Kalibrr

Overview

Kalibrr built a two-sided hiring marketplace for Southeast Asia, pairing job listings with candidate profiles, assessments and recruiting software. Paul Rivera, Danny Castonguay and Dexter Ligot-Gordon founded the company in 2013 and joined YC Winter 2013.^[1]

The original insight was that employers needed evidence of ability, not another stack of resumes. Kalibrr tested candidates, matched them to roles and gave recruiters software to manage the funnel. YC now labels the company acquired, yet Kalibrr still markets its platform, publishes current company roles and appeared publicly under Rivera's leadership in 2025.^[2][3][4] No observed source identifies a buyer, transaction date or terms.

Founding Story

Rivera encountered the problem while running a Philippine BPO. Recruiting took too long, applicant screening was weak and retention was difficult. The early Kalibrr team turned that operating pain into a cloud hiring system for BPOs, recruiting agencies and headhunters.^[5]

Ligot-Gordon came from workforce policy rather than software. His family history linked education, migration and access to work. Rivera convinced him to move to the Philippines and build Kalibrr. He later described the question behind the product: could a person demonstrate capability and use that demonstration as a credential?^[6]

That belief shaped both the marketplace and the company. Kalibrr built engineering assessments and product case exercises, hired people without conventional credentials and sold the same assessment approach to employers. Ligot-Gordon said: "You just need the opportunity to demonstrate it."^[6]

Timeline

• 2013: Kalibrr joined YC Winter 2013 and launched its employer recruiting product.^[1][5]
• December 2013: The company reported a $1.9 million raise and a pilot involving discussions with at least ten BPOs.^[5]
• January 2017: CB Insights records a $5.51 million Series A-II round.^[7]
• 2021: Ligot-Gordon left Kalibrr after leading product, design and engineering.^[6]
• June 2025: Kalibrr released a Philippine Top 50 Employers list and identified Rivera as co-founder and CEO.^[4]
• 2026: YC displayed an acquired status while Kalibrr's product and company job pages remained active.^[1][3]

What They Built

For candidates, Kalibrr combined profiles, job discovery and skills assessments. For employers, it started with filtering, candidate records and SMS outreach, then expanded into candidate recommendations, job distribution and applicant tracking.^[5][2]

The assessments mattered because the marketplace operated where degrees and previous employers were uneven signals. Ligot-Gordon said Gojek used Kalibrr's assessments while scaling its engineering team. The assessment layer gave the company proprietary matching data and a reason for employers to use Kalibrr rather than only post elsewhere.^[6]

Market Position

Target Customers

Kalibrr served white-collar job seekers in the Philippines and Indonesia and employers hiring local or remote teams. Early customers were BPOs and recruitment firms; the later product addressed employers directly.

Market Size

YC describes more than five million high-skill white-collar candidates in Kalibrr's marketplace. The current employer page claims more than eight million talent profiles, 20,000 companies and 500,000 hires.^[1][2] These are company figures, not audited market measurements.

Competition

Kalibrr competed with JobStreet, LinkedIn, Indeed, recruitment agencies and employer applicant-tracking systems. A listing marketplace could be copied or syndicated. Skills evidence was the stronger wedge: it could surface candidates screened out by prestige-based filters.

The platform still faced a familiar marketplace constraint. Employers wanted enough qualified candidates in each role and location; candidates wanted credible jobs and responses. Expanding across countries multiplied differences in language, salary, labor norms and employer demand.

Business Model

Kalibrr launched as subscription SaaS for BPOs, headhunters and recruitment agencies.^[5] Its current employer page promotes hiring software and subscriptions but does not disclose prices, revenue or margins.^[2]

The model joined two products: a marketplace that attracted candidates and software that employers paid to use. Candidate liquidity made the software more valuable; employer demand made profiles and assessments worth completing. Public evidence does not show how much revenue came from subscriptions, recruiting services or other products.