The weather is getting cooler in America, but we can lucky still stay warm with the hot embers of the ongoing CareerBuilder dumpster fire. This time, our favorite old-timey job board is rebranding with a new logo and ad campaign. Mmmm, toasty.
We also dive into the new investment at The Mom Project and play some buy-or-sell with a couple of internationally focused companies and one "Salesforce for recruiting" wannabe. Watch out Gem! To end the show, we take a break from porn and prostitutes to focus on the growth of Africa and Big Tech's continental invasion, featuring Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
INTRO (1s):
Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Joel (21s):
Oh yeah. Forget Facebook if any organization needs a whistleblower, it's the show. Hi kids you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast the real teen alternative to Instagram. This is your co-host Joel "Mr. October" Cheeseman.
Chad (37s):
This is Chad "Toto" Sowash.
Joel (40s):
On this week's show a big win for moms in the workforce. Buy or sell. And the CareerBuilder, dumpster fire is back, baby. Let's do this. So our week is better than Facebook's Chad, if nothing else.
Chad (54s):
That's not saying much, not saying much And I would, I would say probably not, because I think their revenues are probably still okay. So you've heard before all PR is good PR well, their fine.
Joel (1m 7s):
Yeah, I remember all the companies that were boycotting Facebook for like 48 hours that didn't have much effect. We'll see, we'll see, some people are calling this their jumping the shark moment though. We'll see.
Chad (1m 18s):
But shout out, shot my first shout out to Facebook though, and conspiracy theories. So Francis Haugen, former Facebook employee, for all of those who've been locked up in a closet for the last few days. She comes out for an interview on 60 minutes and says she has tens of thousands of documents. She's getting ready to testify in Congress. She has tens of thousands of documents and the very next day Facebook goes down for six hours. So, so what, what's your favorite conspiracy theory?
Joel (1m 48s):
I'm going to keep it simple. I think Zuckerberg is just saying, all right, you fuckers keep messing with us and we'll shut it down forever. So he's given us a little tease of what could happen if we keep messing with the Zuck. That's my conspiracy theory.
Chad (1m 60s):
Yeah, shutting it down forever means he loses billions, so that's not going to happen. Mine very simply was they did a lockdown and they thought they said six hours. That's nothing. We make more money than God anyway. So let's shut it down for six hours. Let's find, you know, at least start sleuthing around and seeing if others are actually starting to pull documents much like Francis did. So I think this was more of a security situation than anything else. How do we find where other perspective leaks are? So if you are internal to Facebook right now, you got to know, they're watching you so close.
Joel (2m 38s):
So is this the Bill Cosby conspiracy, once one woman comes out, they all come out and Facebook is worried that one whistleblower leads to more whistleblowers so let's dump as much data as we possibly can through the digital paper shredder?
Chad (2m 55s):
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, if you think about it, everybody loved Bill Cosby until this started and everybody hates Facebook even before this started. So thinking of it from that standpoint, coming out against Bill Cosby, that's one thing. Coming out against Facebook that's too fucking easy.
Joel (3m 13s):
My first shout-out goes to Vonq, our favorite STD in the industry. They celebrated 15 years in business this week and that's, that's not an easy task to do. So shout out to Vonq!
Chad (3m 27s):
That's pretty legit. I gotta say that's pretty legit. Shout out to Christopher Taylor for interviewing me on the Oven Ready HR podcast. I didn't need to have oven mitts or anything. The episode was titled Blow Up Your Recruitment Process They Probably Suck Anyway. I dropped this week and I got to say, Christopher has the most silky, smooth and calming voice I've ever heard on a podcast. Then you combined that with his English accent and I didn't want to leave. I just wanted to continue to record it. It was that sultry
Joel (4m 3s):
It's called out of the oven?
Chad (4m 5s):
Now, not out of the oven. It's called Oven Ready HR
Joel (4m 11s):
Oven Ready HR. Okay and it's not about cooking. That's interesting. Speaking of a silky smooth voices, I got a shout out. I've mentioned this podcast a couple of times in the past. It's This Week in History and we talk a lot about females, sort of overachieving in a male dominated world. And I encourage you to check out "Night Witches" an episode about a Russian, yes, the era. It was the nickname the Germans gave to female aviators in the Russian army in World War II. It's a really inspiring, inspiring story. And I'll throw in another podcast about women over overcoming.
