Grain lore.

Yo, I'm Rhett.

I'm the cofounder. I previously made Cased, a bike clothing business, and I also study economic development in low-income countries.

When I made my first website for Cased, I wasted $5k on some Fiverr dude that didn't deliver. That was lame. When I started running static ads, I then blew $10k on an unvetted agency, which was super lame. Sourcing was always a shitty time. Upwork was such a hassle.

Then, one day, I was meditating under a tree, and I came to a profound realization of how to make a lot of money: Make a fantastically better version of Upwork!

This past year, my cofounder Kyle and I went deep into the talent industry. Many conversations, articles, and international trips later, we put together Grain. I literally don't think there is a person who understands the hiring/talent industry better than Kyle.

We've been grinding to make Grain the absolute best product in its space!

Hey, I'm Kyle.

I'm pretty obsessed with finding ridiculously good people and figuring out what they're actually great at.

Before Grain, I worked at MeritFirst, where I helped companies like Ramp, Corgi, Eragon, Clay, and Loop hire based on demonstrated ability instead of whatever AI-optimized stuff someone could cram onto a resume.

The thing I kept running into was that great people are everywhere, but managing them correctly and hiring them at exactly the moment you need them is incredibly hard.

Sometimes the perfect person doesn't want a full-time job. Or, you only need their expertise for a few weeks. Or, you just have an important project sitting around, because you don't know who you can trust to do it well.

So, it's pretty clear there is a massive problem here. That's what we're building Grain for.

This ‘tell us what you need done, we find people, and we manage it without any effort on your end’ flow is a super unique value-add to the placement industry.