This week's show is a wild ride. Sorta like a winding small intestine, it was all over the place and ended explosively.
We go from European startups HeyJobs and Omnipresent kicking ass and taking names to a ruckus game of buy-or-sell featuring Rolebot, Bambee (our favorite stripper name, by the way), Learn In and Workramp. Turns out, Portugal is making Chad a big softie when it comes to "selling" startups. Then there's lots of Great Resignation talk and we end the show by poking Mother Nature right where it hurts. Not just the tip and no pulling out on this show.
Enjoy!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
SFX (0s):
It smells nasty, but it's good for your health.
INTRO (4s):
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 (25s):
Oh yeah. It's the colonoscopy edition of our show, which means it'll be explosive gut wrenching and funky. And at the end you'll feel empty and a little violated you. It's the Chad and Cheese podcast. This is your co-host Joel "dropping the Browns off at the super bowl" Cheeseman.
Chad (42s):
This is Chad "no Baker Mayfield here" Sowash.
Joel (47s):
And on this week show, HeyJobs hey. The great resignation is still a thing and a little buy or sell. Let's do this.
Chad (57s):
Okay, Joel. So the market answered your question from last week with Matt Ryan. That's who the Colts are gone with for their next starter as a quarterback. But we know it's not Baker Mayfield and that makes me excited!
Joel (1m 13s):
And Baker's still looking for a job. He may want to go to, HeyJobs.
Chad (1m 19s):
You shouldn't go to HeyJobs. If that's only, I don't know that he's essential though, that's the problem.
Joel (1m 25s):
And speaking of assholes, I get a colonoscopy tomorrow, which is fun. So as soon as I get off of this call, I'm going to be gutting my system. If you will, I'm going to be snaking the pipes. It'll be fun. It'll be a fun 24 hours for me. So as you listen to this, say a prayer.
Chad (1m 41s):
Yeah. All I gotta say is next time, you know, do the box. I don't care what they say. Just do the box.
Joel (1m 48s):
What is the box for those that don't know and aren't old and middle-aged like us?
Chad (1m 53s):
Yeah. The boxes. When you go to your doctor and say, Hey, have him send the box to my house, you shit in the box, you send it back. And then they tell you all the stuff, right? You don't have to go through like this crazy a day or two days worth of your system just being fricking eradicated or maybe it's good. I don't know. Maybe it's good that your system is eradicated from all the Chipotle you've eaten in the last year or so.
Joel (2m 18s):
I love that. You said Chipotle cause that's literally what I had yesterday. So I'm tempting fate. But anyway, folks, if you're old, if you're 50, get your colonoscopy. I have a family history, which makes me have to go to the doctor and not do the box. Chad does not have the history so he gets to be boxed instead of snaked, either way. Do it.
Chad (2m 42s):
Shout out. It's good to get the shots.
Joel (2m 45s):
All right, we're going to go. We're going to go north for, for some Canada shout outs. All right. Number one, we got Toronto in my shout outs. Toronto is now the third largest tech hub in North America trailing only San Francisco and New York City. Microsoft, Google Stripe, and others have recently opened offices in the area and Toronto's tech workforce is growing faster than any city in the US. You can probably thank Donald Trump and closing the border, building walls and not giving visas to educated people. So.
Chad (3m 19s):
Yes.
Joel (3m 19s):
Shout out to Toronto. Number two, Instawork, the shift work marketplace focused on blue collar jobs has expanded to the great white north. Its first market, outside the US, Toronto and Vancouver will open first where they have thousands of members already signed up. Montreal is coming soon. Apparently they got to get that French thing figured out first, but shout out to the great white north.
SFX (3m 48s):
Cucucukoo
Chad (3m 49s):
Very nice. So, as we were talking about football, I'm going to give a shout out to the Portuguese team who are playing Turkey today in a World Cup qualifier. If Portugal wins and Italy wins, they will be matched against each other for one slot. So what that means is that this World Cup will either be missing Italy or Portugal. And that's sad, but I hope it's not Portugal. I hope Portugal's in it. So here we go.
Joel (4m 18s):
Yeah. Is Rinaldo still on the national team?
Chad (4m 21s):
Yup!
Joel (4m 21s):
He's gotta be right. And he's a bad ass motherfucker, right?
