This show has it all.
European predictions for 2022 (Oh boy, Monster's not going to like this).
LinkedIn news (Clubhouse isn't going to like this either).
A French unicorn named PayFit. (Cue the unicorn song)
Oh yeah, and Gerard Mulder, CEO of Dutch company Textkernel, and recent acquirers of US-based Sovren, joins the show to give his insights on all thing's world-of-work.
The guys also dig into some recent startups - Hinterview and SonicJobs - that have garnered millions in funding.
Ciao!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Chad and Cheese Does Europe INTRO (5s):
Some podcasts, do it for the fun. Some do it for the fame, Chad and Cheese they do it for global effin domination. That's why bringing America to its knees was just the beginning. Now they have their eyes set on conquering Europe and they've drafted industry veteran Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze of Belgium to help them navigate the old country and bring HR's most dangerous podcast across the pond to trash-talk like never before. Not safe for work in any language. The Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. pe.
Joel (39s):
Oh yeah. The US and Russia are in talks to keep the peace in Europe, the meeting, however has no actual Europeans in the meeting. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your cohost, Joel, "Ivan Drago" Cheeseman.
Chad (54s):
And I'm Chad "pissing off the un-vaccinated" Sowash.
Lieven (57s):
And I'm still, just Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze.
Joel (1m 1s):
And on this episode, LinkedIn takes aim at Clubhouse, European predictions for 2022 and oh yeah a French unicorn. Let's do this, everybody.
Lieven (1m 16s):
Yeah. '
sfx (1m 16s):
Europe has a bunch of countries in it.
Joel (1m 19s):
What's up boys?
Chad (1m 20s):
I keep hearing the intro and how the announcer just totally kills Lieven's last name.
Joel (1m 29s):
As if you really know how to say it after 14 shows.
Chad (1m 33s):
Yes. Of course I do.
Lieven (1m 34s):
I still remember it. I still recognize it. So it's not that bad.
Chad (1m 38s):
That's good. That's very good.
Lieven (1m 39s):
Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze.
Joel (1m 40s):
It's good to have you guys on. And again, it's been a while since we've all been together.
Chad (1m 47s):
Happy 2022, hopefully.
Joel (1m 48s):
Happy 2022. Happy 14th show. I think of Chad and Cheese Does Europe.
Lieven (1m 54s):
14th already?
Joel (1m 55s):
And who better to have us on the 14th. Lucky 14th show that our mystery guests, Gerard Mulder, CEO of Textkernel Gerard I'm sure I butchered your name in Europe, but welcome to the podcast.
Gerard (2m 13s):
Thank you guys for having me. It's a great honor to be, to be on this podcast.
Chad (2m 21s):
Much like a European, way too nice right out of the gate. Okay.
Joel (2m 26s):
But at Gerard, is it, is it Herard? Is it
Gerard (2m 29s):
I'll say, I'll say once the way the Dutch pronounce it, it's actually Gerard.
Joel (2m 36s):
Oh my God. No,
Gerard (2m 37s):
I won't do that to you. And I think Lieven like a Lieven actually has a very nice pronunciation of my name.
Lieven (2m 48s):
We would say, Gerard.
Chad (2m 51s):
Sounds kind of French.
Joel (2m 52s):
Lieven has a real education. Unlike Chad and Cheese. So, so Gerard CEO of Textkernel, what else sort of Twitter bio, or sort of a quick summary Textkernel that, for those that don't know, give us, give us the quick intro.
Gerard (3m 7s):
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, basically like many in our field, we help connect people in jobs better. And we do that by providing technologies that can be integrated into existing processes to help speed up application processes, to match candidates with high accuracy, to do sourcing and we do a lot of data enrichments. So both on the profile and candidate side, as well as the demand side of the labor markets to help do analytics on the labor markets. So our customers typically use it to kind of like understand what skills are emerging, how is demand developing across different countries in Europe, the US and Canada.
Chad (3m 54s):
So a little bit about Gerard though. So do you like long walks on the beach? Do you like strolling through the Arden? I mean a little bit about you, give us a little history.
Gerard (4m 3s):
Well, I definitely, the Arden, so I just came back from there with Christmas. That's a tradition. We go there every year.
Chad (4m 17s):
That's awesome.
Gerard (4m 17s):
And yeah, my background is, I joined Textkernel in 2005. It was then a four people company and helped build it out to what it is today. And yeah, I mean, my background is very much in more, on the commercial side, honestly, but as you join a startup, you kind of tend to do everything. So I've been a product manager, a marketing manager, I'm a project manager, you name it, I've done it. And you have today of course, I'm sure we'll get to talk about it where we're making big waves.
Chad (5m 6s):
Yes!
Gerard (5m 6s):
And we're currently 150 people company and yeah growing fast and having fun. Wow.
