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Product-Market Fit Comes From Listening, Not Guessing

For tech companies, finding top engineering talent is already tough. Finding it quickly, fairly, and without hidden biases? That’s where most hiring processes fall apart.

Ninh Tran, founder and CEO of Snapbrillia, knows this from experience. Before launching his current company, he helped organizations like Amazon, Google, and Facebook hire nearly a million people in a single year during the pandemic.

But the more he saw inside high-volume technical hiring, the more he realized the problem wasn’t just speed or sourcing — it was how candidates were being assessed.

Lesson 1: Traditional Coding Tests Are Failing Everyone

Tran noticed that many companies were rejecting huge volumes of applicants — not because they couldn’t do the work, but because they failed outdated, textbook-style coding challenges that had little to do with real-world engineering.

In his words:

“If someone has 8–10 years of experience, they shouldn’t have to grind through computer science trivia to prove themselves.”

Snapbrillia’s answer:

  • Real-world projects pulled directly from the hiring company’s tech stack.

  • Assessments that fit into a 30–60 minute session, not marathon four-hour tests.

  • An AI-powered platform that helps interviewers spot and reduce unconscious bias.

Lesson 2: Interviewer Bias Is Real — and Costly

Hiring bias isn’t always intentional — but it is measurable. Tran built Snapbrillia to track interviewer behavior, giving feedback on patterns like:

  • Cutting off certain candidates more often than others.

  • Offering more hints to one demographic than another.

  • Overvaluing “cultural fit” at the expense of technical skill.

For SaaS and tech companies, this isn’t just an ethics issue — it’s a conversion rate issue. Every time bias filters out a strong candidate, the hiring funnel becomes slower and more expensive.

Lesson 3: Product-Market Fit Comes From Listening, Not Guessing

Before Snapbrillia, Tran had already learned a hard truth: ideas are worthless without market validation.

His process for finding product-market fit:

  1. Shadow the user — recruiters, hiring managers, and engineers — to see where frustration peaks.

  2. Ask high-value questions — not “Would you use this?” but “What’s the hardest part of your job right now?”

  3. Validate features in batches — if 10 prospects all ask for 5 of the same things, build those before chasing one-off requests.

Lesson 4: Growth Starts in the Community

Instead of pouring money into ads, Tran’s growth strategy is community-first:

  • Target the top 10% of influencers in HR tech and recruiting.

  • Build genuine relationships by sharing the mission, listening to feedback, and co-creating insights.

  • Let those influencers carry the message to the other 90% of the market.

For B2B SaaS founders, this is a reminder: influence flows through nodes. Find the people your buyers trust, and make them your champions.

Lesson 5: Make the Message Shareable

To spark word-of-mouth, Snapbrillia’s pitch is simple and provocative:

“If you’re Black or Hispanic and apply for a tech job, you’re 50% more likely to be automatically rejected in the first three stages of hiring.”

It’s an attention hook that leads straight into the solution — a fairer, faster, bias-aware hiring platform that actually helps companies hire better talent.

Lesson 6: A Mission Beyond Metrics

Snapbrillia’s five-year goal isn’t just revenue growth — it’s helping 1 million people land high-paying, fulfilling jobs they might never have had access to otherwise.

Tran sees a ripple effect:

  • Those hires gain skills and financial stability.

  • Some will launch their own companies or nonprofits.

  • Their work will feed back into communities that are often disconnected from the tech economy.

This isn’t “DEI as a feature” — it’s the core business model.

Key Takeaways for SaaS & Tech Leaders

  1. Test for the work, not the trivia. Use real-world assessments that reflect the actual job.

  2. Measure bias in interviews. Data beats assumptions.

  3. Validate before you build. Watch users work, don’t just pitch them features.

  4. Leverage industry influencers. They can accelerate trust and adoption faster than ads.

  5. Craft a repeatable message. If it can’t be said in one sentence, it won’t spread.

Tran’s advice to his younger founder self?

“Do it. Don’t worry about the money — it will come if you build something people love that makes a difference.”

For SaaS and tech companies trying to win the war for talent, that “difference” might just be the thing that turns hiring from a headache into a competitive advantage.