Hey! 🫰 This is the first Playbook issue published on Substack.
I wish I had done this move sooner.
Glad to finally be here.. Reach out to hello@julien.design or send me a DM on Substack if you have questions.
This issue is a bit special because it also serves as a small announcement.
Let’s start strong.
Hiring is broken. And I don’t mean that lightly.
It’s slow. Soul-draining. Unpredictable.
You can spend weeks chasing, only to lose your best candidate overnight.
Or worse, hire wrong and spend months undoing the damage.
Ask anyone who’s done it well.
They’ll tell you: hiring is not just hard. It’s insane.
At amo, it took me 3.5 weeks or 600 hours, for 2 exceptional hires.
That’s what great hiring actually costs. Focus, persuasion, and a stamina most teams can’t afford.
And you’re supposed to do that while also… still doing your job.
Designing, shipping, leading.
Hiring becomes your “side project.”
Except it’s the side project that makes or breaks the main one.
I’ve come to hate hiring.
But I’ve also seen what happens when it works.
When you finally find that one person who gets it.
Who pushes you.
Who rewires the team’s chemistry.
That’s not just a hire. That’s a multiplier.
You don’t get many of those.
They’re rare. Like golden tickets.
Hiring is like buying lottery tickets blindfolded. Each one costs 30 hours of work, and you burn through dozens hoping just one is a winner.
You read between the lines of portfolios.
You bet on potential.
You lobby your team to trust your gut.
But they just scored your fav candidate 2/5 on Ashby. RIP.
Even today, I’m not leading a team.
But I keep getting pulled back into hiring.
Designers reaching out telling me that they are looking for new adventures, but can’t announce it publicly.
Founders DMing: “Do you know someone great?”
The same story keeps repeating:
Talented people, invisible in the noise and chaos.
Founders with no time to search, sifting through piles of irrelevant applications.
And they’re not asking for links to a résumé.
They’re asking for intros.
For signal.
A few months ago, a high-profile founder called me.
They needed a founding designer.
Not junior, not just “good.”
Someone exceptional.
Money wasn’t the problem.
Time was.
They didn’t want a stack of cold CVs. They wanted one name.
The right name.
I said no.
Not because I didn’t want to help.
But because I knew how much focus and energy it takes to do it right.
So yeah. I’m building something new.
It’s called Offmarket.
It launches in October.
It’s not a job board.
Not a résumé dump.
Not another inbox full of cold applications.
It’s a curated service.
Built for signal, not noise.
Designed for speed, not spam.
Human taste for the curation.
AI muscle for the heavy lifting.
And I’m not doing this alone.
I’m teaming up with someone I trust deeply, arguably the best design recruiter I know.
Together, here’s the promise:
→ Designers: Land the right role without shouting into the void.
→ Founders: Get intros, not applications.
→ Engineers, PMs, Marketers: You won’t be forgotten. Stay tuned.
Let us filter the chaos for you.
No more playing the hiring lottery.
We’ll send you golden tickets only.
More soon.
In the meantime, you can subscribe to Offmarket right here:
Julien.
Nice!!!