising charity climb. We, we then expanded out to Dartmouth, um, and, and also to, um, Northwestern. So like different universities kind of picked it up, but it wasn't really a company, it was more kind of just like a project I did that I thought would be really, uh, fun, and which was— was— and also, you know, get to go to Africa and climb a mountain, and that was an experience. So see some lions. Um, but yeah, I've always been entrepreneurial. Uh, I guess that's probably why there's this, uh, asynchronicity.

And then why go to Brazil? What, what was your calling to go to Brazil? I've been there not so long ago in— what's it called again? Yep, I did a 110K in the coastal city that my brain is not finding right now. But anyway, I've been there. I'd find it starting my day here. Why did you choose Brazil? And why did you found companies in Brazil when you were there?

In a way, I feel like I kind of chose me, if I can say it that way. I had 3 job offers after university. I've always wanted to go abroad after university. A lot of my friends at university were getting jobs in New York City, and it was right after the 2008 financial crisis. I didn't really want to compete in the same pool as everyone else. So a buddy of mine told me about this city called Florianópolis, which is like a really beautiful town. And I wanted to go there for spring break and find a volunteer opportunity. Actually also connected to Cornell Tradition, funnily enough. So I went and ended up doing volunteer work in Rio. I spent a week in the favelas, one of the favelas there, and it was a really, you know, eye-opening experience. And then during that time, I ended up getting a job interview at a company called Vale, which is the biggest mining company in the country. Ended up getting hired as one of their trainees to move to Brazil right after university. So I went and worked there in the mining space for about a year in Brazil and another year in Canada, and then ended up coming back to Brazil again, which we get into that whole story, and working in the startup space. So I got connected to the startup story called 21212. 21 is the area code for Rio de Janeiro and 212 for New York. So it's basically connecting American investors with Brazilian tech talent or Brazilian founders. Entrepreneurs. And I was kind of the token gringo, the token foreigner who kind of can connect the two worlds where I knew how to pitch to the VCs and to sell. And then I could also speak Portuguese and like talk to the Brazilian founders and, you know, work with them and help them get the success that they want. And that's actually kind of where I started connecting with all these engineers, because a lot of them were in the coworking space of the accelerator or at the meetups I would go to in the Rio and São Paulo tech ecosystem. Um, yeah, uh, so that, that's kind of how I ended up getting to Brazil.

Uh, it's funny actually, the, the town right here. Oh, I love it. Yeah, I love Brazil. Have you been to Paraty?

Yeah, Paraty. Yeah, beautiful place.

Yeah, Paraty. Uh, yeah, I love it. And Florianópolis, I almost went back then when I was, uh, staying in Punta del Este in Uruguay. Was very close by. Yeah, or at least flight distance. And yeah, I also did like the, the full digital nomad thing. Um, back in your days it was like very early days to be a digital nomad. I also did the student exchange thing in Hong Kong, so like had quite the, the culture shock there. I guess like once you're honest about like your experiences on LinkedIn, that's like one insight that I get from you. I I also listed all my experiences. And two, um, yeah, the fact that you're open to other culture and you're like a wild man, like going out there and starting business— I was also that way. I think that's another factor to success here. I see Co Grower, right? Like, so that was— that one was interesting, was a beach house co-living space.

Yeah.

Then you went back to, to Canada, and that's when you started VanHack, right? Like, you accepted a couple of jobs probably for for cash flow reasons, and then like VanHack saw the, the first light of day, and then it was like an English school. Tell me when you decided to pivot that from, from this to like full-on tech recruiting agency.

Um, well, we decided to— I like to call it an evolution. Um, if you look back, it all kind of makes sense why we, you know, how it evolved to the point it is now. But, um, I, I, I, and I, and I say that sincerely because we weren't really looking for a pivot. You know, the English school was working, we were getting sales, customers were paying a monthly subscription to, you know, get our career coaching and getting hired. So I wanted success cases for the school. Like, you know, when you go to Harvard or Stanford, you get hired at Goldman Sachs or, you know, Google. And, and, and I wanted to have said, oh, well, VanHack, you know, Academy or VanHack, we call it the VanHack Premium. VanHack premium students had got hired at AWS. So I went to talk to Amazon. So I went to talk to all these companies and just naturally was like, hey, I have these students, do you want to hire any of them? And just started making intros. So I worked at a coworking space in Vancouver called Spring. There was a lot of startups around and I would, you know, was friends with all of them. So I just kind of started making intros and people started getting hired and then companies started asking, how much does this cost? So really distinctly remember our first customer was Eastside Games. It's a gaming studio that got acquired. Diego Mezquita, wow, cool. This is like a live interaction. Hey Diego. I don't know if— anyway, maybe you can cut that in the actual podcast. But I would go and ask them, they would ask me, how much does it cost? So I just made up prices. I had no idea how, but yeah, in the early days it was just all kind of hand-to-hand combat of me making intros. And then we got paid more in one placement than we did in all one month of English revenue. And I was like, well, hold on, like the companies have a lot more money, you know, to be frank, than the candidates do. You know, these are emerging market software engineers who are, you know, seriously strong candidates in tech talent and make a good living at home. But you can't compare that to like a, you know, $10 million funded Series A company or whatever, you know, large or mid-sized tech companies usually was our target customer, still is the kind of company we mostly work with. So yeah, it kind of was a natural evolution, I would like to say, rather than a pivot. And then just like Vana is now a natural evolution of our recruiting agency business. But I, yeah, that was, those were exciting times 'cause it kind of like, peel back the onion of how big this could be. I was like, holy crap, like, if we make 100 hires, like, that's like a million dollars. Um, so yeah, we made up 92 hires in 2017, uh, almost did that in revenue, and then, you know, grew from there. Uh, so yeah, that was a really pivotal moment for sure, uh, that evolution to recruitment.

