UK-based and focused car has tickled the industry's funny bone recently. With a series of marketing strategies that have pushed the boundaries of good taste (and made our eyes bleed a little), founder Gareth Peterson and team have gotten our attention.
Yeah, they can cut through the clutter, but does their product have what it takes to face the Firing Squad and come out alive? You'll just have to have a listen, mate.
Brought to you by Pandologic, a programmatic job advertising platform that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance without any wasteful spending
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Pandologic (0s):
pandoIQs, Programmatic recruitment advertising platform helps employers source talent faster and more efficiently than ever thanks to predictive algorithms, machine learning and AI. Buzzword, overdose alert. Yeah. Pando was on the cutting edge of Programmatic, while being deeply rooted in the recruitment industry. pandoIQ provides an end to end Programmatic job advertising platform that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance without any waste spending to maximize the ROI on your recruitment spend.And their AI enabled algorithms use over 48 job attributes and more than 200 billion historical job performance data points to predict the optimal job advertising campaign.
Pandologic (51s):
The machine does all that shit. That shit sounds expensive! Think again Cheeseman, pandoIQ provides an end to end job advertising solution that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance without any wasteful spending. Sold! How do I get started? Go to Pandologic.com to request a demo and tell him Chad and Cheese sent you. Ooh. They have a chat bot too, that we can talk to. Oh, kill me now.
Firing Squad INTRO (1m 20s):
Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level.
Joel (1m 42s):
The British are coming. The British are coming. What's up, everybody. Welcome to firing squad. These are your favorite podcasters. I'm Joel Cheesman joined as always by Chad Sowash and today we have a super special firing squad. The myth, the legend, the, the, the envelope pushers Caroo from out of Manchester. England are here. You've seen their videos. You know them, you love them. You can't get enough. Gareth Gareth Petersen. Welcome to firing squad my friend.
Gareth (2m 18s):
Hey guys. Nice to finally meet you.
Chad (2m 21s):
(Music playing) Some sexy tunes right there.
Joel (2m 23s):
Oh, for, for listeners real quick. Caroo is the company that sent Chad and I, a pair of bikini underwear and a condom. So I'll leave it to you now, Gareth, to describe who you are and we'll get to your company in a second, but tell us about you
Gareth (2m 39s):
About me, right? Okay. I'm Gareth Pearson. I'm a father of two. Believe it or not. And I'm the managing director for a little known startup in Manchester called Caroo. We're a technology-based business. And we essentially use a lot of data to match candidates to the right jobs.
Joel (2m 57s):
Excellent. Chad, tell him what he's won.
Chad (2m 59s):
Gareth, you lucky bastard, you will have two minutes to pitch Caroo. At the end of two minutes, you will hear that bell then Joel and I will hit you with rapid Q and A. If your answers start to get boring and they shouldn't get boring on this episode, kids, Joel's going to hit you with the crickets, that's your signal to tighten up your game. At the end of Q and A, you will receive either a big applause, that's right, you'll be able to buy all the black latex you want. Golf clap, you're probably gonna need to keep that Caroo branded toilet paper around and keep it in stock.
Joel (3m 40s):
Keep it in your pants.
Chad (3m 41s):
Then last but not least the firing squad, this ain't the thing, man. You're going to have to jump on Facebook. Marketplace, sell all that S and M gear because you're going to need the cash dude. In three, two, one, your two minutes starts.
Gareth (3m 58s):
A Caroo. We do things differently as you were about to see, firstly, thanks, Chad and Mr. Cheese for having me and these two minutes to introduce our strategy. So this British chap wrote a rap, that's probably crap, but it's our first podcast and we want to leave our stamp. This might be the best chance that a Chad and cheese club and not the sound of a gun hammer, smacking a bullet on the ass. And obviously and selfishly, I'm trying to talk to that attracts brands that want to match to relevant talent in chat. It's as simple as that and in so doing puts Caroo on the map, but wait, the current cartography, isn't the sort of geography that professionals want to see. And through using Caroo, you will see what these people expect from our delivery. They didn't want agencies, they wanted control and transparency, profile anonymity because alas, LinkedIn shows everything and anyone can contact me.