Joel (5m 11s):
Awesome. Awesome. Let's get to some shout outs. Shall we gentlemen? All right. I will go first. My first shout out goes to France. French authorities hit Google and Facebook with record breaking fines of 210 million euros, big money for Facebook and Google for making it, making it too difficult for users to opt out of cookies. Facebook was fine for the same offense and both companies now have three months to comply or risk fines of 113,000 euros per day. The watchdog said facebook.com, google.fr and youtube.com websites did not allow the easy refusal of cookies.
Joel (5m 55s):
Citing the example of Facebook, it said, quote, "several clicks are required to refuse all cookies, as opposed to a single one, to accept them" end quote, Vive LA France, for sticking it to big tech, shout out to France.
Chad (6m 8s):
Sticking it to big tech, Lieven. You got a shout out?
Lieven (6m 13s):
Yeah. Shout out to the Reddit anti work community. What? Yeah, that's something new. Y'all know the subreddit Wall Street bets where people used to encourage each other to buy meme stocks like GME, et cetera, and try to try to make some money on the way there. And now there's the new subreddit, that's actually not new it was launched in 2013, but it's suddenly booming and it's called subreddit antiwork. And they're at 1.6 million members encouraging each other to quit our jobs and become idlers and give each other tips on how to eat from dumpsters and how to live for free basically. So I guess if this is the new hype for 2022, the war for talent is getting a new chapter.
Chad (6m 56s):
Ah, shit. Yeah. That, that those are the in cell message boards where Joel gets his provisions.
Lieven (7m 3s):
And I must say most of the people are male. Most of the members are male and from North America.
Chad (7m 12s):
Imagine that?
Joel (7m 12s):
That's all right, because we don't have government handouts to live on. We gotta go through the dumpsters.
Chad (7m 18s):
Dumpsters. Yes. Going back in, I'm going to double up on Joel's French shout out. So a big shout out to French President Emmanuel Macron for a pissing off the 8% of the French who are unvaccinated in order to harass them into protecting themselves and others against COVID 19, slap them around there Macron, slap them around.
Joel (7m 45s):
And no cafe for you without the shots.
Lieven (7m 46s):
He said (SOMETHING IN FRENCH) . They are going to annoy them just until they quit, something like that.
Joel (7m 54s):
I love it. Love it. May 6th, something's going on Lieven. Why don't we tell the audience and listeners about May 6th
Lieven (8m 1s):
May six we are planning on not to postpone the Congress on May 6th. Actually. It's actually going to be May 6th, the e-recruitment Congress, 2022. We've been planning it since 2019. So it's about time.
Chad (8m 17s):
And no shit. We gotta make sure that Gerard's there too. So Gerard, put that on your calendar, big guy.
Gerard (8m 22s):
Definitely. I will. And I love, I love the fact that you guys are planning because you know, you can also not blend because of fear, but you guys are planning.
Lieven (8m 32s):
Indeed.
Joel (8m 32s):
There's an old saying, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans is that yes. They have the same saying over in Europe?
Gerard (8m 42s):
Yeah. But hopefully it will work out like that.
Joel (8m 44s):
Yeah. Hopefully you can, you can show up or have some Textkernel folks, now that you have 150 employees.
Chad (8m 50s):
And I would like to take this time to land in Belgium. I had to actually divert to Malta last time, which was a huge disappointment.
Lieven (9m 2s):
You're Hippocratic.
Joel (9m 2s):
Okay. Are you looking for real estate in Belgium now, Chad, you've already got your Portugal empire almost almost solidified.
Chad (9m 8s):
I'm just going to focus my, you know, on the beaches of Portugal right now.
Joel (9m 14s):
We appreciate that, the world appreciates that. Well, let's get into some of the news that Gerard alluded to. If you don't, if you don't remember from, I don't know how many shows it's been?
Chad (9m 29s):
Topics!
Joel (9m 29s):
Texkernel bought a little company here in the U S called Sovren. So they did this in December. The combination of both companies will create a stronger player in the AI based search and match technology space the company says in Textkernel strengthens its North American and APEC footprint with the acquisition. Following the deal Textkernel will serve over 2,500 clients, including some of the largest staffing firms in the world, working from offices in the Netherlands, US, France and Germany. According to a market source cited by Reuters, the deal is valued at 30 to 40 million euros. Textkernel is backed by Main Capital, which bought the company from CareerBuilder back in 2020.
Joel (10m 11s):
So let's dig in a little bit with our friend Gerard. Gerard, how did this deal come together? And you're finally going to announce how much the deal was for on the podcast, right?
Gerard (10m 24s):
No, I'm sorry. I can't no, no that's yeah. I'm sorry guys. No.
Joel (10m 27s):
That's all right.
