If you missed the news breakdown from last week, you're in for a treat this week. The boys breakdown a bevy of news, including
- iCIMS buying Jibe
- AMS buying a chatbot
- Where you at SHRM? Do you job!
- Rumors out of CareerBuilder, and Entelo,
and new headwinds for Slack.
Enjoy the tsunami of news and opinion from HR's most dangerous podcast. Remember, Sovren, Canvas and JobAdx make it all possible.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by
Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman 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 & Cheese Podcast.
Joel: Oh, yeah. Don't call it a comeback. Back with our regularly scheduled weekly roundup, this is the Chad & Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous Mfers.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: I'm Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I am tired as fucking hell dude. This travel is some shit.
Joel: You crazy, mofo man. On this week's show iCIMS ain't no Jibe turkey, Karen finds... You like that one?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Karen finds a mate and Slack gets a stiff arm. And we have more rumors than an episode of TMZ. Stay tuned, we'll be right back after this word from Sovren.
Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make.
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Joel: Va-va-voom.
Chad: I always do, every single time I hear that commercial.
Joel: So I posted on Facebook this week that Spaceballs was released however 30 years ago or whatever it was, and my favorite line is when they're combing the desert, "We didn't even found shit."
Chad: While they were combing the desert, the white dudes have a comb, and the black dudes have a pick.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: It was awesome.
Joel: Yeah, it's funny shit. I see your fort is as big as mine.
Chad: Love it.
Joel: Yeah, dude. You've been a traveling man. I was smart enough to take a little time off. But you had to go out to Denver last week.
Chad: Yeah. No, I had a great time. Louise Grant from Jobg8. Julie was actually on stage. She fucking killed it. I was her roadie, let's put it that way, which was awesome.
Joel: She is number one, were you like standing ovation, go baby go.
Chad: It was awesome. We go to a lot of these industry conferences.
Joel: We do.
Chad: And it's really cool because you see at lunch with the guys from TalkPush and so on, Bill Fanning and Jonathan Duarte, just all these guys that you see.
Chad: The things that stick out about a conference is what matters, right? As soon as you come in, you know how they give you the bag full of like, I say in most cases junk. It's got all these cheap tchotchkes and shit, right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: So Louise and group, they give you a bag, and it had beers in it.
Joel: What?
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Were they in a cooler or something? Just warm beer?
Chad: They were warm, yeah. So you had to get your own ice, not a ... I can do that for goodness sakes.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: But giving of the beer was pretty awesome. So, that's a big applause.
Joel: Okay. So was this Denver, Colorado based beer?
Chad: Yes, yeah.
Joel: Okay.
Chad: It was all local brews.
Joel: How many?
Chad: I think there was just one per, but Louise gave me a special bag because she knows we like beer, that had six Senators or something like that.
Joel: I feel like this whole beer thing is a little bit like thanks to us. A little bit, just a little bit.
Chad: It could be. It could be.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: But I have to say that was pretty awesome.
Joel: This whole ... Yeah, the spread of alcoholism, you know God bless the Chad & Cheese Show.
Chad: That's like TAtech. You go to TAtech, whenever we're on stage they open the bar. I mean Pete and Peter at TAtech. It's like no they get it. Then obviously SmashFly. We were on stage at SmashFly just a-
Joel: Bucket of beer.
Chad: Yeah, a bucket of beer was brought to us. So pretty much wherever we go they understand that it's kind of written in our silent contract, I guess you could say.
Joel: In Belgium, I presented at a bar.
Chad: See.
Joel: That's I can die a happy man now at a bar.
Chad: At Tyrone everybody was faced forward but the bar was at the back and they brought the bar in for us. So all we did was go to the back of the room and we sat at the bar and pretty much did our talk during that. But we turned the entire room around because the bar was at the back of the room. That's good shit dude.
Joel: Yeah, and we've been really good at our server skills lately.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Honing those.
Chad: We're trying.
Joel: Delivering the goods to people. But yeah, Louise that's a big thumbs up.
Chad: Got to love it. Got to love it.
Joel: Dear conferences, take note conferences out there.
Chad: Take note.
Joel: Goodie bags of beer. I'm surprised with Colorado there wasn't something green in the bag too.
Chad: Yeah, I know. That sit was going around all over the place. So whether it was gummies or just the traditional, that was happening.