Joel (4m 55s):
This is a diversity and a female play. If you've ever listened to the, How I Built This podcast. Yeah, it's great. They talk to founders. Well, the most recent one and you and I, this one's close to our hearts. It's the Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey. Uncle Nearest was a former slave in Tennessee that taught Jack Daniels how to make whiskey and a female her name is Fawn Weaver, visited the original distillery from the 1800s and basically brought the brand back. And if, if you think about it for a second, there aren't too many more white male dominated industries than the American bourbon industry.
Joel (5m 46s):
And her story of overcoming the obstacles, the history telling the story is really cool. So if you like business startups and then a story around, you know, females overcoming and a diverse, a woman of color overcoming, it's a great podcast. That's How I Built This with Fawn Weaver of Uncle Nearest Bourbon.
Chad (6m 5s):
Trying to segue off of that nicely. I want to shout out to the Bruce family. So in 1912, Charles and Willa Bruce purchased beach front property in Southern California and turned it into a resort open to black customers. But in the 1920s, the land was taken from them and absorbed into Manhattan beach. Now worth $75 million, new state legislation is returning the property back to the Bruce family. So no, they're not going to get reparations for the last a hundred years that they've lost from their resort business, although they are getting their family heritage and seventy-five million dollar beach back.
Chad (6m 53s):
So good for them. It's not enough, but it's a move forward.
Joel (6m 57s):
Yeah interesting. So I'll keep it on the diverse play. You'll be proud of me on this. So Sarah Silverman, comedian and podcaster, which is a pretty good podcast, she brings up an issue that I've never thought of. And I just want to put it out there. She brings up the issue of Jewface. We talk about blackface on the show and people are familiar with a lot of things in the news around blackface, but Jewface is apparently getting some more criticism. And it's basically where historical characters in history that are Jewish are played by non Jews. So this is an issue in the Jewish community. And I thought it was really interesting.
Joel (7m 38s):
So if you want to learn more about that, check out Sarah Silverman's podcast, she's regularly political and critical of sort of the world that we live in with a nice comedic twist that Sarah Silverman can only bring.
Chad (7m 54s):
Who I'm not critical of is United Airlines. Nearly 600 United airlines employees have lost their jobs because they were not vaccinated against COVID 19 and 175 people were fired from a North Carolina hospital network while California starts to crack down on their unvaxxed citizens as well. The writing's on the wall, kids writing is on the wall. I think it, it sucks that we have to get to this point when other countries are just like amazingly Vaxxed and they're doing it because they know it's for their best of their community. We have to fire 600 fucking people. This is crazy!
Joel (8m 32s):
Yeah. And I know it's LA, but is it, do you know if it's the entire state of California or just the city of Los Angeles, it's going all mask?
Chad (8m 40s):
LA LA, but you know that this is going to start rolling out, maybe not into Northern California, but you can see this happening.
Joel (8m 48s):
Not in Texas. I can predict that or Florida. All right, I'm going to spin it back to business here in our shout outs, we talked a while back about Sterling back checks, IPO, and, and they've gone public and have been not super exciting, but just where we predicted sort of boring and slow growth, but HireRight? Probably their primary competition just announced that they'll be going IPO in the near future. So what's good for the goose is good for the BackCheck Gander. Shout out to HireRight and just came across the wires, Chad or buddies at BrightHire, who doesn't love a good Teddy Chestnut reference?
Chad (9m 30s):
My favorite country singer.
Joel (9m 31s):
Has announced it has raised 20 million in series B. And I just have one thing to predict there. I sense the unicorn coming out on BrightHire we'll be paying attention. Teddy, let us know.
Chad (9m 48s):
Gotta love a startup that is deeply entrenched in the industry. Teddy's been in the industry for a while. LinkedIn, some other places. That's awesome. Staying in a shout out to the industry, shout out to the year 2000! HireQuest acquires RecruitMedia. So a staffing company buys a job board. It feels like Y2K all over again, because I mean, Joel, you were actually with Espan or Job Options when Spherion bought them. Right. And that didn't work out so well. So why will this work out? Well,
Joel (10m 23s):
It didn't work out for job options and it didn't work out for me because I was laid off with everybody else in 2000 hours fairy on, well, they had bigger problems than buying our little, our little job board.
Chad (10m 35s):
You think, you think it'll work? I mean, a staffing company buying a job board. It hasn't worked throughout history. Randstad, Monster, right?
Joel (10m 44s):
Yeah. Yeah. What, what happens is they flood the whole job board with their own jobs and then they become a turnoff to the job seekers and they eventually leave. So history is not kind to this relationship and I don't expect this one to be any different.
