Around one year ago, Dominic ended our first-ever Zoom call with these beautiful words:
“Alvaro, I love everything about this. I’m all in.”
The instigator behind that call was Michael Land. Colleagues at the time, we’d been fantasizing about launching something together for a while. We were both passionate about Sales and Edtech, and he’d recommended I chat to Dom and we get him in on the plan.
It was an easy sell, and a perfect fit.
We all shared the same belief: that anybody can have and deserves a career they love, provided they have access to education and professional opportunities. We wanted to build a program that was laser-focused on getting people into their first tech sales job in the shortest time possible. Accessible for everybody regardless of their background, personalized to each individual, and designed 100% for employability.
One trip to Portugal and many, many hours of curriculum development later, we launched our first MVP into the world in March 2021.
Hyrise (or Headstart, as we were called then), was born!
Our journey so far has exceeded all our expectations. As with any startup it's been a rollercoaster ride, but here are our highlights for the past 9 months:
If we can narrow down our year to three key learnings, it’s these:
We have therefore validated our initial hypothesis, and learnt a great deal in the process. Spending time close to the problem we’ve realised, as it’s usually the case, that it’s deeper and more nuanced than we thought. Hence, our plans for the future have also evolved along with it.
Our objective has never been to impact 100s of lives but rather 100.000s. 2022 will be about getting ready to scale.
We are overwhelmed by the number of people and stories we've come across this year. Single mothers struggling to make ends meet and working overtime to get into a new career. People with zero educational background getting the job of their dreams in less than 3 months. And a lot of work from our team behind the scenes to make it all happen.
To everyone that has been involved with Hyrise in this first year, a HUGE, HUGE thank you. We're building a beautiful community of like-minded people that want to improve the status quo.
After this first year, we double down on our belief that everyone can have and deserves a career that they love. And we will work extra hard to make this a reality for as many people as possible.
Onwards!
“I would not have been able to grow personally and professionally to the point where I am right now without Hyrise.” Learn how and why John decided to enter the tech sales industry and leave after 12 years in the tattoo world.
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Besides being a great source of motivation and self-improvement, sales books also provide us with a much-needed opportunity to rest, reflect, and take a deep breath in the midst of our hectic schedules. For that reason, we were determined to find the top sales books out there. We asked our LinkedIn network to recommend the sales book that has had a big impact on their sales career and this was the outcome.