--- title: "Behind the Build: Building a two-sided, sealed-bid recruitment marketplace to take TalentUnlocked from design to launch" description: 67 Bricks took TalentUnlocked’s sealed-bid recruitment marketplace from design to live in six months, on technology their own team can hire against. image: https://67bricks.com/hubfs/TalentUnlocked%20featured%20image-1.png --- [Skip to content](https://67bricks.com/blog/talentunlocked-sealed-bid-recruitment-marketplace#main-content) [![67bricks-logo-white](https://67bricks.com/hubfs/67bricks-logo-white.svg "67bricks-logo-white")](https://67bricks.com/) - Who we are Show submenu for Who we are - [Meet the team](https://67bricks.com/meet-the-team) - [News & Insights](https://67bricks.com/news-insights) - How we help Show submenu for How we help - [Our work](https://67bricks.com/our-work) - [Client Testimonials](https://67bricks.com/testimonials) - Careers Show submenu for Careers - [Current opportunities](https://67bricks.com/our-careers) - [Our culture and values](https://67bricks.com/our-culture-and-values) - [Contact us](https://67bricks.com/contact-us) - Who we are Show submenu for Who we are - [Meet the team](https://67bricks.com/meet-the-team) - [News & Insights](https://67bricks.com/news-insights) - How we help Show submenu for How we help - [Our work](https://67bricks.com/our-work) - [Client Testimonials](https://67bricks.com/testimonials) - Careers Show submenu for Careers - [Current opportunities](https://67bricks.com/our-careers) - [Our culture and values](https://67bricks.com/our-culture-and-values) - [Contact us](https://67bricks.com/contact-us) ![""](https://67bricks.com/hs-fs/hubfs/TalentUnlocked%20blog%20background.png?width=1440&name=TalentUnlocked%20blog%20background.png "\"\"") ##### [Case Study](https://67bricks.com/blog/tag/case-study) , ##### [Featured Case Study](https://67bricks.com/blog/tag/featured-case-study) # Behind the Build: Building a two-sided, sealed-bid recruitment marketplace to take TalentUnlocked from design to launch Share [mailto:?subject=&body=https://67bricks.com/blog/talentunlocked-sealed-bid-recruitment-marketplace](mailto:?subject=&body=https://67bricks.com/blog/talentunlocked-sealed-bid-recruitment-marketplace) ### *A recruitment startup arrives with a prototype, a clear idea and no engineering team. Roughly four months later it has a working two-sided marketplace, and by August its first recruiters and a founding engineer 67 Bricks helped hire.* --- ##### Client: TalentUnlocked | Sector: Recruitment technology | Engagement: MVP build, from architecture to handover ## Immediate outcomes | **• A working two-sided recruitment marketplace built from a standing start, beginning March 2026, with roughly four months to a usable MVP**  **• Greenfield in the fullest sense: no codebase and no engineering team when work began**  **• A build led by the founder's own marketplace design, with the investor prototype retired early**  **• Deliberately common technology, so TalentUnlocked can hire from a wide pool rather than a narrow one** **• Automated testing, linting, quality checks and security scanning built in from the start rather than added later** **• A monolith-first architecture, modular enough to be split into services when scale demands it** **• Scope held firmly, with the hardest features deferred so the platform could reach real users and start earning feedback** **• 67 Bricks helped TalentUnlocked identify and hire their founding engineer** **• An admin view built from early on, so Alex can see what is happening on his own platform without asking a developer** **• First roles went live in September 2026** | | --- | ing contractors ## At a glance | Client | TalentUnlocked | | --- | --- | | Region | UK | | Sector | Recruitment technology | | Engagement | Requirements and architecture, UX design and user testing, full MVP build, hiring support, handover | | Duration | From March 2026; roughly four months to a working MVP, with 67 Bricks rolling off in November 2026 after a handover period. |   ## Who TalentUnlocked are   TalentUnlocked is a startup founded by Alex Smith and his father Simon, who between them hold decades worth of recruitment experience, and built the product around problems they had run into themselves.  TalentUnlocked is a recruitment marketplace connecting employers with vetted agencies. Employers post a role, agencies submit sealed bids, and the employer chooses who runs the search, with the hiring process then managed on the platform through to placement. It's built to make agency recruitment fairer and more transparent for both sides.    ## The problem #### No codebase, and nobody to build it Most 67 Bricks engagements begin with a system that has stopped keeping up. This one began with no system at all. Alex had built a prototype using Lovable, an AI prototyping tool, and it had done its job: it showed people what he meant, and it was built to bring investors on board. What it was not was a product. There was no codebase and no founding engineer to turn the idea into something that could take real money from real users.   #### The risk of a first build For a startup, the danger at this stage is not technical. It is spending the funding window building the wrong thing, or building the right thing so slowly that the window closes. TalentUnlocked needed a platform good enough to charge for, quickly, without the shortcuts that make the second year harder than the first.   ## Why 67 Bricks   TalentUnlocked came to 67 Bricks through a referral rather than a competitive pitch. What that referral pointed at was less the sector than the shape of the work: a data-driven system that had to exist quickly and correctly, built by a team that had done it before.  > ###### "We probably have the greatest speciality in handling complicated data-driven systems, and we have expertise at building stuff quickly, doing MVPs, helping solve those kinds of problems, answering questions quickly and just getting something out there." — Rich Brown, Software Engineer, 67 Bricks The other half of the answer is what a startup gets from a team that will argue with it. TalentUnlocked could have hired a firm that built exactly the prototype, in exactly the order requested.  > "There would have been a world where we could have just made an exact copy of the prototype, or just done exactly the things he said in the order that he said. But I think we've done a sensible job of consulting on what the right thing is to do at different times." —  Tim Barclay, Technical Lead, 67 Bricks   ## The solution #### A prototype, not a specification Alex arrived with the marketplace itself already designed: how agencies bid on roles, how they're allocated, and how both sides are kept moving through the process. What he needed was a team to turn that design into a working product, and a partner to decide what to build first.  The Lovable prototype had done its job of showing investors the idea; the detailed mechanics lived in Alex's own design work, and the build followed those. Before any of that, there was foundational work that a client with an existing technology function would already have done: understanding the requirements, designing an architecture, and putting in place the basic apparatus a software product needs in order to exist. 67 Bricks also ran user experience design and, alongside Alex, user testing.   #### Consultative, not order-taking The clearest value 67 Bricks added was in sequencing: deciding what to build now, what to build simply, and what to leave alone.    > "There's a case of, we can get 90% of the value here by doing this right now, and it's actually easy if we do it this way, but we can put the really difficult bit into the long grass and get most of the value now." —  Tim Barclay, Technical Lead, 67 Bricks Alex was hands-on, joining daily stand-ups. For a product with one person who fully understood what it was for, that access mattered more than any process. He was new to the product owner role, though not to the product, so alongside the build 67 Bricks coached him in working effectively with the engineers.  #### Built to be hired for Every technology choice was made with an eye to who would maintain the platform after 67 Bricks left. The stack is deliberately mainstream: TypeScript, Next.js and NestJS, Postgres on Supabase, hosted on Vercel. > ###### "We've explicitly not tied them into a load of more complicated, arcane software that people don't know how to use. We've gone with common software that's easy to find people who know \[...\] It doesn't require people to know MarkLogic or Scala, which is a bit of a higher bar."   —  Tim Barclay, Technical Lead, 67 Bricks The architecture is monolith-first: one application to begin with, because that is the fastest route to something that works, but split into clear modules so pieces can be changed or swapped, and so services can be separated out later without a rebuild. Off-the-shelf services were used where building would have been slower and no better, for chat and background processing among others. The quality apparatus that often gets cut when a team is moving fast was built in instead. Automated testing, linting and quality checking are in place from the start, architecture decisions are documented, and automated security scanning runs so that regressions are caught rather than discovered.   #### A controlled setting for AI-assisted delivery There was a second reason the project appealed. A tightly bounded greenfield build, with requirements that were well understood from the outset, gave 67 Bricks a controlled setting in which to push further on AI-assisted development practices than a large legacy estate allows, with what was learned feeding back into how the company builds. #### Designed to be handed over An admin view was built pretty much from the beginning, so that Alex can monitor what is happening on the platform himself, supported by logging and observability rather than a standing request to a developer. 