Personio Rides the Dinosaur
It's a new day in America. New president. New Vice President, who's also a minority woman! The new attitude in the New World, if you will. The sun rose and the weight has been lifted. Unfortunately for you, dear listener, this is the same craptastic podcast you've grown to love (or at least tolerate).
Rejoice!
This week,
- Personio rides the dinosaur HR industry into "Unicorn" status
- Another game of Buy-or-Sell ensues for 1) Betterfly 2) Kanarys 3) HiPeople
- Alabama is ground zero for workers-of-the-world uniting against Amazon, ya'll,
- WFH is a financial coup for Corp America while workers get f'd,
.. and lastly, Brits think they know best when it comes to mood tracking. Hey, this isn't the '70s! Take that mood ring nonsense and put it in your fish-and-chips!
Anyway, enjoy this Sovren, JobAdx, and Jobvite powered production.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
INTRO (2s):
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 (22s):
Aw. Yeah. Vice president. Mike Pence is back home in Columbus, Indiana. You partied at his pad last night didn't you Chad?
Chad (31s):
Fuck him.
Joel (32s):
This is the Chad and Cheese podcast AKA boys who love bourbon. I'm your cohost Joel JLo Cheesman. And this is
Chad (40s):
Chad fireworks Sowash
Joel (43s):
And on this week, show job postings as Easter eggs, workers of the world unite in Alabama and this wristband says my mood is extra salty. Now past the Tabasco.
Sovren Promo (57s):
You already know that Sovren makes the world's best resume CV parser, but did you know that Sovren also makes the world's best AI matching engine? Only Sovren's AI matching engine goes beyond the buzzwords. With Sovren you control how the engine thinks with every match the Sovren engine tells you what matched and exactly how each matching document was scored. And if you don't agree with the way it's scored the matches, you can simply move some sliders to tell it, to score the matches your way. No other engine on earth gives you that combination of insight and control. With Sovren, matching isn't some frustrating "black box, trust us, it's magic, one shot deal" like all the others. No, with Sovren, matching is completely understandable, completely controllable, and actually kind of fun. Sovren ~ software so human you'll want to take it to dinner.
Joel (1m 57s):
Oh, it's back. Let's go... (🎵🎵 🎶 🎶 Music 🎶 🎶 ,🎵 )This is how it felt when Biden spoke, yesterday, last night, when the poet girl spoke (Amanda Gorman), this is what it felt like.
Chad (2m 9s):
Feeling, feeling the groove. When you woke up this morning was feeling the groove. The air felt crisper, the birds were singing louder with joy. And last night, did you see the, the like fully produced inauguration movie slash music video that they had last night?
Joel (2m 30s):
I did not. So you'll have to enlighten me
Chad (2m 33s):
The ability for us to be able to produce a much more enjoyable time for all Americans, not just ones who can afford to go to these inauguration balls and whatnot was pretty amazing. I mean, it had some amazing talent. It started off with Bruce Springsteen ended with Katy Perry where she sang fireworks. And I tell you, man, I've seen so many fucking fireworks in my life. It was awesome. Biden was in the White House, watching Kamala was on the steps behind Katie Perry, right in front of a Lincoln, at the Lincoln Memorial.
Chad (3m 13s):
And I mean, it was just like this experience that there was no way in hell we could have ever had. If we didn't have the scenario, play out all America got a chance to kind of dip into it and enjoy it. Where for the most part, we just don't. We don't get to we're just commoners.
Joel (3m 31s):
Yeah. It's usually a really a exclusive event and we get to see pictures and some highlights. You go to the other end of that spectrum. I think it was Andrew Jackson who just opened up the White House to everybody and it turned into a big orgy party, whiskey whiskey. So, so this is somewhere in between. We get to sort of partake, but there's no whiskey orgy in the White House that goes, so I'm guessing you were not at the Columbus airport when our illustrious former vice-president landed yesterday.