And how much time did you pivot until, uh, you found success in the recruiting business itself, right? Like, did you have to change a business model? For example, now I see on your website that you have a subscription model, $3,000 a month, that you had to focus on some market, that you had to change GTM, uh, playbooks or hire key people in the business. When did you know that like this shit was taking off and it wasn't stopping, right? It wasn't like in the chaotic phase anymore?

Oh, we've been in the chaotic phase forever. I still feel like I'm in the chaotic phase. You know, there's peaks and valleys and there's been a lot of cycles and COVID and craziness in the last 10 years we can talk about.

Yeah, describe the main ones, the valuable ones, you know, if I would be a founder and would like to start a similar business.

Yeah, I think like 2018, 2019, there was kind of an interesting moment. We went through phases. So I would say like our first kind of phase was 0 to, you know, $3 million where we went from, Vinit, hello Vinit, a long time no see. Uh, uh, yeah, I'll take it. I'm rock and roll. Um, 8:48 AM recording a podcast before the team all hands. That's what rock stars do.

Um, it's gonna drink water instead of whiskey.

Yeah, yeah, electrolyte water. That's, that's, that's the, that's the hack. Um, so yeah, we worked in 2016. We, we made 2 placements. I still remember making 2 placements in the same day. Actually, I was hanging out with Vinny that week. We were in Chile and we made 2 hires on the same day on like December 5th or something like that, 2016. And this was our first kind of year. I wouldn't call even a year. It was like in the spring of that, maybe even halfway through that year, we started really focusing on B2B. And we made 2 placements in one day and I couldn't believe it. I was like, this is the craziest thing ever. Like we just made, like it was over $15,000 with the 2 combined. And one was in Germany, the other one was in Waterloo in Canada, like totally different parts of the world. And it just, I just kind of blew my mind if you can get paid to make intros because I just always like to make intros just for fun. And so I really started, you know, focusing on that. And then we, I think, grew a lot. And then another big thing we did was events. So we did a recruiting fair in 2018 in São Paulo where we flew down, skipped the dishes, which is one of the largest food delivery apps in Canada. They're actually part of the Just Eat Group, which is one of the largest in the world. Just Eat Takeaway, they merged. So anyway, we took down their team of like the co-founder, CTO, HR, the whole thing. We made 72 hires in a weekend. So that was like a real moment of like, hold on to the steering wheel. Yeah. And then COVID hit, we can talk about all that. But yeah, those were kind of early moments of, of craziness.

Did you buy your Ferrari after 72 hires in one weekend?

Well, it wasn't that, so that's the thing. Like once you get to that scale, you don't get paid the full fee per hire, just economics. And this has actually been a big business model issue for us since day one. I've always wanted to create a subscription business and that's why we have one now. Plus I think it's like a unique value offer that can let it help us grow faster. So it's kind of double-edged sword or like that, trying to get—

well, it's predictable, right? And it's like the consumer paying his eggs on Amazon on a monthly basis. They don't have to think about it, just like comes and happens at their door. Uh, that's the logic, right? But I think the MRR play favors a bit more the founders. But yeah, depends on where you play. So the, the 3K model, what was the logic behind that when more— most agencies just like charge 10 or 15% of, I mean, finder's fee or recruiting fee or placement fee. Why go with that one? What was the logic there? Was it financial? Was it for your clients? Was it for MRR so that investors could write you more checks?

I think I was just tired of waking up every first of the month. Hey Hector, good to see you. I was tired of waking up. Oh my God.

Truffle burgers.

Yeah, that's actually what we did. We had 2 truffle burgers. That was the celebration.

Truffle burgers.

Yeah, in Luxembourg actually. So it was very fancy.

It was very fancy. Oh shit. Love it.

No, I'm not kidding. We did a startup program in Luxembourg and actually Vineet was there. So yeah, the business model came from About a year ago, I was getting really fed up with the seasonality of our business. We have a very seasonal business. Hiring happens on Christmas. No, it doesn't happen on New Year's. Things stop. Doesn't happen in August. It's very much a spring and fall kind of time. Now May is probably going to be our best month. May, June's going to be—

In tech sector, because me, when I used to have 2,000 employees in my 10 years as a founder, I would hire all the fucking time. Yeah, less on Christmas, but I mean, I think, yeah, maybe you're the exception.