Gerard (10m 27s):
But yeah. How did it come about? Well, first of all, of course I known so for, and for a very long Diamond and we were competing, but as a competitor, we've always kinda, you know, respected each other. We, you know, we approached the same problem from a different technical perspective you could say. And I think it's, it had advantages to do that, but now joining, it actually creates a really strong culmination. And basically we just reached out to Robert at the right time.
Joel (11m 3s):
And how much whiskey did you have to send them to get a call back?
Gerard (11m 10s):
Well, it's actually a funny story because, we couldn't actually meet during this time because we weren't allowed to go to the US. So what we did instead is we met in Aruba.
Chad (11m 29s):
So horrible.
Gerard (11m 29s):
Horrible right? So we flew out for his team and some people of our team and I think that really helps building trust and going together on, you know, because it's always a big thing, especially, you know, if Robert having founded the company and run the company for over 20 years, it's important he gets to meet the people who will take over from him.
Chad (11m 59s):
Hell yeah. I got to say, Gerard, you are downplaying this big time because Textkernel is a huge in Europe and Sovren is huge in the US so being able to put these two players together, Robert actually had a conversation with us about this, and this was a holy shit moment for us. So we've been waiting for something big to happen in parsing and matching, and this was it. So what we were really excited to see this happen, and I know I'm like fucking fanboying at this point, but so what? But, I mean, from my standpoint, how do you see the current landscape? This is major power when we're talking about computing power and data in systems today, how do you see the current landscape?
Chad (12m 41s):
And then give us kind of like an idea into the future, your vision on where this actually goes. .
Gerard (12m 51s):
Yeah. So if you think about the number of profiles we process jointly. And if you think about the number of matches and searches that are done on our system, it is indeed a big thing because we were, I mean, Textkernel was already the biggest in the industry, but together with Sovren, it's even bigger. And yeah, if you look at the landscape, I think, and this is why I liked Sovren so much, I think we have very little competition left that we can't actually compete with. And the great thing about the two technical approaches that the difference is that we can very easily take things from the Textkernel product spec and our knowledge on, for instance, semantics, on skills and things like that.
Gerard (13m 43s):
And actually add that to the Sovren product stack quite easily. And we actually expect to actually make a lot of progress already in May. So if you think about most tech companies that are joining forces, getting really usable benefits from each other's products stacks often takes multiple years. I think we can really be much faster. So I'm very excited about it. And also the customers respond extremely positively to the news, which of course is super important.
Joel (14m 21s):
Yeah. You mentioned, I don't know, sort of the competition, the landscape is fairly bare once you guys got together to create the 800 pound gorilla. So what's the plan from here in terms of growth? Are we going to see a lot more marketing around the world from Textkernel more salespeople? Like, are you just gonna like totally solidify the market and establish yourself as the alpha male in this space? Like what can we expect in terms of the next 12 months in regards to growth and marketing and development?
Gerard (14m 56s):
Yeah. So, so first of all, it's a marketing and explaining our possibilities to the market. So especially in the US, you could say that, you know, with, Sovren our market share in the US doubled. So we already had a significant market share in the US, but now it doubled, but I still think that's, we're just scratching the surface of the typical use cases that are arising for our kind of technology. And it is primarily driven by automation and digitalization processes and what these processes needs are very accurate, matching, very accurate understanding of the data and the process you want to automate.
Gerard (15m 43s):
That's where we add value. So in one word or two words, you could say, we deliver foundational technology to drive many of these processes.
Joel (15m 51s):
Excellent. Well, I think I speak for both of us saying that we're excited for you guys and Robert and Sovren are great friends of the show and we're excited for you and, let's get into predictions. And frankly, one of my predictions is CareerBuilder bought you two or so years ago. My prediction is with the power of Sovren. You guys will now buy CareerBuilder in 2022, you will flip the switch on ownership.
Chad (16m 19s):
Don't waste your money on that shit.
Joel (16m 21s):
You can get a two for, with Monster. It'll be great. Speaking of let's go into some of our European predictions, by the way, if you haven't heard our, US predictions show with Tim Sackett and I encourage you to do so, but right now let's get into some European specific predictions. Lieven you have two, Gerard, you have one. Lieven, let's go to you first with your prediction. Number one for 2022.
Lieven (16m 46s):
For the record, I had plenty of predictions, but I was only allowed to choose two.
Joel (16m 55s):
Yeah.
Chad (16m 55s):
Being held down by the man.
Joel (16m 57s):
Coming soon, the Lieven prediction show for the Chad and Cheese Show.
Lieven (16m 60s):
Oh my God, I can, I can keep going on predicting. Anyways. Anyways, first one you were talking about Monster and I heard your prediction on, was it last week show about Monster? And I sort of agree. I mean, you know, there's a new CEO, a Randstad or an incoming CEO because Jacque hasn't left yet, but I'm the new CEO. Norton who comes from Accenture and was pretty tech savvy. And I heard a lot of great things about him. So I'm wishing him good luck, but the new CEO is going to try to do something to make a difference. And he will finally try to get rid of Monster. Of course he will. Jack couldn't because Jack was always saying that it was a good investment, but now he's leaving, but Sandra is going to try to get rid of Monster.
