Hi Guilder, thanks for taking the time to share your story with us! To begin, could you briefly introduce Guilder and explain what problem you're solving in the European recruitment market?
Hi, and thank you for the opportunity! Guilder is a cooperative recruitment platform built to fix one of the most expensive and overlooked problems in the European hiring market: mistrust and inefficiency among recruiters, candidates, and employers. In today’s system, recruiters often work in isolation, duplicating efforts and hiding candidate information to protect their deals. This leads to long hiring cycles, high costs, and missed opportunities.
Guilder changes that by creating a trusted network where recruiters can safely share vetted candidates, earn passive income from their work, and help businesses fill roles faster and more affordably. We're solving the inefficiencies of traditional recruitment by turning individual efforts into collective value – without compromising privacy or control.

‍Your platform aims to transform recruitment by replacing slow, fragmented hiring processes with real-time, data-driven access to talent. Can you tell us more about how Guilder works and what makes it different from traditional recruitment platforms?
Absolutely! Guilder works by creating a shared ecosystem where vetted candidate profiles – what we call digital twins – can be safely accessed and reused by trusted recruiters and hiring companies. Instead of recruiters hiding valuable candidate data for fear of losing deals, Guilder lets them share that data securely and earn passive income every time a profile they’ve uploaded is revealed or used by someone else. What sets us apart from traditional platforms is threefold:
- Cooperation over competition: Recruiters don't compete in a zero-sum game – they earn together.
- Structured data and automation: We reduce manual vetting and redundant outreach, speeding up hiring dramatically.
- Revenue-sharing model: Recruiters get paid for contributing value, even if they don’t close the deal themselves.
Traditional recruitment tools are built for individual transactions. Guilder is built for network-driven efficiency, where trust, transparency, and speed are finally aligned.

Where did the idea for Guilder originate? Was there a particular moment or pain point in the recruitment industry that sparked the need for a new solution?
Yes – Guilder was born out of a deep frustration with the waste and distrust embedded in recruitment. The idea came from watching skilled recruiters invest hours vetting candidates, only to lose deals and have that work go to waste. Even worse, recruiters rarely collaborate because sharing a great candidate could mean losing a client or commission. Meanwhile, businesses face long hiring cycles and talent shortages – not due to lack of candidates, but because everyone is protecting their corner instead of working together. That tension – between value created and value lost – sparked the realization: What if we could turn recruitment into a cooperative model, where vetted work doesn’t go to waste and trust is built into the system? That’s how Guilder began.

Tell us more about your team – how did you come together, and what expertise do you each bring to the project? Did you always envision launching your own product in this space?
Jurgen Germeys: I met Daniel when I moved to Prague to support my son in his education. I wanted to get involved in the start-up world, and Daniel responded positively. In 2023, recruitment went into an upheaval, and fellow recruiters of Daniel were feeling the pinch, and rather than improving cooperation, competition created a very protective attitude and exploded the inefficiencies recruiters deal with every day. Personally, I disliked recruitment due to the dehumanising effect it has on candidates and did not help in any way to improve my bottom line. While we were discussing all these issues, we created a clear, simple solution to resolve all these problems in one fell swoop, like undoing a Gordian Knot. Daniel always wanted to solve these issues, whereas I love making things work.

You’ve been part of the DDAccelerator programme – what were your expectations going in, and how did the experience support the development of Guilder? Which aspects of the programme were especially valuable for you?
Our main expectation is to improve and test all our assumptions in regard to the solution we offer. The offer is unique, especially in a European setting where cooperation is rarely thought of when it comes to improving business processes and helping each other improve effectiveness and profitability. Win-win scenarios are often ignored in Europe, which is quite weird, especially since Europe was set up to create win-win solutions. DDAccelerator really helped us fine-tune our goals and our set of priorities to make this happen.

What kind of partnerships or collaborations are you currently looking for to help Guilder reach its next phase?
We are in TRL (Technology Readiness Level) 5, with some recruiters wanting us to go live. But we need to push it to TRL 6 before we can do that. So we are looking for seed capital to make that happen.

Looking ahead, what’s next for Guilder? How do you plan to build on the feedback and connections from the accelerator, and what milestones are you focusing on in the coming months?
We have begun with investor outreach, but the feedback is that we need to build more traction within our group of businesses that would make it a reality. So we have started planning out how to create a stronger network of recruiters and get them to start cooperating and demonstrate the added value these operations will deliver. We have interested parties, but we need to push a bit further. The big milestone is getting to TRL 6 and starting the monetisation of our operations to demonstrate the potential profitability and added value to the entire European economy.

Thank you Guilder for sharing your story and vision with us. We look forward to seeing how your cooperative approach to recruitment continues to grow and reshape the hiring landscape across Europe. Wishing you all the best on the road ahead and continued success in bringing your mission to life.