Joel: I guess we're starting shout outs, I guess that's the first one technically.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Yeah. So you mentioned SmashFly. But huge shout out to Josh Zywien.
Chad: Julia Levy from Fiserv.
Joel: And Holland McCord, right?
Chad: No, Holland McCue.
Joel: McCue.
Chad: Dombeck McCue yeah, from Delta Airlines, yes.
Joel: Yeah. She's had eight names since I've heard of her.
Chad: Yeah, I know.
Joel: But yeah, they were brave enough to come on stage with us, talk shop, and big shout out to those folks.
Chad: Yeah, and Holland actually brought us beer from Atlanta. So again, people are just getting us. So here's a couple of things from SmashFly that I loved.
Chad: So, Alan and Tyler from Intel I loved that they're on stage telling everyone that their bat shit bad recruitment funnels suck. Get rid of them.
Chad: I want to bring these guys on because again, they're Intel, they have a lot of money they're pushing into recruiting and what not, which I think is just awesome especially from a tech systems' analytics standpoint, a data standpoint.
Chad: But I want to get these guys on the show to talk about their recruitment infinity loop. It's really good shit and we saw a lot of that where everybody is kind of moving from this old funnel to more of an infinity loop.
Chad: That is more predicated on not just the recruitment process but also engagement. So trying to kind of blend engagement into the recruiting piece. Go fucking figure, right?
Joel: Engagement, a common theme on the show that we love so very much.
Chad: Yes, yeah. And Holland also said in her presentation of Delta Airlines that they actually have gained, they're given 80 hours back to their recruitment team through their use of Chatbots. So, I thought that was pretty cool.
Chad: So hearing these practitioners on the stage talk about yeah, this is really cool. But also to be able to talk about the data and the really practical ways that they're using it and the impact on their teams.
Joel: Chatbots clearly work. Like a year or so later they're clearly ...
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: It's one of our new stories we'll feature, a little tease there. They're going to start falling like dominoes to acquirers. But anyway, we'll get to that in a second.
Chad: Too easy, yeah.
Joel: Shout out to iHeartRadio.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Apparently you can now listen to the Chad & Cheese podcast at iHeart.
Chad: Yeah, iHeartRadio and also the new platform Luminary. We're on Luminary, iHeartRadio, and we just continued to add platform.
Joel: Luminary is an interesting one. They have paid podcasts like exclusives on there.
Chad: Yeah, yeah.
Joel: So let's see if that works very well for them. You had a couple of new listeners, Kevin Kirkpatrick and Stormin Norman. You know anything about these cats?
Chad: Kevin Kirkpatrick, first and foremost, I just wanted to say that you're saying John wrong, okay? So he's a new Philly listener. Or maybe he's not a new Philly listener, but he's a Philly listener.
Ed: Yo, that John is so lame.
Chad: That's exactly right. Thanks Ed. Stormin Norman is a guy that I've known forever. He's been in this industry forever and he has 1500 domains that he's trying to get rid of just because they're sitting around doing nothing. So he's like, "Chad can you say something about it on the pod?" I'm like, "Yeah, not a problem."
Chad: So if you're looking for ... These are trusted domains that he really just can't do anything with. Go ahead, hit us up on chadcheese.com.
Joel: Are they really good?
Chad: Yeah, some of them are actually pretty good. But I didn't go through all of them because it's like over 1,000 domains.
Joel: We need to give him Jason Davis' number because he's got about 1,000 domains too. Maybe they could be like a bundle package deal.
Chad: But anyway, so shout out to another, I believe, new listener, a Jose Watson. It's hilarious. He actually was listening to the Chad & Cheese podcast without headphones at work and he was asked to please put the headphones on because there's some language. So sorry not sorry Jose. You should have known better.
Joel: He had a moment there, didn't he? Oops.
Chad: Oops. Then Sarah Stamp who logged into and listened to our live stream on SmashFly's Transform. She's a listener but she obviously wanted to watch the show too. So, big shout out to Sarah.
Joel: And that's when she discovered those guys have a face for podcasting.
Chad: Especially you, yes.
Joel: I'm sorry George Clooney. Have we shout out to SmashFly Transform yet?
Chad: Yeah, those guys really killed it in Boston. The venue was pretty awesome. Having practitioners, again, not just talk about fluff about stuff on stage, I hate that shit.
