Jayfound

A talent discovery platform for overlooked, self-taught builders

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Inspiration

Hiring pipelines filter on degrees, resume polish, English fluency, and proximity to the right networks. They don't filter on whether someone can actually build. We started with JMatt, a self-taught builder in Jinja, Uganda, who has real skill but none of the signals recruiters look for. Our insight: process is a better signal than pedigree, and it's verifiable.

What it does

  • Portfolio Hub: Builders document any project in stages: start, rough version, final, and lessons learned. This works even for projects built years before the platform existed.
  • Puzzle Arcade: An optional set of culture-fair, nonverbal reasoning puzzles, graded deterministically. It boosts discovery for people with thinner portfolios. Skipping it doesn't hide anyone.
  • Recruiter view: Recruiters browse a ranked list and filter by skill tag. They never filter by raw puzzle score.

Ranking weights portfolio depth highest, then puzzle performance, then mentor endorsements, so demonstrated work always counts most.

How we built it

Next.js for the frontend and API routes, Supabase for Postgres and file storage, and Vercel for hosting. It's a deliberately small stack, so one person could put the effort into the portfolio staging UI and the ranking logic. Ranking is a plain server-side weighted calculation, recomputed on read, and the puzzles are graded deterministically.

Challenges we ran into

  • Designing a portfolio model flexible enough to stage a project retroactively.
  • Tuning the ranking weights so puzzle scores never outweigh real work.
  • Scoping a solo build under a hackathon clock. Auth, payments, and mentor verification were cut on purpose.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A ranking model that encodes the thesis (portfolio over puzzles over mentors) instead of a flat leaderboard, and a working loop from builder portfolio to puzzle to recruiter list.

What we learned

How much signal comes from documented process rather than a finished artifact, and how to design assessments that are fair across cultures and languages.

What's next for Jayfound

Expanding beyond Jinja to other resource-constrained maker communities, anti-cheating as usage grows, multi-language support, and a pilot with a named cohort and an anchor recruiter.

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