Chad (11m 2s):
Agreed, agreed, here too. So my last shout out is to PWC, who said it will allow 40,000 US client service employees to work virtually in live anywhere they want. That deserves a big applause, but wait, but wait, but wait, they, they also want to pay people less who are working remote. Here's a shocker.
sfx (11m 28s):
Oh, Hell no.
Chad (11m 29s):
I expect this from corporate America trying to focus, you know, the narrative on cost of living instead of the actual deliverable the worker provides, but it's 2021. People are doing a job and they provide a deliverable and it's none of your fucking business where I live or where it's being performed because I'm doing what you need me to do. My biggest problem though, today is that there are a few people that are out on social media that are saying I would do my job from home for less money. Well, that's nice, but you're not speaking for the entirety of all of your peers. And this is getting sucked up by the corporate machine.
Chad (12m 10s):
And people pointing at these privileged workers who can afford to take less money, but not everybody can. So if you're one of those who say, Hey, I'll take less money. How about just shut the fuck up?
Joel (12m 22s):
It reminds me of the most popular Netflix show in history that's now the hottest thing going right now. Chad, have you checked out the Squid Game?
Chad (12m 32s):
I have not.
Joel (12m 32s):
Okay. I won't ruin it, but there's a scene where people have to choose one or the other. And that reminded me of that. You got it. You got to check out the Squid Game. I'm only two episodes in, but I'm totally hooked. And so is the world, according to social media. So check that out. By the way, it's a Korean made film and is there any country hotter than Korea? You got a Parasite, which was huge. You got the Squid Game. You got K-pop, which you know, I cannot get enough of. So Korea is having a moment. Good for them. And who else is having a moment? Chad, we got some new winners for whiskey and beer, two of our favorites. All right.
Joel (13m 12s):
So Ryan Fillman who we actually highlighted last week. I think in China, these are, these are random beer winner. I swear to God random.org. I put the numbers in and these that spits it out. Our whiskey winner, Kevin Hager, wait, that's not right. Kyle Hager, he won whiskey. He's already received it. We've already got the what's he wearing a smoking jacket with the two bottles of whiskey or?
Chad (13m 37s):
Okay. It looks like a Terry cloth like robe. And then he has a glass of whiskey in his hand. That's going to be the one that we use for the promo.
Joel (13m 46s):
We have three pictures from Kyle one. He's in like a wife beater tank top. One he's in a smoking jacket. I mean, I don't know what's going on at Kyle's apartment, but it's happening, man. It's a happening.
Chad (13m 56s):
I love it. I love it.
Joel (13m 57s):
All right. All right. By the way, if you want free shit, you got to go to Chad cheese.com/free. We got t-shirts from Emissary, beer from Adzuna and we got whiskey from Sovren. You can't lose. Don't wait. And while you're there, leave us a review on your favorite podcast of choice. That's it for shout outs. Let's get to some fantasy football. Chad, where this week you were, you were ousted from the number one spot. Number one now we've got Bill "football" Fanning. The wonderful Miss Q at number two, Chad, you falling to three, but I like your chances to move up this week.
Chad (14m 37s):
I'll take it.
Joel (14m 37s):
Michael J. Cox is next. After that Christie "Dark Side of the Moon" is next up, Chris "There's Always Next Year" Yanks Fans" Russell. Pete "don't call him douchi" Suchi is taken on me this week in the next spot. That's that'd be Cheese "call me RAD" because I'm out of the celler from last week, followed by Jason "Vorhees" Putnam and following up the caboose "Breakin' Benjamins" Kunze. That is your fantasy football update sponsored by poach.ai. Thanks everybody.
Chad (15m 11s):
I got to say, I got to say Benjamin is in the cellar, but he has scored the second most points in the entire, I mean, so it's like, he's got a hell of a team. He's just when he's playing certain teams, he's getting a loss. So he's got a good team. So I'm playing him this week and he'll probably fucking beat me.
Joel (15m 31s):
Yeah. And at which point he'll move up to like three on the leaderboard with that many points. So yeah, fantasy football is a fickle mistress, everybody. And these things will not be what they are at the end of the season. We got some podcasts to mention if you haven't listened to the European show, we got some good shit there. Some freelance goodness in France and other places. And then make sure you listen to Workplace Whiplash with Tracy Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas authors of Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out.: The Catalyst’s Guide to Working Well. And we have a few birthdays. Chad are one of our favorite Brits.
Joel (16m 13s):
Daniel Fellows celebrates a birthday this month as does fans of the show, Tim Larson and Paul Jacobs of John Graham down in New Zealand!