Chad: I get up and leave when I hear practitioners just talk about fluffy bullshit on stage. I was in my seat listening to things that actually mattered. So big props to Jay Z, to Tom, to Brandy and the gang over there for putting that together.
Joel: Yeah. I was sad that I had to jet out early for you know personal reasons. But I was glad to see that the QR Code is making a comeback with Sprint Recruiting, I believe.
Chad: Don't call it a comeback, it's been here for years. Last but not least, we've got to finish this shout right with RecFest. Guys we've been talking about RecFest for a while. I know it's like Chad shut up it's already sold out. You can still get on the wait list.
Joel: You lead the way.
Chad: Yeah, you can still get on the wait list. But here's the thing guys, 3,000 attendees, five stages. They're actually shutting down four of the stages and we're going to be the headliners.
Chad: So we're the last ones that are actually on and through our friends at Talent Nexus, we're going to be doing some really cool stuff with them. I'm just teasing you about it now.
Chad: But one thing that we will tell you about is if you're going to be at RecFest, we've actually teamed up with Talent Nexus and we're going to be giving some lucky listener/twitter follower, whatever, a free year of beer or coffee depending on what they like. If they like coffee we'll probably give it to the person who's going to take the beer. But anyway, free year of beer. Promotion should be a blast.
War Games: Shall we play.
Chad: God damn straight. I'm stoked. We have some other surprises with the guys from RecFest. We're putting some things together. You've got to be at the stage because we're going to be giving a lot of shit away and a lot of surprises are going to happen. So, it should be a blast.
Joel: Be there or be square baby and you'll miss my red, white, and blue speed dial if you don't show up.
Chad: Correct. I sure hope you don't have one of those.
Joel: Boom.
Tengai: Hi. This is Tengai, the unbiased interview robot. You're listening to the Chad & Cheese podcast. I love these guys.
Joel: And we love you too Tengai.
Chad: How could you not.
Joel: Almost as much as iCIMS love Jibe this past week or two weeks ago.
Chad: Yeah, yeah.
Joel: Our buddies at iCIMS who have gotten the acquisition bug here lately acquired Jibe, which I guess you would call sort of a talent platform.
Chad: More of an engagement.
Joel: Yeah, making career sites, being knee deep in Google stuff really early on.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Yeah branding stuff. Sort of an attraction ... See how I did that, we'll lead into that. Sort of an attraction platform that iCIMS is building here. You'll remember they acquired TextRecruit a year or so ago as well. So they're building a nice little platform for marketing to candidates.
Chad: Yeah, and I think TextRecruit has probably been like close to two years now, right? Man, it's been a little while.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: So I mean once again people, I'm going to say this again and you've heard it before but too fucking bad. Let me make this very clear, this is an arms race. It's what it is. You either pick who you're going to partner with as a core tech or you try to survive on the island by yourself. That's what's happening here.
Chad: So, Canvas obviously, Jobvite, TextRecruit, iCIMS, Jobvite also with Telemetry, which is kind of like a Jibe like platform, I guess you could say.
Joel: RolePoint.
Chad: Yeah, RolePoint. I mean there's all this that's actually happening, and this is an arm's race. Make no doubt about it. The big question is if you're a start up out there or if you're a company that has been a point solution for a very long time, are you going to join in this kind of arm's race? Are you going to try to duck and cover and hope this shit passes?
Joel: So we have a whisper number for what iCIMS paid for Jibe, unsubstantiated rumors, but we like our sources pretty well. The number that I heard was 60 million.
Chad: Yeah. So the amount of cash that they actually were able to put together was like over 40 million, right?
Joel: Yeah. Jibe raised around 39 million, I think.
Chad: Okay, okay. So you take a look at the sale on that, that's not a bad buy for iCIMS, right?
Joel: No. Jibe investors didn't get quite the 10X that they were probably hoping for. It was more like the one and a half X.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Yeah, and acquisition on the West. I had heard over the years, sort of negative rumors about Jibe and sort of they're running out of money.
Joel: So I'm not going to say that it was a clearance sale, but it probably was a little bit of a bummer for Jibe investors who forked over 40 million.
Chad: Yeah. Well Joe very early on became very fast friends with Google, right? With Bogomil and then now Tarquin to be able to infuse their tech, the Jibe tech with Google and use Google search, which we thought was very smart, right out of the gate.