Chad (4m 26s):
He is!
Joel (4m 26s):
Well, I'll root for Portugal, just for you, Chad, because I hate you so much.
Chad (4m 32s):
That's sweet.
Joel (4m 32s):
And your wonderful life. Shout out for me. This is a different one. There's a company called Island and no, it's not the island you're probably on an Airbnb right now. Island is an enterprise browser, which I've never really thought of before, but it sounds like a really good idea. They've announced raising $115 million series B at a valuation of $1.3 billion. So unicorn alert. Island offers a secure browser that aims to give enterprises greater control over their data. And with those pesky Russians poking around enterprise level companies, having a custom browser and not Chrome or Firefox or whatever else they're probably using now might be an interesting idea and enough people like it that they've made this one a unicorn.
Joel (5m 18s):
So shout out to Island, the browser you've never heard of.
Chad (5m 22s):
Yeah. Not to mention the corporate spyware, they can probably attach to it as well. My shout out next shout out, goes to Wedgie. Congrats to Matt Baxter, Firing Squad alumni for two new in funding and adding Rocky Howard, chief people officer and equity officer from the Mom Project to wedges advisory board. Great to hear smaller organization Wedge they're growing fast. I think this is their second fund in the last, at least six months. So great news. And if you haven't heard Matt pitch, Wedge and face the firing squad, just Google, chadcheese and Wedge and give it a listen or search the firing squad playlist on Spotify and they're all right there.
Joel (6m 12s):
And what better company than Wedgie to talk about on a show like today? And by the way, no one can milk the Michigan fundraising circuit like Matt Baxter, all of those companies are like the Michigan such-and-such and the Michigan such-and-such and the Ann Arbor such-and-such. Like yeah. Total route total funding for them is $4 million shout out to them. That's great. Next one for me is Lana Roads, rug bowl. No, it's not what you think, Chad. The popular porn star, Lana Roads, which Lana is anal spelled backwards if you didn't know that.
Joel (6m 52s):
She launched her own NFT enterprise on January 22nd of this year, the project raised a cumulative of about $1.5 million promising a profitable return on people who invested. Everything went smoothly until she decided to quit the project and vanish with all the money. The NFT project featured a collection of 10,000 cartoon images of the 25-year-old air air-quotes "influencer". One week after the launch Roads abandoned the project and disappeared with 509 Ethereum or $1.5 million. Wow Chad those investors talk about taking it in the ass from Lana Roads.
Chad (7m 35s):
Again NFTs not doing it. Okay. So next shout out. I posted an article about Dan Price, you know, the CEO of Gravity Payments on LinkedIn, the guy who paid all of his employees, including himself, $70,000 a year. Anyways, the article revolves around this tweet where Dan asks his employees where they want to work? 7% said they wanted to go back to the office full-time. 31% said they wanted office remote hybrid. And 62% said they wanted to work only from home. So Dan told them sounds great. Do whatever you want.
Chad (8m 17s):
As CEO what do I care? If you get the work done that's all that matters. AKA work from anywhere. The thing that gets me is the amount of people who are just haters, boggle my mind, because whenever somebody says, you know, they want to be able to give this kind of like, choice this freedom. Everybody's like, well, there's a scenario where hybrid doesn't work. Or there's a scenario where, you know, only work from office is gonna work. And it's like, well, yeah, but we have to be less stringent because before this, all we did was force motherfuckers into the office. What this is doing is allowing for the conversation where we didn't have it before. And that's what he just did.
Joel (8m 52s):
And by the way, for listeners that stick with us for about 30 more minutes, we will talk in depth about this topic. And oh yeah. Chad's boy DJ Sol just stay tuned for that one kids. But while you're waiting, if you want sign up for some free shit, Chad.
Chad (9m 10s):
Yes!
Joel (9m 10s):
We give away t-shirts. We give away beer and we give away whiskey. Shirts by Emissary beer, from our friends at Pillar and whiskey from our new buddies at Textkernel. But you got to sign up. You got to go to Chadcheese.com/free. If you want to win nothing, no costs to just a little bit of your time to win some free shit. So Chadcheese.com/free. Do it.
