Another year, another podcast full of predictions that (mostly) won't come true. Yup, it's finally 2024 and the boys have sobered up enough to give their best guesses for what will happen over the next 12 mos. And if you already long for 2023, never fear, we also review last year's hits and (mostly, again) misses. Plus, we reflect on 2023's podcast takeaways, our fantasy football champion is crowned, and travel heats up again. And what the hell is Dry January?
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Intro: 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: Oh, yeah. Two guys who can't even spell dry January. Hey kids, you're listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel the prophet Cheeseman.
Chad: I'm Chad. Who said dry January is a thing, Sowash?
Joel: And on this week's episode, we're pulling out the crystal ball and looking into what 2024 has in store, or probably not so much if history is any guide. Let's do this. What's up, man.
Chad: Hello. I'm finally back in my second abode in Cabana. So I'm not on Madeira anymore. And next week I'm gonna be back in the USA. So yeah.
Joel: And I think I speak for all of Facebook when I say we're not gonna miss any of your beach fronts adult mischief making photos that we had to endure for the last couple of weeks.
Chad: Oh, I do it for you. I do it for you all.
Joel: You do it for me.
Chad: You gotta live through me or take examples or whatever. It's all good.
Joel: Peepers and I had to power through to make it to midnight on New Year's Eve, but we did it.
[laughter]
Chad: Dude. I was, okay, the island of Madeira, it's like off the coast of Africa, but it's a Portuguese island and they have the best fireworks in all of Europe. The entire island is lit up and it's crazy. We were out on a boat, which was literally a replica of the Santa Maria. So we're like on a pirate ship, and it has nothing, but it's an open bar, snacks and booze. And we sat there and shit we were probably out till 3:00, but I mean, we were watching just this island get lit the fuck up. It was amazing.
Joel: What was the drink of choice? Was it sangria?
[laughter]
Joel: Or was it beer? It looked like some nudist, male swingers thing that I saw.
Chad: What the fuck are you talking about.
[laughter]
Joel: Anyway, a lot of people listening don't even follow you on Facebook, but it was wild.
Chad: The drink of Madeira is Poncha and it's this very, it's fruit and it's rum that's pretty much it. It's fruit, and it's rum. And yeah, you you can get knocked out pretty quick on that shit. So we were heavy into the Poncha. That's for fucking true.
Joel: Shit. Yep. That sounds about right. Well, you ready to get back to work? You're ready to focus and get back to America and embrace work, the work ethic, the puritan work ethic and get back?
[laughter]
Chad: What?
Joel: I gotta say, I enjoyed, people listening, Chad and I take at least a week, I don't hear from him. He doesn't hear from me and it's a great sort of relaxing time for me, 'cause Chad's a bit of a pusher. He's a bit of a go like, do this shit, or let's get this thing going, or what. So it was nice to kind of relax. But I feel pretty rejuvenated. I'm ready to hit the ground running.
Chad: I definitely feel rejuvenated.
Joel: A lot of stuff going on. Starting with travel.
Chad: Yes. We've got travel happening in late January. We're going to San Diego for TA week, the 29th of January that week. And we're gonna be at Mission Bay Resort, hanging with koalas at the San Diego Zoo with our friends from KoalaFi. Get it with the Q and the I. Koalafi?
Joel: Yeah. I do.
SFX: Winning!
Chad: We're gonna be in their booth doing some interviews, we currently have eight events scheduled for 2024 already. Fuck! So come and see us at any and all of them. Go to chadcheese.com/events register and come get drunk with us.
Joel: I do have a quick travel, a quick a Canadian travel.
Chad: Oh, shit. No, you did the Canadian thing, didn't you? You did the hockey thing?
Joel: We're doing that. So we're headed to Montreal next weekend.
Chad: Oh, nice.
Joel: If you're in Montreal, which it has a nice, vibrant, employment related community. Yeah, come out and say hi. Maybe we'll have a beer but meeting up with the hiring branch folks watching a Canadians hockey game, against the Oilers. Connor McDavid hopefully won't be injured and having a good time. So I will be representing the podcast solo in beautiful Montreal, which I've never been, but I hear it's a beautiful city.