Chad: And while that was happening, guess who else was a part of that whole kind of collab that was happening? iCIMS. iCIMS is doing the exact same things. So the big question was were they pretty much in the room together, did this all kind of come about through those types of relationships? That's a good question.
Joel: Well we know iCIMS is a huge fun of Google and sort of taken up the middle man of job search.
Chad: Right.
Joel: So, yeah, definitely a match made in heaven from a Google affection standpoint.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Joe will be joining iCIMS as a VP, I believe, or a general manager of the new Attract product.
Chad: Which means Jibe's going away.
Joel: Probably, probably. It's a good name though.
Chad: Well last year ... No, it's a great name. Last year when we were at iCIMS HQ and we were going through the iCIMS' Influence Analyst Conference they were talking about these different components.
Chad: The big question that I had for Al was dude, you can't build all this shit. You can but it makes no sense. He was like, "No, no, you're right. You're right." Which is one of the reasons why we bought TextRecruit.
Chad: So I see this as something where some very smart people, the Colin Day's of the world, the Al Smith's of the world, they know their shit. He's a due diligence kind of guy, so he saw something I'm sure in Jibe that they wanted to pull in because it's kind of like cheating, right?
Joel: A little bit. Susan Vitale at iCIMS will probably hate me to say this. But I like Jibe better than I do iCIMS as a brand.
Chad: Yeah. I mean that's the hard part, right? Not to mention it has the name in the market. Not to mention if you pull Jibe, and this is kind of the argument that you and I have had for a little while is if you pull Jibe into iCIMS as a part of iCIMS you could have perspectively lost money from clients because clients actually have a bundle of money for a "talent attraction", talent engagement type of platform, and they have obviously a bigger pile of cash for their applicant tracking system.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Here's the thing, if they're both together, I guarantee you that pile of cash for the engagement piece is going to be much, much smaller. But if it's a different platform, a different product but just owned by iCIMS, I think they can actually keep and gain more money that way.
Chad: Again, that's just my opinion but knowing how the actual market thinks and selling into this market for 20 years, that's what going to happen.
Joel: I know you're a big fan of house of brands. But to me, and I could go either way, I'm a huge fan of either depending on the product. But I think with the announcement of Attract, iCIMS Attract or whatever they're calling it, I would not be surprised to see Jibe and TextRecruit sort of melt into this new Attract tool.
Joel: You will probably say that's a bad decision. I would say it's probably just something that's going to have to happen regardless. But we'll see those guys in a few months. We'll have to nail them down for an interview and see what's really going on with those brands.
Chad: Well literally if you have a company like ... And this has a lot to do with culture too. Let's not try to throw this out and just think it's a brand thing because it's not. The people who work for TextRecruit right now, okay, they might be getting paid through obviously the iCIMS funnel. Totally get that, right?
Chad: They believe that brand. They are a part of that brand, that TextRecruit brand. If you get rid of a brand like that, something that has had a purpose and something that ... I mean Eric has obviously sold these people on for years because he believes in the purpose. He embodies that purpose. That's going to be an issue from a resource standpoint because people will leave because that purpose means so much to them.
Chad: So, if they are looking to make this transition, they're going to have to do it in an incredibly delicate manner.
Joel: Slowly. It will be iCIMS Attract messaging powered by TextRecruit for the next two years and then it will slowly just fade away.
Chad: Again, it's a delicate conversation.
Joel: It's just delicate. Delicate like the name Karen, which leads us to our next story.
Chad: Karen.
Joel: A love story between Alexander and Karen.
Chad: Alexander Mann Solutions acquires Karen.ai. This to me is big fucking news. It's a Chatbot, right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: So we've got all of these messaging solutions that are being acquired. Now, again, this isn't just an arm's race for the "tech vendors." RPO and staffing see the writing on the wall as well and they know they have a better chance of building the tech and it will be adopted if it's going through their services.
Chad: So if you're a staffing company and you're using these products or if you're an RPO and you're actually embedding these products and clients are paying for these products and you're embedding it into their process methodology, holy shit, it just makes sense from an adoption standpoint.
Joel: Yeah, yeah. I mean if you're a shareholder in a Chatbot right now you might want to go yacht shopping because the dollars are coming.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Investment dollars we've been talking about for a long time. But these suckers are going to get snapped up in the next 12 months post taste.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: We know they work. You've mentioned Holland talking about the time saved, the money saved with Chatbots. We know that job seekers like them. There's no more black hole like. Chatbots work and ultimately people are going to write checks to gobble these guys up.
