2024 recap: scaling our craft together
We had our heads down building and growing like crazy in 2024, so when I took a break over the holidays and looked back, I was honestly a bit amazed by the incredible progress we’d made towards building the world’s first craft sourcing platform capable of fixing our industry’s trades gap with data.
From blowing past 100,000 craft members to winning industry-leading customers like EMCOR, McCarthy, Haskell, Swinerton, and WB Moore, and launching the world’s first AI-powered craft recruiting agent, it really felt like we’d taken a leap forward in building a platform that helps connect the best craft talent with the companies who need them most.
A few of my team’s accomplishments really stood out to me:
Exponential growth across our metrics: We saw revenue grow 6X, churn drop 10X, monthly profile completion rates improve 2.4X, profile views surge 17X and every efficiency metric (from gross margins, to payback and NRR) improve considerably.
100,000+ craft members: we surpassed 100,000 skilled craft workers—a 10X increase from just 10,000 members at the start of 2024 and a huge vote of confidence from our nation’s skilled trade workers.
Groundbreaking craft intelligence: We released eight seminal craft labor intelligence reports offering deep and actionable insights into the craft labor markets of Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Charlotte, Denver, Jacksonville and Atlanta.
AI-driven craft sourcing: In its private beta, Sam, our AI-powered recruiting agent, drove up to 27x more attended calls between craft recruiters and workers compared to manual efforts, streamlining hiring processes and saving recruiters about 30% of their time.
New features for smarter, seamless sourcing: Features like natural language search, primary trade, map view and quick click responses massively simplified how craft recruiters discover and engage with craft professionals.
While we grew a ton in 2024, we also made several huge conceptual leaps forward on how to better balance the supply of craft workers with the hiring needs of our customers.
Essentially we evolved our strategy for acquiring new workers onto our platform from a localized approach to a broader “regional cluster” model. This allowed us to onboard craft professionals across neighboring markets throughout the South and Southeast and expand the range of skilled workers available to our customers—including more trade types and worker classifications such as open shop, union, per diem, and relocatable workers—while also making the process more cost-efficient, and therefore scalable, for Skillit and our customers.
All in, these improvements position us to better address the hiring needs of our mid-market and enterprise customers, and in 2025, we’re committed to helping them scale their craft workforces more efficiently than ever with a roadmap packed full of innovations including:
Expanding talent pools: Tools like AI-driven conversational onboarding and 1-click-apply will streamline profile creation and expand the worker funnel, ensuring our customers even greater access to qualified candidates.
Improved matching: Enhancements like experience-based matching and per diem search options will deliver more precise candidate matches.
Call-centric sourcing: A reimagined hiring flow centered on AI-supported calls will make it easier for craft recruiters to connect with top talent and streamline their recruitment process.
Network-driven growth: We have 3 incredible features planned that will empower workers to build their professional networks, driving engagement and organic supply growth that benefits both workers and employers.
Worker-first features: We’ll also be leaning into building workers pay benchmarking tools and profile view notifications to help boost worker engagement and ultimately improve hiring outcomes.
I’m really thankful to our employees for their resilience and team work this past year. This mission chose me but their talent gives them tremendous agency and I’m grateful they choose to build Skillit with me every day.
I’m also thankful to our investors, especially Zach, Jesse, Travis, and Rafi, for their support. While venture capital faced a lot of criticism last year (ironically much of it on LinkedIn—a platform built on $150M in VC funding), it remains the best catalyst for human progress, and Skillit would not exist without it.
Looking ahead to 2025, I’m particularly excited to fully embrace conversational AI. With time and hands at a premium in construction, I’ve always believed voice would be the future of our platform. Now, with on-device speech models and rapidly improving latency, voice is perhaps just months away from becoming the dominant interface for humans and Skillit is perfectly positioned to lead the charge for craft leaders, recruiters and professionals.
Our best work is ahead of us,
Fraser