Chad: Yeah. One thing I'm not doing is going north for the winter. That's just not something I do. I don't do that. I find a sandy beach where it's nice and warm, so you enjoy that.
SFX: Just the tip.
Joel: Well, it's almost as good as getting free stuff, but not quite as good. So we had a nice little holiday giveaway. If you haven't signed up yet, kids, you gotta go to chadcheese.com. Click the free link. We're talking Textkernel, giving away whiskey, Aspen Tech Labs, giving away beer. Of course, we got t-shirts from our friends at JobGet. And if it's your birthday, you might win a nice bottle of rum from our friends at Plum. But last month's winners, our bourbon winner was Alan Bourne. Not related to Jason Bourne, as far as I know, our beer winner was Morgan Michels. And Kelly Herivnek was our birthday winner.
Chad: Nice.
Joel: And I think if I hear birthday, that that usually means that we play this one. I'm little slow on the trigger, man. It's been a couple weeks.
[video playback]
SFX: Do you feel the tension in the air right now? I know I can. I can feel it all the way down in my plums.
Chad: That's what dry January does to you.
Joel: Yeah. The brain is off for sure. All right. Celebrating another trip around the Sun and our listeners, Mira McDonald, Zachary Larsson, Cheryl Ford, Rob Arant, Mark Katz, Peter Brooks, Mark Becker, Mark Fogle, Keith Sedlik, William Nolan, Steve Brown, Lou Adler, Athena Carp, Peter Zalman and Lauren Sharp. One of our favorite Aussies, if not our favorite Aussie is celebrating another birthday.
SFX: Happy Birthday!
Chad: Who's Who?
Joel: Hopefully they're not celebrating dry January on their birthday have a drink for us if anything else.
Chad: Yeah. If they're smart, they're not. I wanna jump into really quick and talk a little bit about what we did in 2023 kind of like in retrospect and then move forward a little bit. What stuck out to you in what we've done over the last year or so with the Chad and Cheese?
Joel: Well, aside from not killing each other after six years together.
Chad: Always big. Always big.
Joel: I figured 10. 10 is the breaking point where we finally walk off the stage but the travel stands out for sure. It's been so fun watching the RecFest, The Unleash crew grow, come to America, continuing to meet friends, new people, old faces some of the interviews we did live from a multitude of booze was great. The startups we always love some of the ones that stuck out like Vet, Aaron and others have been fun to watch. Certainly we'll get to it eventually but fantasy football is always a highlight for me, Chad. Always a highlight.
Chad: Even though you don't perform well.
[laughter]
Joel: No, like the rest of my life I did not, not perform well. How about you, what stood out for you in '23?
Chad: So I was taking a look at what we did over the year and we did over 60 interviews and we tackled some pretty heavy topics in 2023, who would've ever thought that we would be talking about failing child labor laws. I mean going back to the 1930s and saying, hey look we're just gonna take away all these child labor protection. So we talked to Reid Mackey about that we talked to some other incredibly smart people like Professor Ifeoma Ajunwa and Professor Mona Sloan about AI regulations. Pay transparency still a thing, gonna continue to be a thing. Maria Colacurcio and Anita Lettink. We've been talking about remote work and return to work all year because it's been kinda like this tug of war. We talked to Mary Elkordy about that. Women exiting the workplace Tracy Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas talked to us about that giving us the women's perspective. Turnover contagion with Andrea Derler and Roe versus Wade which has really impacted our lives after the SCOTUS overturn and Dr. T is what we called her but Dr. Tana Session. She was amazing. It was just great to have all of these experts come on the show and again those are just a few of the 60 plus that we have and we came out of the barrel hot in 2024 with our friend of the show, EEOC commissioner Keith Sonderling. I think this is like his third or fourth time on.
SFX: Aih papi!
Chad: But yeah, it's great stuff and I mean with including our YouTube only content we are over 1200 episodes pod to date. 1200. 1-2-0-0. Fuck!
[applause]
Joel: I think that deserves an applaud for anyone who's listened to any of those in the last six years that we've been doing it. By the way it's Tana, not Tanor so if you see her.
Chad: Oh, Tana.
Joel: So if you see her out there make sure that you get that right. Dude, Michigan might win a national title.
Chad: Yeah, I don't wanna talk about that. We're done with that.