Chad: I'd like to dive deeper with Holland too and find out exactly what they did with the Chatbot that saved them that 80 hours because there might be ... I would guarantee there's even more that can be done. But do you know who actually works over at Alexander Mann Solutions? Do you remember?
Joel: That's our girl, right?
Chad: Yeah, the queen of Chatbots.
Joel: Quincy.
Chad: Yeah, the queen of Chatbots. She was on the pod last November.
Joel: Yes.
Chad: If you haven't listened to go chadcheese.com, click on podcast and just look through the November podcast. It's there, listen to it. It's damn good.
Chad: So, when I heard the whole Karen thing happening I automatically thought about her.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Because she knows, I mean, she knows her shit just not from an RPO solution design kind of a thing, because that's what she spent a good amount of her time in. But also from a tech standpoint, she really knows her shit.
Joel: Yeah, and she knows the players.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: So for Karen to be the one that they targeted and went to acquire, and the terms of the deal were not disclosed. But our girl knows her Chatbots.
Joel: So if you're a Chatbot and not using Karen as a blueprint, you might want to start doing that because someone who knows Chatbots and someone who has the money to buy them pick this one so you might want to follow suit.
Chad: We'll have to look at early stage too, right, because you can't allow a Chatbot in some cases, depending on what you want to do with it, to get too big.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Because of the price tag, right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Not to mention the ability to really change the road map of where that perspective Chatbot is going. So, I think we really haven't heard a lot about Karen, to be quite frank.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: And I think this is probably smart because they were out there. There's no question they were shopping and they were checking out all these Chatbots. This Chatbot was probably in the right stage for them, for exactly what they were looking for. It's probably not as mature as a TalkPush, well I guarantee you it's not as mature as a TalkPush or an Olivia or something like that.
Chad: But the price tag goes up dramatically when you start talking about them.
Joel: Yeah, and she knows all the teams as well.
Chad: Yeah, yeah.
Joel: So, I'm sure whatever talent they had had some part in writing a check to get those guys.
Chad: Yeah, good point. Yeah.
Joel: So yeah, modulation is all around. But this is to me going to start a domino effect. We're going to start seeing these Chatbots get gobbled up.
Chad: Watch this space kids.
Joel: Another space to keep an eye on is the one that JobAdX is currently residing. Let's get a word from them and we'll talk about another new CEO for one of our favorite hourly sites.
Chad: Yeah.
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Joel: So I feel like Snagajob is one of these dying stories that doesn't get enough attention. But Snagajob not too long ago was a major, major force in the job world. And they've fallen off the map really quickly.
Chad: So do you feel like they're a dying brand because they did a brand refreshed, there's a Snag.co or something like that.
Joel: Yeah, I feel like that was a major fuck up because when they were Snagajob, you can post your jobs and part time work and hourly folks. They were a force in that space and they decided to go platform, marketplace based Uber for workers.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And we both agreed that's a good place to go. But they have not faired well in terms of that new world. They went to Snag.co. They became more sort of native at based. Their original CEO, the one they had when we first interviewed them about this is gone.
Chad: Right.
Joel: The guy who took over is gone. And now they have a new CEO. So shit's fucked up over Snag.
Chad: I have an entirely different kind of vantage point on this. I think that-
Joel: That's why we have a show.
Chad: Yeah. I think Fabio Rosati. I love the name by the way, Fabio. He stepped into the CEO position. It might not have been announced this way because he's the fucking executive board chairman, right? But I think it was always short term.
Chad: And Mathieu Stevenson who's the new CEO, he was the CMO. But he joined the team in January, right? So the guy hasn't even been there a year yet. I believe that Fabio was looking to groom Mathieu to be able to take over the position so he could step back. That's what Fabio has done, he's stepping back into the executive board chair position.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: So I think this was something that was kind of calculated behind the scenes. I could be totally wrong, it could be fucked up. But to me it feels like it was calculated behind the scenes and that they were looking for the right person to take over as CEO and that person is going to have to be focused on on-demand platform for hourly workers.
