Standout growth playbook

Put the final values in the server-rendered HTML and animate from them, or start the count only after hydration so the served number is always the true one. Use the published figures (10,000+ builders, 60+ startups) now, and fill the two stats that are not published anywhere (days from intro to offer, founder reply rate) from intro data, or replace them with published numbers until they exist. Render the four Without/With points as plain text. Repeat the same three numbers on /company and /ai so every page tells one story, and add a build check that fails if the served homepage contains "0+" or "0%" in the proof band.

Proof that only exists after JavaScript runs is not proof for the readers that summarise Standout to other people. Assistants and search engines quote what they fetch, and for an intro business the founder reply rate is the number that sells to both sides. It is a two-day fix to a page that already earns the traffic.

[ ] Served HTML shows 10,000+ builders represented
[ ] Served HTML shows 60+ startups matched
[ ] Founder reply rate: real figure with definition, or removed
[ ] Intro-to-offer days: real figure, or removed
[ ] Without/With points written in the HTML
[ ] Same numbers on /company, /ai and /vision with an as-of date
[ ] Build fails if the proof band is served as 0

• A live reply rate looks weaker than the animation suggested

  Publish it with its definition and sample size; a real 40% beats an implied 100%.

• Numbers go stale as the network grows

  Read them from one source and show an as-of date.

• Your websiteHomepage (fetched twice, November 9, 2026): in the page as served, the proof band reads "0+" Builders Represented, "< 0d" Avg Intro To Offer and "0%" Founder Reply Rate, and the "Without Standout" vs "With Standout" block shows only the numbers 01-04 with no wording. H1 "Get introduced to your dream role."; "The top 5% get represented"; a four-step flow (connect LinkedIn, chat, hand-picked roles, booking); one candidate testimonial; an "Earn $3,000" referral banner.Source
• Your websiteVision page: "10,000+ builders represented" and "60+ startups matched", "from P26 pre-seed teams to Series B unicorns"; "We don't sell software, we deliver introductions"; recruiters charge "20–30%" of first-year salary; talent is free and companies pay only on a successful hire, with no retainer or exclusivity.Source
• Your website"Standout for AI assistants" page (/ai): companies "pay a success fee only when they hire", with no retainer or exclusivity and fees refundable within a guarantee window; most briefs yield a first shortlist within 24 hours; integrations listed: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Slack and Notion; network deepest in San Francisco, New York and Europe.Source
• Google PageSpeedMobile performance 64/100 (desktop 78); real visitors fail Core Web Vitals on LCP (p75 2.8 s) and INP (p75 204 ms); the homepage weighs 5.4 MB in 109 requests, of which fonts are 2.9 MB and JavaScript 1.95 MB; 725 KB of unused JavaScript and about 0.85 s of render-blocking requests; 16 third-party services, the heaviest Facebook (280 KB), Google Tag Manager (192 KB) and TikTok (158 KB), plus Clarity, Bing Ads and Google Ads tags.Source

Add a short pricing block to /company: the success fee (a percentage or a flat fee per hire by role level), when it is charged, the guarantee window and refund rule, and what is free (intros, pre-screening, pipeline ops). Add a calculator for one hire at a given salary: Standout's fee against a 20% and a 30% agency fee. Link it from the pricing-models blog post and the comparison pages.

Founders at pre-seed and seed are price-sensitive and self-serve; a visible, lower, pay-on-hire price is the clearest edge over agencies, and it removes a reason to delay the first brief.

• Locks in a price too early

  Publish it as the current price with a date; grandfather early customers.

• Larger companies want custom terms

  Add "multiple hires? talk to us" under the block.

• Your website"Standout for AI assistants" page (/ai): companies "pay a success fee only when they hire", with no retainer or exclusivity and fees refundable within a guarantee window; most briefs yield a first shortlist within 24 hours; integrations listed: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Slack and Notion; network deepest in San Francisco, New York and Europe.Source
• Your websiteFor-companies page: "Find your people. Not the same overhunted shortlist."; warm intros, on-demand sourcing from LinkedIn and GitHub, pre-screening (a demo shows 142 inbound cut to 6 forwarded) and pipeline ops; onboarding starts from the company URL (about 10 minutes in the demo) with intros sent via Slack; 25 customer logos; no price, fee or guarantee stated and no quotes from hiring companies; CTAs "Get your first intros today" and "Try it with your domain".Source
• Your websiteVision page: "10,000+ builders represented" and "60+ startups matched", "from P26 pre-seed teams to Series B unicorns"; "We don't sell software, we deliver introductions"; recruiters charge "20–30%" of first-year salary; talent is free and companies pay only on a successful hire, with no retainer or exclusivity.Source
• Your websiteBlog: newest posts include "Pay-on-Hire vs Retainer vs RPO: Startup Recruiting Pricing Models Compared (2026)" and "Recruiters vs an AI Talent Agent for Engineers" (November 6, 2026); stack posts such as "Go Engineers in 2026" and city posts such as "Software Engineer Jobs in Denver"; footer social links are X and LinkedIn only.Source
• Competitor researchParaform: "Hire great people in days, not months", average time to hire 27 days, 10,000+ recruiters, 1,000+ companies, demo-led with no public price. Wellfound: 27,000+ startups, 10M+ candidates, free posting plus paid Reach and Autopilot. Mercor's homepage now leads with "organizing human intelligence to power the AI economy" (expert work and AI evaluations).See the research Source