Gareth (4m 40s):
Even shows stuff, not conducive to diverse teams and inclusivity. Finally, job recommendations need to be a fit for me because relevancy is key, then and only then should you notify me. To enable this we use algorithms and technology. Not using job titles because they mean something different to everybody. You've seen it yourself type into Indeed. Yeah. I look for marketing manager in they're promoted post. Head of IT. I mean, fuck me, Indeed give them back the money please. And last week I told LinkedIn I was open to opportunities. First one I received was PA to an MD, no read, that's not for me. So people said, focus on skills and experience G. We listened, designed and delivered accordingly. We're not about volume, that's a false economy. You don't have time to manage all of those. CVs are ready-made shortlist is what you need with candidates prioritized accordingly.
Gareth (5m 22s):
Is it perfect? No, it never will be, but that's just tech. We move fast and improve iteratively. And what you see now isn't a patch and what it's going to be. You want credibility. We've worked with Adidas. Added Ask Jim Sharp Disney and over 400 SMEs, the BBC, but we still consider this MVP. So thanks again, Chad and Cheese and the wider recruitment communities. You welcomed me and shared your expertise that helped shape our experience in technology. Now, if I've got this right, that's a two minute delivery and now it's time for me to drop the M I C
Joel (5m 50s):
And our listeners can learn more at
Gareth (5m 55s):
Chad (5m 56s):
Yes. And don't forget that. There's also a warning that we have to put out on the front end of this. If you're in the US, you definitely want to listen to the podcast because it's going to be fucking entertaining, but the app is not available to you yet. Go ahead, Joel.
Joel (6m 12s):
All right, dude. I always get to this first, tell me about the name, how'd you come up with it and tie that in with you. You talked about your background, but not so much the fact that you're not from this industry. So I'm also curious about what drew you to the business. So name and the draw.
Gareth (6m 29s):
Basically, it's just a mashup of kind of like Caroo and or careers and the idea behind sort of deliveroo. So it's, we want it to stay clear of using the word recruitment, because what we found from our research is that generally speaking, the industry has a bit of a negative perception. So that's kind of where the name came from. In fact, actually, if you look us up on the UK's company's house records were originally incorporated as Tiki CV. So thank fuck somebody got rid of that. Right. So, right. Yeah. So actually my background is just a bit weird, really, I suppose a bit like our marketing. I've just got this sort of insatiable appetite for trying to understand problems and challenges and look at suboptimal experiences and then working with end-users to design what that experience would look like in an ideal world, and then understanding what technology we need in order to deliver that experience.
Gareth (7m 21s):
So prior to working at Caroo and within recruitment, I was at Manchester Airport Group looking at a variety of different experiences that we could, we could implement using digital in the physical environment because well, Manchester airports are really shits experience. And then prior to that, I was in retail. So the attraction of going into recruitment and doing something different is pretty, it was pretty significant to me,
Chad (7m 42s):
So that''s a big leap. I mean, everybody understands the experience sucks. It, it shit, no matter where you go for the most part, but to be able to make the leap into an industry that you have never been in before, there's a lot of learning to do. How long has Caroo been around
Gareth (7m 60s):
Caroo's probably it was around about two years prior to my introduction. And we've been, I've been here for three years and ten months. We've been live with the actual sort of beta through to live version of our product since January the 12th, 2019.
Chad (8m 18s):
Okay. So who on the team actually has industry experience anyone?
Gareth (8m 21s):
So we have a couple of solid investors who are from the recruitment background, and we also have a couple of colleagues who are ex-recruiters as well. So they know the industry very, very well.
Chad (8m 31s):
Okay. So on the candidate side, who is your target market? What types of positions are being filled on Caroo?
Gareth (8m 38s):
Predominantly we focus on sales and marketing and sort of technology and digital skillset. So software engineers, product, project managers, business analyst, et cetera, et cetera. So it's really just those sorts of sales marketing. Imagine if you were to review higher dot-coms target list is kind of not dissimilar to that.
Chad (8m 59s):
So we talk about developers getting into the tech roles, aside from all the other roles. I mean, it's, there's a different experience that's there. We see that the coding platforms that actually make you prove that you can do the job to make it easier to jump into bigger titles, right? So instead of having a quote unquote "matching algorithm", you have a proof of concept type of delivery and user experience. Why are you trying to be so broad right out of the gate?