Chad (9m 33s):
Got to love it and gotta love it. Also events, baby early May. We're going to be at the Erecruitment Congress in Belgium. That's right. And from what I hear, we're also going to be on a boat sometime around early May in Belgium too. Then late May we're going to be at Unleash in Vegas, but the best way to see where we're going to be good to Chadcheese.com, click on events, check out all the events, register for all the events, go to all the events, because guess what? You've been locked up for too fucking long. You deserve to have a beer or a couple of shots of bourbon or some shit like that with Chad and Cheese.
Joel (10m 17s):
Boats and hoes, boats and hoes. Got to have me, my boats and hoes. We got birthdays. Chad.
Chad (10m 25s):
Excellent.
Joel (10m 25s):
Number one. My sister celebrated a birthday this week. So Happy Birthday, Holly! Holly, my sister, Tammy Bailey, who also wants some free shit. She's also celebrating with the birthday this week.
Chad (10m 39s):
Yes.
Joel (10m 39s):
Timmy Smith. I don't know many adults named Timmy, so I love it for you, man. Timmy Smith,
Chad (10m 44s):
Timmy!
Joel (10m 44s):
Temo Hillhorst. I'm not saying that right. I'm sure.
Chad (10m 48s):
Excuse me.
Joel (10m 49s):
Josh Winright. It's probably Wainwright, but he put it in the system is Winright? So Josh Wainright, Winright? Happy Birthday. Brian Barnes, Hayden Hughes, Audra night rock on. She celebrates a birthday. Jason Warner, Jamie Leonard and Steve Kraut. One of my favorite Philadelphians celebrates a birthday.
Chad (11m 21s):
Excellent. The Kraut!
Joel (11m 21s):
Another year around the sun, everybody.
Chad (11m 24s):
Topics!
Joel (11m 24s):
HeyJobs
Chad (11m 25s):
HeyJobs?
Joel (11m 25s):
Big one for our friend Marius Luther who guests hosted our European show back in August. If you haven't listened to that, check it out. The Berlin based, HeyJob's a startup building career platform for talent in Europe announced on Thursday that it has raised $47 million in its series B round of funding. The company reports that this is the largest financing round ever received by a career platform in Germany.
Chad (11m 49s):
That's Big.
Joel (11m 51s):
The company has doubled its head count in the past 12 months to 300 employees. HeyJobs says it's used by thousands of job seekers as well as over 2,700 employers ranging from small businesses to the largest of European employers. The customers have made over 10,000 hires. Founded in 2016, they have offices in Berlin, Cologne and Vienna, but will accelerate growth in Germany as well as Europe and beyond. But no talk of the US Chad. Total funding is now $62 million.
Joel (12m 30s):
Chad, what do you think about the HeyJobs news?
Chad (12m 36s):
Hey, boomer! Boomer retirement means Germany alone is losing over 500,000. Yeah, that's half a million workers annually. Soon, twice as many people retire every year as join the workforce. From a Marius LinkedIn post here's a quick quote "our big hairy audacious goal is to become the number one career platform for essential talent in Europe, literally changing millions of lives every year. It's crazy how we as a society have neglected the largest share of the workforce. 30 million alone in Germany, over 200 million essential talent in Europe for decades, they deserve better."
Chad (13m 21s):
And HeyJobs deserves a big applause because do this message is on fucking point, but do it gets better. They've also added Katrine Suitor as chairwoman of the HeyJobs board. And the first question is, eh, but this Katrine and have any real experience, you know? Yeah. She's a board member and chair in private as well as publicly listed companies, such as CloudFlare previously, she chaired the German digital council and was state secretary in the German Ministry of Defense. She was a senior partner at McKinsey and Company. And man, I think I've fallen in love with this move alone.
Joel (14m 0s):
Watch out when Chad falls in love. Yeah, dude. Nice win from Marius. Wow. He's a good dude. Enjoy talking to him a few months ago and look forward to seeing him hopefully in person when we're in Europe this year. Also thank God for browser translators. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to read what the hell was on. HeyJobs. HeyJobs. I think it looks a little bit to me like Netflix for Jobs that is it's a recommendation engine, with an ever improving AI behind it. This quote from Marius, I think is very telling quote" whilst five years ago, we could identify who is a nurse versus a driver our AI has now learned to identify who is a qualified intensive care unit nurse that seeks to do three night shifts"
Joel (14m 44s):
end quote. That being said, it's still a job board and they have their work cut out for them needless to say, especially if they want to grow outside of Germany. There's a little, little, little site called StepStone that has a lot of market share in that part of the world. And we've also talked about StepStone getting the hell out of France on the European show. So Europe has a bunch of countries in it and all of those countries have their own unique cultures. They have their own unique companies that service them, et cetera. So HeyJobs growing and succeeding outside of Germany is no slam dunk. But if anyone's going to do it, I'd say our boy Marius can do it.