[laughter]
Joel: Let's go to fantasy football something that's great. So another season is in the books.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: I had a lot of fun I think everyone that participated.
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Joel: It was an all female Final four which was awesome. I think half the league was female but Dina Perro for Pyros...
Chad: Boom.
Joel: Is our champion for 2023, her winnings are on the way. I can't wait to see the pictures, she's already promised a good photo session with her winnings. She was followed close matchup jagged little Jill Patterson came in second. Marcy Mall Playground, Michelle Sergeant Slaughter rounded out our Final Four then we got Brent Locey, Joe Berga Dixon, Chad you came in seventh respectably right there in the center not showing off...
Chad: Not good.
Joel: Not falling behind, Dean Oster at eight and then everyone else sucked didn't even get into like the Constellation stuff. That would be me, Jasper, the European, Dennis last year's Champion, Tupper and then the Cellar we got Kristen Urban and that is just frankly the car crash of fantasy players.
Chad: Ridiculous.
Joel: We might send Dennis Tupper a little something for going from first to almost worst for this year but that is another season. Hopefully we do it next season. I'm pretty sure our friends at FactoryFix who sponsored this season and the year before are gonna be at least open-minded to doing it again.
Chad: They love it.
Joel: But that is Fantasy football finale.
Chad: And talking about little boats and hoes. I mean YouTube, we launched a YouTube channel in 2023.
Joel: We did.
Chad: I kinda had to drag you kicking and screaming but at the end of the day it actually worked out pretty damn well and we got to I think Skill Scout to thank for that to make us look all pretty and sound good.
[applause]
Chad: We had over 30,000 video watchers or downloads, whatever the fuck they call it. Anyway over 30,000 in less than a year.
Joel: We don't know the internet.
Chad: Yeah, the top five YouTube videos was number five iCIMS CEO abruptly quits. Number four...
Joel: Shocker.
Chad: $7 Mayo might end democracy, number three Uber takes aim at TaskRabbit, number two StepStone steps in it, and number one will AI take recruiter jobs with Amy Butchko. That was it, that was a great interview as well.
SFX: All right, all right, all right.
Joel: Oh, Butchko. By the way Chad I'm on my way to being TikTok famous. My Full Service Sucks short, by the way, the shorts are totally surprised. Like people love us in about one minute or less intervals, which I totally understand, but my Full Service Sucks on TikTok is over 4000 views, which I'm pretty, pretty impressed with. I'm well on my way to TikTok fame. So I can finally walk away from this podcast and talk about things that old white men get angry about. I think it may be my calling.
[laughter]
SFX: 60% of the time it works every time.
Joel: Which brings us to reviewing last year's predictions. If you haven't been paying attention, kids, this is our prediction show. If you haven't heard it before, we review our predictions from last year, see where we got it right and where we mostly got it wrong. And then we make new predictions for the new year. So Chad I don't know how you wanna do this. We can do one each. We can do all of yours, all of mine.
Chad: Knock all your three out. Yours is going to be fun here.
Joel: Okay. My three, my three were super specific.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: They were rooted in fact, if you don't believe me, go back to the archives, go to chadcheese.com and go to January for that one. So my first one was... My first prediction from last year was that Scott Gutz CEO of Monster would no longer be CEO of Monster. And for that one...
Chad: Oooh.
Joel: Yeah, I got that one wrong. And although he's still there, it's gotta be the worst job in our industry. Piloting a ghost ship basically in foggy uncharted waters can't be very much fun.
Chad: I think the paycheck he's bringing down, he's probably okay with it right now. I think maybe being an AE there or something like that, that probably fucking sucks, but being a guy who's taking down the kind of cash he is, I think he's okay.
Joel: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I guess he can cry all the way to the bank on that one. Okay. That brings us to my second prediction. Greenhouse IPO. Oh boy. Greenhouse, although they had, I think hired chief financial officer that had extensive experience in going public and had done some other things that I thought was a clear indication. Greenhouse did not go public nor did any company in our space of significance go public. So that one, that brings me at, O for two.
Chad: I think we think these companies are smarter than they really are. We look really deep to try to look for their hidden kernels of what might actually to try to put the put these things together. I just don't think they're that smart.
