Built In The Field.By The Crew.
ValorJobs did not start as a tech company. It started with a combat veteran running construction crews in Central New York who could not hire from a stack of resumes, and solved it the only way that ever worked: by talking to people.
What follows is the timeline of how an informal hiring practice turned into a network. It isn’t finished. The work continues.
Twenty Years On The Job.
Billy Kittell went from a Marine weapons company in Fallujah and Ramadi to a detective's shield at Syracuse PD to running VALOR Development, a service-disabled veteran-owned construction firm in Central New York.
He staffed it with veterans and first responders because that is who kept showing up. Not as a hiring policy. Because the people he already trusted were the ones who worked out.
“I'd post a job and get fifty applications. Maybe two of them showed up to walk the site. Of those, maybe one stayed past lunch.”
A Resume Tells You Nothing.
A resume cannot tell you whether someone has run a skid steer, pulled a permit, or held a grade. It cannot tell you whether they will be there Tuesday.
So the hiring that worked was never the job board. It was a phone call to somebody who knew somebody. That worked, and it did not scale, and every contractor in the region had the same problem.
Built, Then Launched.
Brett Nyquist joined as co-founder to build the thing that phone call was standing in for. The first jobs and the first operators landed on the platform in January. ValorJobs shipped on iOS on February 24th, 2026.
The rule it was built on: no resumes. An operator says what they have actually run and a contractor talks to them directly. Decisions land in hours, not weeks, because nothing is waiting on a recruiter to forward a PDF.
In The Field.
Six months in, Central New York contractors are hiring on it. Barrett Paving, Suit-Kote, Riccelli Northern, Haun Welding Supply, 84 Lumber, Airport Lighting, Kinsella Quarries, Holbrook Heating, Arrow Fence, Mark Antony Homes, Vitale Concrete.
Real placements, not signups. People who were looking for work in the trades and are now doing it, hired direct with nobody taking a cut in between.
Syracuse is home base. Where the work goes, we go.
Built for those who served.
Built for veterans and first responders by people who get it.