Chad (15m 27s):
Yeah. Well I would say that every country outside of Germany or really in the world have essential workers and that's where their focus is. And that's where the big bulk of these jobs are in there. They're picking as their lane. They have a lot of numbers to actually prove obviously to get this type of cash, you know, $62 million in total. So yeah, we're pretty interested to see where this goes and it is good to have someone bump up against a brand like StepStone. Everybody needs competition.
Joel (15m 57s):
It's a competitive businessman. It'll be fun to watch. It'll be fun to watch. Well, speaking of hot businesses and European companies that are on a roll by the way, we'll talk about this in more depth on the European show as well. I'm excited to hear what the Europeans think about all these deals, but we have Omnipresent next up in the news. We have a unicorn warning, Chad
SFX (16m 25s):
Pink Fluffy Unicorn Music
Joel (16m 26s):
Now they have not publicly said unicorn or what their valuation is, but remote hiring remains red hot. Enter Omnipresent, a provider of tools for managing payroll and compliance for international teams. The London headquartered company pulled in $120 million in a series B funding round led by Kennebec AB and 10 cent, which I thought was interesting. Founded in 2019, Omnipresent has presided over exceptionally fast growth. In 2021, the company said its revenue grew 25X and its team grew by 10X and now employees more than 230 people distributed across more than 40 countries. Omnipresent handles just about everything needed for a company's HR team, including local employment, compliance, payroll, HR support and benefits for international teams.
Joel (17m 18s):
Proceeds from the current investment we use to help build out Omnipresent's new products and services, customer growth in geographic expansion. Total funding now is at $137.8 million according to CrunchBase. Chad Omnipresent go.
Chad (17m 34s):
Dude, I love the name period. I mean they're Omnipresent. They're everywhere, which is exactly
Joel (17m 40s):
And they have the .com right?
Chad (17m 42s):
Yes. And they have the.com! Anyways, in, prior to this Omnipresent had $18 million in funding. That's it. They got this huge raise this time. And after just hearing the negative workforce numbers from Germany alone, that we just heard about, HeyJobs and what Germany is facing. Then add names like remote.com who's raised 196 and they are a unicorn. This is further validation that remote work at the very least in Europe is a necessity. It's not a choice kids. It's a necessity. This has and will continue to be a necessity in the US as well. I'm looking forward to seeing Dee Coakley in Belgium in early May.
Chad (18m 24s):
I'm predicting BoundlessHQ who is in the exact same sector, gets a funding bump this year as well. Currently they're at $4.9 million US.
Joel (18m 33s):
Yeah. This thing is a juggernaut hitting things at the right time. Obviously the world in pandemic, work from home isn't going anywhere. We'll talk about that in about 20 minutes or so 50 minutes, but with Remote and Omnipresent, and you mentioned Remote raising $200 million, I mean these two companies are turning into like Godzilla versus King Kong with both coming out victorious in their own way. It also feels like they both have a huge headstart on anyone looking to really compete on a huge, a significant level. Unless DJ Sol has his way and we all go back to the office. Omnipresent is going to be in a good place to support companies everywhere.
Joel (19m 17s):
And I'd venture to say, I'm surprised that the Upworks of the world, aren't getting a little more into this space. Maybe they will at some point, but for the most part, it's pretty Greenfield. These guys have got a huge head start. They've lapped anybody that wants to get into this thing. So I think these Remote and Omnipresent are going to be the Coke and Pepsi of the remote workforce going into the future.
Chad (19m 39s):
Yeah. I think there are going to be firms like, you know, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs where they, I mean, it's just what they say their culture is. It's total control, right? That's what it is. That's our, that's our culture. We are totally controlling you and that's what you're going to have to do to get our name on your resume. Right? But the rest of the world is really going to have to focus on being able to fight for talent. Now will Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase will they have to do the same thing? I think they might be forced to, but we'll see.