Chad (16m 22s):
Nice. I can't wait till they all get Vaxxed and they are out of lockdown so we can visit them for God's sakes.
Joel (16m 32s):
Yeah, no shit.
Chad (16m 34s):
That being said, we are going to Belgium kids, the e-recruitment Congress happening on November 25th in Ostend, Belgium spend some American Thanksgiving time with Joel and myself in Belgium. The modem VAX rate is currently 72.5%. So a hell it's a hell of a lot safer than staying here or maybe some of the other European countries. But if you are in Europe, register, grab a cheap flight, come over, have drinks, and we'll have a great time go to E-recruitment-Congress.com
Joel (17m 2s):
Chad, you know how good you felt to get out of the house after the pandemic going to Europe and yeah, I've still been in the cabin. So I'm ready to get the hell out and show Europe the best of me, if you will. I don't
Chad (17m 17s):
Know. I don't know if you're ready for that.
Joel (17m 25s):
I don't know where this, this shit's going. Let's let's get to the news, shall we?
Chad (17m 29s):
Topics!
Joel (17m 29s):
Oh boy. How long has it been since we've talked about CareerBuilder?
Chad (17m 35s):
Too long!
Joel (17m 36s):
Probably about four months the last time they announced a new CEO. So "industry icon", I say that in our air quotes, CareerBuilder's rebranding itself, Chad. Most notably there's a new logo, some people are calling this the fourth new one, I'm calling it the third. As part of their new brand identity of the company is launching a TV, radio and digital with the trademark tagline "let's job it up," which will be featured on programs like CBS NFL, Sundays, and the people's choice awards. CareerBuilder CEO, Susan Arthur said in a release quote, "this relaunch is a celebration of the ways CareerBuilder can support evolving individual ambitions with a modern, empowering brand."
Joel (18m 22s):
Chad, are you ready to celebrate CB's rebrand?
Chad (18m 25s):
Not even close. So Tim Sackett did a compare and contrast on the new logo against its predecessors. And it was funny, but it's not the point at all. This isn't about how ugly the logo and colors are. This to me is about the new CEO, Sue Arthur. This is about what's broken at CareerBuilder and the color scheme and logo should not be the new CEO's priority. As a new CEO, you cannot allow this type of stupidity to happen on your watch because it demonstrates that you are not focused or you have no control over your fucking staff from a priority standpoint.
Chad (19m 6s):
Just for a second let's say all of this was nearly or maybe finalized by the prior regime, right? I can hear that excuse right now. Well, that was all done through the prior regime. Well, it doesn't matter because as the new CEO, you have to understand optics as a customer or a prospect or a stakeholder. I look at this move and say, this was her first fucking move. I mean, what the fuck is wrong with her? Now I see that Sue Arthur has a wonderful list of brands and positions that she's held over the years. Just check out our LinkedIn for God's sakes, but none of them have readied her for becoming the captain of a sinking ship.
Chad (19m 48s):
She's having the staff apply a new coat of paint to the Titanic after it hit the fucking iceberg dude. So that's my rant. This whole logo and color thing is really just a symptom of a much larger problem at CareerBuilder.
Joel (20m 3s):
Yeah. Where to start? If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone here it? Is a common question. So it's very telling that outside of a ad age and ad week, this news saw no major news outlet cover the story on Google news. That's how far this brand has fallen. Yeah. Brands change because of damage control or things are antiquated. They need to freshen shit up. They don't just happen on a whim like they've seemed to happen at CareerBuilder and the original brand, which by the way, they spent millions of dollars, you know, promoting and building with Superbowl ads and tons of other shit.
Joel (20m 49s):
And then by total surprise, they changed it up to like some trivial pursuit pie icon with the sea because they were going from a job board to a software company. Well, that didn't work out so well. So I would have had more respect if they would have gone back to the old logo and said, we're going back to our roots of being a job site and being the best job site we can be, as opposed to, I don't know, looking like an ink stamp on a piece of paper, it has no equity to me, starting over from scratch is hard to sort of fathom. Now they're going to have to you know, spend more money on that. Let's job it up. I don't know if that really rolls off the tongue, that well. We'll see how that goes.
Joel (21m 30s):
The Superbowl ads or the ads that they have, at least they're sort of being funny. The one thing that I think that struck me really quickly was in the ad that they promoted, the guy who's in the break room and the boss is cooking a fish or something. The guy that the employee, the disgruntled employee applies to 15 jobs at once on his mobile phone, through his CareerBuilder app. Now that is not really the message.