Rebuild /yc as a page for YC founders: how Standout works for a batch company hiring its first engineers, designers and GTM leads, the pay-on-hire terms, published YC customer logos, and a one-click brief from the company URL. Add a candidate section that links the YC blog guides. If it cannot ship this week, remove /yc from the sitemap the same day.

Batch-mates hire at the same time, talk to each other and trust a fellow YC company; a working page gives scouts and founders one link to share in batch channels.

• Looks exclusive to non-YC startups

  Keep /company as the main path and link it from /yc.

• Your websiteSitemap (checked November 9, 2026): 13 top-level pages including /yc, which returned 404 Not Found on two checks; 167 blog posts from May 1 to November 6, 2026, including about 25 "<company> engineering jobs" guides, with overlapping pairs such as /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs (May 2) and /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs-apply (August 18); /vs holds three comparisons (Wellfound, Mercor, Hired) while five more sit on the blog (Triplebyte, Otta, AngelList Talent, Vettery and a second Hired page); 6 job category pages; 9 location pages (8 US cities and London); 40 company careers pages.Source
• Your websiteVision page: "10,000+ builders represented" and "60+ startups matched", "from P26 pre-seed teams to Series B unicorns"; "We don't sell software, we deliver introductions"; recruiters charge "20–30%" of first-year salary; talent is free and companies pay only on a successful hire, with no retainer or exclusivity.Source
• HiringCareers page: founded 2025, Y Combinator Spring 2026, "Seven people in San Francisco", "Hiring now: Sales and content"; mission "Help us give every great builder an agent of their own."Source

Move the five blog comparisons into /vs with redirects and merge the two Hired pages into one. Date every page and add a "last checked" line. Add company-side comparisons (Standout vs Jack & Jill, Paraform, Wellfound Autopilot and a contingency agency), each with fees, who does the sourcing, candidate privacy, time to first shortlist and when you pay. Refresh /vs/mercor from Mercor's current homepage.

Comparison searches come from people about to choose; one hub with dated, fair pages ranks better than eight scattered ones and gives scouts a link for every objection.

• Out-of-date or unfair claims about rivals

  Quote rivals' own pages, date each page, and avoid claims about their status you cannot confirm.

• Your websiteSitemap (checked November 9, 2026): 13 top-level pages including /yc, which returned 404 Not Found on two checks; 167 blog posts from May 1 to November 6, 2026, including about 25 "<company> engineering jobs" guides, with overlapping pairs such as /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs (May 2) and /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs-apply (August 18); /vs holds three comparisons (Wellfound, Mercor, Hired) while five more sit on the blog (Triplebyte, Otta, AngelList Talent, Vettery and a second Hired page); 6 job category pages; 9 location pages (8 US cities and London); 40 company careers pages.Source
• Your websiteComparisons: /vs promises "Honest, side-by-side looks at Standout versus other ways to get hired in tech" and lists Wellfound, Mercor and Hired, all from the candidate's side; /vs/hired carries no date and describes Hired in the present tense; its pricing row says "Free for candidates; companies pay a success fee only on hire".Source
• Competitor researchJack & Jill's homepage: an AI career agent for candidates and an AI hiring agent for companies; companies pay only when they hire; claims 433,929 professionals and 6,486 companies; links a Bias Report and a third-party assurance of its AI candidate matching.See the research Source
• Competitor researchParaform: "Hire great people in days, not months", average time to hire 27 days, 10,000+ recruiters, 1,000+ companies, demo-led with no public price. Wellfound: 27,000+ startups, 10M+ candidates, free posting plus paid Reach and Autopilot. Mercor's homepage now leads with "organizing human intelligence to power the AI economy" (expert work and AI evaluations).See the research Source

List every employer with more than one guide, keep the stronger URL, merge the newer facts into it, redirect the other, and add an "updated" date. Give each surviving guide the same end block: live roles at that company from the Standout board and the offer to be introduced to similar founders.

One strong page outranks two weak ones, and merging is faster than writing. Employer-name searches are high intent for exactly the engineers Standout represents.

• Short-term ranking dip after redirects

  Redirect to the closest page and keep the strongest URL.