Like, usually companies are, and, and kind of naturally people, um, they don't make hiring decisions, um, during like down kind of vacation time. They, they, they— the nice thing about Christmas is that people, a lot of people make hires leading up to the end of the year because like, oh shit, I gotta make this, you know, or else the candidate might leave, or, you know, I don't want— I want to tie up this loose end before the end of the year. So Christmas, actually, like pre-Christmas, is actually a good time. but like early January is pretty tough because you're starting from scratch. Usually that's where things start. Anyway, I, I, I won't go into too much down this rabbit hole, but I got tired of waking up at zero every month. Um, I wanted to wake up at, you know, $80K MRR. Um, like, you know, the dream of getting to $1 million, $83.3, you know, whatever. I think it's $84.333.

You've achieved that since, uh, post-COVID, right?

Uh, well, so we, we've been more than a million in revenue for sure, um, but we haven't been more than a million in MRR. So that's something new. About a year ago, 2025, was when we launched the subscription business, um, and now what it's able us to do is position ourselves against, uh, literally hiring a tech recruiter. So instead of hiring a tech recruiter, you can hire Vana as your tech recruiter who will fill all the roles you need to fill using our talent pool. So it becomes a really killer value prop, I feel. And it's really easy to start. You can get a 7-day free trial, et cetera, et cetera. And it's month-to-month pricing. So it's really cool to see our customers have success where they like hire 5 people and they, you know, in 3 months and like the cost per hire is like way lower. I used to be scared of that because I was like, oh man, like I'm losing all this revenue on the other side of the, the traditional business. But you'd be surprised, a lot of companies actually want the placement model. They're happy with that model. They want a little bit more extra handholding and something very specific and high-end. And but the majority of customers are happy just to, you know, work with the software and have that do the heavy lifting and be the, you know, recruiter that they could add to their hiring stack. So yeah.

What have you seen in the job market in the last couple of years? You can start from COVID I guess. Is it increasing the demand and the supply in the tech space. Uh, and what about when agentic, the agentic era hits? Will most jobs be actually slashed? We've seen already a couple of slashes in the, in the tech world, right? And, uh, Square, for example, and Jack Dorsey was a big one. Uh, tell me a bit more about it.

I think, um, you know, I think Coinbase made a layoff yesterday or the day before as well. I think it's a natural part of business. Um, things are going to change. Um, the way I look at it is all those 7,000 people who got laid off at Coinbase, uh, maybe 1,000 of them will go start their own companies and, um, you know, bloom, uh, the next batch, which is great. Yeah, yeah.

And I think it's business for you, it's candidates for you, it's a gold mine for you.

I, I hope so. I don't know, we'll see. Not just for me, there's a big, big, a lot of competitors in our space. But, um, I, I, I feel like that's maybe the optimist in me, is just think that like, okay, people are going to get let go. As long as not what happened in 2022, which was terrible where like everyone was laying off and it was just like blood, blood in the streets, you know. Um, uh, I think this is more kind of like some companies traditionally selectively pruning, which I think is a healthy sign of, of, uh, uh, the market, state of the market, right? Like, um, I think more than, more than not, like hiring in general is increasing or like steadily increasing.

Tell me how you landed these big boys, uh, deal Headspace, Jobber, Deloitte. Uh, these are like pretty fancy logos. DigitalOcean's another one. Booking.com. Yeah, how did you get these big boys?

Uh, uh, well, a lot of them actually is girls. A lot of like booking.com, we've worked with Jennifer, and you know, um, uh, selling to, to mostly, uh, yeah, I think a lot of it is just being, being, um, having something that can add value, right? Like, um, we always believe that we, we have something that's unique, uh, even in the space that's so, so, um, commoditized, like being able to uncover this kind of hidden talent on other parts of the world. Um, and then also, um, just hustling. Um, like DigitalOcean, you mentioned, we met them in Lisbon in Portugal, Web Summit. Um, uh, then that was like another 3-month sales cycle. We like actually flew down to Mexico to be with them in person. Um, you know, it was a whole thing. So, um, a lot of it is just going out there and showing up and, you know, hitting the pavement.

Love it. Um, yeah, I said a couple of Canadian companies as well. So, uh, Telus, uh, is one for sure. And, uh, yeah, you still have like, uh, Lynx in, in Canada. Like, uh, do you feel that's like a little Mote Rogers as well in there? and 1Password, which is a great Montreal company, my native Montreal. So do you feel you have an edge in there since you have like a foot in the US as well? You're like more international, uh, you're more techie on the coast, right? So what's your, your edge there?

Uh, we're Canadian, so, um, I think that maybe helps. Um, but no, I don't think there's no edge in terms of geography. Um, I mean, maybe the fact that we're in Canada, we're in Vancouver, they're also like, Talus also is here in Vancouver. You know, we have a lot of presence in Toronto. Rogers is in Toronto. One past, we actually got through our Ukraine campaign where we helped 25 Ukrainian engineers move to Canada during like 2023 when the war started, or 2022. Anyway, I have a team all hands I can't be late for in 1 minute. So I think we could, if this is cool, we could just finish now. But This is really great being here, Charles. Thank you so much for the invite.

Yeah, my pleasure. That was Ilya Brodsky and Charles Cormier for