Gareth (9m 31s):
To be fair, we were actually even broader than this originally. And we were going after all head office functions, but I think it's fair to say that we spread ourselves too thinly in the early days. And now what we've done is we've actually sort of honed in very, very specifically on these particular job functions.
Joel (9m 48s):
So one of the big challenges that most of our listeners will have is that they can't go to your site and actually test drive the app and see what it does and how it works. So I'm going to ask you a real challenging, I'll give you a real, a challenge in saying like visualize the app through words, if I'm a job seeker, what do I see? Chad has a big, a component of your app, for example, and if I'm an employer, what's the experience there because our mature audience can actually sort of test drive the technology?
Gareth (10m 21s):
Looking at it from two different experiences, really. So employees use the desktop based web experience and they come in, they create a brand profile, which gives some high-level information about the business, the culture, the brand story. This is all sorts of stuff that candidates have asked us to curate on their behalf. So, you know, when we did the research and dug into what was a brand story, or they really wanted to know who founded the business and where it was going and what the vision and the mission were, et cetera, et cetera. So everything that we asked for from employers is really defined by the other side of the marketplace, which is the candidates. So in terms of the experience, they quickly build a brand profile and then they can post as many jobs as they want. And when pro when posting those jobs, they can attack the relevant skills and experience that are required for that job.
Gareth (11m 8s):
So in the example of a software engineer, I may say, right, I'm looking for a software engineer. This is the salary bracket. Here is the, the skills required front end, back end, full stack, and then into the particular software stack as well. Then there's a variety of different features that you can use around hard coding things and applying filters. And on the candidate experience side, what we have to do is get people in as quickly as possible so they can see a relevance and we can add value quickly. So there's a few screens on after downloading the app, we never asked for any personal information upfront, we just want you to get in and start browsing the app. And then what we do is we sort of look at those similar tags in terms of your skills and experience. And then you can go onto create a profile. So we'll show you some jobs and then you can create a profile if you choose to or write a CV.
Gareth (11m 51s):
And then we can pick out additional skills and tools, tasks to improve the matching algorithm there as well.
Joel (11m 56s):
Is the app specifically for England? I mean, what is the footprint specifically and talk about the growth plan, because it looks like you got about 2 million pounds from optimized capital recently, and you're looking to raise 5 million pounds in the near future. I assume growth is part of that. So talk about that.
Gareth (12m 14s):
So I suppose one of the things I'm a big believer in is let's not recreate the wheel, right? So there's a lot of tech businesses that have grown rapidly and we can sort of take the best bits of how they've developed their business, their strategy, and how they've grown their businesses. So for example, our approach to design is not dissimilar to what you'd expect to hear from the likes of Brian Chesky at a BNB. Right? Then I decided that we would stay regional because sticking regional would allow me and the team to get out and meet users and actually see them and converse with them. Face-to-face to understand their pain points around the particular user experience that we're designing, but also with their frustrations around the industry. And that was, you know, that the idea sort of came from what I've seen Amazon do when they launch products, they launched locally to their head office.
Gareth (12m 57s):
And I just think, I believe that speeds the process up. Plus we've got a great test bed in Manchester for, you know, it's one of the fastest growing tech hubs outside of London, as well as leads just on our doorstep as well, strong large populations. So it made sense for us to stay regionally and really get this product working really well in the region before we then sort of took the business national. So the yes, you're right, we would look to potentially fund externally for that set, that amount of money. And then we would take the business pretty much national across the UK. I, my ambition is clear. Like I have, I really want to help people improve their lives through their careers, right?
Gareth (13m 39s):
And at the moment, what you see is an app that looks very much like a, a job app or a more engaging experience, or you can't see obviously, but more engaging experience like a job board, but there's the potential for this thing is so much bigger than what it currently is. We have some seriously shit, ah, ideas for, for where this goes. And we've just started beta testing, the ability to post content for employers, which can then be tagged and distributed to the relevant audiences as well. So our plan really is Manchester leads the Northwest, and then we kind of branch out into M 25, which is the ring road around London, Cambridge, which is another large tech hub. And then we move around the country in a nine to 12 month roll up.