Joel (20m 13s):
Yeah. And I mean, we spent so much time talking about the employee side of the equation. Look, there are a lot of employers who are quite happy to be able to look at a talent pool that's global being able to recruit people from all over the world. They just need the tools to be able to facilitate workers all around the world, deal with regulations and all the red tape that comes with that. And these companies are at the forefront of helping those businesses do that. So we talked too much about the job seeker side probably, but there are many employers that are quite happy with a work from home environment because their talent pool got a lot bigger.
Chad (20m 51s):
Yeah. Well, and it's the same way in the states. I mean, you have to set up for different taxes for different states, right? I mean, you have different setups, different onboarding, those types of things. So, you know, when you start to go global, it's just, it's more layers of bullshit that you have to go through to be able to get people to do jobs.
Joel (21m 11s):
Yep. And those people will be quite happy to pay someone else to figure out all that for them.
Chad (21m 18s):
Amen.
Joel (21m 18s):
Remote and Omnipresent are happy to cash their checks. Well, speaking of cashing checks, let's take, let's take a quick break to pay some bills and we'll play a little buy or sell.
Chad (21m 28s):
Yes.
Joel (21m 28s):
All right, Chad.
Chad (21m 29s):
It's that time!
Joel (21m 31s):
Buy or sell. My favorite game, probably yours. People love it. Let's do some buy or sell shall we? You know how it works? I'll read a startup that's recently got funding and we buy or sell it basically. It's pretty straightforward. First up we got Rolebot R O L E B O T. Sit back, relax and wait for calendar invites to populate your inbox, Chad. That's the promise of startup Rolebot who has raised $4.5 million from investors recently, including Jason Calacanis famous valley investor. The company says it uses AI to book interviews with candidates without the need for resumes, job descriptions or job postings.
Joel (22m 19s):
Clients include Snowflake, Randstad and the American Red Cross, as well as the University of Southern California. Total raised is now $5.8 million according to CrunchBase. And the company employs about 60 folks according to LinkedIn. Learn more at rolebot.io. Chad, what you got for Rolebot? Buy or sell?
Chad (22m 40s):
I'm going to start with some text straight off of the website, quote, "use robots, intuitive web interface, and provide a link to an employee in your company or in another that would make the perfect blueprint for the job, sources and schedules the interview without any human intervention." That sounds like heaven, right?
Joel (23m 1s):
Sure.
Chad (23m 1s):
Well, I don't know if this sounds familiar, but there was this little Amazon algorithm that did the exact same thing that was shut down because it turned heavily biased against females. When you start pointing algorithms at things and you allow them to do their work, you're going to end up with bias. I know that I'm always preaching scale and this is definitely scale! We've learned when you scale too quickly without human engagement, big problems, big biases occur. And when a company can't even get the D & I acronym correct on their fucking website, all I can say is that it's a sell.
Joel (23m 40s):
I don't know why they're even pushing the diversity play. To be honest.
Chad (23m 43s):
I have no clue.
Joel (23m 44s):
There's budget in companies to buy diversity shit. If they just sold this as put in a profile of a current employee or someone that you want and I don't know if it's, do you plug in like the LinkedIn profile? I don't, I'm not exactly sure what you plug in. There's a lot of mystery shrouded in this company. I felt like, how does this stuff happen? Where do they find the candidates and the profiles that they match? Is it like a Hire Easy thing where they already have the candidates? Are they pushing out the jobs? And then they send them to you. And then you as the recruiter kind of grade, like, okay, which ones do I like? So in addition to the algorithm part, you're now putting in human bias because now the humans are saying which ones they like and which ones they don't.
Joel (24m 29s):
And then once they select the ones they like, then I guess some sort of outreach message goes to the candidate. And then they say, yeah, I want to interview and then the calendar thing comes in. So I know they're pushing this as like, Hey, this is a breeze. Go take a nap and when you wake up, you'll have candidates scheduled. It certainly seems a little bit more complicated than that. On its surface this feels like a tool that you can use to like, fill your funnel? Industry, veteran Tim Cup calls it a top of the funnel, bionic arm for bandwidth, which was kind of entertaining. But if you look at it strictly as like, Hey, this is a tool in my recruitment marketing toolbox.