• Your websiteSitemap (checked November 9, 2026): 13 top-level pages including /yc, which returned 404 Not Found on two checks; 167 blog posts from May 1 to November 6, 2026, including about 25 "<company> engineering jobs" guides, with overlapping pairs such as /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs (May 2) and /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs-apply (August 18); /vs holds three comparisons (Wellfound, Mercor, Hired) while five more sit on the blog (Triplebyte, Otta, AngelList Talent, Vettery and a second Hired page); 6 job category pages; 9 location pages (8 US cities and London); 40 company careers pages.Source
• Your websiteJob board: "37,419 opportunities". Job pages carry "Talk to Standout", "Let me introduce you to the founders.", "Skip the process" and a $3,000 referral box. The London page ("Startup Jobs in London | 1,405 Open Roles") has only "Join" and "Earn $3,000" calls to action and no prompt to get matched.Source

Write one setup page per promised integration in the same shape as the Ashby guide: what syncs (roles, stages, rejections, scheduling), permissions needed, time to connect and a screenshot. Fill in the Slack page. If an integration is not live yet, say "coming soon" on /ai instead of listing it.

The ATS is where a startup's hiring lives; a clear guide removes a buying question, and matching claims across /ai and docs keeps assistants and buyers from finding a contradiction.

• Documenting an integration that is not finished

  Label beta features clearly.

• Your website"Standout for AI assistants" page (/ai): companies "pay a success fee only when they hire", with no retainer or exclusivity and fees refundable within a guarantee window; most briefs yield a first shortlist within 24 hours; integrations listed: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Slack and Notion; network deepest in San Francisco, New York and Europe.Source
• Your websiteDocs (9 pages): the integration guides cover Ashby (with setup steps) and Slack (listed, no setup detail); the companies getting-started guide covers sharing roles, reviewing matches and starting conversations, with no pricing and no time to first intro; other setups are told to email.Source
• Your websiteFor-companies page: "Find your people. Not the same overhunted shortlist."; warm intros, on-demand sourcing from LinkedIn and GitHub, pre-screening (a demo shows 142 inbound cut to 6 forwarded) and pipeline ops; onboarding starts from the company URL (about 10 minutes in the demo) with intros sent via Slack; 25 customer logos; no price, fee or guarantee stated and no quotes from hiring companies; CTAs "Get your first intros today" and "Try it with your domain".Source

Ask the founders of recent hires for a two-line quote, the role filled and days from brief to signed offer. Put three on /company beside the logos and one on /yc and each company-side comparison page. Keep a running list so scouts can send the closest match (same stage, same role) in outreach.

Logos say who; quotes say what happened. Specific time-to-hire claims from peers answer the question founders ask first.

• Founders slow to reply

  Draft the quote from their own messages and ask them to approve.

• Your websiteFor-companies page: "Find your people. Not the same overhunted shortlist."; warm intros, on-demand sourcing from LinkedIn and GitHub, pre-screening (a demo shows 142 inbound cut to 6 forwarded) and pipeline ops; onboarding starts from the company URL (about 10 minutes in the demo) with intros sent via Slack; 25 customer logos; no price, fee or guarantee stated and no quotes from hiring companies; CTAs "Get your first intros today" and "Try it with your domain".Source
• Your websiteHomepage (fetched twice, November 9, 2026): in the page as served, the proof band reads "0+" Builders Represented, "< 0d" Avg Intro To Offer and "0%" Founder Reply Rate, and the "Without Standout" vs "With Standout" block shows only the numbers 01-04 with no wording. H1 "Get introduced to your dream role."; "The top 5% get represented"; a four-step flow (connect LinkedIn, chat, hand-picked roles, booking); one candidate testimonial; an "Earn $3,000" referral banner.Source
• Your websiteVision page: "10,000+ builders represented" and "60+ startups matched", "from P26 pre-seed teams to Series B unicorns"; "We don't sell software, we deliver introductions"; recruiters charge "20–30%" of first-year salary; talent is free and companies pay only on a successful hire, with no retainer or exclusivity.Source

Subset each font to the characters used, serve WOFF2 only, cut to the two or three weights the design actually uses, preload the one the H1 needs and use font-display swap. Then remove the 725 KB of unused JavaScript flagged by PageSpeed and the 0.85 s of render-blocking requests. Re-test and watch the field data over 28 days.

Candidates arrive from social and job pages on phones; a lighter page shows the headline and CTA sooner, and passing Core Web Vitals helps every one of the thousands of job and blog pages that share the same fonts.

• Design looks different with fewer weights

  Check with the designer before cutting each weight.