Joel (14m 21s):
And beyond that, or is it just specifically, you're going to stay in Europe or the UK?
Gareth (14m 26s):
LinkedIn could do far better than what it does with the amount of data that it has. I mean, as you heard from my relatively crap rap, I mean, you hit go. I switched on my search and I got PA to an MD. It's nothing really sophisticated happening. Then I just think that the scope for awesome shit in recruitment is mind boggling and it's exciting. So I have no other ambition than, yeah, I would like to take this thing international. I only live once, right. And there's no rehearsals in this life, so let's live it big.
Chad (14m 56s):
So let's talk about the tech then the matching piece is something that you're hitting off very heavily and yes, LinkedIn has shit tech when it comes to matching. So does Indeed. I mean, we're talking about the two biggest brands in our space and they have mediocre at best tech when it comes to matching what makes your matching so much better and you don't have as much information as Indeed, possibly, or LinkedIn from the profiles. What makes your matching so much better working on less data.
Gareth (15m 28s):
Building around what people want to be matched on? First of all, me, I mean, I think, you know, the research told me so much more than I could ever really, you know, I thought there was going to be all this need for artificial intelligence. I mean, throw some more big tech buzzwords in there if you want machine learning, blah, blah, blah. But actually when you really boil it down to when people said, you know, there were a few key things that came out of the research. First of all, I don't want recruitment agencies because LinkedIn is buzzing with them, right. That's their domain. That's the little beehive. I'm sick of being inundated by messages from them. This is, you know, specific to certain skillsets, but too many, too many approaches from a recruitment agencies and too many salespeople. Okay, cool. So then we would remove those from the community, right?
Gareth (16m 9s):
And this is a community that's built around the professional for the professional. The second thing was making sure the jobs are relevant. Okay, cool. Now I need you to define what relevance actually means. Well, first of all, show me software engineering jobs. Don't show me product management jobs. Okay, cool. That's a simple heartfelt, all right. Now let's define that even further. What does, what does it actually mean? Do you want to be matched on your interests? Do you want to be matched on any sort of soft skills now, first and foremost, if you want me to consider this job and then progress that. Well, I need to make sure that I can do the job, I need to make sure it's a match for my skillset. Okay, cool. So let's look at what your composition of skillsets are and get you to tag those brilliant, right? Well then there's a set of tools that I'm used to using. So I'm not just a front end developer or a full stack developer.
Gareth (16m 50s):
I'm actually skilled in these particular areas like php.net, Java, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So let's then look at those, but let's make sure that we weight heavily towards, towards the skillsets and less so towards the tool sets. But if a tool, a particular tool is a fundamental requirement of the job, then let's make sure that that, the employee can stipulate that. And then that re-weights the algorithm. So we're still early days, right? But actually when you start to just listen to what people want, you can already start to see the small sort of changes that we can make to improve the experience.
Chad (17m 25s):
When you import your profile from LinkedIn?
Gareth (17m 28s):
I don't think they'd let us do that. Let's talk about, let's talk about the no staffing rule. Because I remember back in the day when 75% of Monster's revenue was staffing agencies and hot jobs at the time they blocked out staffing agencies. And that is where I believe Monster actually won the battle and they actually acquired Hot Jobs later on. Why did you go, why did you decide to go to employers only and not allow staffing to use your app? Knowing you could put limiters on it? Number one. And so to ensure that you're not getting your database killed by staffing and recruiters, but you are cutting off a huge amount of revenue right out of the gate.
Chad (18m 13s):
That's what people wanted. And I'm a firm believer that if you give people what they want and build a product around their needs, then they'll end up loving you. I mean, from what I've been seeing, a lot of businesses are starting to build their into, you know, pre COVID and even during COVID, a lot of businesses are building their internal recruitment function. And I think there's this, the market certainly in UK is why isn't it, the idea that we'll actually could be cheaper for a scaling business just to implement our own HR business. So we really just did listen and stayed true to the candidate side of the audience. And to be fair, the employers also wanted to remove the noise of recruitment agencies, too.