Chad: And that is going to be a very competitive space with Uber, is now in that space. Obviously the Upworks of the world. There are just so many of those companies and I guess from my standpoint and we're obviously a little bit closer to this brand, but do you think Jobcase is going to go in that direction too as kind of an on-demand kind of a system?
Joel: I think that's going to inevitably have to be part of their offering. I know they're built so much around community. But it would be an interesting part of what they're doing.
Chad: Play, yeah.
Joel: You know actually play because they already have sort of ingrained reviews and communication engagement amongst job seekers, which really plays well into who hiring is good with contract workers or gig workers. So I definitely think so.
Joel: I just think with Snag whenever you lose a CEO and sort of the visionary, the person that you know was ... It's just really hard for organizations to deal with volatility in the CEO ranks.
Joel: So, I mean maybe Snag will get it together. We'll certainly report on it either way. But I just think you never ever hear about Snag in the news, from release. I mean they have just sort of disappeared and I'm sure they still have happy customers and people using them.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: But I just don't. I don't feel the same kind of energy around the company that I did just a few years ago.
Chad: They still have close to 100 million registered workers and nearly half a million employers using this system.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: So, again, I think they've got a long runway, right? And I think just from my standpoint, this change was always something that they kind of calculated behind the scenes thinking that ...
Chad: Fabio is still going to be from Upwork fame, right? He's still going to be there overlooking everything. But they were looking for the right person, I believe, to take this over.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: The reason I asked about the Jobcase, your ideas on Jobcase is because they just hired Jeff Chow to be their SVP of product management. And that dude led product and design teams over at Google and TripAdvisor.
Chad: So, the $100 million that they received just months back they're looking to make some very aggressive moves on their side as well. But again, you're right, they're more of that social community piece, how do you perspectively flip a social community kind of a piece into an on-demand work platform?
Chad: It seems interesting because they're both in the same segment going at the market differently.
Joel: Yeah. I think we should make a note to reach out to Mathieu Stevenson, new CEO, and get him on the show and dig in to what the vision is and what they're doing and what we can expect from them in the future.
Chad: I'm already on that. Tease alert. Transitioning over into something we never talk about, Slack.
Joel: Slack.
Chad: It's interesting that people think it's a big deal that Microsoft is banning the use of Slack.
Joel: They're sort of blaming it on security issues with AWS. But it's a competitive play. Microsoft has a competitor for Slack, as such they don't want their employees or their company using Slack when they have a competing product like that.
Chad: Right.
Joel: It just doesn't make any sense.
Chad: No.
Joel: Now what is interesting and this wasn't in the story, I don't think, is I understand that LinkedIn uses Slack internally. So it would be interesting. I don't know if they ... I'm sure they banned it across all Microsoft companies but I'm pretty sure that LinkedIn has been a Slack user for a long time. So that could be a nice little headache for employees to switch over to Microsoft products.
Chad: Yeah. And I haven't used Teams but I've actually talked to people who do and they love it. I've used Slack, and I don't like it. I just don't like it. It's information overload especially when you get five or six people on a team and they're collaborating on something, it is a bitch to try to keep up with in some cases.
Chad: It really ... It's like information overload. It's better than email, don't get me wrong. But I just ... Slack is a "finished product" it doesn't to me feel like a finished product.
Joel: Aside from being a very competitive landscape, I think we've been reporting on open source products or services and Matter most.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I think it was the one recently that got 50 million. Did I hear that correctly?
Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joel: So whenever we see a space like this where there is a main player and then it's basically commodity and people do it for free or do it really expensively, it gets in trouble. When you have big players like Facebook and Microsoft getting into this.
Joel: But as you listen to ... When Slack went public, their CEO was doing the rounds on CNBC and Bloomberg and everything. They asked him that same question, you know, "Hey, you're getting competition from really big players." He wasn't super concerned. I think his comment was, "We're competitor aware, but we are customer focused."
Joel: Which is I think a good way to be. In fact, he mentioned that apparently Google has a competing product. But cool for him is no one knows about it. So it is true that these big companies, the bigger companies will throw resources at creating a competitor.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: But if Slack continues to iterate and I do think at some point they're going to be an office competitor, which is a big reason why I think Microsoft wants to kill them now.
Chad: We'll see. I just ... Again, the whole Microsoft kicking Slack out to me just doesn't seem surprising at all.