• Google PageSpeedMobile performance 64/100 (desktop 78); real visitors fail Core Web Vitals on LCP (p75 2.8 s) and INP (p75 204 ms); the homepage weighs 5.4 MB in 109 requests, of which fonts are 2.9 MB and JavaScript 1.95 MB; 725 KB of unused JavaScript and about 0.85 s of render-blocking requests; 16 third-party services, the heaviest Facebook (280 KB), Google Tag Manager (192 KB) and TikTok (158 KB), plus Clarity, Bing Ads and Google Ads tags.Source
• Your websiteHomepage (fetched twice, November 9, 2026): in the page as served, the proof band reads "0+" Builders Represented, "< 0d" Avg Intro To Offer and "0%" Founder Reply Rate, and the "Without Standout" vs "With Standout" block shows only the numbers 01-04 with no wording. H1 "Get introduced to your dream role."; "The top 5% get represented"; a four-step flow (connect LinkedIn, chat, hand-picked roles, booking); one candidate testimonial; an "Earn $3,000" referral banner.Source

Carry the context: when someone clicks from a job, city or category page, open the agent chat already holding that role, city and stack ("You were looking at Senior Backend roles in London; here are three founders hiring like this"). Add a "Get matched to roles like these" block to every city and category page. Track signups by entry page.

Someone browsing a specific role has told you what they want; starting the conversation there shortens onboarding and turns job-board traffic into represented talent.

• Visitors only wanted to apply directly

  Keep the company's own apply link visible next to the intro offer.

• Your websiteJob board: "37,419 opportunities". Job pages carry "Talk to Standout", "Let me introduce you to the founders.", "Skip the process" and a $3,000 referral box. The London page ("Startup Jobs in London | 1,405 Open Roles") has only "Join" and "Earn $3,000" calls to action and no prompt to get matched.Source
• Your websiteHomepage (fetched twice, November 9, 2026): in the page as served, the proof band reads "0+" Builders Represented, "< 0d" Avg Intro To Offer and "0%" Founder Reply Rate, and the "Without Standout" vs "With Standout" block shows only the numbers 01-04 with no wording. H1 "Get introduced to your dream role."; "The top 5% get represented"; a four-step flow (connect LinkedIn, chat, hand-picked roles, booking); one candidate testimonial; an "Earn $3,000" referral banner.Source
• HiringFounding AI Product Engineer (San Francisco): owns "either the company experience (how hiring managers brief us, see talent, decide)" or "the talent experience (how the people we represent get found, profiled, and intro'd)", including UX, UI and the conversational agent.Source

Add a live block to every stack and city post: "N open roles for Go engineers at startups right now", three example roles from the board, and "Get introduced to the founders" that opens the agent with the stack or city filled in. Use the same block on the newest company-side posts (pricing models, recruiters vs an agent) with a brief CTA instead.

A live count turns an evergreen article into a reason to act today, and it reuses data Standout already has.

• Low counts on niche stacks look thin

  Show the count only above a threshold.

• #9 Give the 37,419 job pages and the city pages a "get introduced to founders hiring this role" path

• Your websiteBlog: newest posts include "Pay-on-Hire vs Retainer vs RPO: Startup Recruiting Pricing Models Compared (2026)" and "Recruiters vs an AI Talent Agent for Engineers" (November 6, 2026); stack posts such as "Go Engineers in 2026" and city posts such as "Software Engineer Jobs in Denver"; footer social links are X and LinkedIn only.Source
• Your websiteJob board: "37,419 opportunities". Job pages carry "Talk to Standout", "Let me introduce you to the founders.", "Skip the process" and a $3,000 referral box. The London page ("Startup Jobs in London | 1,405 Open Roles") has only "Join" and "Earn $3,000" calls to action and no prompt to get matched.Source
• Your websiteSitemap (checked November 9, 2026): 13 top-level pages including /yc, which returned 404 Not Found on two checks; 167 blog posts from May 1 to November 6, 2026, including about 25 "<company> engineering jobs" guides, with overlapping pairs such as /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs (May 2) and /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs-apply (August 18); /vs holds three comparisons (Wellfound, Mercor, Hired) while five more sit on the blog (Triplebyte, Otta, AngelList Talent, Vettery and a second Hired page); 6 job category pages; 9 location pages (8 US cities and London); 40 company careers pages.Source

Add a second CTA under the hero for engineers: a copyable `npx standout` line with one sentence on what it checks and what is shared. Give it a docs page (what it runs, what data leaves the machine, how long it takes), and add the command to the stack posts and engineering job pages. Track CLI starts and CLI-to-intro rate separately from LinkedIn signups.

A command in the terminal is native to engineers and is a better signal for founders than a profile; it also travels well in developer communities where a signup link does not.

• Engineers worry about running unknown code

  Publish what it does and link the package source.

• Y Combinator profile"Agentic hiring marketplace", Spring 2026, team of 7, San Francisco. Candidates run a CLI command (`npx standout`) that assesses how they build and debug instead of uploading a resume; "10k talent / 60 companies / 100 intros" in one month.Source
• Your websiteHomepage (fetched twice, November 9, 2026): in the page as served, the proof band reads "0+" Builders Represented, "< 0d" Avg Intro To Offer and "0%" Founder Reply Rate, and the "Without Standout" vs "With Standout" block shows only the numbers 01-04 with no wording. H1 "Get introduced to your dream role."; "The top 5% get represented"; a four-step flow (connect LinkedIn, chat, hand-picked roles, booking); one candidate testimonial; an "Earn $3,000" referral banner.Source
• Your websiteDocs (9 pages): the integration guides cover Ashby (with setup steps) and Slack (listed, no setup detail); the companies getting-started guide covers sharing roles, reviewing matches and starting conversations, with no pricing and no time to first intro; other setups are told to email.Source

Each week, pick startups on the board with roles open more than 30 days that match strong represented talent. Send the founder an anonymised shortlist for that exact role (three profiles: background, stack, pay floor, why now) and one line: "Want intros? You pay only if you hire." Offer to claim and manage their careers page on Standout. Log every send on the scout leaderboard.

