Employbl YC application (Summer 2019)
Company name:
Employbl
Company url, if any:
If you have a demo, what’s the url? For non-software, demo can be a video.
Describe your company in 50 characters or less.
We generate leads for in house talent teams
What is your company going to make?
Employbl is a subscription service to supplement the sourcing efforts of in-house talent teams. We focus on Digital Marketing and Engineering opportunities in the Bay Area for budding talent teams, Seed to Series C.
Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?
Alameda, CA
Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted (not private) YouTube or Youku video introducing the founder(s). (Follow the Video Guidelines.)
Which category best applies to your company?
Recruiting/Talent
How far along are you?
I’m working on the project full time, recruiting for two startups and a little over one hundred candidates have signed up. The site works but I need to build more into the candidate search and have better candidates and more companies onboard.
How long have each of you been working on this? How much of that has been full-time? Please explain.
I had the idea and registered the domain name back in 2016 when I was a technical recruiter at a recruiting agency in San Francisco! It was a side project that landed on the front page of hacker news back in July. That was exciting for about two seconds. I’ve been working on this full time for about a month.
Are people using your product?
Yes
How many active users or customers do you have? If you have some particularly valuable customers, who are they? If you’re building hardware, how many units have you shipped?
I’m partnering with Lob and Snapdocs to help them source talent and hire.
There are 142 active candidates in the system right now, that’s skilled individuals taking a proactive approach to finding a new job. When new job postings come in from employers, I source for those companies particularities like years of experience and knowledge of certain tools. It’s nice having quality candidates come inbound though!
Do you have revenue?
No
Anything else you would like us to know regarding your revenue or growth rate?
I focused on number of candidates signing up for a few weeks, but after feedback from a hiring manager and friend of mine I’ve realized that it’s the quality of relevant candidates and how I present that information, not the number of candidate signups that’s important. I’ll be spending my time going forward building better matching tools so that employers see relevant candidates and don’t have to spend wasted time reviewing resumes.
If you’ve applied previously with the same idea, how much progress have you made since the last time you applied? Anything change?
This is my first time applying to YC
If you have already participated or committed to participate in an incubator, “accelerator” or “pre-accelerator” program, please tell us about it.
I have not participated in any accelerators.
Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you’re making?
I picked this idea to work on because of my experience hunting for jobs as a junior engineer in the Bay and my experience as a technical recruiter. There’s no way it’s necessary to charge 15–40% of people’s first year salary to make hires. I worked hard as a recruiter and brought in over a million dollars for my agency but saw that everybody’s candidate database is siloed. It didn’t feel right to be protecting and hiding candidate info to make sure I got paid. I know people need this because of the thousands of candidate conversations, personal experience and the fact that companies still pay agency recruiting fees, even to software companies like Hired and Vettery.
What’s new about what you’re making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn’t exist yet (or they don’t know about it)?
Employbl is new on the employer side because there’s no hiding candidate information or charging per hire. Our job is to provide qualified talent leads to internal recruiting teams, just like marketing teams funnel leads to sales teams.
For candidates we provide a rich (open source) database of Bay Area companies to assist them when job hunting. This isn’t new but sites like Craft and Crunchbase charge people to use it, which isn’t something job seekers are willing to buy.
Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?
Hired, AngelList (Source and A-List), Vetterey, Indeed sourcing, Third party recruiting agencies.
What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don’t get?
Information should be open and accessible to all, especially candidates who want jobs. Hiding candidate info
How do or will you make money? How much could you make?
(We realize you can’t know precisely, but give your best estimate.)
Employbl is a subscription service for young companies, seed to series C.
8 cities, 300 companies per city signed up at $500/month = ~$14 million ARR
at $250/month = ~$7 million ARR.
How will you get users? If your idea is the type that faces a chicken-and-egg problem in the sense that it won’t be attractive to users till it has a lot of users (e.g. a marketplace, a dating site, an ad network), how will you overcome that?
The company discovery tools and rich information about companies helps bring active candidates inbound. When new job openings come in from our partner companies the requirements are specific so I need to tap into my network and hit the phones to find them leads, traditional recruiting work!
For bringing on initial employers as early adopters I’ll be relying on friends and word of mouth. We’re at two companies right now and haven’t made any placements yet so need that dialed in! Once I start making placements I have an entire database of companies to reach out to and offer my services.
Have you incorporated, or formed any legal entity (like an LLC) yet?
Yes
What kind of entity and in what state or country was the entity formed?
(e.g. Delaware C Corp)
Delaware C Corp
Please describe the breakdown of the equity ownership in percentages among the founders, employees and any other stockholders. If there are multiple founders, be sure to give the equity ownership of each founder.
Connor — 100% of shares
Are any of the founders covered by noncompetes or intellectual property agreements that overlap with your project? If so, please explain.
I am not covered by any noncompetes from my recruiting agency and I work on this full time.
Who writes code, or does other technical work on your product? Was any of it done by a non-founder? Please explain.
I write the code and built the website.
Is there anything else we should know about your company?
(Pending lawsuits, cofounders who have left, etc.)
One area I’ve been focusing on is providing information to candidates about the tech stack companies use and the office locations of all the companies using that tech stack. It was something I knew needed to exist during my job hunting but no one had done it in an accessible and easy to use way.
If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, please list them. One may be something we’ve been waiting for. Often when we fund people it’s to do something they list here and not in the main application.
One idea is to have personal shoppers in Cape Town send swag to Americans.
When I was in Rwanda I worked with a friend on a software solution for a dairy factory called Cows N Hills. Never applied to YC with it but could’ve been awesome.
Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered.
(The answer need not be related to your project.)
The most confident candidates after the interview never gets the job.