Joel: Well you know what I say about predictions, Chad, they aren't wrong, they just haven't happened yet.
SFX: 60% of the time, it works every time.
Joel: All right. Let's get to my third prediction from 2023... UKG buys iCIMS. Yeah, that one was rooted in a, I thought some sound logic the CEO that they had hired Brian Provost had experienced selling a company to UKG and I thought what better CEO to sell to UKG than the guy who sold a previous company to UKG. Unfortunately, Brian Provost is gone while Scott Gutz continues to to drive the Monster ship.
Chad: Who would have thought that Provost just would eject. I mean, out of just thin air, one day he wakes up, picks up the phone, says I quit. Who would have thought that would have happened? I guess what, again, you never know these crystal balls. Sometimes they work. And most of the times they just don't.
Joel: Full disclosure. We have no idea what happened at iCIMS, so we can only project.
Chad: That's what happened in my head. He woke up, yeah.
Joel: That brings my take at O in three for my predictions from 2023.
SFX: Just the tip.
Joel: All right, Chad, are you ready?
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Let's do this.
Chad: Oh man. I tell you what pay equity was having its moment in the sun. And I thought automatically there's one company that's out there that I know and I love that they're going to get acquired because they are a system that just makes sense for pay equity, right? They're very transparent. It's technology. It makes it easy. And Syndio did not get acquired. So that was a big, big zero for me. Although, I'm sure they're doing incredibly well still, whether they were acquired or not.
Joel: Is it something you think might happen in '24 or are you putting that one off the table?
Chad: You know what? I don't think so. And here's why. And I don't think it's a situation where they won't do well. I think they'll continue to do well. I just think that because DEI, pay equity, all of these things are just not cool anymore. AI is kind of taking the stage. CEO saying stupid shit. I mean, we've seen so many CEOs just come out and say the quiet parts out loud over the last couple of years, that has taken the shine off of just about all the things that we cared about, that we should be caring about. And DEI, pay equity, those types of things, unfortunately are just not getting the focus and the time that are deserved. And I feel...
Joel: Which is a shame.
SFX: Boo!
Chad: Yeah. Like 2024 is gonna be just another year of stupid shit from the CEOs, from the C-suite, from the board of directors and unfortunately we're going to be, we're going to be focusing on the drama and not the things that actually matter.
Joel: I think you're right. All right. Now let's get to your number two prediction from last year.
Chad: So Web3 is alive. My prediction was that some form of blockchain-esque type of organization would actually get out there in our space and it did happen. CV Wallet did come out and I think they're doing well. I think they're doing a lot better than we had actually thought right out of the gate because they didn't focus on blockchain. They focused on process. They focused on really the issues because of all the cons that happened on blockchain and crypto and that kind of shit. And we'll give that a half. What do you think, a half maybe?
SFX: All right. All right. All right.
Joel: McConaughey approves. We'll go with that one. Yeah. Bitcoin's having a moment here in the new year and ending last year. Ethereum is back. Solana is striking hard. I don't know, crypto might be a hot topic in '24. And your buddy, Sir Richard, might be in for a good year. All right. Let's get to your final prediction from
'23.
Chad: Google for jobs paid ads. That's right. We've been talking about this for years now, kids. I think since Google for jobs came out in 2017, we've been talking about the paid ads finally happening. We haven't seen them in the wild, but we have seen testing. We've seen screenshots of testing. And therefore, I mean I think we'll probably take it off the board from now on, but...
Joel: You think so?
Chad: We know that it's in the process. We know that it's happening. Google for jobs paid ads. I'm going to
take a win on this one.
SFX: Just the tip.
Joel: All right. If you're keeping score at home, Cheeseman, 0 in 3, Chad, we'll give him a one won in one. How about that? We'll give a tie to the Bitcoin. Well, let's see if we can do any better in 2024. Don't get your hopes up. We'll be right back. All right. Chad, it's time to make our 2024 predictions. Are you excited?
Chad: Oh yeah, dude, I'm stoked. I am stoked.
