Startup Interview with Terence Hielscher, Founder & Managing Director at MoBerries

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

My story begins in Glashütte, eastern Germany – a town renowned for making luxury watches. I grew up there as the middle child in the last generation born before the fall of the wall. I was motivated by the stories of the previous generations’ struggle to see the world and promised myself that I would seize every opportunity I could to explore and grow. Thus I was drawn to America at a young age by this dream and belief; I perceived it as a way of bettering myself.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

MoBerries helps people to identify opportunities in the talent market efficiently.

The talent market has many imperfections in it regarding information and understanding supply and demand factors for companies and candidates. Our platform identifies inefficiencies by learning from interactions. This is more than simply matching keywords. Our engine learns from our customers in ways that drastically improve their recruiting experience by providing them feedback on how they can better perform.

What is the origin story?

America opened my eyes to a new culture and provided me with valuable work experience. Working as a nanny, I surrounded myself with people who had been successful in their respective careers. Being around success made it all tangible, and most importantly, it felt attainable. The work I did as a nanny ignited my inner passion for developing children and people as a whole.

America's diversity really opened my eyes, as interacting with people from different cultures and socio-economic groups cemented my love for people and their unique stories; this fueled me to find ways to help people achieve the best versions of themselves.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

I love our team because we all strive for the same vision throughout the highs and lows. I never doubt their resolve and know they are just as determined to make something happen. They understand the importance of what we do for people and this concept of being an agent for change.

Everybody out there deserves the chance to get the job they really want.

Our engine is all about learning from people's interactions to make relevant matches happen; it is an efficient process for all parties and why they trust us to save them time.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

I have honestly never given this much thought, it might sound cliche, but just like your favorite athlete always dreaming of their sport – this is what I have always been aiming for.

I wanted to build something meaningful and something that could live beyond me.

For me, a huge accomplishment would be showing the children from where I grew up that the sky’s the limit to what they can get out of life. Keep your nose out of the sky, your faith strong, and your face to the rising sun.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

Our success is measured in the number of people we make happy.

End of the day, it's about getting candidates hired. That is the goal.

There are many other goals along with the candidate funnel-like conversion to interview, candidate engagement, however, getting you hired and, more importantly, generating you as much demand as possible, empowers the candidate to best negotiate and know their worth.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

The most exciting part of our growth is the challenges that accompany it. At the core of a platform like MoBerries is the balancing act between candidates, companies, and their jobs. These are the realities of running a marketplace. We require many suitable candidates across various job categories to fulfill our partners' job positions. Maintaining high engagement from all stakeholders is key.

What technologies are you currently most excited about and most worried about? And why?

I am excited about deep learning, the benefits of leveraging metric learning, and how it is becoming more affordable regardless of company size.

I am a strong believer that life is a relationship-driven business, and the fact that we can apply technology to help humans be more high touch excites me. The future will not be about building companies but ecosystems built on unique business logic.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

We received an invite to participate at the Startup of the Year Award and reacted to it, as we saw that some of our current partners were also participating.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

I cannot say this really applies to me, as everything I have built was with the intention of not letting the younger me down. I would tell him how proud I am of him for being so brave to set off into the world alone without knowing the magnitude of the journey ahead.

I would say to myself it is ok not to have the answers for everything. What sets us apart is our commitment to the process of figuring it out. I would also tell him to never sacrifice his happiness, for it is what makes you strong, don’t forget that patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

Who you are today has no bearing on the person you will transform yourself into tomorrow.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

It always goes on.

This is really what we learned from the past year. As a recruitment company, we were facing complete hiring freezes starting in April 2020.

But, knowing that recruitment is one of the core essentials in business, we anticipated that the hiring freeze would eventually pass, and luckily this paid off. So this is the biggest lesson from the past year – it always goes on, and sometimes all you can do is be patient.