A founder who has struggled to fill a role for a month responds to real candidates more than to a pitch, and the shortlist shows the product instead of describing it.

• Candidates feel exposed

  Only show anonymised details candidates have approved for sharing.

• Seen as spam

  One email per role, only with strong matches.

• #2 Put the price on the companies page: a success fee only on hire, the guarantee window, and the math against a 20-30% agency fee

• HiringFounding Sales / Talent Scout (San Francisco, on-site): "The product works"; the bottleneck is finding candidates and getting them in front of clients. Pay of $100–$200 per intro accepted by a client, $500–$1,000 per offer and $4,000–$6,000 per hire; sourcing across LinkedIn, GitHub, Discord, university clubs and other communities; a live leaderboard of outreach sent, signups activated, intros accepted and hires made.Source
• Your websiteJob board: "37,419 opportunities". Job pages carry "Talk to Standout", "Let me introduce you to the founders.", "Skip the process" and a $3,000 referral box. The London page ("Startup Jobs in London | 1,405 Open Roles") has only "Join" and "Earn $3,000" calls to action and no prompt to get matched.Source
• Your websiteSitemap (checked November 9, 2026): 13 top-level pages including /yc, which returned 404 Not Found on two checks; 167 blog posts from May 1 to November 6, 2026, including about 25 "<company> engineering jobs" guides, with overlapping pairs such as /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs (May 2) and /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs-apply (August 18); /vs holds three comparisons (Wellfound, Mercor, Hired) while five more sit on the blog (Triplebyte, Otta, AngelList Talent, Vettery and a second Hired page); 6 job category pages; 9 location pages (8 US cities and London); 40 company careers pages.Source

Give each scout a tracked link per community (a Discord server, a university club, a GitHub topic) and a short landing page that speaks to it ("For members of X: get introduced to founders hiring Rust engineers"). Add a source column to the leaderboard and a weekly view of hires per 100 outreach by community. Move scout hours toward the top three sources each month.

The scout pay plan rewards accepted intros and hires; tracking by source points that effort at communities whose members founders actually reply to.

• Small numbers mislead

  Judge on intros accepted until hire counts are large enough.

• HiringFounding Sales / Talent Scout (San Francisco, on-site): "The product works"; the bottleneck is finding candidates and getting them in front of clients. Pay of $100–$200 per intro accepted by a client, $500–$1,000 per offer and $4,000–$6,000 per hire; sourcing across LinkedIn, GitHub, Discord, university clubs and other communities; a live leaderboard of outreach sent, signups activated, intros accepted and hires made.Source
• HiringCareers page: founded 2025, Y Combinator Spring 2026, "Seven people in San Francisco", "Hiring now: Sales and content"; mission "Help us give every great builder an agent of their own."Source

Add plain terms to /refer: who can refer, when the hire counts (for example after the guarantee window), when and how payment is made, and a status view for referrers. Then add a company-side referral: a founder who refers another hiring startup gets a credit against their next success fee, or a cash reward, when that startup hires.

Clear terms raise trust in the offer; founder referrals bring pre-qualified companies, which is the side of the marketplace the scout role says is harder to bring in front of candidates.

• Referral gaming

  Pay only after the guarantee window.

• #2 Put the price on the companies page: a success fee only on hire, the guarantee window, and the math against a 20-30% agency fee

• Your websiteReferral page: "Once they get hired through Standout, you receive a $3,000 referral bonus"; sign in with LinkedIn to get a link; no eligibility, payout timing or payment method stated; the program is framed around candidates referring friends who are job hunting.Source
• HiringFounding Sales / Talent Scout (San Francisco, on-site): "The product works"; the bottleneck is finding candidates and getting them in front of clients. Pay of $100–$200 per intro accepted by a client, $500–$1,000 per offer and $4,000–$6,000 per hire; sourcing across LinkedIn, GitHub, Discord, university clubs and other communities; a live leaderboard of outreach sent, signups activated, intros accepted and hires made.Source
• Your website"Standout for AI assistants" page (/ai): companies "pay a success fee only when they hire", with no retainer or exclusivity and fees refundable within a guarantee window; most briefs yield a first shortlist within 24 hours; integrations listed: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Slack and Notion; network deepest in San Francisco, New York and Europe.Source

Build a post-hire sequence: on offer signed, the agent asks the founder for the next role on the plan and offers to open the brief; at 30 days it checks in with both sides (fit, guarantee window); at 90 days it asks the new hire for two people they would vouch for (with the referral bonus). Keep the hire represented quietly for the future, with their consent.