Joel: Okay. In a macro level, I'm really concerned about '24, the world is burning, global conflict, geopolitical uncertainty, we have an election year here in the US, Taiwan, has an election, Germany in recession. It's a really volatile year. I'm really scared to make predictions this year. And I've decided that this year will be my George Costanza strategy for predictions. Now, if you're not a Seinfeld fan, hopefully, there's four characters in Seinfeld and George is kind of the self-deprecating, negative one. And he has an episode where he says, if everything that I do is wrong, then the opposite must be right.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: If every instinct I know is wrong, then I'm going to do the opposite. So this year, I'm going to go a little George Costanza on you and go the opposite of what I would normally do on our prediction show. So with that, my first prediction is no IPOs. That's right. No IPOs of significance. And I'm not talking about some pink sheet bullshit company. I mean like significance. And we've been talking whether it's more official than others, but iCIMS, Greenhouse, Smart Recruiters, Personio, Deal for sure, HiBob, like some companies are teasing IPOs, their S1s have been like, they've almost got there. They're really close to doing it.
SFX: Just the tip.
Joel: But this year, I think with so much volatility, I think we were at peak IPO with Birkenstock last year. I think the IPO markets, unless Reddit, Stripe, some of these big tech companies go public and really hit it out of the park, I don't think any of our companies are going to go IPO in 2024. Now, what I hear a lot of these days is "survive till '25". I think this will be a year where we hunker down, survive, get through the elections and everything else. And then '25, you're going to see a flood of some of these companies go IPO. But for me, my first prediction, is that there will be no IPOs in our space in 2024. And that brings us to your first one, unless you have a comment.
Chad: Oh, yeah. First, I mean I'd like to say that... It sounds like the year of Cheeseman not taking any big swings, you're just going to bunt and try to get on base.
Joel: That's a black or white. No, that's a black or white prediction.
Chad: That's a big swing.
Joel: That's no gray area. That's no tie.
Chad: It's not going to be a big year. We all know that.
Joel: Either I'm right or I'm wrong. There's no gray area.
Chad: Just because it's black or white does not make it a big swing. That's not a big swing.
Joel: I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm really wrong. And we have a lot of cool shit to talk about, including IPOs.
But I don't think it's going to happen.
Chad: Yeah. We'll still have a lot of cool shit to talk about. But IPOs, probably not.
Joel: Oh yeah. I hope it's not all cyber trucks and meta VR systems next year or this year.
Chad: All right. Get ready. Yeah. I'm going to go big on this one. I'm going to talk about two acquisitions that are going to happen in 2024. Yes. I understand several clearance rack acquisitions will happen in 2024, but those are not the ones that I want to focus on. I believe there are amazing startups that are new, different and will provide market vendors, big market vendors with a market advantage that they do not have today. Here are two that are near and dear to my heart that I believe could change the TA landscape forever. The first is an early stage startup who I believe can revolutionize the talent acquisition space. And I don't mean by using a large language model. I mean by creating new rails, infrastructure, much like AppCast did, by building the programmatic advertising rails for recruitment marketing agencies and new revenue streams for job boards.
Chad: Plus also creating infrastructure to make background checks faster, accreditations and references instantly available and new revenue streams for screening, testing assessments and simulation providers, just for starters. And instead of talking about PPC and PPA, how about we talk about having the data and ability to actually target qualified candidates. The ones who you know have the accreditations, they've already passed the background checks, they passed the assessments, and instead of paying for an apply or a click from a candidate that doesn't meet the requirements, they actually make sense. The only vendor currently in our space that can pull this off, call back to last year, CV Wallet.
SFX: That's winning.
Chad: Yes. Sir Richard and Queen Beverly, they have tremendous experience in the space, resources, and the network to pull off an acquisition in 2024. Why? Because as we saw, big names like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and many others get leapfrogged by little old OpenAI. The big names in our industry understand their rails, their infrastructure and their brand mean nothing if they're leapfrogged by a competitor who acquires a more evolved infrastructure and revenue models. That's why CV Wallet gets acquired in 2024.
Joel: Oh my God.
Chad: That's a big swing.
Joel: As if Sir Richard and Beverly need another Maserati. Upgrade that garage, as they say in England 'cause you're gonna need a few more...