Chad (22m 1s):
Scattershot.
Joel (22m 1s):
That's certainly not the message most employers want to see.
Chad (22m 5s):
No.
Joel (22m 5s):
All in all this is lipstick on a pig. I want to see some innovation out of CareerBuilder that doesn't involve Pokemon Go. To me that's really going to change the story about CareerBuilder, not a new tagline and not a new logo.
Chad (22m 22s):
A new coat of paint on a sinking ship. Fucking diversion.
Joel (22m 26s):
But we haven't talked about CareerBuilder in a while. So that was fun. All right. And our listeners love it when we talk about CareerBuilder. Let's talk about moms!
Chad (22m 35s):
Hello mom.
Joel (22m 36s):
Another thing, everyone loves our friends at the Mom Project, by the way, check out our interview with them that's in the archives. They're in the news! The Chicago based company founded in 2016 has secured an $80 million series C funding round bringing the grand total to $115 million. Chad, I don't know, right around the corner, the new funds will be invested in product development, distribution, and team growth to advance the platform's goal of connecting moms with more than $1 billion in economic opportunity in the next two years, they serve more than 500,000 moms and 3000 companies through its suite of hiring education and retention solutions.
Joel (23m 22s):
Oh, and they count Serena Williams as their strategic advisor. Chad, are you ready to get down with the Mom Project?
Chad (23m 28s):
Who is?
Joel (23m 28s):
By the way, I was rated PG on that one. I could have gotten a lot of different ways with you getting down with mom.
Chad (23m 38s):
Anyway. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. I believe the money invested in the Mom Project is, is purely focused on potential because there is so much potential here, not just on a job board or the hiring piece, but the Mom Project has promise to become a hub for this community itself. And this is a community that every company wants to tap into, which means providing guidance, support, and the opportunity to actually drive hiring outcomes for moms all over the world, not just in the US so this isn't just a funding exercise, a feel-good funding exercise.
Chad (24m 19s):
It's about the promise. Now, the hard part it's up for Alison and staff to execute on this promise and this momentum. And while I mentioned staff, I also have some additional breaking news. You ready for this?
Joel (24m 34s):
I'm ready.
Chad (24m 35s):
So, you know, Rocky Howard, over at Smart Recruiters, she has just left Smart Recruiters to take a chief people and diversity officer position at the Mom Project. So, I mean, think about it $80 million in fun and new funding and afternoon tea with Serena Williams. Hell yeah, I'd do that in a heartbeat.
Joel (24m 56s):
As a former latchkey kid of the eighties, Chad, I, I know firsthand what working mothers have had to sacrifice throughout the years and how much work over motherhood has been an issue with getting women back into the workforce. Particularly in our country, America has sort of forgotten this demographic in terms of business. Thankfully that's changing companies are realizing they can access an educated, highly viable asset as long as they remain flexible with things like childcare, school, et cetera. And the Mom Project to me is hitting things at the right time with COVID underscoring, the need to support moms who have been let's face it, mostly moms have been burdened with at-home schooling, childcare for the last 18 months or so like, the timing is right for this business.
Joel (25m 44s):
Society's ready for it. And you got to applaud an effort to get moms more in the workforce and get companies finally on board with helping them and compromise with that, giving them more time back to letting them work from home and you get great, great, let's be honest human resources in return. It sounds like a win-win and the Mom Project is going to be right in the middle supporting that trend. And it's good for everybody including society.
Chad (26m 11s):
Yeah. We need to get Alison back on. I definitely would love to see an organization like this become an advocacy group and prospectively a lobby group. Who knows? Yeah.
Joel (26m 20s):
Yeah. Well, let's take a quick break.
Chad (26m 20s):
And we'll do a little buy or sell one of our favorite activities.
Joel (26m 22s):
Buy or sell. Chad, are you ready to play one of our favorite games and pastimes?
Chad (26m 25s):
Oh, am I.
Joel (26m 32s):
All right? Let's get to it. All right. Let's start with Ontop.
Chad (26m 37s):
I liked the name.
Joel (26m 39s):
We're following Ontop after the Mom Project. I don't know what that says about us, but anyway, yeah, you liked the name born in Colombia, but now Miami-based Ontop is a global hiring and payment startup that's raised $20 million from Tiger Global and SoftBank among that brings total funding to $26 million. The company automates international hiring payments and taxes, onboarding and payroll management for global teams. Ontop, started out by connecting us companies with Latin American talent and its customers were mainly tech startups, but very quickly companies in Europe and other places around the world were reaching out, wanting to hire people everywhere because talent is everywhere.
