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• Daily Idea - Watch Them Work

• T

Watch them work. Then hire.

The One Liner

Hire by watching, not guessing.

The 140 character tweet (or X) version

Stop applying. Start performing. Top creatives showcase their skills live while multiple employers watch, ask questions, and hire faster.

The Longer Story Version

The Problem

Hiring creative talent is broken in a very specific way.

If you’re a candidate, you’re stuck in a loop:
You apply to 20 jobs.
You tell the same story 20 times.
Your portfolio gets skimmed for 12 seconds.
No one sees how you actually think.

If you’re an employer, it’s not better:
Portfolios are polished, not truthful.
Interviews test talking, not doing.
You spend weeks filtering noise.
The best talent disappears into inbox chaos.

Everyone is busy.
No one feels seen.

The core issue isn’t supply or demand.
It’s signal.

Creative work is dynamic, but hiring is static.
We’re judging living skill from dead artifacts.

The Solution

Flip the interview.

Instead of candidates applying one-by-one, they host a live session.

A designer redesigns a screen in real time.
A 3D artist models live.
A video editor cuts raw footage.
An animator walks through their workflow.

Multiple employers join the same stream.
They ask questions live or async.
Candidates explain decisions as they work.
Sessions are recorded and replayable.

After the session, the platform matches both sides.

The candidate becomes the product.
Employers come to watch.

It’s less “job interview” and more “audition.”
Less résumé, more reality.

If Twitch exists for gamers and demos exist for startups, this is the obvious missing format for hiring creatives.

How We’d Build It

Phase 1: prove demand and signal
This is scrappy on purpose.

Use existing live infrastructure instead of reinventing it.
Light wrapper that handles scheduling, access control, and replay.
Vibe-coding tools like Lovable or Replit to spin up flows fast.
Manual curation of talent to keep quality extremely high.
Start with one role (design or video) and one format (30-minute live sessions).

Goal: prove that employers will actually show up and watch.

Phase 2: productize the experience
Once signal is real, you tighten the loop.

Built-in session pages with calendar slots.
Async questions so employers don’t need to attend live.
AI-generated session summaries highlighting how candidates think.
Matching that happens after the session, not before.
Private replays so candidates don’t feel exposed.

Goal: reduce friction without losing the magic.

Phase 3: scale the marketplace
Now you lean into leverage.

Recurring showcases for elite, vetted talent.
Employer subscriptions for access, not candidates.
Light reputation signals based on past sessions.
Network effects kick in: great sessions attract great employers, which attract better talent.

Goal: make this the default way high-end creative hiring happens.

Why it needs to exist
Portfolios are static. Work is not.

We’ve normalized live performance everywhere else:
Founders pitch live.
Creators stream live.
Developers ship in public.

Hiring is one of the last places pretending a PDF tells the truth.

This doesn’t replace interviews.
It replaces guessing.

And for the small group of people who are actually great at what they do, this flips the power dynamic in their favor.

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The Hiring Manager vs. The Creator

The designer is live.

One screen. Cursor moving. No cuts. No deck. No “I’d approach it like this.”
They’re actually doing the work.

Two people are watching.

The Hiring Manager

This is incredible.

In thirty minutes, I learned more than I usually learn in three weeks of interviews.
How they think. Where they hesitate. What they do when something breaks.
This alone replaces résumés, portfolios, and half my calendar.

But… am I being fooled?

They’re calm on camera. Confident. Fast.
Is that skill or performance?

What about the people who are brilliant but awkward?
What about the ones who need a day, not a spotlight?

If I hire based on this, am I optimizing for talent… or stage presence?

Still, it’s hard to unsee.
This feels like watching game tape instead of reading stats.

The Creator

This is the best work I’ve ever shown.

No gatekeeper. No recruiter translating my skills into bullet points.
They’re seeing how I actually think.

But… did I just give away my edge?

I explained my process. My shortcuts. My taste.
I showed how I solve problems under pressure.

What stops them from watching, nodding, and hiring someone cheaper?
Or worse, lifting ideas without calling back?

I feel powerful right now.
And slightly exposed.

If this works, I win fast.
If it doesn’t, I just performed for free.

So which is it?

Empowering or exploitative?
Leverage or exposure?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: it’s both.

For the hiring manager, this collapses uncertainty.
For the creator, it removes excuses.

But it also shifts risk.

The company risks bias toward performers.
The creator risks visibility without protection.

And the real question isn’t “does this work?”

It’s: who gets to say no?

If creators choose this format -opt-in, curated, recorded - it’s leverage.
If companies demand it - mandatory, unpaid, mass-auditions- it’s exploitation.

Power doesn’t come from the camera.
It comes from who controls the format.

Used right, this replaces guesswork with signal.
Used wrong, it becomes another cattle call dressed up as innovation.

But once you’ve watched someone actually work…

Going back to résumés feels like pretending again.

And that’s why this idea is dangerous in the good way.

One of these is already too late

• A browser layer that reprices digital services in real time
• A software roll-up hiding inside boring SMB invoices
• A consumer app that monetizes silence instead of attention

You don’t know which one yet.
But someone using NTE Pro already does.

NTE Pro isn’t for inspiration porn.
NTE Pro is for timing.

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If you’re early, you win.
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