Shepherd Sold For $52M and What It Means For Offshore Contract Startups

I’m a bit late to the party but a couple days ago, @sweatystartup announced that he’s bought a major controlling stake in Shepherd - valued at $52 Million, and a pivotal point in startups building around offshore contracting and headhunting agencies.

This one’s a brilliant piece. Keep reading

Let’s talk a bit about @marshal (I spent two hours stalking this dude’s profile, trust me bro, I know what I’m talking about hahah)

Amazing personality.

Really smart. Tweets about cool stuff. Drives a slick 993, wears a Tissot AND a Santos (He gets watches, just saying)

So Marshal Haas has been hiring offshore support teams from the Philippines for over 15 years now, for a number of projects.

Then COVID happens.

2020, the whole world goes remote. People go out of jobs, companies run out of money.

Some find a way to run their operations without taking a deep cut in their margins, but it’s not going to last long.

Everyone suddenly realizes that there’s a whole pool of talent OUTSIDE of the states that can be hired on a contractual basis for any business function that doesn’t need a ton of overseeing.

One problem though - How do I know these offshore employees won’t scam me? How do I vet these people? How much am I saving really? Can I really trust them? Can someone help me out with this?

Enter @marshal, drifting into the scene in his Porsche, getting out, walking towards you all slick and cocky, grin on his face, and a little:

’Sup? Ever heard of Shepherd?

Instant Hit!

The app grows and grows and grows, till yesterday, when it was publicly announced that Marshal would sell his controlling stake of Shepherd at a $52 million USD valuation!

If that doesn’t deserve a 30-second applause for Marshal, I don’t know what does :)

Here’s Marshal’s zero-to-One gist of this entire journey:

• Know the food you’re making

Stole this from @AlexHormozi

Marshal’s been hiring offshore talent for over 15 years now. It becomes extremely easy to build something for a market that you were a customer in.

Why would you want to do something you have no idea about, stack the odds in your favour, and then ask Life to kick your balls seven ways to Sunday?

Take the league you’re playing in, turn it over its head by building a better solution.

• Build an excellent product for ONE Customer

Shepherd started off by building a headhunting solution for ONLY Customer Support executives. Now it covers every sector of employee under the sun.

Build first for one sector, then Scale like crazy.

• Influence Incentives WORK!

@ShaanVP hosts one of the largest business podcasts in the world. He is also an investor in Shepherd. He openly stated in his podcast yesterday that his voice helped grow Shepherd by 300x.

Getting a content-led partner who has a STRONG audience behind him/her early on makes a HUGE difference to the growth of a company.

I’ll stop with the information overload, but hopefully this piece helps you get through the week with a bit more energy.

🙂 Keep following this newsletter for more awesome shit.