Joel (27m 24s):
Ontop charges companies, $29 per month for each employee manager, plus a fee equaling 1% of the size of the payment. So for example, an employer would pay Ontop $49 for an employee making $2,000 a month. Chad, are you going to buy or sell Ontop?
Chad (27m 40s):
It helps they are international when pitching remote work because companies are building strategy around those combined areas. And it also helps they are young. They haven't taken a lot of cash thus far because all the core talent platforms and HCM platforms out there might want to add, or maybe even refresh old dilapidated tech that they currently have with some new stuff. And since money is flowing like water buying up, this startup could be cheap and easy. They're backed by Y Combinator, they have over 200 clients, operating in 150 countries with 90 local experts. Now that could all be marketing fluff because we've seen that before. But I've said, you know, when I'm doing these rapid assessments of startups, there are the three things that I care about: first and foremost, is it a shitty task?
Chad (28m 29s):
Yes. To take these things off of TA and HRS plates, right? It's more than one thing they're doing more processes. Number two is the product scalable? It seems to be, they need to take a deeper look, but it seems to be, and last but not least are the roots of the founders in this industry, meaning do they understand and have connections within the industry? Because if you're looking to get acquired, you need to have them. If you're looking to get integrated, you need to have those. So the answer is no, unfortunately, which means, you know, having the quick connections to prospective acquiring entities platforms, it's just going to be a suck. It's going to be a slog.
Chad (29m 10s):
So unfortunately I love the idea around this. They need to get some people from an advisor standpoint up in a very high level to help them where they need it, which is industry experience and connections. But until then, this is definitely a sell for me.
Joel (29m 26s):
Sorry, boys. All right. Really? Okay. Well Chad, when Tiger and SoftBank invests along with, you mentioned Y Combinator, you need to pay attention. We'll talk about Africa in a little bit, but the trend we're noticing is opportunity, not only in Africa, but in India, in South America as well. And there really hasn't been sort of the growth and the opportunity in those countries since there's been a digital workforce and work from home is supercharging the trend. Listeners will remember Andela from last week in Africa and you're going to see that I think in South America as well, and these guys are sort of on the fringe of that trend. I think Ontop is in a good position to take advantage of that trend.
Joel (30m 9s):
Founders aside, I think moving to America was probably a good idea in terms of more investment, more talent, more, more roads into folks that can help while also maintaining a link to South America and the rest of the world. So for me, I'm going to diverge from you and I'm going to be a buyer of Ontop. Let's get to ModernLoop, not Modern Family. The San Fran based ModernLoop, another Y Combinator, this is in their winter '21 cohort has announced a $3.3 million in seed funding. ModernLoop helps companies automate and streamline recruiting operations.
Joel (30m 49s):
Like Gem, it's probably fair to say ModernLoop is hoping to be another Salesforce for recruiting. Founders include a guy from Slack and a gal from Facebook who saw an opportunity to help recruiters get off the spreadsheets and come into 2021. The company employs around 14 folks, according to LinkedIn, Chad, are you a buy or sell on ModernLoop?
Chad (31m 15s):
This one's a baby man. It was founded in December of 2020. So number one, the shitty task litmus test? I don't think it passes it because I don't believe most TA leaders believe this is a problem. Plus it's probably already quote unquote, "baked into their current core talent platform," whether it is or not it doesn't matter because you have to convince the people who are actually buying. I mean, just the adoption piece here, I think is hard. Second scale, will it scale? Yes. I think it passes the scale test, but once again, does TA believe they need it?
Chad (31m 55s):
No, I don't think they do. I think they have things that they believe that will go ahead and bridge those gaps. Leadership CEO, Lydia Hahn has an impressive list of companies that she's worked for as a product manager, Slack, Facebook, and Salesforce, and her co-founder's a CTO spent eight years at Facebook as well. So they don't check all the boxes for me. So it's definitely a sell.
Joel (32m 21s):
Okay. I'll say much of the same thing to keep it shorter, no industry experience, entrenched competition that is highly funded with high levels of brand awareness and a lot more money in the bank. They seem to be targeting SMBs and small staffing firms. From what I can tell, which frankly sucks. These guys are a knife in a gunfight. I'm a big seller on modern poop. I mean, ModernLoop. All right, let's get to buck. That's Buk.
Chad (32m 57s):
BUK it.
