EPIC
8×Capacity Gain w/o Hiring
Challenge
EPIC is a founder-led boutique talent consultancy disrupting traditional executive search. Their mission: help companies find exceptional talent that giant headhunters miss. But as a bootstrapped startup, they faced an existential scaling problem.
Pain Points
- Candidates filled 3-4 separate Google Forms (painful, high dropout risk)
- Designer manually aggregated data from multiple Google Sheets
- 4 hours per candidate profile to copy, format, review, and finalize
- ~1 week turnaround from candidate intake to deliverable CV
- Maximum capacity: 10 profiles per week (designer maxed out at 40 hours/week)
The Strategic Constraint: Without automation, their competitive advantage (the talent community database) would remain a concept, not a reality. The manual CV process was killing their ability to validate and scale the business model.
Client Profile
- Industry
- Executive search & talent development
- Scale
- Bootstrapped startup, €200k annual revenue, 3-4 person team
- Sponsor
- Tiago Forjaz, Founder
Solution
Allyato designed and deployed an intelligent candidate profiling system that transformed EPIC's operations from manual chaos to automated scalability.
Intelligent Fillout Form
Replaced 3-4 scattered Google Forms with one intelligent form with smart conditional logic and pre-filled fields.
Airtable Relational Database
Single source of truth for all candidate data. Enables sophisticated querying, filtering, and matching at scale.
Automated CV Generation (Documint)
Professional CV auto-generated with complex conditional logic, consistent formatting, and multi-language support.
Workflow Orchestration
Candidate completes form → data syncs → CV generates automatically. Same-day delivery vs. 1-week turnaround.
Timeline
1 month to first working system; 1.5 months to full rollout
Investment
Barter exchange (valued at €5-10k equivalent)
Results
Strategic Impact
- Enabled core differentiator: Built talent community database (personality, learning agility, potential) that giant headhunters don't have
- Competitive positioning: Boutique startup can now compete on quality and speed without massive teams
- Business model validated without burning cash on headcount
Operational Metrics
- 8× capacity gain: 10 profiles/week → 80+ profiles/week (same designer hours)
- 8× time savings: 4 hours per profile → 30 minutes
- 8× faster delivery: 1 week turnaround → same day
- Zero manual copying errors; consistent professional formatting
Financial Impact
- Avoided hiring 6-8 designers to achieve 80 profiles/week manually
- Cash saved: €180-240k in annual salary costs they didn't have
- Runway extended: Proved model viability before needing external funding
- System still running 1.5+ years later (foundation of operations)
Testimonial
"Allyato took our chaotic multi-form, multi-spreadsheet process and turned it into a seamless automated workflow. Candidates now fill one intelligent form, data flows into our Airtable database, and professional CVs generate automatically in 30 minutes instead of 4 hours. This 8× capacity gain was the difference between staying stuck at 5 profiles/week and building EPIC's talent community we have today."
Tiago Forjaz
Founder, EPIC