Joel (25m 9s):
I think it's a buy, but because they're pushing so much the diversity play and the unbiased recruiting, which I just don't get, I'm going to give it a sell as well. Unfortunately, if they fix that, I think I look at the company more favorably. That's two sells. Let's go to Bambee. B A M B E E no it's not just your favorite stripper name. HR compliance solution Bambee has raised $30 million in series C funding bringing total funding to $65 million. Bambee wants to use the new cash to introduce a new customer benefits, hire talent for its customers and HR management teams and increase its engineering teams as well as increased head count by 150 people this year at it's LA headquarters, as well as beef up its Nashville, Tennessee operation.
Joel (26m 4s):
Aimed at small companies that cannot afford their own HR manager, Bambee founded in 2016 by CEO, Alan Jones, a former CMO of ZipRecruiter grew its top line by a hundred percent in 2021 and is OnCourse to double again in 2022. It has nearly 10,000 active subscribers. Chad is Bambee one of those special organizations you invite back to the champagne room, or do you tell him you're just here for the wing buffet?
Chad (26m 29s):
Oh, Bambee kind of like her sister Cheree. I'm not going to be buying or selling this one, but let me tell you who should be buying this? Are you ready?
Joel (26m 42s):
I'm ready.
Chad (26m 43s):
The newly formed Employee, Inc. You know, Jobvite, JazzHR, and NXTThing RPO. They should acquire this company. Now all Bambee HR professionals would come equipped with JazzHR. And then when the client company grows and they need an FTE for HR, they lose the part-time Bambee HR rep and they get an FTE via NXTThing RPO all while the client keeps JazzHR in place. And then when the client grows again, enter Jobvite. This is a buy for me for Employ Inc.
Joel (27m 17s):
Take Bambee back to the champagne room. Chad that is a buy. All right, small companies hate HR. It's the last thing that they bring onto their company. And they probably don't want to do that when they do. Big companies say that too, right? But that's not the point. So if they can just automate HR while paying a small fee, to have a pro on call, like a doctors on demand kind of thing for $99 a month, then this thing is a total slam dunk selling to small businesses, sucks ass. And a lot of the customers will be out of business year after year.
Joel (28m 0s):
But those challenges also keep the competition out. Put your HR on autopilot, plus a dedicated HR manager from $99 per month. And go ahead and buy Bambee. That champagne room is getting crowded. All right, now to our third startup, Learn In, Learn In, Learn In. If you're from the Midwest, we talked about FindEm a couple of weeks ago. Now we got Learn In the platform that helps companies establish their own talent academies announced that it has raised $10 million in series a funding to promote companies solutions for helping employees build deeper skills, precisely aligned to company growth and success.
Joel (28m 42s):
Learn In's core features include a prepaid Learn In stipend card, a world-class program, marketplace and custom program builder, a tuition benefits manager and dedicated coaching. Chad buy or sell Learn In.
Chad (28m 56s):
Why are talent leaving jobs today? A recent survey by Prudential found that 80% of those switching jobs are doing so because they're concerned about career advancement. While 72% of these workers want to switch jobs to acquire new skills. The answer talent academies, that term should be standardized within the talent management space, because that's what we've needed desperately for decades. Providing companies solutions for helping employees build deeper skills, precisely aligned to company growth and success. That's great articulation of what employees and employers want.
Chad (29m 37s):
To me this is way overdue. This is a buy.
Joel (29m 40s):
This is what employers want to do, build talent academies. All right. The great resignation is real. As Chad said, and companies are freaking the fuck out. Our recent Gartner report said 59% of HR leaders have placed building skills and competencies at the top of the list of priorities in 2022. That's the good news for Learn In. The bad news, however competition, Coursera, LinkedIn, Google, online colleges, et cetera, seem like a safer, easier choice for employers to make. And I think Learn In is going to be the odd man out. When companies figure out am I going with a brand I trust or a bunch of hacks from Utah? This one is a big sell for me, Chad.
Joel (30m 21s):
Now let's go to work. Tramp wait, WorkRamp.
Chad (30m 23s):
Oh, I can't wait to see the line of Mormons at your door.
