Cocktail Napkin to Startup (DIY Part Two)
June 17, 2006
When I came up with the idea of doing a series of “how-to” posts for startups I racked my brain for ways to provide value. I decided that it might be interesting to provide a detailed account of an idea we came up with on May 11th and bring you through the process as it happens. But first, I need to give you some background and the problem the idea sought to resolve.
THE BACKGROUND
Last year, around June, I went to SuperNova to find out what was going on in the so called Web 2.0 space. Throughout the conference several concepts took hold in my head. The first was the concept of agile web development and second was Microformats. I also had the chance to meet Matt Mullenweg the guy behind WordPress and Anil Dash from MovableType. More recently I was in BarCamp Bangalore in India and after talking with Chris Messina when it became clear to me that there are going to be huge opportuntities to empower users as adoption the adoption of Microformats accelerates. This is especially true now that Microsoft has announced support for them. Finally, I was intrigued by Edgio’s business model (listings from your blog). The ultimate take away for me was the idea that the idea behind the Web 2.0 space - i.e. what made it different from Web 1.0 - was that it made it easy to build on the work of others. Everyone working on small solutions to big problems, each allowing others to build on their ideas to solve problems. Now I just needed a problem…
THE PROBLEM
For me most new business ideas start with a problem and not the “I need more money” sort of problem - those never seems to result in more money! This idea was no different resulting from a problem one of our companies called Architel faces on a daily basis. The company is lead by Scott Ryan and it provides information technology support for small businesses. Scott’s team is always hiring. They use job boards like Monster.com and specifically use the resume search feature to find candidates. Interestingly, most employers search for their own employees first. The idea is to see who is actively looking. If you notice that one of your employees has updated his resume recently you might start to wonder if he is unhappy in his position. Employees realize that their employers look at Monster so they do have the option of hiding their current employment, which lowers the response rate.
Most employees don’t use Monster.com (and other boards) to present their resume. They use the boards to look for open positions and apply for those positions. Resume search customers are notified if a candidate has applied for a job in the last two weeks (month, quarter - take your pick) and have the option of contacting the candidates. The Architel recruiter explained to me that candidates are usually turned off when she says, “I found your resume on monster.” It is as though she is intruding. The candidate didn’t post their resume for just any job, they likely posted it in reponse to a specific job. The Architel recruiter then explained that most of the candidates in the Monster.com system were not the sort of people we generally are looking for. She explained that the best candidates had jobs and were not looking to move. So Architel pays Monster.com for access to resumes of people who don’t necessarily want to be contacted and who are not very good candidates for the company’s openings. How frustrating!
Evidently lots of people are equally frustrated. They have a quasi-resume on LinkedIn, an often dated resume on Monster.com and on scores of other jobs sites they have used since the late 1990s. These data ’silos’ don’t communicate with one another and make it hard for someone to keep all of their ‘resumes’ up-to-date. Most people are VERY frustrated. What if people could own their data, update it in one place and choose to share that data with Monster.com, LinkedIn or any other resource - now that would be nice. What a concept: own your own data! Now I had a problem…
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4 Responses to “Cocktail Napkin to Startup (DIY Part Two)”
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Looking forward to the rest of the series. BTW, recently found your blog and I’m really enjoying it. Keep the nuggets coming.
Do you steal all of your ideas from people that think you are a serious VC, or just this one in particular?
Not sure what you are talking about? I did receive a call from someone with an idea for a Web 2.0 job listing site. For transparency I detailed how that conversation led me to another conversation with one of our own engineers that led to another conversation with Brian. Ultimately, our concept was not a job listing site at all, but the exact opposite.
Update: I talked to Jason (the guy who originally called me) to make sure he didn’t feel like I ’stole’ his idea. He is launching his private beta of a site to store employee data centrally - i.e. a data silo. Sort of the opposite of our idea of keeping resume data at the edge. If anyone should be annoyed it might be Keith at Edgeio - but again ideas are worth very little if they are not executed. Follow along and see if there is anything to complain about.