How I Bootstrapped a Silicon Valley Recruiting Empire

What we talked about.

Sunny Ray talks with Gabriel, an Argentine founder who spent years as a top ranked amateur Go player before becoming a software engineer at companies like Robinhood, OpenSea, and Circle Medical. Gabriel explains how a conversation with a recruiting startup sparked his pivot into talent search, leading him to bootstrap Silver, a recruiting firm connecting Latin American engineers with demanding US companies. He shares lessons from his first failed startup, a Go community website called Kaya, and describes how his podcast Tecnologia Informal and coaching product Interview Ready grew out of repeating the same career advice to candidates. Gabriel discusses why he chose profitability over venture funding, why immigrants should still target the US market even after moving home, and how his competitive Go background shaped his resilience as a founder. The conversation closes with his vision for Silver Dev becoming the dominant boutique tech recruiting agency in Argentina and beyond.

A former pro Go player turned engineer bootstraps a profitable LatAm tech recruiting business without VC money.

The questions, and the answers.

What are you working on today, in a sentence or two?

I am Gabriel, Argentinian but lived in the US for 15 years working as a software engineer at places like Robinhood and OpenSea. I crossed paths with a recruiting startup and something clicked, so I built a company called Silver. I focus on finding engineering talent in Latin America for demanding companies like Twitter and Scale AI.

What was life like for you as a kid in Buenos Aires, and how did you become a top Go player?

Argentina went through a major financial crisis in 2001 and I had to think about supporting my family. Programming was an option, but I felt a calling to play Go. I started at 16 and decided to go pro after three months. It took four years to become a top one percent player, comparable to going to college.

What tipped the scale between becoming a professional Go player and going into software?

It felt almost religious, like a calling. At 18 I had to decide between studying sixteen hours a day to be the best in the world at Go or studying computer science. It was made with no brain, I just knew this was what I was supposed to be doing at that time.

You wrote openly about how Kaya ran out of money and momentum. What was the hardest lesson from that failure?

I was not technically good yet, I only had a year and a half of experience, so I crashed the car into the wall many times learning. The second lesson was that I was too alone. As a two person team building from scratch, I should have had an outside advisor who already went through it to save me time and pain.

At what point did you realize you were building toward something else besides being a software engineer?

In 2019 I interviewed at a YC recruiting company called Triplebyte and had a two hour conversation with their product manager about how the market worked. I asked about remote talent in places like Argentina and they said it was too small a market. I decided then to build my own marketplace for that.

Why did you focus on Latin America specifically for recruiting?

I have a podcast called Tecnologia Informal that gives me branding and audience in Argentina. Recruiting firms in Latin America often never lived in the US or worked for a US startup, so they lack the language and connection. I understand both sides, which lets me connect naturally with US companies like Twitter.

Silver Dev is bootstrapped with no outside funding. Was that deliberate or necessity?

Silver is not the kind of business that merits VC funding unless I change its scope entirely. I would have to chase all the talent and build scaling software with AI to get a moat, and I do not want that. The business is profitable because we are better than competitors, so I do not need outside money.

How has moving back to Argentina changed your perspective on business?

Every immigrant eventually decides whether to go back home, but if you want to build a business you should still aim for the US market. The biggest mistake migrants make is building the local version of a business they liked abroad. Even from Argentina, clients pay more and are more motivated when you target the US.