Tilek Mamutov: 10x-ing the life of engineers globally

Hey everyone,

I met Tilek when we were both going through Y Combinator. I immediately loved what he and his team were working on: helping engineers from emerging markets get a job at big tech companies. Outtalent has a tremendous impact on their students, and it’s nothing short of inspiring.

A few things we’ll talk about:

• How they know they have Product Market Fit
• How he helps engineers 10x their salary
• The value of talking with a therapist as a startup founder

Questions are from me, quotes are answers from Tilek, emphasis mine and the text below the quotes are additional comments from me.

What is Outtalent?

Outtalent (YC S19) helps outstanding engineers around the world get jobs at top companies.
We offer an online program that covers distributed system design, algorithms, data structures, as well as soft skills. The developers pay only if they get into one of the top 10 companies of their choice.
Overall, we want to help people from all countries set and achieve ambitious goals together, independent of what’s said on their passports.

I love the framing “independent of what’s said of their passports”. What a great mission statement!

Why did you decide to build Outtalent?

I myself was a software engineer in Kyrgyzstan with a salary of $4K / year. Getting a job at Google Ireland increased my income by more than 10x and was truly life-changing. Later, I went on to become a project lead at Google X. I co-founded Outtalent in 2019 in order to help people from all countries accelerate their learning and achieve their own career dreams together.

$4k / year!!! The most junior engineers at big tech companies start well above $100k

Could you give an indication of your stage?

2 full-time employees, 1 part-time, helped 33 developers get jobs at top 10 target companies like Google, $1.3M of booked revenue in 2021 (5x YoY).

That’s a sweet $650k average revenue per employee.

How do you define product market fit and do you have it?

I define "product market fit" in the following way: "We don't do any recruiting or ads to attract top engineers but we get so many top engineers applying to Outtalent that our main challenge is building and hiring quickly enough to support the demand."
I think there is a lot of hard work for us to get there but I am optimistic we will reach it soon.

Tilek and I disagreed on this point. When demand is too high that you struggle to keep up with it, to me, this sounds a lot like Product Market Fit!  Check out Marc Andreessen’s definition:

And you can always feel product/market fit when it is happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You're hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they've heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it. You start getting entrepreneur of the year awards from Harvard Business School. Investment bankers are staking out your house

But Tilek thinks they’re not quite at Product Market Fit, so I guess they’re not since “you can always feel product/market git when it is happening”

How did you get your first 10 users / customers?

People from my country (Kyrgyzstan) and region (Central Asia) have been asking me to somehow help them get a job at Google ever since I got there in 2007. I ignored this as an area for startup until I realized I can unite my passion for education and coaching with what people really want.

I simply announced a mentorship program where you pay only if you get into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, or Microsoft.

About 100 people applied and started this program with 8 of them. I got into YC about 6 months later with only those people.

Tilek already knew he was about to “build something people want” (YC’s motto) since he had people asking him how to get a job at a big tech company.

And first 100?

We tried various social media channels like LinkedIn, manual and automated email and messaging.

What's one thing you wish you had known when you started your company?

I would start talking to a therapist before my first fundraising round.

I haven’t done that yet, but so many founder friends tell me great things about having a coach and / or therapist.

Are you seeing a therapist now? I've been thinking about getting a coach / startup therapist for a while.

Yes. I feel very happy and mentally stable but I think my therapist helps me understand myself better, perform better, and have an even more enjoyable life and relationships.

Sounds pretty good!

What's a tool that makes you save time every week or every day?

Airtable!!!

How do you use Airtable?

Almost for everything - admissions, fellow database, interview feedback, peer-to-peer assignment, and more.

We use Airtable as well at Actiondesk, and actually have built an integration with it. Airtable is great to store and organize data, but not great to analyze it and build reports, which you easily do in Actiondesk.

*secretly hoping Tilek signs up to Actiondesk after reading this*

What's a favorite book and why?

Ray Dalio - Principles

This is a very good book. Any particular insights you got from it?

I like the ideas of radical truth and radical transparency. We practice something similar at Outtalent.  I believe we give feedback to each other - fellows, mentors, team members almost on a daily basis. A lot of the feedback is visible to all.

In comparison to Bridgewater Associates, I would say they are way more transparent and their feedback is more direct. As far as I understand, feedback at Outtalent is usually more packaged.

Plus, I now also like writing down some principles I used for decision-making.

What's a favorite podcast episode you'd recommend me to listen to?

You probably already know but I would recommend some episodes from How I Built This or Tim Ferriss Show.

Love both of these shows.

If you were not working on Outtalent, what product would you build?

Life coaching chatbot that is secretly a mental health chatbot.

On a lighter note, what's a movie / tv show / documentary you watched recently you'd recommend people to watch?

I liked Hulu's WeWork documentary. I hope to watch the newest Matrix soon.

Lastly, where can people find you if they want to follow the rest of your adventures?

Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram

That’s a wrap. Did you enjoy this? Do Tilek and I a favor and forward this to a friend who may enjoy this too.