Joel (18m 49s):
Let's talk about marketing. If I had to say you have a secret sauce, it would be the marketing side and to say that you push the envelope is probably putting it too conservatively. Talk about sort of the mindset of the marketing. Obviously it's a cut through the clutter strategy and you talk about the partners that you have. Cause it seems like you rely a lot on agencies that are really pushing this and talk about the relationship you have with them and how they'll come into play as you continue to grow the company. Did they introduce sort of a riskè strategy and you guys are implementing what they want to do or did they come in and say, Hey, you guys are, are meatheads you're beyond what's normal we're going to really accentuate that.
Joel (19m 34s):
How did that relationship happen? And what does it look like in the future?
Gareth (19m 39s):
Well, we started as every other tech business and we, yeah, first of all, there's a lot of clutter, there's a lot of noise and, and some, sometimes people get a bit worried that investing in content to try and cut through the noise is going to be a waste of time because there is so much of it. But actually that becomes a mountain of shit that you can stand up on and actually screen. Right. You can get some good cut-through we, you know, we started like every other business, which was, let's go with this agency, let's you know what we'll do, you know what we'll do? We'll test a little bit of swearing just to be a bit edgy. And it was like, what, this is bollocks because it doesn't work? You just look like, you know, your dad, your uncle died trying to be cool. And, and I thought, you know what?
Gareth (20m 19s):
This is our business. And the people that work in this business are confident. We're all a little bit cheeky and we're in a dry, boring industry. And a lot of this, you know, it's full of corporate clutter and people hiding behind logos. And I just thought, you know what? I'm so proud of the team that we've put in place that they should be in front of the camera. And you know, if the Manchester that people buy from people, then we'll, hopefully that's gonna, that's going to benefit us because they'll get to meet our team. Yes. We work with a couple of agencies. The stuff that you're used to seeing on the creative side is Offended Marketing. I, I knew the founder before he sat up Offended. He was doing, I wanted to test him.
Gareth (20m 59s):
I'll do a lot of testing guys and I'll see what works. And if it doesn't work, we'll kill it fast. But he was testing some stuff on my own personal brand. And I was just wanted to see whether or not that was gaining better traction. And what's really interesting about how they, how they work in their creative processes is really spend a lot of time with you to understand you and understand your background. What makes you tick? What pisses you off, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And I could just see them as getting bad. So I just, I just said to him like, dude, you've got to take the brands. Like you've got to take the brand, just make sure that you don't get many lawsuits. And you know, I want, I want people to know about Caroo, but I don't want them to just know about Caroo because that's easier. I can, you can put a shitload of cash behind paid media budgets and put in front of everybody.
Gareth (21m 41s):
I want people to love Caroo. I want the following and I'd seen him do a talk at a recruitment event. And I was just like, me and him, me and him, we'll get on, don't get me wrong. You look at us. We're very different looking people, very different backgrounds. I'm definitely the better looking. And you know, it just, it works like, and those guys are for me, they're genius. So, you know, I gave him the brand and I think it's fair to say we've built up a pretty passionate following of people. Even when people don't engage with our content, like they come back to me like in a conversation or an email, it's just like, I love what you're doing. And it's not for everybody.
Joel (22m 16s):
So for listeners, I want to highlight, you should go check out the download our app for a BJ campaign that you guys did. I thought that was particularly classy and effective BJ standing for better job. Of course everyone knew that. Yeah. So you talked a little bit about, some people are going to be turned off by that obviously. And you could argue that, Hey, at some level there are employers that aren't going to touch a company that sort of pushes the boundaries that much. Do you think it's a hindrance to scale or do you believe it's actually helped you grow? And is there a particular kind of company that's going to hire a marketing, you know, marketing strategy like that?
Joel (22m 57s):
And are you okay with saying, look for a lot of companies we're not going to work for you and we're not going to be a fit and that's okay. Or does the marketing evolve into something a little more mainstream?
Gareth (23m 7s):
It's a great couple of questions. I'm going to adjust the first one, first. I think if you're a business trying to appeal to everybody, you're going to fail, right? And we're a small business and we've got to make the best use of a finite budget to cast on it wider to make sure that people know about us. And I think that's exactly what we're doing. It is very cost effective. It's not designed to be super high gloss, you know, stick me on the front of a magazine style type of stuff. It does well because it's entertainment, right? The best company sort of entertain you. So if it turns you off, it is going to turn some people off. There are some people working for large corporates who believe, it's really hard, I've had people approach me and they contradict themselves in the same conversation.