Joel (32m 58s):
Founded in 2017, Chile based Buk, which has developed a human resource management platform for Latin American companies announced that is that it has raised $50 million in a series A funding round that values the company at $417 million. Holy shit. The platform handles paying salaries, professional development, employee surveys, performance evaluations, recruiting and attendance. Buk has more than 4,000 clients and power's payroll for over 400,000 employees on its platform. And they saw a ARR increased by 151% in September compared to September of last year, Chad what's buy or sell in Spanish?
Chad (33m 37s):
To me, it is buy, buy, buy, baby. I love this because it's focused if other HCM platforms and want to own the Latin market, what's an easier thing to do, but then to buy Buk, right? So they pass my litmus tests, doing the shitty work, automating at scale, being able to be focused enough to actually own Latin America with regard to tech that is perfect because you now have an acquisition bullseye on your back, which is a good thing.
sfx (34m 15s):
Applause
Joel (34m 12s):
Yeah. I can't recall a 50 million series A that resulted in a $417 million valuation. This company is obviously a rocket ship and investors are seeing that. I mentioned the growth in South America that we're going to see in the next decade plus, and these guys clearly are on the cutting edge of that trend. So yeah, Buk up, baby. That's a big, big buy for me. That concludes by herself.
sfx (34m 38s):
That was fun.
Joel (34m 39s):
All right. You got some news out of LinkedIn and China.
sfx (34m 42s):
Thanks for sharing this story Bas. If you come across stories and you believe that, you know, we might like them. Share them, send them to us. So this tweet is from B Allen Ebrahimian quote "I woke up this morning to discover that LinkedIn had blocked my profile in China. I used to have to wait for Chinese government censors or censors employed by Chinese companies in China to do this kind of thing. Now, a US company is paying its own employees to censor Americans."
sfx (35m 24s):
She received a long note telling her that pretty much the content of her summary was something that was not going to pass muster for a Chinese government.
Chad (35m 35s):
But when you go to her LinkedIn profile, you see that she's an Axios reporter in charge of covering China. As you read further down her profile she's in deep and has uncovered leaked documents in China over the years, and is writing a book for Harper Collins around much of this content. So the question is when Microsoft and American company bends the knee to China, where does it end?
Joel (36m 2s):
This has been a subject for a while.
Chad (36m 6s):
Yeah.
Joel (36m 6s):
For those that don't know, Google's not in China, Facebook is not in China and Twitter is not in China. For some reason, LinkedIn has been able to dance between the raindrops, if you will, and be accessible in China, it's their third largest market for LinkedIn. And China does not have freedom of the press. Maybe that's news to some people. And if you want to play in China and access its billion plus citizens, you have to bend to the Chinese way of things and part of that is silencing dissension of the government. So in other words, companies have to decide, is it people over politics? Profits over politics? It's a hard, it's a hard decision to make.
Joel (36m 48s):
And unfortunately, if you want to play in China, you have to play by their rules, just like any other country and LinkedIn is doing that.
Chad (36m 57s):
So this is a new form of sovereignty, digital sovereignty. And it's something that we are going to have to be taking a look at as technical organizations, technical analysts, whatever it might be. We have to be aware of these things. And I thought this was an interesting story, knowing that we use and talk about LinkedIn all the time to see them bending the knee. And it's more toward profits.
Joel (37m 24s):
Sure. And, and for me also, you know, the Afghanistan debacle, I guess, you know, really raised awareness when you saw the pictures of, you know, beating women and, you know, bullying citizens, you know, we talked sort of freely and on our podcast about the Salesforce CEO, you know, bitch slap in Texas over its legislation around abortions. And we should feel lucky every now and then that we live in a country where a CEO of a company can talk trash about a state government without that state government, you know, putting him in jail or kicking him out of the state or kicking the whole company out of t`he state. To me, it's kind of a moment to appreciate the country we live in as much as we bad mouth it.
Joel (38m 7s):
We do have it pretty good in comparison to much of the rest of the world. As far as you know, I mean, it's a hard question. Do you pack up your bags and leave China sort of in revolt or do you play by the rules and continue to make money from that? And that's our question to answer Google to their credit, I guess said, we're out, like we're not going to play by the rules. And as a search engine, it's very hard to, you know, close out certain, content and make things unsearchable by certain populations. So for them, that made sense for LinkedIn, at least for now, it makes sense to silence a few journalists if it means, you know, we can keep making money from our third biggest market.
Chad (38m 57s):
So for all those international listeners, we understand here in America, we don't corner the market on freedom. So most of you have the exact same opportunities to speak your mind. We're starting to see again that the Russia and China, and some of those that aren't, we know the question is what are we going to do as a society, not just in America, but just as a community to be able to have these hard discussions.