Lieven (17m 46s):
But of course, no one is going to be willing to buy it.
sfx (17m 51s):
Applause
Lieven (17m 51s):
So they're just going to chop it up and very lots of small parts, like the coffee machine and laptops, et cetera. And then at the end, we're going to sell the whole website as an NFT. I think.
Joel (18m 6s):
Trumpasaurus and NFT now that they have Monster beverage in Europe, right?
Lieven (18m 10s):
The energy drink. Yeah.
Joel (18m 11s):
I think, I think they sell the domain, that Monster beverage for $25 million.
Chad (18m 16s):
But what other assets do they have to sell at this point? Seriously? Any comments Gerard? Gerard's like, no, I'm not getting into this.
Gerard (18m 24s):
I'm not getting into that. I mean, I've been working with the Monster guys for ages and they're all good people. So, but, but I'm also not a regular at this podcast, I'm Lieven, you guys to do that.
Joel (18m 39s):
We won't put you on the spot. Let's roll right into your prediction.
Gerard (18m 46s):
All right. Yeah. My prediction is a little bit more, it's certainly more difficult to check later on, but I think 2022 will further democratize equality in pay for professions across Europe. And I think 2022 will make the biggest step. So to make it a little bit specific, 2022, will really take away many of the differences, especially for highly educated roles.
Joel (19m 19s):
Now your prediction of this, will this be sort of government driven? Will this be market driven? What will be the forces that create the equality.
Gerard (19m 28s):
Market driven, supported by governments though? Because I do, I actually do think that you in and say many things about the European commission and what they're doing, but one thing I do think that they do really, really well is enable international movement of people. It could still be better, but you know, if you look, if you compare to European economy with the US economy, one of the big downsides of Europe was the ability for people to just take their suitcase, if they were willing to and move to another country and start working. I think, you know, European Union has brought that.
Gerard (20m 11s):
So, so it's that, but actually it's COVID of course, that that really made it so easy to start working from any place. Also, why would you be paid less if you live in Poland or in Belgium?
Joel (20m 26s):
Chad has such a boner on this prediction right now. He's so excited.
Chad (20m 30s):
Yeah. It's hard to keep down. Yeah. So the thing is that Gerard, I agree a hundred percent with regard to, you know, being able to see, not just pay, but pay transparency, obviously what you can see more in Europe than you can in the US but also, you know, one of the hardest positions to fill, at least from my understanding are like truck driver positions. And that's not a highly educated position. So, you know, are we not going to democratization from the top to the bottom because you're seeing individuals who can pretty much do that job anywhere in the EU.
Gerard (21m 3s):
Yeah. Now I think you're actually entirely right there. It's just that I think on, in turn driving, think it's happened already to a large extent for as an example, for instance, but also a lot of other vocational professions. Nowadays, if you're a contractor, you can take a job anywhere in Europe and just get paid the same. Right? So even in construction. I actually do agree with you. It's across the whole array of professions, but still, I believe that for highly educated professions, as I do think that some of those jobs are easier to do from any location, the difference will even be smaller.
Gerard (21m 57s):
That's a prediction might be wrong.
Joel (21m 59s):
Predictions are never wrong. They just haven't happened yet. Lieven let's get to your second prediction.
Chad (22m 5s):
Lieven as another prediction he wants to steal from me. Go ahead.
Lieven (22m 12s):
Okay. The next one, it's nothing I'm going to steal from you. It's even more weird. The next big thing in 2022 or the best investment in 2022, we'll be buying the e-Krone and the economy will be the cryptocurrency launched by Sweden and are going to launch it somewhere in 2022. But that's an educated guess, the fact is China is going to launch the digital one and Juwan, or how do you pronounce it by the winter Olympics? And they're going to let the competitors either, how do you call them the sports people and the participants and the people who are watching, you're going to let them pay and those digital Juwan things.
Lieven (22m 54s):
But Sweden is also working on one. They're testing it right now, they have a pilot project. And I think there will be the first European country launching a virtual coin, which is controlled by the government. And this is going to be a game changer because it's going to put a lot of pressure on Bitcoin, et cetera.
Joel (23m 13s):
So will employees demand being paid in Swedish, E-currency. Is that another prediction part of that?
Lieven (23m 20s):
Maybe not sure if they want to be paid in it, but they can change their own currency to the Swedish e-currency. And that's probably going to be a very good investment, is the best way to stop inflation I guess, because Euro won't be able to launch something like that in a short period of time. And Sweden never adopted the Euro and they still have the Krona, Swedish krona. So for them, it's easier to launch something like this, but I was thinking it took us so much time to launch one currency for Europe, the euro. And now suddenly all those states are going to launch their own cryptocurrency, because I know the Netherlands are working it, France is working it. I'm sure German, the others are working on as well.