Chad (4m 1s):
No, the plane went over my house though. So I knew when I knew when that asshole was in town.
Joel (4m 6s):
The, the crowd looked bigger for him than it did for Trump as he was exiting on Air Force One yesterday, no one on CNN said that that the crowds at the Apple store are bigger than the crowd for Trump, which I thought was pretty funny. Yeah, of course. I had to watch Fox and Fox's take was like Trump landed in Florida to mass crowds and jubilation. So, you know, we live in two news universes.
Chad (4m 33s):
Just imagine if he would have pardoned the Tiger King. I mean, the crowds would have been so much larger.
Joel (4m 41s):
Are they gonna, they're gonna do a Tiger King II. When's that shit come out by the way, this is how the pandemic has progressed. We've gone from like Tiger King and we all hate ourselves and eating Cheetos all day, which is actually what I call Tuesday. But anyway, and we've sort of ended with the Queen's Gambit and more like, sort of thoughtful programming so I feel like we've had our white trash moment ending, ending with the Capitol riots.
Chad (5m 8s):
Yeah. I don't know that America is done with its white trash moment although I have to say props to Airbnb and I'm going to start off with this with a little news, but also some shout outs. I do remember you, kind sir, saying that Airbnb and now has stockholders. So the founders will start to act much differently because money rules all and Airbnb says, sit down and shut up Cheese. They shut down 3,400 plus DC listings on their platform while covering the host for their losses.
Chad (5m 48s):
Airbnb made a similar move in early co COVID pandemic days when it allowed guests to cancel without penalties. I remember we had to do that because we're getting ready to go to London. All this shit happened. We had Airbnb set up and we, we got to actually cancel without penalty. So ultimately I think this gives me faith in brands. I'm starting to get faith in government just because of yesterday and shiny videos and fireworks. I'm getting there, right? But this gives me more faith in brands, Amazon, Google, Apple, severely hampering, hate speech with their kicking Parlor to the curb.
Chad (6m 29s):
And now Airbnb lessens the likelihood of large groups to use their platforms, to travel to DC, to perspectively cause harm so it's a good day in America today, people.
Joel (6m 42s):
Yeah. We talk a lot about corporate corporate entities taking the lead on a lot of these social issues. Shall we say whether it be black lives matter. Yeah. So yeah. Hats, hats off to them now. Now Twitter's stock has taken a big shit since they've dumped Trump off the platform so we'll see if this becomes a trend that is everlasting. I may, I may end up being right about Airbnb when else all of a sudden done. You never know
Chad (7m 10s):
This moment in time, my friend. Wrong.
Joel (7m 16s):
All right, I'm going to give a quick shout out to personal fave her on the show, we interviewed him a couple of years ago, Mike Timkin.
Chad (7m 24s):
Love that guy!
Joel (7m 25s):
Recruitment Marketing.
Chad (7m 27s):
Love that guy!
Joel (7m 28s):
The dude's been around since T-Rexes we're doing recruitment marketing, and he's finally finally hanging it up. So Mike, enjoy it, man, go golfing, play chess, whatever it is, gets your, get your juices flowing. It's been a fun ride and we hope that you won't disappear. Totally. We hope that you'll still be around to give us some social media commentary, if nothing else.
Chad (7m 51s):
He is known for being an amazing mentor, he's an awesome storyteller. He has stories out the wazoo and he's just an amazing human being. So I think seeing a guy like that leave our industry really, to me, leaves a huge void and hopefully a vacuum that many of us can actually get sucked into and start to work more as mentors.
Joel (8m 15s):
Well, fortunately for me, I've, I've been bringing millennials under my wing of mentorship for many years, so it's, I'm already doing my part. Dammit,
Chad (8m 24s):
Calling them dumb asses I don't thinkis mentoring.
