When Meetesh Karia joined Earnest as chief technology officer in early 2023, the engineers were not the problem. The arrangement was. His Latin American development team came through a jumble of contractors, freelancers and agencies. Pay differed. Equipment differed. Even working schedules required individual negotiation. One engineering manager had three developers from three agencies. A team, on paper. A small diplomatic conference, in practice.
- Howdy recruits full-time Latin American professionals for US companies.
- Its service includes the unglamorous essentials: payroll, equipment, benefits and local support.
- The distinctive bet is that offices, coaches and career paths help remote colleagues stay.
Earnest eventually worked with Howdy.com to build a more unified operation in Guadalajara. In Howdy’s account of the project, the lender cut overall costs by 15-20% while increasing take-home pay for many teammates by 20-30%. Those figures belong to a particular customer story. But the question they raise travels well: how much of a hiring budget pays for useful work, and how much pays for the arrangement around it?
01 / A greeting with a business plan
Howdy began in Austin in 2018, founded by Jacqueline Samira and Frank Licea. Its own history starts modestly: five people, one client. Austin companies were competing for local engineering talent. Across Latin America were professionals who could work during the same day, without making the journey to Texas. Connecting those groups required recruitment, certainly. It also required an employer experience worth accepting.
The business passed through two names, Austin Software and Astro, before announcing the Howdy rebrand in January 2023. Alongside the greeting came a $5 million extension to its $13 million Series A. The company reported $21 million raised in total and a $105 million valuation at that financing. Investors included Greycroft and Obvious Ventures; Howdy had already joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch.
Later in 2023 it acquired Brazil’s GeekHunter, a recruitment marketplace with roughly 400,000 candidates, according to contemporaneous reporting. The acquisition price was undisclosed. The expansion made geographical sense: the company’s value depends partly on knowing people in places its customers do not.
02 / The office in the remote job
There is a pleasing incongruity in a remote staffing business that opens offices. Howdy’s first House appeared in Montevideo in 2019; Buenos Aires followed in 2020. These spaces give professionals somewhere to work, meet colleagues and attend events. The company makes local community part of the service, rather than leaving each engineer to invent it beside a kitchen table.
Its recruitment team includes more than 30 psychologists trained as recruiters, according to Howdy. Their brief covers motivation and communication alongside technical and English-language screening. Professionals also receive performance coaching from people with engineering-management experience. The distinction is practical. A recruiting decision happens once; misunderstandings, career questions and difficult weeks continue arriving.
Howdy advertises 98% retention. Its current FAQ describes professionals staying with partner companies through their first two years. That is a company-reported figure, rather than an independently audited result. The machinery behind it is more informative than the percentage: someone has accepted responsibility for the stretch between joining a team and wanting to remain on it.
“It doesn’t feel transactional.”James Gorman, RigUp - in Howdy’s customer account
03 / The arithmetic of belonging
Howdy sits between several familiar purchases. A freelance marketplace can help find a person. An employer-of-record platform can administer employment. A development agency can deliver a project. Howdy sells ongoing teammates plus the surrounding operations. The customer directs the work; Howdy supports the hiring and employment infrastructure.
Its published pricing explanation allocates an average bill three ways: 60% reaches the professional’s bank account, 25% funds benefits and local support costs, and 15% is Howdy’s fee. It advertises no upfront recruitment charges. This is a description of average allocation, not a universal salary quote. Roles, compensation and the employment arrangement still matter.
Earnest’s experience illustrates why the bundle can appeal. According to its CTO’s account, payroll software paid people but did not source candidates or shape local benefits. Agencies added support, yet complicated raises and promotions. Consolidating the team meant reconsidering the system around capable engineers. Guadalajara offered overlap with Pacific Time and convenient visits. The company reported adding about 20 teammates there in five to six months.
04 / When the clock matters
Nearshoring has an advantage that requires no sales poetry: people can discuss a problem while both are awake. Niche BMS first hired a Ukrainian developer through a contractor firm, then encountered time-zone difficulties. It turned toward South America and hired eight engineers through Howdy. In the published case study, those engineers helped build an energy utility-data API using the company’s Python, Django and AWS stack.
The customers are varied. Cybersecurity company SimSpace hired five engineers through Howdy. Accounting firm Furey hired three accountants. OJO, the real estate technology company, initially worried about integrating remote developers; its engineering leader said their commitment changed that perception. These are vendor-published success stories, with the selection bias that implies. They nevertheless show what is being bought: people joining an existing organisation and taking responsibility inside it.
Culture occasionally needs laundry. A group activity from Howdy’s talent site. The remote-work infrastructure also makes room for meeting in person.
05 / A career, rather than a task
The company is adding AI training to that proposition. Its AI-Native Engineering curriculum covers prompting frameworks, context management, spec-driven development and evaluation engineering. The course description assigns humans responsibility for intent and final judgment. That emphasis fits the broader model: tools can accelerate execution, while people still need direction and development.
There are boundaries. Licea has described declining customers whose needs amount to a short website adjustment or a temporary project. A business buying a few hours of work will struggle to justify a system built around careers. Nor can local offices compensate for a client that withholds meaningful responsibility. The customer’s management choices remain part of the bargain.
The useful thing to copy is the sequence. Define a continuing role. Make compensation, equipment and support coherent. Give someone responsibility for the employee’s development. Keep colleagues close enough to solve problems together. Howdy packages those decisions into a service. Its most interesting proposition is that the supporting arrangement deserves as much design as the hire.