Lieven (24m 2s):
Belgium is not, but the others are, this is going to be a step back I feel. That it will be a good investment for those who will be the early adopters. I'm sure
Gerard (24m 13s):
I've always find so fascinating with the cryptocurrencies is that they're not really money. You can buy things with it, but it's, you're, you're kind of trading a digital currency into money. And then with that money, you, you, you buy, I know you can also buy directly with digital currencies at some places, but the value of the digital currency, is really defined by the demand for that digital currency. Not by any kind of economic liaison to production or something like that. So, do you expect that to be different for these government controls currencies?
Gerard (24m 56s):
Yeah,
Lieven (24m 57s):
I think so. And I'm definitely not an expert at all, but in my opinion, those cryptocurrencies, if you buy them, it's not investing, it's speculation, strictly speculation, your hope someone else will be willing to pay even more the moment you're trying to sell it. So that's strictly speculation and it's not backed up by anything. It's just, it's thin air. In my opinion.
Chad (25m 18s):
I use it any, but anywhere in Sweden, right? I mean, you can't go to France and use this crypto?
Lieven (25m 25s):
Go, no, but same here. You have changing offices. So it's not difficult at all to change it on the fly and our mobile phone.
Chad (25m 34s):
The Euro is so amazing when you're an American and you can go to Europe and hop countries until you get to England or Sweden, or, I mean, all that all sucks. So to me, this just adds another layer of suck.
Joel (25m 48s):
And the answer is the US dollar will reign Supreme for the rest of our lives, end of story. And if we can go that far, let's take, let's take a quick break and we'll get into a LinkedIn taking on Clubhouse.
sfx (26m 1s):
Europe has a bunch of countries in it.
Joel (26m 4s):
All right, guys, we've got LinkedIn in the news, which technically is a US company, but they affect everybody. In the news this week LinkedIn events is coming this spring with video events, but we'll debut this month with an audio component, similar to Clubhouse. With some 800 million users worldwide and Microsoft in its corner, LinkedIn is bound to destroy popular audio event, app Clubhouse, as well as take the live video world by storm. Right guys? Is anyone selling LinkedIn, upping its live events game and taken on Clubhouse?
Lieven (26m 40s):
I'm actually buying it. I think they have one big asset, one added value, and that's their audience. They have over a billion users and they can match each episodes with people who might be interested. So this actually could work. I never was a believer of Clubhouse itself. I hated the concept. I did love the way they put himself into the markets. Now you have to be invited and you even saw who you were invited by, which is a great marketing stunt. When I got invitations, I checked, who would I like to match my name to? So it was a big stunt, but in this case, this could work because let's just say, for example, I get a text message on my smartphone Hey Lieven there's a LinkedIn audio session on recruitment about to start, would you like to listen in?
Lieven (27m 30s):
Okay, sure. Why not? So they could match my personal interests with their existing episodes or their sessions. And this could be a game changer.
Gerard (27m 39s):
Yeah, I totally agree. I think if you look at the last one and a half, two years, we have used LinkedIn in a big way to actually get new audience for our new listeners for our webinars and stuff we wanted to tell through the markets, them helping you and potentially match the content of what you're talking about to the right audience. It could be, it could be big, but, but as I understood it, it's just all audio, right? It's no video or images?
Joel (28m 9s):
They're launching audio this month, and then eventually upgrading the LinkedIn live events.
Gerard (28m 14s):
So I would really like it if they would add something in there with a video or content or something like that.
Chad (28m 20s):
It's just proves that Clubhouse was nothing more than a feature, from the top to the bottom not to mention there's no on demand ability, right? So there's no recording to be able to go to later. So you had to be in the moment you had to be there, you had to be in the room, and there are way too many avenues and platforms to be in right now to engage. So I think if LinkedIn does this, right, where Clubhouse fucked it up is that they actually record, they have on demand sessions, and this is nothing but a more portable way to provide better content.
Chad (29m 1s):
And in Georgia, I also agree with the video, but video is not as portable as audio. So this will provide them power that they currently do not have. So it's smart, but again, Clubhouse was nothing but a feature and they should've sold when they had what a $4 billion valuation?
Joel (29m 18s):
Yep, you're probably right about that too.
Lieven (29m 20s):
Yeah, I think it's, it could be like some kind of an interactive podcast. And that's an interesting idea. I mean.
Chad (29m 26s):
Yeah.
Lieven (29m 26s):
We have a podcast and we record, and then we put it online and people can listen to it, which is great. But now people can listen live and they can interact immediately. So there should be something like in an interactive podcast. And if you host it decently, or if you are a good moderator, it could be, wow. We should give it a try. I think.