Chad: Success breed success, my friend. Success breed success. So my second, in today's world, we are flooded with generative AI and vendors who are doing their damnedest to try to figure out how to wrap this AI into practical workflow for their users. And for over a decade, vendors have tried to solve the recruiter workspace problem. Hiring companies are using an average of 30 plus different technologies today and recruiters have to have at least that many browser tabs open to use that shit. So it's not just efficient and many great platforms need to be receiving adoption and they can't because they just can't get the users to use their platforms because they're all over the place. Enter Poetry.
SFX: Aih papi!
Chad: That's right baby. A recruiter enablement platform that wraps all of those problems into an early stage solution. Founders and our friends, Adam Gordon and Mike Hughes are both veterans in the space, they sold candidate ID to iCIMS and they are not looking to create the next platform to rule them all. Oh no. They're creating a workspace that ties all of those platforms and point solutions together. And that was always the answer. Creating a platform to rule them all was never sustainable and never the real world and practical answer, but rather a workspace that ties them together and integrates practical generative AI workflows. That's the answer and that's my friends, is why Poetry gets acquired in 2024.
SFX: Welcome to all things Scottish. Our slogan is, if it's not Scottish, it's crap.
Chad: Two European companies.
Joel: So we get a two for one. For your first prediction in '24. Acquisitions, two companies, both European, I'm shocked that as the newest European resident that you're picking two European companies to get acquired.
Chad: And that literally just came into my mind as I'm talking about. I'm like, holy shit, they're both in Europe. I didn't even think about that as I was thinking about these. Yeah, so it just popped.
Joel: Just came into your head. Just came into your head. All right, kids. That brings me to my second prediction for 2024. No new unicorns in 2024. Now Chad, you remember '21 and '22, we had a parade of unicorns, tons of them. Deal, Remote, Oyster, Velocity Global, you name it. There were tons. And this past year we had HiBob, Harry, maybe, was close in that neighborhood, I don't think this year with inflation, I think is still gonna be high. Volatility's still high. I think there's a lot of investors that feel burned by putting in so much money into the workspace. Remote work is still kind of up in the air. I think that investors will be gun shy to invest in our space. I think inflation money won't be cheap, into next year. Volatility around the globe. I just don't think we'll see a billion dollar valuation and a new unicorn in 2024. And again, I hope I'm wrong about that one as well.
Chad: Whew. Yeah. Well, I'll have a little to add about that later.
Joel: Fair enough. All right. Well, while you think about more European companies to pimp and more European ideas and socialists ideologies to throw at us. Let's take a quick break. And remember, kids, there's no show without the sponsors, so please listen to the ads and write blank checks to these companies. All right, Chad, you've had a little time to think.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Think of new things that are going on. But this brings us to your second prediction for '24.
Chad: Prediction for 2024. Twitter hiring dies. Now let me paint a picture. In December, that's where the European part comes in. In December, the European Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether Twitter may have breached the Digital Services Act. The investigation includes countering the dissemination of illegal content, combating information manipulation, increasing platform transparency, and examining the user interface design. This provides a huge distraction for an already undisciplined Twitter. Plus, this is happening right when Threads launches in the EU. Moreover, the economics just don't work. Enterprise advertisers are continuing to run away from Twitter, which has resulted in losses around in the billions. Then Elon tells the enterprise advertisers to go fuck yourself. Then just recently, Linda Paper Tiger Ya Carino declared that Twitter would target small to medium sized companies to replace the said enterprise dollars.
Chad: Twitter then wrapped their SMB jobs thingy into the basic verified offering, which includes spotlight top roles on your profile. Who the fuck at a small to medium-sized business is going to manage that day-to-day jobs fiasco? Nobody, nobody. Number two, job sync via ATS or XML feed. Who the fuck at an SMB knows what an ATS or XML feed is? No, it's a very, very, again, it's starting to, it's starting, very thin, very thin. Last but not least, unlimited job slots published to your profile and job search at twitter.com/jobs. Who looks SMB profile on Twitter? So you have to go to the actual profile to see this shit. So all of these features, "features" are just smoke and mirrors until Twitter starts pulling jobs into their main feed. Then all fucking hell is going to break loose. Johnny's plumbing and heating, their jobs start popping up by Alex Jones tweets, and then all bets are fucking off, kids.