Repeat briefs from happy founders cost nothing to acquire, and early check-ins catch problems inside the guarantee window before they become refunds.

• Feels pushy right after a hire

  Lead with a check-in, ask about the next role second.

• HiringContent Creator (San Francisco hybrid, plus a remote listing): works with the founders to make Standout "the defining voice for agentic hiring and startup talent", turning opinions, hiring data, customer stories and product launches into content; Standout focuses on pre-seed to Series B startups, talent pays nothing and companies pay only on a successful hire.Source
• HiringFounding Sales / Talent Scout (San Francisco, on-site): "The product works"; the bottleneck is finding candidates and getting them in front of clients. Pay of $100–$200 per intro accepted by a client, $500–$1,000 per offer and $4,000–$6,000 per hire; sourcing across LinkedIn, GitHub, Discord, university clubs and other communities; a live leaderboard of outreach sent, signups activated, intros accepted and hires made.Source
• Your website"Standout for AI assistants" page (/ai): companies "pay a success fee only when they hire", with no retainer or exclusivity and fees refundable within a guarantee window; most briefs yield a first shortlist within 24 hours; integrations listed: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Slack and Notion; network deepest in San Francisco, New York and Europe.Source

Publish a short monthly index: founder reply rate to intros, median days from intro to offer, and pay and equity bands for founding engineer, design and GTM roles by stage, all from Standout's own intros (aggregated, no names). Turn each issue into a post, an X thread, a LinkedIn carousel and a short video, and send it to represented talent and hiring founders.

Original data earns links, press and assistant citations, and the reply rate doubles as proof of the product. A monthly rhythm gives the content creator a reliable flagship.

• Small samples

  Publish quarterly cuts where monthly numbers are thin.

• #1 Your homepage tells search engines and AI assistants you have represented 0 builders with a 0% founder reply rate: put the real numbers in the page

• HiringContent Creator (San Francisco hybrid, plus a remote listing): works with the founders to make Standout "the defining voice for agentic hiring and startup talent", turning opinions, hiring data, customer stories and product launches into content; Standout focuses on pre-seed to Series B startups, talent pays nothing and companies pay only on a successful hire.Source
• Your websiteHomepage (fetched twice, November 9, 2026): in the page as served, the proof band reads "0+" Builders Represented, "< 0d" Avg Intro To Offer and "0%" Founder Reply Rate, and the "Without Standout" vs "With Standout" block shows only the numbers 01-04 with no wording. H1 "Get introduced to your dream role."; "The top 5% get represented"; a four-step flow (connect LinkedIn, chat, hand-picked roles, booking); one candidate testimonial; an "Earn $3,000" referral banner.Source
• Your websiteBlog: newest posts include "Pay-on-Hire vs Retainer vs RPO: Startup Recruiting Pricing Models Compared (2026)" and "Recruiters vs an AI Talent Agent for Engineers" (November 6, 2026); stack posts such as "Go Engineers in 2026" and city posts such as "Software Engineer Jobs in Denver"; footer social links are X and LinkedIn only.Source

Add location pages for the European cities where the board already has the most roles (for example Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam), using the London template, with a get-matched block, local pay context and the share of roles open to remote or relocation. Add a city post for each in the style of the US city guides.

City searches are high intent and less contested in Europe than in San Francisco, and the pages give European candidates and founders a local entry point to a network Standout says is already there.

• Too few European founders to match the demand

  Start with the cities where intros already happen.

• #9 Give the 37,419 job pages and the city pages a "get introduced to founders hiring this role" path

• Your website"Standout for AI assistants" page (/ai): companies "pay a success fee only when they hire", with no retainer or exclusivity and fees refundable within a guarantee window; most briefs yield a first shortlist within 24 hours; integrations listed: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Slack and Notion; network deepest in San Francisco, New York and Europe.Source
• Your websiteSitemap (checked November 9, 2026): 13 top-level pages including /yc, which returned 404 Not Found on two checks; 167 blog posts from May 1 to November 6, 2026, including about 25 "<company> engineering jobs" guides, with overlapping pairs such as /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs (May 2) and /blog/anthropic-engineering-jobs-apply (August 18); /vs holds three comparisons (Wellfound, Mercor, Hired) while five more sit on the blog (Triplebyte, Otta, AngelList Talent, Vettery and a second Hired page); 6 job category pages; 9 location pages (8 US cities and London); 40 company careers pages.Source
• Your websiteJob board: "37,419 opportunities". Job pages carry "Talk to Standout", "Let me introduce you to the founders.", "Skip the process" and a $3,000 referral box. The London page ("Startup Jobs in London | 1,405 Open Roles") has only "Join" and "Earn $3,000" calls to action and no prompt to get matched.Source
• HiringFounding Sales / Talent Scout (San Francisco, on-site): "The product works"; the bottleneck is finding candidates and getting them in front of clients. Pay of $100–$200 per intro accepted by a client, $500–$1,000 per offer and $4,000–$6,000 per hire; sourcing across LinkedIn, GitHub, Discord, university clubs and other communities; a live leaderboard of outreach sent, signups activated, intros accepted and hires made.Source

List every tag, who owns it and which campaign uses it. Remove any with no active campaign, load the rest through one tag manager after the page is interactive, and send each platform one meaningful event (activated signup, brief started) instead of page views only, so spend can be judged by cost per activated signup.