Joel (30m 25s):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They come. So, so we had two companies in our feed this week. One was called Rant and the other one's called WorkRamp. And I got the one wrong that we were going to talk about. So I don't have a lot to say about WorkRamp, but I'll read it in here. So WorkRamp is scale learning across your business. The San Fran based WorkRamp is a provider of learning management systems, also known as LMS for the kids out there. They've raised $40 million in a series C funding round bringing total funding to 67 point million dollars.
Joel (31m 8s):
WorkRamp's platform enables companies to create in-person and digital training programs and measure their impact through analytics and reports. Chad, are you a buy or sell on WorkRamp?
Chad (31m 20s):
Cornerstones acquisition of EdCast last week totally up-leveled WorkRamps relevance in the LMS market, but that's not why I'm a big fan of WorkRamp. I'm a fan because they're going after the sales training and certification side of the house, along with customer service/customer education first, and then leaning into the workplace. Why? Because sales and customer retention is already a business case and those proven business cases can fuel an organization buying and adopting WorkRamp for then internal mobility, upskilling, reskilling, and driving employee retention.
Chad (32m 5s):
What's better than a great product? A great go to market strategy and WorkRamp might just have both. I'm thinking I'm buying everything. I'm buying.
Joel (32m 14s):
Living in Portugal is turning you soft my man. Portugal is turning you soft. I agree with everything you said, look, you don't get $67 million in funding unless you're doing something right. And you're sort of on a wave that is timed correctly. Companies are obviously concerned about learning management systems. Everyone is looking to buy one. It is becoming a competitive business. This company feels a lot to me like Zendesk for customers, partners, employees, and with a remote workforce being more important than ever I think that, that feature and that solution is going to be in high demand.
Joel (32m 58s):
I could see this really fitting nicely into Remote or Omnipresent in the future if they're ever looking to buy a company. So from that standpoint, it's really hard not to buy WorkRamp. All right. So that's all, I dunno, that's a bunch of buys and one sell, maybe.
Chad (33m 16s):
Rolebot, got the dump from both of us and then yeah. Then you dumped Learn In and so.
Joel (33m 22s):
We're still keeping it real for the listeners. That's nice. All right. So let's go to the great resignation. Shall we?
Chad (33m 29s):
It's still happening?
Joel (33m 31s):
It's still happening. 44% of employees are looking for new jobs this year. Holy shit. 44%. That's according to Willis Towers Watson, a continuation of the great resignation it keeps marching on. Nearly 20% of workers say they would take a new job for the same pay.
Chad (33m 47s):
What?
Joel (33m 47s):
Indicating factors such as health benefits and the ability of flexible work arrangements. There you go. Chad, could be driving decisions.
Chad (33m 55s):
Yeah.
Joel (33m 55s):
However, on the flip side of that, Goldman Sachs is now asking employees to return to the office five days a week. This is according to Fortune who interviewed your boy DJ Sol last week, the move comes five weeks after a botched attempt, which we talked about to get Goldman Sachs employees back to the company's headquarters in beautiful New York. When the firm reopened its office in on February 1st after closing for a month due to the spread of the highly contagious COVID Omicron variant only about half, half Chad, half of the 10,000 Goldman workers actually showed up.
Joel (34m 35s):
Solomon told Fortune quote "I do think for a business like ours, which is an innovative collaborative apprenticeship culture, remote work is not ideal for us. And it's not a new normal" end quote. Dammit, Chad, this is going to get messy. Is DJ Sol on the right side of history or is his remix way played out?
Chad (34m 55s):
Yeah. DJ Sol didn't think that Goldman Sachs should be pulling out of Russia. And then there was too much pressure. And then he pulled out a Russia. I mean his heavy-handedness might work for a while, but if the rest of the market goes the other way, he's going to have to go with the market. The paydays, what I think is what matters in some cases. So it will be different strokes for different folks. Companies are just going to have to get used to that. If I want to control somebody, heavy-handed iron fist, I'm probably going to have an issue getting top talent. If I go the other way, I might have a control issue?
Chad (35m 37s):
Right there going, this is good. This is a feeling-out process. There's no right answer right now.