Chad: Plus, here's the final point. Twitter just wrapped those so-called features into an already existing verification product without increasing the price of the product at all, which gives no additional revenue and actually devalues those bullshit features. So how will Twitter pay to increase SMB buyers? Much like ZipRecruiter did, they have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars as Zip demonstrated and that's not sustainable. So here's a recap. EU investigation. Facebook's threads enters into the EU. Enterprise revenues are gone. Twitter devalues its hiring platform, and much like Facebook shutting down its jobs product, remember, Facebook already tried this. Google shutting down its jobs API, and Google hire ATS. Twitter will come to the realization that without enterprise dollars, they will have to spend more money than they can make through this stupid buck and bullshit advertising to try to lure people into an SMB verification scheme. That's why in 2024, the Twitter hiring platform will die.
SFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Joel: Just to be clear, x.com/jobs is gone when we ring in '25.
Chad: Well, it doesn't exist today. If you type in x.com/jobs, it goes to twitter.com/jobs. So stop calling it X, 'cause it's not X. Twitter hiring platform will be dead.
Joel: It will be... So that page won't exist. What do you think about their LinkedIn killer? Are they going to focus and pivot on that? Should LinkedIn be shaking in its boots? Or do you think they'll not do anything with that?
Chad: There have been stories already that LinkedIn's revenue is jumping because they're actually getting that, all those companies that are running away from Twitter, some of them are going to LinkedIn. So LinkedIn's already siphoning some of that money off. LinkedIn is going to be in the catbird seat when this shit just drops. Well, here's what's going to happen. You're going to have all this pomp and fucking bullshit circumstance from Twitter saying that hiring's the thing, right? Then when it dies, where are they going to go? LinkedIn's going to pop in. They're going to say, come over here, guys. This is where you need to be. So you're going to get the Indeeds and the LinkedIns and whatnot, the big brands, the bigger brands, who are literally just going to siphon that dollar off. But Twitter hiring platform, that bitch is pretty much dead.
Joel: Here's a prediction. Elon will be the GIF that keeps on giving to this podcast in 2024.
Chad: Again, just another bunt. Jesus.
Joel: All right. This brings me to my final prediction for 2024. And by the way, to piggyback on your acquisition commentary, I don't think there's going to be any big time acquisition. It'll be like Poetry, year old thing, or CV wallet. There won't be any 100 million plus acquisition. Paradox is not getting acquired in '24.
Chad: Now, Paradox doesn't want to get acquired.
Joel: I just pulled that out of my ass. But there won't be any huge, really newsworthy acquisitions next year.
Chad: The ones that are kicking ass and taking names, Deal, Paradox, they don't want to be acquired. They don't want that. They're waiting, right?
Joel: If you remember, I think in a previous episode, we talked about Deal and how they've just crushed it. I think they've earmarked $200 million for acquisitions. So these companies that are crushing it, they're going to go shopping and start picking up features and acqui-hires. That'll be hopefully, a news story that we talk about.
Chad: Clearance rack in early stage startups. You get those because tech is starting to accelerate. The velocity is so fucking crazy right now. You can get some real cheap companies who really they couldn't execute, or you're going to get some amazing startups that have tech that nobody, I mean, again, this is all about leapfrogging the competition very quickly.
Joel: Yep. And I think on the raising side, I think you'll see a lot of startups that are AI driven, that have two people, they'll get the five, 10, $20 million, but no unicorns in that group. All right, let's get back to my prediction. In 2024, there will be a death of a unicorn. I've already said there won't be any new unicorns, but I think we will see the death of a unicorn, someone that had previously had a billion dollar plus valuation, go by the wayside. We've already featured Beamery on previous episodes, which is frankly been a train wreck. They raised 50 something million dollars in December of '22, and then turned around and laid off 15% of their people. Then they laid off 25% of their people here just before the holiday season. I've got my DMs blowing up about my whole department was laid off, like Beamery could be in that group. Oyster is another one that raised a ton of money and has seen a lot of layoffs. I think they're running third, fourth, or fifth fiddle to the likes of Deal and Remote. To your chagrin, Eightfold will not be one of the death.
Chad: They took too much money. They've got more runway.
