Hi everyone,

“I want to see that there’s demand for talent.”

— Every investor, ever

I recently realised how silly this question is.

Is there market demand Mira Murati (OpenAI’s former CTO)? Alexandr Wang? World’s #1 competitive programmer? Of course. But we don’t have to take it to the extreme elite to convey this point.

What about a friendly full-stack developer who can own an end-to-end web app build, has outstanding communication skills, is a self-starter who happily works 60 hours a week, can pick up any programming language in 6 weeks and happily takes a salary of $3k/month?

Don’t be silly. Which CEO wouldn’t want this?

Contrary to what many might believe, DirectEd does NOT face market risk on either side of our marketplace, be it Employers, Talents or Investors. Here are the actually relevant question to ask:

• Can DirectEd attract the top 0.1% of high-potential talent?
• How much does it cost to develop these talents to globally competitive standards?
• How long will that take?
• Can you capture part of the value-add?
• Can you do this all at scale?

Yes. Less than $10k. ~4 years. Yes, with an IRR of 30%. Yes, 6000 talents per year and $150M in revenue in equilibrium.

June highlights