Chad (29m 48s):
Agreed.
Gerard (29m 48s):
Yeah, I agree. And I think the good thing about just audio, the advantage of just audio without has some disadvantages as well, but the big advantage is you can reach people in a moments where you wouldn't have normally reached them. So while they're in their car or driving, so it's, yeah, I think it's, I want to experiment with it for sure, for Textkernel.
Joel (30m 14s):
So I'll give you a real life example. I did a live event or scheduled live event and everything on it is really smooth in terms of inviting people and who are the other speakers. It all clicks. It all links into LinkedIn's platform where it fell down big time was that they did not provide their own video platform. So they've partnered with like six or seven different video platforms, and you have to have an account there and then schedule it through that partner to then have the video on LinkedIn. And it ultimately is such a pain in the ass. You just like, screw it. Let's just link to zoom or whatever webinar platform that you want it.
Joel (30m 58s):
And I just felt like the whole time, like Jesus, why can't LinkedIn provide the video and have all this thing be seamless and I record, or, you know, broadcast through LinkedIn. So the fact that they have finally got to a point where they're gonna have LinkedIn live events with actual LinkedIn product, I think that's well overdue. And I think it will be, it should be very successful if they do it right. The audio side of things should be interesting. I think the fact that so many people already have LinkedIn on their mobile devices and alerts can go out saying, Hey, there's an audio session by so-and-so on this topic will generate a lot more engagement.
Joel (31m 39s):
I think looking at your feed on LinkedIn with archived audio based on maybe a comment or a story that was shared on your feed is all going to be really good. LinkedIn is a B2B marketing sales, recruiting dream. So a lot of people I think, are going to be excited about upgrades to this, platform, if they do it correctly,
Lieven (32m 0s):
I totally agree. And I think that desperately needs interesting content, the only thing they miss, and they have LinkedIn learning, which is actually very good content, but the content people put on LinkedIn mostly sucks. So now this could be a step up.
Joel (32m 17s):
Yeah, for sure.
Chad (32m 17s):
It sounds like the video portion, Joel, your whole experience. It sounds like Swedish crypto.
Joel (32m 21s):
A little bit, very disparate and disconnected for sure. Yeah. I got to go where and sign up for what video solution I've never heard of in order to broadcast on LinkedIn is very, very strange. Also strange guys. Also we have a unicorn alert.
Chad (32m 45s):
Nothing strange about that.
Joel (32m 48s):
This time out of France, which makes it maybe a little bit strange. So French startup PayFit announced a $289 million series E round. That's 254 million euros. Following this round, the startup has reached a post-money valuation of $2.1, say it with me, billion dollars. The Company has been building a payroll and HR software as a service platform for small and medium companies. There are currently 6,000 employers using PayFit around 80% of them are based in France, around 150,000 people currently get paid through PayFit. So guys, are we ready to ride the PayFit unicorn?
Chad (33m 32s):
Ride it all day. I mean, nothing is more boring than payroll, but nothing is more important than payroll and PayFit has focused on France. They focused where they know to be able to own that market before they actually start to expand. This for most startups, this is where most startups get it wrong. They want to expand way too quickly. I think it's incredibly smart for them, that they're getting good penetration in the country that they obviously live and work in and then take this kind of cash, which at this point is 437 million euros and start hopefully growth throughout the EU.
Joel (34m 10s):
If it sounds a little bit like JustWorks here in the US, which I know that we've talked about, you're probably on the right track, right? Simplifying payroll. You have people in multiple countries, multiple laws, you know, PayFit lets you manage that payroll from a web browser, as opposed to some office down the street to automate as much of this as possible. PayFit I think also has a product advantage compared to other solutions, as you don't need to be an expert and work for an accounting firm to generate payroll, which I can tell you as someone who has worked with Pay checks before is a pain in the ass. The startup costs to make sure you remain compliant and hides all the complexities around paying someone in Poland, I'm paying someone in Italy.
Joel (34m 53s):
So I think it's it's right time. It goes back to a little bit of our predictions where salaries are going to equalize. People are going to work in multiple countries. And if there's a company like PayFit, that can simplify that, I think that's a home run. It's really interesting to me that 80% of their clients are in France, which means holy shit, that's a lot of room to grow. The company currently has 700 employees that are in obviously Paris, but you've got a footprint in Berlin, Barcelona and London. So I think these guys are really primed to take Europe by storm in the coming years. Yeah.
Gerard (35m 31s):
It's of course it's a crazy amount of money if you think about it, especially I'm not certain about their revenue.
Joel (35m 37s):
Says the European.