Joel: I mean the real challenge for Slack is once all the companies that are using Microsoft, when the IT departments say oh well we don't want to use this AWS service, da, da, da, we're going to go with Microsoft, that's when Slack really hits a brick wall, I think.
Chad: I haven't heard of many companies switching from AWS to Azure, but it could happen.
Joel: Well if the IT department says look Slack is a threat, a cyber threat or a risk.
Chad: That's what this is. This is more, I think, kind of like corporate propaganda. But you know who is really good at this messaging thing?
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Joel: Let's talk rumors. Tons of rumors. Which one do you want to start with first?
Chad: So the Entelo one is ... I mean we're going to talk about Entelo and hearing that they're just not getting traction. But you actually found something even more beyond that. There's kind of some different angles that they're trying run right now.
Joel: Yeah. So we've been talking about Entelo trying to sell discount stuff, looking for anybody to buy their shit.
Chad: Something, yeah.
Joel: They have just been coming up empty. So, a rumor that I got was that Entelo were currently trying to get some private equity funding to merge with ConveyIQ. ConveyIQ you'll remember used to be take the interview video, sort of higher review competitor. And then they became sort of an all-encompassing platform.
Joel: So yeah, there's a rumor that's emerged there. The source also tells me that Entelo was running out of options. Recent departures of VPs, of engineering products sales and marketing, which are kind of the main departments for those who don't know. Plus most of the sales team are out.
Joel: So, shit's bad in Entelo. It looks like they're trying to find an exit. We've heard everyone from iCIMS, to Workday, to all kinds of other companies that are looking to buy these guys. But it looks like the clock is ticking big time.
Chad: Yeah. I think for many of these startups that are starting to see their runaway
kind of run out. The most important thing that companies have to understand is cool tech definitely is awesome to talk about. But if you don't have a solid revenue strategy in place you're fucked because you can talk about, you can try to build cool new tech, but if you don't have money to fuel it then you're screwed, right?
Chad: That's one of the things that I think you get mesmerized into all these numbers that are thrown out from a funding standpoint, but you've got to remember profitability is the key and if you're not building toward that, and you're just building toward the new next cool feature in the next sprint, then you're really losing sight of a long term objective.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Whether that's acquisition or actually building to become your own platform. That's what I'm seeing from a lot of startups is they're not focusing on the fuel, right? You have the engine but you got to fuel that fucker somehow.
Joel: Yeah. And Entelo has been around for quite a while. I want to say that they launched in '11 or '12. We talk a lot about when you build your product on someone else's stuff, that you run a huge risk of getting screwed.
Chad: Right.
Joel: We saw this with Facebook folks like BranchOut and BeKnown and others when Facebook changes their rules you're screwed.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Entelo's original business was hey we're going to scan LinkedIn and when someone changes their profile or they're more active, we're going to pick up these little cues on LinkedIn to tell you like hey, this person may be ... We're looking for a job, we'll have to be open to a new job than others.
Joel: When LinkedIn changed their rules and they couldn't do that anymore and said no one is going to spot our shit, Entelo was like okay now what do we do? And they became a sourcing tool essentially.
Chad: Right.
Joel: Then that became commoditized. From what I hear, they don't even scrape their own data anymore. They either buy it or they rent it or whatever from someone else.
Chad: Right.
Joel: It's that whole pool of 150 candidates that everyone uses. So they've become a commodity when they used to have a pretty cool business.
Joel: But I think LinkedIn pulled the rug out from under them and they've been scrambling trying to figure out what we do or what we do next ever since that happened, if memory serves correctly.
Chad: Yeah. You can run an organization for a good amount of time especially if you're focused on burn rate if you have $41 million. I mean they had close to $41 million.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: So they've been around for a while but still, again, it's all about that strategy and how you're going to attack the market. Are you going to attack to be able to partner and deeply integrate with these core systems? Are you going to try to build something that will stand the test of time, which is going to be hard as fuck, let's just say that.
Chad: At that point, your strategy is entirely different and you're more of ... You have more of a focus on agencies and direct to clients, right? But the strategy is entirely different and I see a lot of these companies they don't even know who to reach out to. They have no clue where the cash is in the first place.
Chad: They see Fortune 500 brands and they think it's going to be easy to walk in and actually sell that shit. Number one, it's not. Number two, they probably don't have as much money as you think they do. Number three, they probably have no clue what talent rediscovery actually fucking means, right? So, you're fighting all of that. It blows my mind, it really does.
