How Lorikeet Found Its First Engineer Through SkillsRobin

‍The situation

Steve Hind co-founded Lorikeet — an AI agent platform handling complex, multi-step customer support — after stints at Stripe and a climate tech startup in the US. He and his technical co-founder Jamie had raised pre-seed funding and were ready to start building. But they needed their first engineer to accelerate progress: someone with strong customer orientation, the drive to work through ambiguity, and the hunger to grow fast in an early-stage environment.

After interviewing dozens of candidates, SkillsRobin helped them to make their match. 
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The match

Steve discovered Peter's profile on SkillsRobin and sent him a connection request. At the time, Peter was one of SkillsRobin's very first users and didn’t expect much to come out of being on the platform. He was pleasantly surprised to receive an interview invitation a few weeks later.

After a two-day work trial with the team, it was clear Peter had strong synergy with both Steve and Jamie. He joined Lorikeet as their first engineer.

For Steve, the experience of finding Peter through SkillsRobin was simple and straight-forward. "SkillsRobin introduced us to high quality, diverse engineering candidates with relevant technical and startup experience. Pre-vetting of candidates saved us time in initial calls and made us more confident moving them down the recruitment pipeline. They provided tremendous value compared to working with recruiting agencies or doing open-call online posting."
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The outcomes

The placement marked the beginning of a remarkable growth story. From a team of 3, Lorikeet scaled to over 60 employees within 2 years across the US, London, and Sydney, and automated over 3 million customer support tickets.

Peter himself grew with the company — moving from founding engineer to product manager, leading Lorikeet's voice product, and becoming one of the key people shaping how the platform evolves.
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In their own words

"Someone like Peter, who is self-taught as an engineer — when you meet him, he was just off the charts in terms of drive. That was our angle on the market." — Steve Hind, Co-founder & CEO, Lorikeet

"I completed a profile on SkillsRobin not expecting to get anything out of it… I didn't expect an opportunity like this.” — Peter Nguyen, Founding Engineer, Lorikeet

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SkillsRobin connects early-stage ANZ startups with pre-vetted developers on a success-only fee basis — no retainers, no upfront costs.