Fewer, later-loading tags help speed on every page, and one clear conversion event per platform shows which paid channel actually brings represented talent and briefs.

• Losing attribution for running ads

  Check with each campaign owner before removing a tag.

• #8 Cut the 2.9 MB of fonts that make up more than half of the homepage

• Google PageSpeedMobile performance 64/100 (desktop 78); real visitors fail Core Web Vitals on LCP (p75 2.8 s) and INP (p75 204 ms); the homepage weighs 5.4 MB in 109 requests, of which fonts are 2.9 MB and JavaScript 1.95 MB; 725 KB of unused JavaScript and about 0.85 s of render-blocking requests; 16 third-party services, the heaviest Facebook (280 KB), Google Tag Manager (192 KB) and TikTok (158 KB), plus Clarity, Bing Ads and Google Ads tags.Source
• HiringCareers page: founded 2025, Y Combinator Spring 2026, "Seven people in San Francisco", "Hiring now: Sales and content"; mission "Help us give every great builder an agent of their own."Source

Publish a short report: what the agent looks at and ignores, how the top 5% bar is set, how outcomes are checked across groups in aggregate, what candidates can see and correct, and what is shared with companies at each step. Add a "Why wasn't I matched?" answer in the product. Review it with outside counsel and consider an independent audit later.

Founders using AI screening increasingly get asked how it works, and candidates trusting an agent with a confidential search want to know what it shares. A clear report removes a buying objection that a rival already answers.

• Disclosing too much about the model

  Explain inputs and checks, not weights.

• Your websiteFor-companies page: "Find your people. Not the same overhunted shortlist."; warm intros, on-demand sourcing from LinkedIn and GitHub, pre-screening (a demo shows 142 inbound cut to 6 forwarded) and pipeline ops; onboarding starts from the company URL (about 10 minutes in the demo) with intros sent via Slack; 25 customer logos; no price, fee or guarantee stated and no quotes from hiring companies; CTAs "Get your first intros today" and "Try it with your domain".Source
• Your websiteHomepage (fetched twice, November 9, 2026): in the page as served, the proof band reads "0+" Builders Represented, "< 0d" Avg Intro To Offer and "0%" Founder Reply Rate, and the "Without Standout" vs "With Standout" block shows only the numbers 01-04 with no wording. H1 "Get introduced to your dream role."; "The top 5% get represented"; a four-step flow (connect LinkedIn, chat, hand-picked roles, booking); one candidate testimonial; an "Earn $3,000" referral banner.Source
• Competitor researchJack & Jill's homepage: an AI career agent for candidates and an AI hiring agent for companies; companies pay only when they hire; claims 433,929 professionals and 6,486 companies; links a Bias Report and a third-party assurance of its AI candidate matching.See the research Source

When a founder enters a domain, return in under a minute a preview: the roles Standout infers they are hiring for (from their careers page or the board), and for each, how many represented builders match plus three anonymised cards (background, stack, pay floor, availability). One click turns a card into a brief and an intro request. Measure domain-entry to brief rate.

Seeing real people who fit removes the risk of trying, and it is a demo no agency or job board can give without a call. It also scales the scout's best move (a tailored shortlist) to every visitor.

• Candidate privacy

  Show only fields candidates approved; no names or employers.

• Thin matches for niche roles

  Offer on-demand sourcing when counts are low.

• #12 Turn the companies on your job board into company signups: one anonymised shortlist per open role

• Your websiteFor-companies page: "Find your people. Not the same overhunted shortlist."; warm intros, on-demand sourcing from LinkedIn and GitHub, pre-screening (a demo shows 142 inbound cut to 6 forwarded) and pipeline ops; onboarding starts from the company URL (about 10 minutes in the demo) with intros sent via Slack; 25 customer logos; no price, fee or guarantee stated and no quotes from hiring companies; CTAs "Get your first intros today" and "Try it with your domain".Source
• Your website"Standout for AI assistants" page (/ai): companies "pay a success fee only when they hire", with no retainer or exclusivity and fees refundable within a guarantee window; most briefs yield a first shortlist within 24 hours; integrations listed: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Slack and Notion; network deepest in San Francisco, New York and Europe.Source
• HiringFounding AI Product Engineer (San Francisco): owns "either the company experience (how hiring managers brief us, see talent, decide)" or "the talent experience (how the people we represent get found, profiled, and intro'd)", including UX, UI and the conversational agent.Source
• HiringFounding Sales / Talent Scout (San Francisco, on-site): "The product works"; the bottleneck is finding candidates and getting them in front of clients. Pay of $100–$200 per intro accepted by a client, $500–$1,000 per offer and $4,000–$6,000 per hire; sourcing across LinkedIn, GitHub, Discord, university clubs and other communities; a live leaderboard of outreach sent, signups activated, intros accepted and hires made.Source

