GetResource.io

Troy Salton spent his early career learning how companies scale. After founding a startup right out of college that grew to 10 people, he took a calculated risk: join Grooveshark as their first recruiting hire when it had 40 employees, then move to Google to see how massive organizations function. At Grooveshark, he witnessed firsthand how chaotic high-growth recruiting could be. At Google, he worked on hiring experimentation and technical recruiting processes. Throughout these experiences, he identified a clear pain point: companies wasted enormous time and resources on outbound sourcing—the prospecting phase of recruiting.

Troy launched GetResource.io eight months into his venture. The company automates the outbound sourcing slice of recruiting, effectively replacing part of the recruiting function with software. Rather than charge the traditional contingent placement fee (only pay when you hire), GetResource charges a flat monthly subscription of $5,000-$8,500. He brought on his older sister and a technical co-founder, keeping equity splits roughly equal at 33/33/33, betting that different co-founders would provide value at different stages. The startup accepted $125K from 500 Startups accelerator at 5% equity, choosing to remain bootstrapped and profitable rather than chase venture capital.

Troy faced an uncomfortable reality: cold outreach didn't work. Instead, he relied entirely on people he knew and Silicon Valley's tight network. With only three team members and no formal sales function, Troy personally closed deals, which took anywhere from one day to three weeks depending on the customer. With roughly 10 customers generating around $50K in average monthly revenue, GetResource maintained strong margins while operating profitably. Marketing spend was zero—it was all human effort.

The biggest surprise was that the business model exposed an interesting asymmetry: if GetResource did its job well, companies stopped needing the service temporarily. Many customers came in cycles—early-stage startups would hire 3-5 people quickly with GetResource's help, then go heads-down for a year until their next funding round. Rather than call this churn, Troy reframed it: customers came back when hiring resumed. Month-to-month contracts with some customers on 3-6 month deals created lumpy revenue, but the business remained predictable enough. Cold sales failed; warm introductions won. Troy was deliberately conservative with cash, wanting to prove the model could work on bootstrap economics before raising growth capital.

At eight months old, GetResource was operating profitably in the low double-digits of customers with tens of thousands in monthly revenue. Troy's bigger vision was treating the recruiting automation as a "hack to learn" toward building a liquid on-demand marketplace for vetted talent that companies could access on-demand and manage through software. He believed if they could nail this for recruiting sourcing, they could verticalize into other talent categories. The company remained intentionally small and lean, focused on learning from customers rather than chasing growth for growth's sake.