Company Overview
Ian Petersen, Co-Founder of NewCombin, a company helping staffing agencies and product teams expand IT & engineering capacity in LATAM with structure, alignment and delivery they can rely on. Learn more at https://newcombin.com/.
Can you tell us a little about your background before starting at your company?
So I’m US-born, but I was raised mostly outside of the US—in Brazil and Argentina for the most part—which is where we started.
NewCombin, for context, started as a development shop and now also builds nearshore teams for US companies, all based in Latin America. We also do quite a bit of AI implementation—that’s kind of the new thing that’s come into play over the last two years.
As for my personal background, I’m in engineering. I was in university doing my master’s when I got started on this, so I began working at NewCombin even before I had finished school. I was around 23 at the time.
Before that, I had worked in e-commerce at a company called Mercado Libre. I also worked a bunch of odd jobs in shipping, was a bartender—just a mix of different things. My first real move into technology was e-commerce, and then I jumped into building this because we saw an opportunity.
The company had already started when I joined my two partners, but it was still within the first year. It was just the three of us and our first developer/tech lead.
My role was really a jack of all trades. If you’re around early-stage founders, you know how it is—you’re doing everything. But at that stage, what we needed most was customers, so that became my main focus.
How did you start at your company? What were the first steps you took to get it off the ground and how did you identify the need for your product/service in the market?
So Nico, my partner, and I actually did a bit of a trek through the Silicon Valley area about a year before NewCombin—around 2016–2017. One of the things we noticed was, first, that companies were competing ruthlessly for talent. And second, that we had that same level of talent across Latin America, but it was incredibly undervalued and underutilized.
That’s where we saw the market opportunity—there was amazing, untapped talent that wasn’t being leveraged. We came back, and as I mentioned, I was working a more corporate job at the time. Nico and I had worked together before, and one day he came to me and said, “Hey, let’s do this.” I said, “Yeah, okay, let’s do this,” and I quit the next week.
From there, we bootstrapped the company. In the beginning, it was really about finding our first customers—honestly, they weren’t the same type of customers we go after today. It was just about getting things off the ground: building momentum, generating revenue, and growing the team. That created a kind of virtuous cycle.
But it all started from that core idea: there’s huge demand, a massive market, and a large segment of the talent pool—especially within human resources—that’s still largely untapped. We saw an opportunity to build something different and make it our own.
What innovations or unique features set your company apart from others in the industry?
Got it — keeping content the same, just cleaning it up:
That one—you know, this one—is one that was very tricky for us to answer. I think we kind of learned this answer along the way over the years, because it is very much a bit of a perfect market when it comes to building teams and outsourcing those teams to other companies.
One of the things that we noticed over time was that the team that you build really defines your identity, how your customers see you, whether they come back to you, and whether they refer you. So it’s not just what I say in this interview with you, but it’s what every team member does and every interaction with my customer.
So the culture that we build is really foundational, and it’s really conducive to us growing organically. Focusing on the culture of the team and focusing on the quality of the team—I think that’s key.
Last year, we went over 12,000 candidates. We made offers to 0.5% of them, and 90% of those accepted. Our median tenure is five years, and we’ve been a great place to work maybe three—I’m not sure if three or four—years running.
So focusing on having a place where people want to develop their skills, want to spend their time, and want to grow professionally is something that I think is strange to have today. Especially in tech, where you’re looking at rotations at near 20–30%.
So I think that’s something that’s different—not just in our line of work, but in the industry in general.
What has been the most effective strategy for scaling your business?
Yeah, so in the early years—and I think this is still true today, but earlier—great work brings more work, especially in a service-based business. Great work brings more work.
But even with the products that we built over the years, if the customers don’t have a great experience, they won’t recommend it. If they don’t recommend it, this won’t grow. And for us, organic growth has been the biggest factor in our growth in the early years. But by early years, I mean maybe, you know, from conception to maybe years three to four—and again, still true today—if we’re not doing a good job, then what’s the point?
But putting the customers first, focusing on keeping them happy—you know, we have about 90% of our customers stay on board with us. So that’s a nice, nice little, nice little stat that we kind of were able—it not just, you know, helps us stay motivated, but it also helps us in showing future customers what we can do.
So then we reached a scaling phase where, you know, we—I think we were 60-plus—we crossed the 60 people, the 60-person mark, and the strategy kind of evolved or built on that and became more about building client relationships, especially when it comes to working with larger companies and larger organizations.
And then operational efficiency—why would someone hire a company like this if we can’t do it better than most? And that’s kind of what became a very big focus, especially as we started growing and we couldn’t, you know, look at every line of code.
Looking ahead, what are your goals for the future of your company?
Of course, the goal is to continue doing what we do, to continue growing. But I think there are a few points to mention here.
One of them is that the tech landscape is changing quite quickly. Like it or not, one way or the other, AI is changing how companies do things or how companies make decisions. So again, one way or the other, there are going to be changes, and we’re going to start seeing more consistently new ways of doing things.
So one of the things that we want to say we want—that we don’t want to change—is this very nice and very powerful base, you know, culture that we’ve built inside of the team, which is very much about continuous learning, about adapting to the changes in the market. This isn’t the first change that we’ve come across. In 2019 we were doing great, 2020 hit, and our business model had to reinvent itself, pretty much.
So staying consistent to how the changes happen—and these changes could be how people do things in the organization, they could be global pandemics, they could be changes in the funding landscape. We work a lot with startups, and when funding is down, how startups approach decision-making changes, and that also needs to change how we approach the services that we provide.
So staying flexible, staying simple, and staying reliable is kind of the big headline in terms of the goals that we want to see. These are kind of boiled down to certain objectives. This is very loose or high level, but keeping things simple, staying flexible, and staying reliable—these lead to very specific goals that we have.
Growing with our existing clients is another one. I think that’s been a huge vehicle—doing a good job, allowing our clients to see and live through success, and us being along the way for that. That’s one of the biggest strategies that we need to focus on.
And then capitalizing on all the opportunities that are being created now with this uncertainty—you know, this uncertainty. Like it or not, there are so many opportunities to take advantage of, and I don’t think we have a choice but to capitalize on them.
So yeah, I think those are kind of the ethos, or the philosophies, that guide the goals that we have. I’m not sure if I’m answering your point—if that’s the type of answer you’re looking for, or if you’re looking for more. Because I could go down to specific goals, but it’s less interesting to talk about revenue.