Gerard (35m 39s):
Yeah, exactly. That about their revenue, but it's becoming more it's we're getting there guys, we're getting there. I mean, I dunno if you like the German company think of what's Personio they're like their value of the like $8 billion. Not so it's possible, but, but I really do believe that their benefit is solving a really big problem. And if I look at a company like us, if you think about the amount of time we spend with so many different countries for 150 employees only, if they could solve that for me, that would be huge.
Lieven (36m 27s):
Now. If I were them, I would use the 400 million to buy Dee oakly and Boundless?
Chad (36m 33s):
Buy Boundless.
Lieven (36m 34s):
Yeah. Never underestimates the complexity of working with something like payroll in Europe. I mean it's, multi-country payrolling, local taxing, employment regulations. This sucks in Europe.
Chad (36m 48s):
Amen.
Lieven (36m 48s):
So if you want to cross the borders, talk to Boundless.
Chad (36m 53s):
That's another prediction by Lieven.
Lieven (36m 56s):
Here, they're going to buy Boundless.
Joel (36m 58s):
So let's see if the next two companies get a similar response. Let's talk about Hinterview. The UK based technology company has announced that it has raised 3 million pounds in series a funding. The video recruiting platform says they've experienced soaring demand for their technology since launching in 2015, the total they raise now is 6 million pounds. And the company says they're serving tens of thousands of recruiters in more than 30 countries. Apparently there's room for another video recruiting solution everybody. Gentlemen, who's buying Hinterview?
Chad (37m 29s):
Yeah, we're going to need a bigger boat. It's pretty simple. And Rick Carsley actually the VP of talent acquisition at Freedom Mortgage was on our show and he talked about Hinterview and he actually, he said, this "Hinterview is just another kind of video software. It's neat to have," they were giving him a free month demo. "But when it's a product that works best when it's integrated into your ATS and this one, doesn't, it's just an obstacle." So at this point, the integrations on the site are Bullhorn, Calendly, LinkedIn and WhatsApp. So unless they're focusing heavily on staffing, they really don't have a chance in hell. Not to mention, if you take a look at all of the video interviewing companies that are out there and just do a Google search in the US I didn't see them in the first five pages, I did a VPN to London, nothing.
Chad (38m 23s):
To Germany, nothing. So they they're going to need a bigger boat and they don't have enough money.
Joel (38m 27s):
Like, do we really need another video recruiting solution? I mean, are they going to be a niche? Are they going to, it's going to be Europe or UK or certain segment, I guess they could go that route. Automation challenges we're seeing some real exciting stuff. Not only from the likes of Vervo, but also Paradox launching video in terms of their process and who can forget the Metaverse. Yes. Is first time we've talked about it, but look, we're going to be video video and recruiting people in the Metaverse potentially, are they prepared for a world with that and to pay for the development that might go into some of that stuff. So I'm going to sell Hinterview as well.
Joel (39m 11s):
Gerard your opinion.
Gerard (39m 12s):
Yeah. I subscribe to, what's been said so far. It's just in general that I, what I always have with these new video interviewing companies, is that you would expect some more innovation and especially with the content of the video. So something like, which is more in our field, really, but understanding what's being said, understanding the entire interview, creating a profile, something in the ATS automatically based on what's been said, suggesting smart questions to the recruiter. Just something more, rather than just another interviewing tool.
Joel (39m 53s):
Try to have a question for you because you live in the resume parsing world all the time. And I'm just curious, when you, when you hear stories about video resumes, whether it's say TikTok doing them or some other platform, do you look at that as a threat? Do you kind of laugh about it because you know, there's no way in hell that's the future of resumes? Like what sort of your take, when you see someone saying we're going to reinvent the resume with video?
Gerard (40m 26s):
Well, I think it's a very interesting development, honestly, and we're already taking a step at it. So like we're nuts. We actually did tests on video interviews and we were perfectly capable of parsing out and normalizing the skills that were mentioned in the interview, for instance. So based on video interviewing, you can already, going from speech speech to text and then applying our document, understanding technology, building a skills profile of the person. So we are looking into these types of things. So I, for me, I think it's unstoppable. Video will come and video CVs will go, man, we're just looking ahead and thinking about how can we do it?
Gerard (41m 11s):
I don't think it will, it's a threat for the resume because I think it serves a different purpose, but one of the things I do believe our customers are going to need is a smart, natural language processing system that combines information from a video, with a resume, with an interview and actually creates one unified profile that you can index and match on and use for other purposes
Chad (41m 42s):
And contextualizes. Right?
Gerard (41m 43s):
Yeah.
Joel (41m 44s):
Chad, that sounds like a scoop to me. How about you? You heard it here first on the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Chad (41m 53s):
So what about you Lieven? You buying this bad boy Lieven?