Turn the CLI result into a private builder profile the candidate controls: what they built and debugged, strengths, the kinds of teams they fit. The candidate chooses when to share it, either inside a Standout intro or as a link. Show founders the profile in every intro note, and publish how it correlates with founder replies and offers once there is enough data.

A signal founders trust raises reply rates, which raises hires and revenue; a profile candidates own gives them a reason to keep coming back between searches.

• Assessment seen as a test candidates can fail

  Frame it as strengths and fit, never a score, and keep it private by default.

• #11 Put the `npx standout` terminal test on the homepage as a second door for engineers

• Y Combinator profile"Agentic hiring marketplace", Spring 2026, team of 7, San Francisco. Candidates run a CLI command (`npx standout`) that assesses how they build and debug instead of uploading a resume; "10k talent / 60 companies / 100 intros" in one month.Source
• Your websiteVision page: "10,000+ builders represented" and "60+ startups matched", "from P26 pre-seed teams to Series B unicorns"; "We don't sell software, we deliver introductions"; recruiters charge "20–30%" of first-year salary; talent is free and companies pay only on a successful hire, with no retainer or exclusivity.Source
• HiringFounding AI Product Engineer (San Francisco): owns "either the company experience (how hiring managers brief us, see talent, decide)" or "the talent experience (how the people we represent get found, profiled, and intro'd)", including UX, UI and the conversational agent.Source

Offer a small, documented interface that a candidate authorises: their assistant can ask for current matches, see anonymised role summaries and accept or decline intros, while Standout keeps the representation, privacy and founder relationship. Start read-only (matches), then add accept or decline. List it in the docs and on /ai.

If assistants become how people search, the marketplace that answers them directly gets the traffic; being first fits Standout's "agent for everyone" story.

• Abuse or scraping

  Per-user authorisation and strict limits; no public candidate data.

• Your website"Standout for AI assistants" page (/ai): companies "pay a success fee only when they hire", with no retainer or exclusivity and fees refundable within a guarantee window; most briefs yield a first shortlist within 24 hours; integrations listed: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Slack and Notion; network deepest in San Francisco, New York and Europe.Source
• HiringCareers page: founded 2025, Y Combinator Spring 2026, "Seven people in San Francisco", "Hiring now: Sales and content"; mission "Help us give every great builder an agent of their own."Source
• HiringFounding AI Product Engineer (San Francisco): owns "either the company experience (how hiring managers brief us, see talent, decide)" or "the talent experience (how the people we represent get found, profiled, and intro'd)", including UX, UI and the conversational agent.Source

Create a "team landing" offer: when a founder winds down or cuts staff, Standout represents everyone who opts in, fast-tracks onboarding (one call with the founder for context instead of one per person), and introduces strong people, or the whole team, to hiring startups. Founders get a simple page to share with their team. Scouts watch for these moments through their networks and investor contacts.

It brings in batches of proven, vouched-for builders at once, gives founders a goodwill reason to recommend Standout, and some will hire through Standout again when they start their next company.

• Looks opportunistic

  Only by founder invitation; never cold-contact affected staff.

• HiringContent Creator (San Francisco hybrid, plus a remote listing): works with the founders to make Standout "the defining voice for agentic hiring and startup talent", turning opinions, hiring data, customer stories and product launches into content; Standout focuses on pre-seed to Series B startups, talent pays nothing and companies pay only on a successful hire.Source
• HiringFounding Sales / Talent Scout (San Francisco, on-site): "The product works"; the bottleneck is finding candidates and getting them in front of clients. Pay of $100–$200 per intro accepted by a client, $500–$1,000 per offer and $4,000–$6,000 per hire; sourcing across LinkedIn, GitHub, Discord, university clubs and other communities; a live leaderboard of outreach sent, signups activated, intros accepted and hires made.Source
• Your websiteHomepage (fetched twice, November 9, 2026): in the page as served, the proof band reads "0+" Builders Represented, "< 0d" Avg Intro To Offer and "0%" Founder Reply Rate, and the "Without Standout" vs "With Standout" block shows only the numbers 01-04 with no wording. H1 "Get introduced to your dream role."; "The top 5% get represented"; a four-step flow (connect LinkedIn, chat, hand-picked roles, booking); one candidate testimonial; an "Earn $3,000" referral banner.Source