Episode Details

Blaine Daws started in data centres in 2008 with a stack of papers and a wired phone. By 25, he was billing £475k a year as a solo 360 recruiter. At a family Christmas party in December 2019, he met Karl Chatterjee, a man who had already sold two recruitment businesses for multi-millions. Karl said: "Why are you going to line someone else's pockets?" Four weeks later, WNTD was incorporated. Two weeks after that, the world went into lockdown.

Like so many other founders back then, he dropped his niche, went after every market he could find, and started to make money. They grew to 20 people and had a huge office in the post-Covid boom. But lost a foothold in their niche and over a quarter of a million pounds doing it.

Then he stripped everything back. Let everyone go. Rebuilt from scratch around the one market he knew inside out: the Nvidia ecosystem and the global data centre buildout powering the AI revolution.

WNTD is now 75 people, generating £15 to 20 million in revenue, and running a £100 billion GPU infrastructure deployment across Europe. Blaine is 35, working 7 days a week, with two young children at home.

"I want to make as much money as possible. So then in five years time, when I'm 40, I don't have to do it anymore."

This week on The RAG Podcast, Blaine Daws tells the real story behind one of the most unusual businesses in recruitment.

We cover:

• How a family Christmas party sparked WNTD, launched two weeks before lockdown
• Going mass market, losing £250K, and why he told Karl most weeks he wanted to quit
• Why stripping back to one niche was the actual growth strategy
• What statement of work really means in AI infrastructure recruitment
• Running a £100 billion GPU build and what that looks like day to day
• Getting equity stakes in the partner companies they work with
• Working 7 days a week at 35 with two young kids, and what it's actually costing
• The question Sean asked that changed the tone of the whole episode

Blaine went from nearly shutting the business down to running one of the most specialised agencies in the world's fastest growing market.

If you've ever wondered what it actually costs to build something extraordinary... this episode has the answer.

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Episode Sponsor: Hoxo

Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn.

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