Joel (8m 28s):
I got some poison for them in this week. Show you just wait, I'm going to give a quick shout out to, because when you think of Mike, Timkin you think of Van Halen and you think a diamond David Lee Roth, and you think of Sammy Hagar. So, so I put out a poll, which is sort of a Chad Cheese, you know, help us with an argument thing who who's a better front man, David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, not surprised by the result, but we've been talking about bringing it up on the show like two or three weeks ago and we still haven't. So David Lee Roth is the, it wasn't even close, right? 73. Yeah. I mean it was Diamond Dave, when you can, when you can, when you can do the splits and saying, you know, jump, you're going to win this competition.
Chad (9m 12s):
All you have to do is look at their top 10 hits. I mean, that's, I mean, Sammy was like around, during like more mainstream Van Halen and they had some good stuff and nothing compared to when David Lee Roth was actually the front man. Yeah.
Joel (9m 26s):
I was trying to think of a band that became better after the front, the lead singer left. And the only one I could kind of think of was like ACDC. That was the only one.
Chad (9m 36s):
That's exactly what I was going to saying.
Joel (9m 42s):
Let's let's give a quick shout out our Pappy's giveaway, we've been talking about that for months. Now, we finally had winners. This is a Sovren sponsor giveaway! We gave away two bottles of Pappy's Family Reserve! We gave away a Blanton's Special Japanese Import. So I can confirm that one of the Pappy's and the Blanton's have been delivered, the other Pappy's is in route. So hopefully we'll be able to talk about that soon. The winners, again, as, as we mentioned, Matt O'Donnell, Pete Suchi, they've both gotten their liquor and Lynn Morton is the unlucky one, who's still sort of waiting out there in limbo, but big ups to them, big ups to Sovren.
Joel (10m 29s):
I'm hoping that we can keep this bourbon flowing with something after this, we'll have to put our heads together and figure out what we can do.
Chad (10m 37s):
The people have spoken they want bourbon.
Joel (10m 39s):
They want liquor. People want to be drunk.
Chad (10m 42s):
It might not be Pappy's for God's sakes, but there's still good stuff out there.
Joel (10m 45s):
It'll be brown people. It'll taste great.
Chad (10m 48s):
Yes. And we we're actually going to be enjoying some beer this week from the beer drop win, right?
Joel (10m 56s):
James Deneen. Jim Deneen, whatever his mom calls him a beer drop. We're going to sample some IPA's with him next week.
Chad (11m 4s):
Yes!
Joel (11m 5s):
We're going to bring, I think Mark Anderson from AdZuna. We may throw our buddy Doug Monroe an invite who knows he might want to want to join it. It's a little late in English time, by the time we do that. But we'll see. We'll see. It's always fun.
Chad (11m 18s):
Perfect, perfect time. And we still have plenty of beer to give away kids. So if you haven't registered, I don't know what you've been doing, but you should go to beerdrop.net or go to chadcheese.com click on the free up top because we are still giving away free t-shirts and you'll also be included in the registration for the AdZuna beerdrop contact-free beer on your front porch, it's a good time.
Joel (11m 49s):
You can't miss you. Can't miss. Let's get to topics!
Chad (11m 54s):
Topics, money kids we're talking about Personio. So who, who? I I've never seen it.
Joel (12m 2s):
You say Personia I say per I say Personio, who?
Chad (12m 5s):
It is Per-son-i-o. Okay. Who's purse whose persona
Joel (12m 11s):
They're a German startup. Yes. German startup target, small and medium sized business. The best way to think of them as sort of Workday for the small guy, these guys just got $125 million bringing them to a $1.7 billion valuation.
Chad (12m 30s):
Crazy
Joel (12m 31s):
Holy shit. Holy shit. Thoughts.
Chad (12m 33s):
Yeah. Here in the U S we have bamboo HR. Namely, those are more on the, I think the SMB side or the S M E if we're talking to Europe. Yeah. So the valuation is super crazy. 1.7 billion, their revenues doubled last year, they weren't even looking for a raise. I mean, pretty much they have investors coming to them and say, Hey, you want a little bit of this, $125 million crack here. So their valuation .
