Manuel Salcedo

Who they are

Manuel Salcedo is Founder of UpScale, an AI-powered recruitment agency for global startup teams — also a Partner at Shiny, a marketplace connecting startups with vetted fractional executives, and running a public experiment to build 1,000 websites using Fable AI.

Person

Manuel studied Industrial and Systems Engineering at Tecnológico de Monterrey and later did Executive Education in Leadership & Strategy at Harvard Business School, plus a Business & Finance program at Università Bocconi and product management training at General Assembly — a deliberately broad toolkit for an operator who keeps crossing functions. His career ran through Uber (Operations Manager, then Senior Operations Manager, then Country Lead), Nelo, and Kinsu, each step adding COO-level scope before he went fractional. He founded UpScale in January 2023 — an AI-forward recruitment agency based in Madrid that matches high-performing candidates with global startups and scaleups. He also became a Partner at Shiny, a marketplace connecting startups with vetted fractional C-suite talent. The through-line is ops-heavy execution in fast-scaling companies, eventually channeled into building the talent infrastructure those companies need. He posts actively on LinkedIn on fractional leadership, AI in hiring, and the future of work — practical takes aimed at founders. His public experiment building 1,000 websites with Fable AI shows a hands-on curiosity about AI tooling, not just commentary.

Network

Possibly — Manuel's network skews toward startup operators and growth practitioners: his LinkedIn engagement surfaces names including Jesse Pujji, Nick Saraev, Nicolas Cole, Jordan Ross, and Jeanette Gomez. These are soft signals rather than confirmed colleagues, but the pattern points to a network built around founders, fractional executives, and content-driven operators.

  • Jesse Pujji· Startup operator / founder (engagement signal)
  • Nick Saraev· Operator / content practitioner (engagement signal)
  • Nicolas Cole· Writer / content strategist (engagement signal)

How they likely show up

  • Career at Uber spanning Operations Manager → Senior Operations Manager → Country Lead → COO → Fractional COO → Founder → Partner at Shiny → suggests someone who scales through roles deliberately, not by accident.
  • Founded UpScale while simultaneously operating as a Fractional COO and becoming a Partner at Shiny → high agency; comfortable running multiple parallel tracks.
  • Active LinkedIn poster on fractional leadership, AI hiring, and startup operations → comfortable being publicly visible on professional views, likely responds well to being asked for a specific take.
  • Public experiment building 1,000 websites with Fable AI → hands-on bias; tests tools in public rather than theorizing about them.
  • Education spans Tec de Monterrey (engineering), HBS Executive Ed (leadership/strategy), Bocconi (business/finance), and General Assembly (product) → deliberately fills gaps across functions, not a specialist.

Conversation tips

  • → Reference the Fable AI experiment specifically — asking what he's learned building 1,000 sites is a concrete opener that signals you actually read his feed.
  • → Ask about the Shiny partnership in concrete terms — he made a public announcement about joining; it's a point of momentum he'll want to talk about.
  • → He writes for founders and operators, not VCs — frame any conversation around execution and team-building, not abstract strategy.
  • → His Tec de Monterrey → ops roles → Madrid arc is unusual; he'll likely appreciate acknowledgment that his path isn't the standard European startup founder track.
  • → Don't ask generic questions about 'AI in recruitment' — he lives in the detail of it; come with a specific hiring challenge or a specific tool you've seen.

Toolbox

Openers

  • Open on the Fable AI 1,000-websites experiment — he made it public as a learning project, and asking what patterns he's noticed after N sites is a question almost no one else will have thought to ask.
  • Reference his Partner announcement at Shiny — he posted about it specifically, framing it as joining a marketplace for vetted fractional executives; it's a strategic bet worth unpacking, not just a side gig.
  • Bring up the tension between running UpScale as a full recruitment agency and operating fractionally yourself — he's both the product and the practitioner, which creates an unusual vantage point on what founders actually need from a COO.

Discovery questions

  1. When you're matching candidates to global startups through UpScale, what's the signal that most founders get wrong when they describe what they need?
  2. You've been both a full-time COO and a fractional one — at what company stage does fractional actually stop working?
  3. The 1,000-websites project with Fable AI — what were you trying to learn, and has it changed how you think about AI tooling for operators?

Avoid

Don't pitch generic AI recruitment automation as a solution — he's built his company on exactly that premise and will have strong opinions about what the current tools actually do and don't do.

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Sources

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Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on September 11, 2026. Each claim is linked to its source above.

Automatically generated by AI from public sources. May be inaccurate or out of date. Remove or correct this profile →