Hello, World!

Welcome! 👋

I’m Matt Tucker, Fountain’s CTO. I recently joined the company via the acquisition of my latest startup Koan (koan.co), and I’m thrilled to be here for (1) our mission around creating compelling technology for the benefit of hourly workers; (2) the opportunity we have in building a great company and engineering culture as we continue to very rapidly grow.

This blog is a place to share our work: what we’re building, what we’ve learned, and how we work together as Fountain Engineering.

Why high-volume hiring? Why now?

The Great Resignation represents a sea change for hourly work. Though the immediate hiring crunch has deep roots in past labor practices), the relationship between employers and the workforce is irrevocably changed. Hiring qualified employees was always a slow process; now, some companies are simply exhausting the pool of workers to hire.

The present state is a classic impedance mismatch, with rigid, drawn-out hiring processes crashing head first into modern expectations for work. Imagine instead:

• workers seamlessly applying for quality jobs
• hiring managers filling positions in hours instead of weeks
• automated clearance of document and eligibility checks
• …and employers genuinely engaging with their workers’ needs

Can software help? You bet. Many companies are talking about the future of work, but for the 55% of workers in the US and beyond who are paid at hourly rates we have a meaningful opportunity to build it. And to build it the right way.

Our unfair advantage

Every business needs a competitive edge. For Fountain, it’s our deep roots serving the gig economy.

As difficult as hiring has become, gig companies do it right. New jobs are never more than a few clicks away. Gig companies meet workers where they are, delivering smooth, personal interactions across channels and devices. For a workforce that’s more phone than desktop, more mobile than office, and more diverse than ever before, sluggish application portals don’t cut it. Expectations are higher than ever before. And we’ve been exceeding them since day one.

Across the table, hiring teams are facing unprecedented competition for qualified applicants for their roles. Beyond eliminating friction from the candidates’ side, hiring teams need leverage—and the workflow automation that defines gig hiring processes is the way to get it.

Succeeding at gig hiring requires a truly seamless system for recruiting, hiring, and retaining outstanding people. By making this superpower available to employers in any sector of the economy, we’re able to save time and create new opportunities for employers and workers alike. Workers find the right job faster. Hiring managers save time and maximize their recruiting budgets. Everyone wins.

Engineering at Fountain

Advantages don’t last, however, and hiring is only a beachhead. Behind it, we’re building the tools that companies need to compete in attracting and retaining their hourly workforce. From scheduling to training to actually listening to employees, we intend for Fountain to become the de-facto tool for companies operating at truly massive scale.

We’re not short on problems to solve. Consider:

• User experience. Refining workflows and connecting with a worker through Fountain needs to be (almost) as easy as it was for them to apply. High expectations in the hiring process extend out to everything that we do: we’re building for the future, and Fountain feels like it.
• Global scale. Our customers already include some of the largest companies in the world, and our usage shows it: millions of people get hired through Fountain every year. Our infrastructure needs to absorb seasonal hiring spikes, scale across continents, and uphold our legal and regulatory obligations along the way.
• Rapid innovation. The problem is far from solved. Fountain today may be the best hiring platform on the market, but our mission to open opportunities for the global workforce is only just beginning. Our ability to develop and test hypotheses and bring new products to market is crucial to realizing our full potential.
• The power of data. Helping our customers adapt to the realities of the modern workforce requires powerful analytical tools—and we’re building them. The combination of automation and intelligence gives small recruiting teams incredible leverage and the system keeps getting smarter the more data we collect.
• Most of all, having an ambitious vision for what’s possible at work means (even more than usual) an obligation to live it. Simply put, our success rests on building an engineering culture par excellence—creative, inclusive, and dedicated to changing the business of hourly work.

We’re just getting started, and we’re looking for awesome collaborators to help. We’ll share more on this blog soon, but we’re building something big. If you’re up for an ambitious new opportunity, we’d love for you to give Fountain a look.