Joel (13m 2s):
Alright twist my arm.
Chad (13m 3s):
Their valuation last year where they received $75 million in January of 2020, their valuation was 500 million. They receive 125 this year, a year later, still had cash in the bank, by the way, revenues doubled $1.7 billion. Total funding is 250 million. And they were founded in 2015 as per Crunchbase.
Joel (13m 28s):
Still a baby.
Chad (13m 30s):
Man. I mean, that's fast! Jesus! And we've talked about this before. This goes beyond just the recruiting talent acquisition side of the house. This goes into HR. This goes much further. So I think the pandemic not only pushed enterprise organizations to reinvest in tech for automation and build the better ability to scale, but the opportunity in the world of small to medium businesses, incredibly large, knowing that most are still using Excel spreadsheets, accompanied by a pen and paper. So the opportunity in this market is large for an overall market standpoint, but it, I mean, it's a pain in the ass, hurting all these cats.
Chad (14m 14s):
So, I mean, they are going to have their issues. I would assume if you're in Europe, they're probably doing ads, TV ads, and whatever they can to target these individuals much like we see with namely here in the US but it's, I think it's, it's a great space and this is hypergrowth. This is unicorn growth.
Joel (14m 35s):
Yeah. Yeah. You see these smaller companies, you know, they don't have the resources to like RFP, you know, the top hundred technologies out there and to give small businesses, a one place, one stop shop, these guys are covering recruiting, onboarding, payroll, absence tracking, and other major HR functions. So for a small company that doesn't have the resources, doesn't have the time, it doesn't have the money for them to go to one place and feel like they're getting, you know, a pretty good solution for their problems. Like, yeah, it's, it's a home run. And, and these guys obviously have the cash now to try to take this message and product to the rest of the world.
Joel (15m 16s):
It will be interesting to watch.
Chad (15m 18s):
And we've talked about small business before, because I mean, remember if you're going from an Excel spreadsheets and pen and paper to something like this. Yeah. This is the crack. You're not going to want to get off this. This is where loyalty just skyrockets. So the big point here, is how are they going to go through client acquisition? That'll be the most interesting, I think, right out of the gate, because it's easier to build for smaller, medium size businesses when again, you know, they're using pen and paper.
Joel (15m 49s):
Yeah. And let's, let's be real. Like it's hard to be super profitable. Maybe these guys have cracked the code, but small businesses are a bitch to sell to.
Chad (15m 57s):
Yeah.
Joel (15m 58s):
It's much easier to land a whale and then milk that whale and try to get a few more, you know, in a year's time than it is to like, you know, get a bunch of guppies that make you rich or profitable. I mean, small businesses typically don't understand tech, like you said, spreadsheets, and they're still posting on the equivalent of Craigslist or ZipRecruiter. So to get out of that box into like an all encompassing technology is going to be a stretch for a lot of companies. I mean, 3000 customers is good on them. That's a hell of a job being a five-year-old company. And again, maybe they've, they've figured it out, but typically selling to SMBs have been the death now for a lot of companies.
Joel (16m 38s):
So good on them.
Chad (16m 39s):
It seems as if there is a shit ton of cash in the market.
Joel (16m 44s):
Shit ton.
Chad (16m 45s):
That's what George Little Rock says. What does George say?
Joel (16m 49s):
Yep. So, so George is talking about a work tech X estimate that came out this week. So the entire market for HR tech is now at $380 billion. I said, billion with a B in case you missed that. So this is all categories of potential market, as well as serviceable market, that these companies are looking to grow into a total of $5 billion was invested in global HR technology firms in 2020. You, US leads the way in terms of money, that's been invested, followed by the UK, Germany, France, Australia, Spain, and Ireland.