Gareth (23m 47s):
They'll tell me the it's listen, it's it's genius. Then they'll tell me, but it's really silly to do that sort of stuff. And then you'll get people who say, no, we can't use you. You're too disruptive. Yet you look at their digital marketing jobs and it says, we're looking for a disruptive marketer. I mean, who do you think is going to be on my platform? Yeah. It turns, you know, we did a relatively, relatively provocative piece pre-Christmas where I wore some rather tight and ill-fitting PBC and we, you know, acted out some sex positions that we claimed was
Chad (24m 21s):
Karma recruit, tra, which is just to take on Kama Sutra. So that was, yeah, let's just go ahead and put it out there, it was sexy. I watched it a few times. It was amazing. Yes, it is. It is crazy. You guys are making noise on the marketing standpoint. Here's the thing that matters though. How are you, how many downloads do you have? And what's your plan to be able to drive downloads from a candidate standpoint? Because as an employer, that's what I gave a shit about that. Number one, the number two are they the people that I want?
Gareth (24m 52s):
What we do is we take what people say, right? So what are real, what our audiences, when we do these user research sessions, right? We're not just testing product, we're listening to how they communicate about recruitment. And that then becomes that then you can then spin that because it becomes relatable, spin is probably the wrong word, but you get where I'm coming from. If you're going to talk in a conversational manner using terms that people often use to describe something, then you're going to relate to them. So we're going to continue. I mean, we've just put out our most, probably provocative paid media campaign. I'll be happy to share with you guys. But what I've seen from the last six weeks of that media campaign going on is an absolute surge in the quality of candidates that we've had specifically in software development and anything around e-commerce SEO and PPC.
Gareth (25m 41s):
And that's because we've listened to that audience, we've put it in a visual and in a way that's visual and we're talking their language from the businesses that we've had sign up that, you know, they've been really happy with the quality. So that's the plan really from a, how do we get candidates perspective. In terms of numbers we've got around about 26,000 candidate profiles, just specific to our region at present. Those emanate from probably anywhere in the region of about a hundred, a hundred thousand installs, that's over the course of probably our 12 month period. But we did take, you know, four months sabbatical for the first, you know, from April to look at the platform while the world was kind of figuring out where to go based on the pandemic.
Joel (26m 28s):
Let's talk about pricing and you guys have, I guess, sort of really drawn a line in the sand in terms of being really affordable. It looks like you actually started as a free sort of a free service to employers. Talk about your current sort of the flat based unlimited. I mean, it's, it, it feels like very early two thousands pricing. Is that gonna, is that gonna hold or is that something that you guys are gonna maintain throughout your growth story?
Gareth (26m 57s):
That's very much the plan. I didn't want pricing to be a barrier to entry. I wanted this to be affordable. I wanted varieties of different types of businesses using it, and we want volume that's quite obvious to see, right? So I didn't want a barrier to the smaller businesses because this is clearly affordable to any of the larger business, but I didn't want to bury it to smaller businesses. Cause you know, my personal experience has been that, you know, I found myself as a better fit for a small business rather than a large Corp. Right. And I just believe that a good technology business curates the right information and displays it in the right manner that's digestible and engageable and hopefully fun. So we didn't want pricing to be a barrier.
Gareth (27m 38s):
We haven't modeled any other, we've got various models, but our, our growth is predicated on the model that you see before you right now. And one of the reasons is that we were massively confident in delivering ROI against that. So, you know, if you look at your cost per hire, then you know, we're pretty confident that you're going to get your money's worth out of Caroo very quickly, which that means that anything over and above is really a bonus, which means that, Hey, next year, I can come back and charge you guys more. Right?
Joel (28m 8s):
And that's the bell meaning that you get to face the firing squad. Gareth, are you ready?
Gareth (28m 13s):
Let's do this.
Joel (28m 15s):
Chad?
Chad (28m 15s):
It's time for tough love Gareth. So I have to say, I have to say that being targeted and not having the app available to the United States, to me, that's not a big thing because you were being disciplined and focused in how you want to grow, right? You have this growth that you want to monitor and you want to make sure that you're giving a great experience because that's what the underpinning of this is, right. A great experience, not just to candidates, but also to employers. So I love that. The marketing stands out in the question is, you know, can you afford it? To be able, to divide and conquer?
