How a Miami-based startup is connecting domestic companies with overseas human resources
By Yousra Benkirane
When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, much of the world began working from home in what appeared to be a temporary solution. Fast-forward three years later: 16 percent of companies are still fully remote, and 40 percent allow a hybrid structure. Following this paradigm shift, where companies have become comfortable using remote workers, Pierce Brehm saw an opportunity.
Brehm is the CEO and founder of Magellan AI, an AI-powered marketplace for HR tech and service solutions. What Magellan AI does is help domestic companies locate overseas talent they can remotely employ.
Brehm initially began his career working for HR tech giant ADP. After ten years there, he used his HR experience to launch consulting firm Hollyn Growth Advisors in April 2021. Hollyn’s mission was to pair domestic firms that wanted to expand into new global markets with foreign technology vendors that could help facilitate that growth.
Looking to become more scalable, Brehm turned to technology to expand the business. He created an AI-powered platform to act as a sort of matchmaker for companies and overseas tech providers, and voila — Magellan AI was born in March of this year, servicing 185 countries with four employees based in Miami, one in Atlanta, and one in Nebraska.
Listo Global, an international HR tech provider based in Utah, partnered with Magellan AI earlier this year. “Magellan AI is providing a tool where companies, regardless of their size or resources, can find and connect with the right vendors to help them navigate their global expansion journey,” says Freddie Ashby, CEO and co-founder of Listo Global. “It’s a real game-changer for businesses, eliminating the painstaking process of manually finding and vetting vendors.”
Magellan AI takes Brehm’s Hollyn model beyond just pairing domestic firms with overseas vendors, however. It drills down to potential employees who can work remotely – as in thousands of miles remotely. Through their AI platform, the company captures data about the staffing needs of the client, such as the type of role, the required availability and country, and the necessary skills. With this information, Magellan AI helps find the best employees for a client’s unique scenario, while at the same time educating them on the risks, benefits, and strategies of global hiring.
Brehm lists several reasons why you might want to hire talent overseas. For one, you get to widen the talent pool. Secondly, you have access to potentially lower-cost talent. And, of course, diversity of thought; as companies look to diversify and expand, having a global perspective becomes more valuable. “But there’s a lot of risks involved. For instance, if you misclassify one of your employees as a contractor versus an employee, in certain countries that’s not a big deal. But in some countries, it is,” says Brehm. In Germany, if a company is found guilty of misclassifying an employee, it may be fined up to $500,000. In France, those found guilty can actually be sentenced to jail time.
Magellan AI’s services are available on a subscription or fee basis. For $499 annually, clients become premium subscribers and have access to the vendors that Magellan Ai partners with. For a pre-negotiated fee, clients also have access to a broader HR technology marketplace that includes all HR tech solutions. Magellan’s platform provides information resources, like country insights, for free.
“We’re adding a talent portal, which I’m really excited about and super proud of,” says Brehm. “Essentially, just like we play matchmaker between companies and technology vendors to help them realize their global expansion goals, we’re also doing the same thing with talent in emerging markets.”
The company is now partnering with higher-education institutions in Africa and Latin America to create a connection between people in those regions looking for jobs and companies looking for remote talent. The institutions are essentially training workers in these continents to take on tech roles. “A lot of these individuals have largely been eliminated, dismissed, or just totally ignored in the global economic conversation. By way of these partnerships, we’re taking all the graduates of their programs and putting them into a talent database,” says Brehm. “Our clients will now be able to go into our talent portal, create a job requisition, and then be matched using AI technology to the best-fit candidate in Kenya, Nigeria, Argentina, or even Chile that has been upskilled and is now ready to enter the global workforce.”
The portal is expected to launch by the end of August, with more than 10,000 candidates in their database. “And we have a goal in the next five years to create 100,000 jobs in these emerging markets,” says the CEO. Magellan AI will charge a placement fee for any hires made on the platform; half of that placement fee will go back to the institution that trained the individual to foster more talent for its clients to dip into. Premium subscribers will have access to the full talent database, from entry to senior level, while free users will only have access to entry-level candidates.
Says Brehm, “The fact that we have more of a social mission to what we’re doing – in addition to trying to be more inclusive of talent in emerging markets that haven’t had that access – I think is something that makes us unique.”