Joel (17m 30s):
I'd like to know where China is? I don't know, apparently that's not being calculated cause I know there's a lot of money going into Chinese firms. And I mean, come on Canada, let's get in the top five, come on. Let's where's, where's our Canadians at.
Chad (17m 44s):
So this data very high level and love this data, but this is perfect for investors, for boards and for strategic planning, because you're talking about the total addressable market, the serviceable market. And then you can start to dig down into the actual serviceable obtainable market. So, I mean, these are great numbers that George is actually flushing out there. Who is this really relevant to? This is relevant to the more, the upper strategic crust. When you're starting to look at markets and perspectively, expand in the markets, as well as a startup. And you want to create a narrative around that.
Chad (18m 24s):
This is the kind of data you start off with, right? So that's, that's good stuff, good stuff from George.
Joel (18m 29s):
I may be wrong and I'm sort of anecdotally.
Chad (18m 32s):
I might be drinking.
Joel (18m 33s):
But I wouldn't want to say, like the last time I saw something around a full number, like this was roughly eight to 10 years ago and I want to say it was at like a hundred billion. So in a fairly short period from the last numbers I've seen, you know, 4x from 10 years ago, a lot of money is going into this. And I assume it will continue as we automate more and more and provide tech and unplug these solutions into our hiring system. So,
Chad (19m 0s):
And as we start to get SMEs involved as well, that's where you have a full market. That's where the total addressable market just exploded.
Joel (19m 10s):
Damn it feels good to be a gangster. Well, Chad, we played buy or sell, last week and people loved it. So we said, let's, let's keep doing it. So we got three, we got three startups, that all got money this week. I'll run through them and we'll, we'll play a little buy or sell. Sound good?
Chad (19m 29s):
Yep.
Joel (19m 30s):
All right, let's do this. (Ding, ding, ding) So Betterfly. I hope I'm saying that. Right. And it's not Better flee. I'm sure it's Betterfly, so they raised $17.5 million. They are a Chilean startup. We don't get a lot of South American players so that's nice. They offer a wellness benefits platform that rewards people's good habits with social giving and life insurance that grows at no cost. I say millennials rejoice, but life insurance is for old people. So I'm a little confused about the social giving piece that appeals to younger people.
Joel (20m 10s):
But then I don't think any of them give a shit about life insurance. So I'm going to go ahead and leap frog, leap, frog you, and say, I'm going to sell Betterfly.
Chad (20m 19s):
Hm. And the interesting thing about that is you did not even mention the domain, which I thought you were going to take about five minutes to pounce on betterfly.cl. Yes. Yeah. So from my standpoint, I mean, when you take a look at integration with activity apps like Peloton, Adidas, Under Armor, Samsung, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? This is an everybody type of a thing. And I think that yes, millennials are into this, but I mean, who's, who's buying all the Pelotons right now? Are the older people who are stuck at home. Right. And they want to be able to actually integrate and be a part of the quote unquote "community."
Chad (21m 5s):
To me, this is something that is hot right now, especially with the pandemic. So for me, this is a buy.
Joel (21m 12s):
Yeah. Okay. Do you know, you know, the app Acorns, I assume, you know, you buy and then they put the pennies in an investment account and you feel good. Like, so to me, this sort of is on that trend of you don't even have to pay attention and we'll give to causes that you love, and we'll put money into a life insurance policy that you'll be able to take advantage of at some point down the line.
Chad (21m 32s):
Or what other prizes are, I mean, it's just, it's, it's like all of this stuff is like, here's a store of the things that you can do. So, yeah, I think, again, I think a lot of this is going to revolve around the interconnectivity and all of the buying of the home gyms that we've seen just in the last year that I believe will continue.
Joel (21m 51s):
Yeah. Yeah. It's also hard to get a gauge on these guys because their site is in Spanish. I assume that's what they speak in Chile.
Chad (21m 58s):
All the way to the bottom. There's a little tab that says English. Yeah.
