Interview with Jacob Hsu, CEO at Catalyte

7/9/18

Jacob Hsu

What does it take to pull someone away from early retirement in Sweden to run a company in Baltimore, Maryland?

For Jacob Hsu, CEO of Catalyte, all it took was a five minutes of hearing about Catalyte’s ability to find great software developers from unexpected places. From that moment, he was all in.

“As I was working my way out of my CEO job at my last company, I found out about this company in Baltimore, Catalyst DevWorks at the time, which was doing something that just blew my mind when I read it,” said Hsu.

“Within minutes of meeting the company and meeting the team, I was blown away with what I saw. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. This company had fundamentally found a formula that I think addressed, frankly, some of the biggest problems we’re facing in the technology world and, I think, society as a whole.”


“So I ended up turning myself around, went home and told my wife, ‘Forget Sweden. We’re actually going to go to Baltimore.’”

What excited Jacob was Catalyte’s Talent Platform, the company’s artificial intelligence and machine learning engine. The platform removes cultural biases from hiring and allows Catalyte to identify individuals, regardless of background, who have the innate potential and cognitive ability to be great software developers. This produces a more diverse and productive workforce that’s not constrained by the traditional markers of pedigree others use to make hiring decisions.


“The core idea of Catalyte is that pedigree has no statistical correlation to outcomes on jobs,” said Hsu. “Great developers, people who can be very successful in the digital economy, can come from any background. We’ve proven that Catalyte teams of developers, developers who come from unconventional backgrounds, are actually outperforming traditional development teams three-to-one from a productivity standpoint.”

To extend this opportunity to as many Americans as possible, Catalyte is in an aggressive period of growth to fill a talent void.


“A lot of our growth is coming from our clients and the need in this country for great software developers,” said Hsu. “We’re looking at hiring 200 people next year just in Baltimore. The true economic impact of what Catalyte can bring to this region is unimaginable.”

If you’re interested in learning more about Catalyte, you can contact them here, connect with Jacob on LinkedIn or discover career opportunities

About Catalyte - Catalyte advances human potential for the digital economy. We use AI to identify any individual with the innate potential and cognitive ability to be a great software developer. Catalyte’s predictive analytics platform hires, upskills and deploys high-performing teams to deliver product engineering and enterprise applications for Fortune 500 companies. Our hiring model and intensive onboarding process rapidly create teams that have exponentially higher levels of production and quality than anyone else. Catalyte has created a diverse and US-based technology workforce to help companies scale software innovation. For more information, visit www.catalyte.io.

Sponsored by:

Greenspring Associates - Greenspring Associates invests in established and emerging venture capital fund managers, venture-backed companies across their full lifecycle, and secondary positions in venture capital funds and companies.

Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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