TalentHunch V2.0 — Another Failed Startup Experiment
TalentHunch V2.0 was an experimental webapp I built to see if I could apply the Tinder swipe-right-to-like concept to job search. It turns out that I couldn’t (this time).
Over the 3 months of its operation it gained 55 users, indexed 83,746 jobs, and generated 7,239 job suggestions (only 311 of which were Liked by a user to indicate a close match).
As with other projects I’ve started in the past, most people I spoke to said they loved the idea, and in some cases registered on the spot (thank you!), but the majority said they’d register later, but never did.
Basically, TalentHunch failed to gain enough traction to keep me motivated to keep building and improving it. It also didn’t have a strong enough value proposition (AKA: didn’t provide value to the user) to keep users coming back every day.
Here’s some lessons learned:
- ABM — Always Be Marketing: As soon as I stopped plugging TalentHunch on Twitter and Facebook interest died off. It wasn’t self sustainable because people simply didn’t get enough value from it to tell their friends about it. An awesome, and valued product, generates its own word-of-mouth marketing.
- A MVP needs to be actually Viable: TalentHunch didn’t come with email notifications or a very good job suggestions generator (hence the low number of total likes above).
- It wasn’t unique or competitive: Job search is a massive market and with companies like Seek and Indeed dominating this market, any new entrant needs to have a truly unique product that both job seekers and employers can gain instant value from.