Joel (22m 3s):
Or they could just automatically give you the English version. If you come in from Indiana.
Chad (22m 8s):
You would think, you would think.
Joel (22m 10s):
Start up number two canaries. Hopefully I'm saying that, right. It's K A N A R Y S. So these guys got 3 million in seed funding for its platform focused on, well, we've heard this trend before diversity, equity and inclusion. They look to leverage job and company search, employee reviews, demographics, statistics, and DNI news to help candidates navigate the job market with an eye on DNI and employees better understand how they're really doing. So taking the hood off, the veil off, of companies in regards to DNI, I assume you are a hot buyer of this startup.
Chad (22m 52s):
A couple of things here. If you go to the site, the site is sexy. I mean, it, it really is. And then you dig into it. It has two co-founders and they're both Harvard law and they're both women of color as well. They're both black females. So they're taking pretty much their experience into really trying to help others with this platform. It's interesting. I think because it has, you can write reviews on company profile, search jobs, plus I believe there's also a community aspect to it. So this almost feels like kind of like a "fairy God boss"w type of platform.
Chad (23m 34s):
And there's no question with DEI. If they have all the data that they say that they do, and they can help from an outcome standpoint, this is a buy every single day. And just as a side note, I've already reached out to the CEO and we're planning an interview.
Joel (23m 52s):
Ooo. Nice tease. You, you dirty boy. So, so yeah, Fairygodboss was exactly what I thought about when I, when I heard about these guys and, and the verdict is still out. The jury is still out on "fairy God boss," they've been around a while. Haven't gotten gobbled up yet. The review, the review universe is sort of engulfed by Glassdoor and Indeed. So that's a really tough market to tap into and cut through that clutter. However, I do think that, you know, if timing is everything, this is a pretty well timed business. And it's going to be ripe in a few years, if not months for someone like a Glassdoor to come in and, and add this review piece, this DNI piece to their business.
Joel (24m 35s):
So yeah, I'd say by, in terms of an acquisition target in the future, I would go ahead and buy that I would buy that. So our last and final startup, Hi People.
Chad (24m 46s):
Hi People.
Joel (24m 47s):
Hi People, not H I G H a, which a lot of people may have mistaken this for its HI people. This is a Berlin startup. So the Germans are very well represented here today. So this startup has raised 3 million in seed funding to automate the reference checking process. This follows a 1.1 million pre-seed round that occurred in 2019. I will note that our buddy, Tim Sackett posted an article this week about how he hates manual reference checks. Where do you fall on this one?
Chad (25m 25s):
This is a sell if I've ever seen one, it seems like it's just so narrowly scoped number one. And then on the site, it actually says, quote, we make it easy to understand and analyze reference data by automatically detecting and flagging outliers within a group. What that says right out of the gate is bias, bias, bias. So yeah, overall, it's incredibly narrowly scoped and it just doesn't do it for me. Yeah.
Joel (25m 56s):
Yeah. I'm going to sell this Turkey too. Yeah. Reference checks seems even if it's automated seems really antiquated. All the reasons that you said, you said before there, I agree with, so let's say we've got a Betterfly. Was a sell for me. Was that a buy for you?
Chad (26m 14s):
Buy for me?
Joel (26m 15s):
We both like Kanaries and we're both selling Hi People. I love it. And that's an episode of buy or sell. Let's get a quick break. And jeez, we'll talk about remote workers and labor unions.
Jobvite PROMO (26m 29s):
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Joel (26m 60s):
(music) Oh, damn it. Won't go away.
Chad (27m 5s):
Oh! I don't want it to go away.
Joel (27m 7s):
Have you seen to do a Geico commercial with Tag Team?
Chad (27m 13s):
Yeah. That is scoop where it is Scoop. That is awesome. Yeah.
Joel (27m 22s):
And do you note at the end, when the guy he does like the LeBron he's like...
Chad (27m 26s):
Sprinkles.