Joel (39m 21s):
Yeah. By the way, you know, China is tightening the vice on its citizens. I'm curious when the breaking point is, I mean, at what point, you know, we laugh about taking video games away from kids, or, you know, doing things like that, but their government has done so many things recently with the Jack Ma thing with Alibaba coming down on corporations. And I mean, it just as an outsider, I'm really curious if and when the people of China finally say enough, and the straw breaks the camel's back and the people revolt in a significant way, but maybe they won't, maybe the government will continue to have such controls and, you know, things will be the way that they are.
Joel (40m 1s):
But to me, that's sort of the story of the next century is how China's people reacts to, to kind of the vice tightening that the government has been doing in the last couple of years.
Chad (40m 15s):
I can say in all confidence that you won't be able to listen to this episode of Chad and Cheese in China.
Joel (40m 24s):
We're banned in China. I love it. As long as we're continually huge in Copenhagen. That's what I care about. Moving from China and American politics we're going to go down to Africa for a little bit Chad after a quick break.
Chad (40m 40s):
All right, Chad, we don't talk enough about Africa. We broke the seal with Andela last week, but let's talk a little Africa because I think as I think you agree, we're going to see real fantastic creativity, innovation sort of freedom of markets and commercial advancement in places like India, Africa, and South America.
Joel (41m 3s):
Apparently Google agrees. Google has announced its investing in, in the continent at the very first Google for Africa event this week, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet announced a plan to invest $1 billion over five years to support digital transformation in Africa. The investment focuses on enabling fast, affordable internet access for more Africans, building helpful products, supporting entrepreneurship and small business and helping nonprofits. Additionally, Twitter's opening up an office in Ghana. Facebook has already been in the continent as well, investing in high speed internet around the entire continent. Microsoft is also there some numbers around Africa because I'm sort of a Virgin in the African know-it-all-ness.
Joel (41m 52s):
Before the pandemic five of the world's fastest growing economies were in Africa led by Ghana. Africa makes up 16% of the world's population, but only 3% of the global GDP, that GDP by the way, is expected to reach 4.5 trillion by 2025. Follow the money kids and keep an eye on Africa. I say.
Chad (42m 12s):
There's a lot of growth to tap. And here, obviously in Google is spending this money for several reasons. How many new users could Google acquire from these measures, right? Not just, I mean, just, just the easy stuff. How many users, how many Google users could, could we actually get eyeballs so on and so forth? How many new businesses making transactions in Google digital storefronts? Right? But mainly I believe that African talent is the new oil and making sure that this talent can engage digitally is big for companies who believe India and Africa could solve their talent woes today and in the future.
Chad (42m 52s):
And once again, I want to call back to, you know, our interview with Vivek, the CEO of HackerRank, who said there is no shortage of talent. Well, I believe him. And I believe this move by Google cements, that statement for years to come. Smart companies, aren't just poaching talent, they are manufacturing talent. And if you're one of those companies that believes LinkedIn licenses are the talent fuel for your company, your horse and buggy just got lapped. So I wish Google would actually do the same thing here in the US as well because our internet speeds are atrocious and what we pay for those internet speeds?
Chad (43m 35s):
It's shameful. It's ridiculous.
Joel (43m 36s):
You know, we mentioned we had, we mentioned China and the LinkedIn story. And you know, to me, the, the global power struggle ultimately comes down to an Americanized future or a Chinese-centric future. Obviously you're going to have allies on both sides, but to me, you look at South America, you look at Africa and India, that's where the battleground of where sort of the, the minds of the people of the future are going to lie. And I know China is doing its damnedest to get into Africa and sort of the Middle East and build these relationships. So to me, the bigger picture of African and South America and India as well, is to drive more commercialism, American style, capitalism, freedom, et cetera.
Joel (44m 26s):
I know that it's idealistic and sort of cheesy, but if it's Google and Microsoft, et cetera, carrying the flag and our way of life to Africa and other continents, I say it's much better than the Chinese focused future where we have authoritarian government. So for me, I hope that we do good in Africa and it's good for the world as a whole.
Chad (44m 54s):
Yeah, just as long as we start to set fair wages and we're not using this as another way for cheap labor.
Joel (45m 5s):
And just as long as we keep getting to play the Toto soundbites.
Chad (45m 9s):
Please! Please.
Joel (45m 9s):
And with that, Chad, another episode is in the books.
Chad and Joel (45m 12s):
We out
OUTRO (45m 12s):
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.