Lieven (41m 56s):
No, no, because just too many doing what they claim to do better. You got, I think, I'm definitely into video. I love streaming. I read a lot about how to, using virtual cams, et cetera, to make the best possible impression. It's all about employer branding, you need to do it right. But when talking about recruitment, technical recruitment, there are basically six steps to follow and you start at a sustainable database like LinkedIn. And then I start searching, scraping, parsing, and then it's matching, contacting and hiring. Six steps. And I think the offer they bring is maybe the last face between contacting and hiring somewhere, but you need to do it everywhere.
Lieven (42m 41s):
And I also, what I don't like is I couldn't find any business plan on their website. I hate it when people aren't transparent.
Joel (42m 48s):
Well with LinkedIn now getting serious about video, maybe a their video resumes will be the next thing that we talk about in 2022, we'll Lieven and I guess no one else was really excited about Hinterview. Let's talk about SonicJobs founded in 2017. London-based SonicJobs has closed a series A funding round as it accelerates efforts to modernize the process of applying for jobs online. Former Deathmatch that's the Chad and Cheese podcast participant SonicJobs uses robotic processing automation technology to modernize the way candidates search and apply for jobs and says it is handling more than 250,000 job applications each month, equivalent to one every 10 seconds.
Joel (43m 38s):
SonicJobs plans to use its new funding to expand further in the UK, as well as launching in the US, coming to America. What does everyone think of SonicJobs?
Lieven (43m 47s):
The good things first. I think learning from e-commerce is something you need to do. It's all about convenience and that's a great idea. And I've been studying the same stuff for years convenience, and the whole idea about people redirecting the spammy process. They call it. I agree. I totally agree. You'll find a job, you want to apply and then they just redirect you and the whole shit happens again, but this is nothing new. I mean, if you apply other websites from a temping agency, you want to get redirected. You'll just get an answer. If you apply through, we have, we have several apps doing exactly the same thing. So I think this is highly over evaluated, but maybe I'm missing something.
Lieven (44m 29s):
I don't know.
Gerard (44m 30s):
Yeah. So I went to the websites and when I came to the website, based on the press release, I was really a little bit surprised because to me, it just sounded like, Hey, this is more like an Indeed actually. So it, it seems to be a job aggregator, which makes the application process easier because you can create a profile on SonicJobs, which they then push into the ATS of the company, posting the job, something like that.
Gerard (45m 10s):
It was really unclear to me. And this is something like even Monster built this guys and CareerBuilder.
Lieven (45m 16s):
Even Monster.
Gerard (45m 16s):
Functionality. So it it's really nothing new, but you know, maybe they do attract a lot of job seekers and have a valid place in the job board world. But I couldn't make them anything different than a job board actually at this point,
Chad (45m 33s):
It's all about process, right? It's all about going from being a candidate. Who's going from filling out a form to another form, to another form going from this corporate career site to that corporate career site. And this is what Indeed's easy apply does. Right? But easy apply isn't for everybody. And that's the thing. They're trying to create somewhat of a competitor to easy apply. I like the idea of streamlining. I like it a lot. There's no way in hell they have enough money to expand to the US that to me, just through this whole conversation. Off the rails, because to be able to do much like PayFit, PayFit, 80% of their, you know, their clients are in France.
Chad (46m 17s):
Mikhil and SonicJobs, you guys need to focus. You need to be able to gain ground where you're at and then perspectively, when you get some cash come to the US but there's no way in how they can do it now.
Joel (46m 33s):
I read the PR first and the quote of more than "they're handling more than 250,000 job apps per month equivalent to one, every 10 seconds." I thought, well, that's kind of impressive. So then I went to the website and the headline is apply to over 500,000 jobs in one click. And I, my first thought was, okay, that's how they're getting one every 10 ds. They're just shotgunning this shit everywhere. And then I thought.
Chad (47m 1s):
RPA.
Joel (47m 1s):
And I thought, oh, gee, what employer? Wouldn't love using a site like SonicJobs where people can apply to 500,000 jobs in one click. Can you say, un-targeted now maybe when you know, employment is low and people aren't going back to work. Like maybe companies want that kind of exposure. But when things get back to normal, there's no way employers are gonna embrace a site that touts 500,000 jobs applied to at one click. That's my take on SonicJobs. What was it? You said you're going to need a bigger boat? Chad, you're going to need a lot better business model as well. If SonicJobs is going to make it.
Joel (47m 43s):
well, boys, that wraps up another episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast does Europe. We want to thank Gerard.
Gerard (47m 51s):
You're welcome.
Joel (47m 52s):
CEO at Textkernel. Now, Gerard, for those who want to know more about Textkernel or you, where would you send them?
Gerard (48m 3s):
You can always connect with me on LinkedIn and go to Textkernel.com. And I'm sure you'll find a way to reach out to me.
Joel (48m 17s):
Gerard Mulder. And if you want to listen to more of European goodness, check us out at chadcheese.com/Europe. We're out.
Lieven and Chad (48m 24s):
We out, we out
OUTRO (49m 2s):
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.