The problem
Southeast Asia’s startups and SMEs cannot hire fast enough: local tech talent is scarce, Hong Kong and Singapore salaries price out smaller employers, and graduates stare at a job market with no map — who is hiring, for what skills, at what pay.
How it works
Glints runs a two-sided talent marketplace across Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. Professionals join for jobs and career content; employers post roles or hand Glints the whole search. The wedge that scaled it was borderless hiring — matching Hong Kong and Singapore employers with full-stack developers and designers in lower-cost markets — backed by supply-building in new pipelines like the Philippines and proprietary salary/trends data employers actually read.
Pain points
Engineer searches dragging for months, median Hong Kong tech salaries running 2.5x Southeast Asian levels, SMEs with nobody in-house who knows how to recruit, and early-career candidates guessing at paths from anecdote.
Business model
Employers pay: job ads, recruitment fees and managed remote-talent contracts, plus career services on the candidate side. The company reports positive contribution margins in every business unit with Indonesia and Vietnam profitable.
Challenges
Marketplace liquidity must be rebuilt city by city, downturns cut both hiring budgets and cross-border premiums at once, and every market has an incumbent board plus LinkedIn fighting for the same employers.
Funding
- Raised: $50M oversubscribed Series D co-led by DCM Ventures, Lavender Hill Capital and returning investor PERSOL Holdings (Aug 2022), bringing total raised to $80M; earlier a $22.5M Series C led by PERSOL (Apr 2021) (TechCrunch).
- Valuation: no citable valuation disclosed.
Latest — December 2023
Glints’ “What to Expect for 2024” talent report found AI-engineer demand up 15% half-on-half with full-stack developers the top cross-border hire, and noted 73% of Southeast Asian startups now hire outside their home markets (TNGlobal) — data that doubles as proof of the borderless-hiring thesis Glints sells.