Inside Northspyre’s Hiring Strategy: Why They Prioritize Industry Experts Over Tech Veterans
Most SaaS companies build their teams around technical expertise first. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, William Sankey revealed how Northspyre took the opposite approach, making industry expertise their core advantage in building real estate development software.
Starting with Industry DNA
The strategy began with William himself. Before founding Northspyre, he spent years in real estate development, working on projects like Madison Square Garden’s billion-dollar renovation. This experience revealed a critical insight: “these people are the very best at what they do, some of the very best in the industry, but they spend a lot of their time doing a lot of tedious administrative work.”
To solve this, William didn’t immediately hire a team of engineers. Instead, he spent three years learning to code while continuing his day job: “I was a software developer by night, real estate developer by day.” This dual perspective proved invaluable in understanding both the technical and industry challenges.
Building the Technical Foundation
When it came time to build the actual product, William partnered with someone who complemented his industry expertise. He describes co-founder Mark Newport as “a much smarter guy” and “brilliant engineer” who could turn industry insight into elegant technical solutions.
Scaling Through Domain Expertise
As Northspyre grew, they maintained this balance of industry and technical knowledge. William explains their hiring philosophy: “we always try to hire a lot of real estate professionals… we have quite a few people on our staff that have actual hands-on experience running and delivering projects. They really get it. They haven’t just done a few user interviews.”
This approach stands in stark contrast to most tech companies targeting real estate. As William notes, “there are a lot of insanely brilliant technologists in places like Silicon Valley. But this was a difficult challenge to tackle. Not because they couldn’t build the technology, but because it took a lot of understanding around what is really important to real estate developers.”
The Competitive Advantage
This strategy created a moat that pure technology companies struggled to cross. “Unless you’re very much in the weeds of how things work, it’s hard to see,” William explains. Understanding “what do they really need to be able to accomplish and do and what are the critical pieces of data that you need to achieve this” required more than just technical skills.
Results That Speak
The success of this approach is evident in Northspyre’s growth. From their New York beginnings, they’ve expanded to manage over $125 billion worth of projects across more than 2,000 developments nationwide. Their platform now operates “in every major city across the US. And a lot of secondary and tertiary markets, whether we’re building projects in Montana and Iowa.”
Lessons for Founders
Northspyre’s hiring strategy offers several key insights for founders targeting traditional industries:
- Deep domain expertise can be more valuable than pure technical skills
- Industry veterans bring credibility that technology alone can’t match
- Understanding user problems requires more than user interviews
- Technical solutions should follow industry insight, not lead it
For founders building vertical SaaS companies, the lesson is clear: while technical excellence is important, deep industry knowledge might be the more crucial foundation for success. As William puts it, they “haven’t just done a few user interviews” – they’ve lived the problems they’re trying to solve.