Joel (35m 44s):
Yeah. Yeah. I said messy. And it's going to get pretty messy. This is a massive reshuffling. And it's going to take years to play out. You'll have industries like banking, who all say in conjunction the Jamie Diamonds and DJ Sol's come back to work or else. And if you want to work in those industries, you suck it up or you get a new career, you do something else. And for a lot of folks putting a few years at Goldman Sachs is quite fine because then I can do other things that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do. Other companies will hybrid. Some companies will survey their workforce and accommodate, which I kind of think is a good strategy. Some people will go one way, get tired of that move and go to a company with a different set of values.
Joel (36m 25s):
There's going to be pressure from shareholders to go the opposite way when profits go down. Poaching will be easier than ever before, by the way, it's definitely going to get messy and we'll have a lot of fun talking about all of this shit in the coming years. On another note, if you couldn't get into Goldman before, it's going to be a great time to get in now.
Chad (36m 54s):
Yes.
Joel (36m 54s):
And listen to the sweet, sweet rhymes of DJ Sol.
Chad (36m 58s):
Spinning records in the cafeteria.
Joel (36m 59s):
Spinning records to the Mormons. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk about poking mother earth. Yikes. Not just the tip. All right, Chad, I mentioned Island in my shout outs, which is a browser for companies, which I didn't even know existed and I thought it was brilliant. So I came across another brilliant piece of news. You're not as hip to this, but I'll read it out. The earth is in trouble Chad.
Chad (37m 29s):
Yes.
Joel (37m 29s):
We know this. While we look to wind, sun and nuclear to solve our impending doom, one promising source of sustainable energy remains largely untapped and underappreciated. That's geothermal energy. Chad geothermal energy comes from within the earth. You've heard of volcanoes, right? Slow radioactive decay produces a never ending supply of powerful heat. To access this clean resource A company called Quaise. Hopefully I'm saying that right. Q U A I S E not queef or quasi or queasy, which is kind of what my stomach is starting to do right now called quick Quaise plans to dig 12 and a half miles down, deeper than ever before into the Earth's crust.
Joel (38m 12s):
Kind of like my colonoscopy tomorrow. Less than 1% of the Globe's energy comes from geothermal sources, but the MIT spinoff, so these are smart people, Chad believe geothermal energy could provide 8.3% of global energy and power 40 countries fully. Quaise has raised $63 million in startup cash to proceed with the development of their technology. I expected you to be impressed with this, Chad, but you weren't. Why?
Chad (38m 39s):
So first off, why does this feel like Theranos to me? It's it just seems too good to be true. Right. And in not to mention with the advent of fracking, I know they say this isn't like fracking and it's more, but still it's like these, these are things that I don't know that anybody should be comfortable with. If we can actually get this to work. That that would be amazing because anything that we can do to get away from petroleum would be awesome. But drilling down to the core of the earth and killing it right now from the outside, with all of the shit that we have going on and then perspectively killing it from the inside dude. I just, I don't know, man.
Chad (39m 21s):
I just don't know.
Joel (39m 22s):
I don't know, man. It sounds scary.
Chad (39m 24s):
It sounds scary, man.
Joel (39m 25s):
When I read this and I, and we talked about it a little bit, I was reminded of a movie in the seventies, which you won't remember. It was called At the Earth's Core. And these people in the seventies that were dressed, like it was the 1800s for some reason, they went into the center of the earth. And of course there are dinosaurs. They're like, it's sort of like planet of the apes. There's slaves. So I agree who knows what the hell we're going to find when we go down there? But it makes total sense to say shit, we've got this magma down you know, 12 miles from us. If I don't have to look at windmills, if I'm gonna have to die from nuclear energy, if I'm don't have to see solar panels and everything, like I think it's pretty genius.
Joel (40m 18s):
It's pretty genius. But yeah, it's a little scary. When you start poking around into the Earth's magma, It could unleash volcanoes of epic proportions and kill us all.
Chad (40m 31s):
Magma.
Joel (40m 31s):
And speaking of volcanic, I got to start taking my laxatives for my colonoscopy tomorrow. And remember kids, if you're a, middle-aged get your colonoscopy. It's just good health, everybody. It's just good health.
SFX (40m 45s):
Smells nasty, but it's good for your health.
Joel and Chad (40m 49s):
We out.
OUTRO (41m 25s):
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.