67 Bricks helped TalentUnlocked identify and hire their founding engineer, Matt Jones (now Head of Engineering), who started in August while 67 Bricks were still on the project.  "We helped them to identify and hire a founding engineer, someone who would be able to take it on from us and start iterating on what we've already built, and start growing more on their own." (Richard Brown, 67 Bricks)    > ###### "We helped them to identify and hire a founding engineer, someone who would be able to take it on from us and start iterating on what we've already built, and start growing more on their own." — Rich Brown, Software Engineer, 67 Bricks     ## Managing risk: holding the scope On a first build for a startup, the largest risk is not architectural. It is the pull to keep adding. The point of the discipline was not tidiness. Every week spent on a feature nobody had asked for was a week TalentUnlocked was not learning anything from real recruiters. Delivery speed was treated as a product requirement in its own right, and pragmatic choices were made in service of it, without cutting corners on accuracy. > ###### "We made very pragmatic choices regarding speed of delivery and getting something out there quickly \[...\] so we were optimised for speed, but we still had correctness and a kind of long-term vision in place. We weren't just trying to slap something together as fast as possible." — Rich Brown, Software Engineer, 67 Bricks   ## Outcomes > ###### "We have a working system now, which we didn't when we started." Tim Barclay, Technical Lead, 67 Bricks That, for a business that started with a prototype and no engineers, is the outcome that mattered first. Getting something real out quickly was itself the commercial point: an MVP TalentUnlocked could put in front of investors and prospective users rather than a deck describing one. The first recruiters were onboarded in early August, and the first roles went live in September 2026. In a two-sided marketplace the order matters: recruiters have to be in place before employers post roles, or the roles sit there with no audience. It's still early, so the numbers that will eventually matter (roles filled, time to hire, recruiter and employer take-up) are only starting to come in. This is a build story rather than a results story, and the results are the next chapter.     ## Why the partnership worked - A team that could start from nothing, doing the foundational work a startup has not yet done for itself, rather than needing an existing system to improve. - Consultative delivery rather than order-taking: most of the value taken now, the hardest parts deferred, and pushback where pushback was warranted. - Scope held deliberately tight, so the platform reached real users while there was still time to learn from them. - Mainstream, well-documented technology chosen so TalentUnlocked can hire from a wide pool and is not dependent on 67 Bricks, or on anyone. - Quality practices built in from the start, not retrofitted once the pressure came off. - Handover treated as part of the build: a founding engineer 67 Bricks helped hire, and an overlap period to transfer the work properly.   ## Project credits   | Will Bailey | Head of Partnerships; pre-sales | | --- | --- | | Jerome Jones | Senior consultant on the engagement; pre-sales | | Tim Barclay | Technical Lead | | Rich Brown | Engineering | | James Morris | UX design | | Pardha Mantravadi | Business analysis and user testing |   ###### "It really is a foundation that they will be able to build off of and continue to build off of for a long time." ![rich-brown-3](https://67bricks.com/hs-fs/hubfs/rich-brown-3.jpg?width=388&height=480&name=rich-brown-3.jpg) Rich Brown Software Engineer, 67 Bricks ###### "We're not just like a house that just churns out code. We're a house that tries to think through problems and come up with solutions." ![tim-barclay-1](https://67bricks.com/hs-fs/hubfs/tim-barclay-1.jpg?width=388&height=480&name=tim-barclay-1.jpg) Tim Barclay Technical Lead, 67 Bricks ## More case studies ## [![Behind the Build Irish Tax Institute AI search mode](https://67bricks.com/hubfs/ITI.png) Behind the Build: Building a governed, source-backed AI research mode on the Irish Tax Institute's existing platform](https://67bricks.com/blog/irish-tax-institute-taxfind-ai-search) ## [![67 Bricks AI Platform Everway](https://67bricks.com/hubfs/Everway%20website%20image.png) Behind the Build: Building a flexible, AI-ready content platform to support Everway's next phase of growth](https://67bricks.com/blog/everway-ai-ready-content-platform) ## [![](https://67bricks.com/hubfs/the-bmj-featured-6895c0433ab1c.webp) BMJ Best Practice, modernising medical information for the digital age and increasing traffic by 202%](https://67bricks.com/blog/bmj-best-practice-knowledge-base) ##### LET’S GET STARTED ## Talk to one of our experts today Book a free scoping call with one of our team to uncover the potential in your business. 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