Joel: Well, that'll be the thing, but I think they're just good enough to survive, but I think there's gonna be some down here that we say goodbye. Maybe they're an acquisition on the clearance rack or maybe they just shut the doors, some other companies that we talk about. So that is my third prediction that we say goodbye to a unicorn that had previously raised one billion dollars in valuation dollars. Thoughts? Like it, don't like it?
Chad: Yeah, no, I like it because the valuations were bloated. We talked about the valuations. A lot of those billion dollar valuations were literally not real world billion dollar valuations. So yeah, I could definitely see that happening, but they're gonna be like the, like you said, Eightfold. Eightfold, they took a lot of money unless they continue to buy fuckin' spaceship booths like at the HR techs and like in every fuckin' conference you know, across the world and they keep adding people, which they're not gonna do. They've got at least runway to be around for a few more years. But beyond that, I think the head shed, right? The actual CEOs or co-CEOs, I think we're gonna start to see heads roll before we start to see unicorns die.
Joel: Yep.
SFX: That escalated quickly.
Joel: All right, let's get to your third and final prediction for 2024.
Chad: Third prediction for 2024. My last prediction does not have a name ascribed to it, but it is very specific. It's not a bunt. It's not a bunt. A dominant AI player will emerge in the HR and TA space. While everyone is watching ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and all the other very general platforms fight over the next level of multimodal dominance. We will see a domain specific player in HR and TA, use OpenAI's model. And no, I don't mean Josh Burson's bullshit platform. I mean a real player with access to real data, not something that they conjured up because they were paid to conjure shit up, right? I mean very specifically an AI player that will open its platform up to the public to play with ALA, OpenAI and ChatGPT. They will provide limited, yet free access, and their brand will gain notoriety and will leapfrog many of the bigger brands that are out there in 2024. And this is where I'm gonna kind of counter what you're saying. They will have an opportunity to be a unicorn because the only thing that's making people unicorns in 2024 is AI. And if they adopt that OpenAI platform or process that OpenAI leapfrogged, I think we have some people in the space, if they take the risk that they will be able to do that.
Joel: Yeah, well no doubt AI will be the sexy story.
SFX: What are you doing, step bro?
Joel: Probably all year. The counter to that is like the bubble bursts, AI is a fraud, Dot-com bust 2.0, and we're seeing a different tune. But yeah, I agree that AI will be the story for this year in our space. And there was someone, someone posted predictions that I read. It was that someone will get a significant amount of money invested and the investors will realize that they have no employees and the CEO is a bot. [laughter] So that'll be a fun story if we ever get that. So that is...
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Our predictions for 2024. To recap, I said no IPOs in our space this year. I said no new unicorns. And I said one unicorn will die in 2024. Yours were?
Chad: CV Wallet and Poetry will be acquired, two early stage startups. Twitter hiring will die on the vine. And last but not least, we will see a domain AI player, obviously in our space, adopt the open AI business model and they will just fucking kill it. They will leapfrog a lot of the bigger brands in our space in 2024.
SFX: 60% of the time, it works every time.
Chad: Usually not 60% of the time. Where I don't think we've got a 60%.
Joel: You have a global prediction to kind of end the show. We got elections, we got sports obviously going down. Any predictions on a macro level that you want to end the show with?
Chad: Yeah, I don't want to think of macro stuff at this point because there's so much dystopian things that are happening around us. I'm trying to keep it light at the first of the year, especially with this year being a big, big presidential election in the US. And again, everybody's watching. Everybody's trying to see just how fucking crazy the Americans are and we're gonna let them know at the latter part of this year. But the hardest part about this is the ride we're going to have to take from now. And I'm sorry guys, it's gonna get a little dark. The ride that we have to take starting now all the way to November, this is gonna be a dark year when it comes to news and it comes to social media. I'm probably going to have to detox several times this year. [chuckle]
Joel: Well, that being said, I'm gonna give you a sunshiny ironclad prediction for 2024.
Chad: Please.
Joel: The Cleveland Browns win the Super Bowl. The Cleveland Browns.
SFX: Winning.
Joel: Win the Super Bowl.
Chad: Joel Flacco. I was like, what the fuck?
Joel: Flack around and find out everybody. We out.
Chad: We out.
Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the chat and chase podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuggle heads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.