Chad (28m 58s):
I believe in this market, you can't afford not to do something like this. To do the Kama Sutra. S and M types of things, those are brand builders for you guys. Yes. Will people turn away from you? Yes. Guess what? Fuck them. They're not going to be a part of this experience and that's fine. This is a way that you get out there and you can actually reach out and pull people closer to you, as opposed to, again, not, not really being a brand that anybody even knows or cares about. Now, the hardest part for me from a business standpoint and being in this business, as long as I have is that you can't turn a blind eye to the amount of revenue that you're shutting out of the platform knowing that staffing accounts for the lion's share spend on many platforms that are out there today.
Chad (29m 48s):
Now, that being said, it's a market differentiator, which I appreciate for job seekers and for employers. So, you know, it's mighty attractive to some, you know, to some extent, but my suggestion overall would be using the Indeed Trojan horse model and allowing staffing in with limitations to ensure spamming and the battering of your database doesn't happen. Use those dollars for marketing and to drive downloads. The thing is, it's nice that you're giving people what they want. The biggest question is will they come and pay for it? That's the hardest piece overall, if you can get that, that's awesome.
Chad (30m 30s):
But it's going to be a hell of a long slog, if you do it without staffing. That's why I think you guys have a great model, a great idea, but overall you're missing the biggest piece and that's the perspective revenue opportunity, which is why Gareth is getting a golf clap.
Joel (30m 52s):
All right, Gareth, now it's my turn. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I love British rock. Love it. And when I knew you were from Manchester, learned, you're from Manchester. That, that teed up a lot of rock, sort of a nostalgia for me. So looking at, from Joy Division to the Smiths, to the Stone Roses, to my favorite band Oasis, this is I felt, I felt, yeah, I felt a real connection to going forward. And as you look at some of those bands, some of them remained fringe and some of them, you know, sort of made it big. You could say the Smiths and Oasis made it big, whereas the Stone Roses and Joy Division largely sort of stayed regional.
Joel (31m 35s):
So when I look at your business, I got to ask the question, does this remain sort of a regional phenomenon that that's popular within sort of the UK borders or European borders? Or is it something that really breaks out into the U S and Asia and all parts of all parts of the world? And I tend to think that that you're not so much Monte Python to break through into a global realm that you're going to be largely, very successful regionally. I think that the pushing the envelope, the fringe sort of marketing, the disruption marketing that you're doing plays really well in a sort of small focused business. I think you're going to attract a lot of job seekers, but I don't know how many serious job seekers, how many older job seekers?
Joel (32m 21s):
I don't know the breadth of which you're going to attract a ton of people, but for the people that you do attract, I think they're going to love you. I think they're going to talk about you. I think that with a certain segment of the population, you're going to be very popular. And on the employer side, I think you're going to turn off a lot of employers. I think that the number of Adidas's that you have, which I think is one of your bigger advertisers is going to be pretty minimal. So do I think you're going to be the next Indeed. Do I think you're going to be the next Glass Door? I don't, but do I think that you can be a very successful focused sort of appeal to you know, a smaller market, but still be very successful?
Joel (33m 5s):
I think you need to grade your company on that scale. Now, if you had told me, Hey, we want to be a really great regional sort of job resource. Now, companies here locally, I think my grade would have been different, but the fact that you said, we want to be bigger than Elvis, bigger than Jesus. That makes the scale that I'm grading you on a much tougher. So, whereas if you're a regional player, it would have been probably, a rousing applause, because you want to rule the world with sort of your fringe strategies and marketing. I'm going to agree with Chad. It's a golf clap. If you tweak things a little bit, it could be a rousing applause, but I think you're going to be a taste that not everyone is favorable to.
Chad (33m 52s):
I think it's tasty.
Joel (33m 56s):
And with that. We out.
Chad (33m 58s):
We out.
Gareth (33m 59s):
Thank you.
Firing Squad OUTRO (34m 1s):
This has been the Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to the chadandcheesepodcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the Firing Squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today that's www.chadcheese.com.