Joel: Mind blown. Let's go to CareerBuilder, speaking of blown minds.
Chad: It's interesting because we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago and you would ask me, "Who's head do you think is going to roll?" I said Irina. I think Irina, the current CEO, her head is going to roll just because she's in charge, she's the one making the decision. It's her, right?
Chad: She sets the tone for the entire organization. Well the tone has been a mass exodus of executives and very pivotal types of individuals from CareerBuilder, right?
Chad: So we were talking about that and I had a bunch of people texting me and calling and all that other fun stuff saying you're right, right? So I'm not saying she's gone or, but I believe because of the whole ...
Joel: Yeah, the stove is getting hotter and stuff.
Chad: Yeah, the board meeting, all that stuff, I don't see it lasting very long guys. The big question is who's going to step up and who are they going to put into that CEO position?
Joel: It will be another pencil pusher, which I think is what I called her when we talked about this.
Chad: Yeah, yeah.
Joel: For those that didn't listen or don't remember, they had their second sort of executive leave within a year of the company and the board meeting when she mentioned, yeah, heads are going to roll. They're still trying to sell this thing. They're trying to scrap it, sell the pieces of it, and it's just not working.
Joel: Irina, the nature of the beast, is most likely going to be replaced.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Yeah. I don't know how else this is going to end but it's not going to be pretty for a lot of people.
Chad: I'll tell you when you can really see this thing is over, look at the bonus cycles for sales people and when those bonus cycles are actually paid out, when you start to see the mass exodus, it's fucking done. Done. That's all there is to it.
Chad: That's like the last piece because there are so many great sales people already at CareerBuilder, they can see it happening internally when they see it happening internally and you see that happen after the bonus cycle, done.
Joel: By the way, CareerBuilder sales people, there are a lot of Chatbots looking to hire good sales folks. Get on the phone there with AllyO and Mya and Olivia and everybody else because they're paying well and higher.
Chad: Yeah, yeah. So in Denver this week and you and I are always pretty high on Google and what they're doing and it was interesting because this guy got on stage from Google, I can't remember his name. But he was talking about how Google is pretty much going to stop all the third party cookies, right?
Joel: Yeah, yeah.
Chad: He's talking to a room of tech vendors who rely on third party cookies for retargeting. It's like why did you just say that in this room? Was that kind of a nice little hey we're going to smack you upside the head? But he had a-
Joel: Remember when they launched Facebook jobs at TAtech?
Chad: Yeah, TAtech, yeah.
Joel: Job boards, yeah that was good.
Chad: Like are you fucking kidding me? It was a really short presentation. It wasn't really great. I guess he had to go to Morocco or some shit like that. Then he was trying to get off the stage and it was like no, you have time for questions.
Chad: So I was lucky enough to get the first question and I asked him about the WaPo story this week in Washington Post that actually ... that researchers had actually called Google Chrome spyware because of the amount of cookies that it pulls in, right?
Chad: So my question to him was okay, so if you already have Google Chrome which is collecting all these cookies and actually being seen and called spyware, why are you telling everybody in this room that you're doing away with third party cookies?
Chad: He looked at me like I can't believe you just asked me that fucking question.
Joel: Of course.
Chad: Then said, "Google is doing away with cookies, next question." I'm like what the fuck is this?
Joel: All right. I think that concludes our rumors segment of the show. Let's talk about Wayfair employee's uprising and call it a day.
Chad: Yeah, let's close this bitch out.
Joel: You know the story better than I do because it's more of your lane. But basically Wayfair furniture maker was selling furniture to, I guess what, border?
Chad: No, it's the current. So the current situation that we've been hearing all over the news is kids in cages, kids sleeping on concrete, that kind of thing, all right.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: So apparently the Federal Government said well let's go ahead and spend $200,000 on furniture from Wayfair for an immigration detention facility. For a immigration detention facility and employees got wind of this and they were like no, this is not right.
Chad: Now, it's not that they don't think it's right that kids sleep on something other than concrete, number one, okay? So it's not that they want to take beds away from the kids. They have a fundamental problem with obviously these kids being in cages and sleeping anywhere away from their parents.
Joel: Principle, the principle of the whole thing, right?
Chad: It's the principle. So this impacts our industry. Everybody is like why the fucks are these guys talking about this? It's pretty simple because this country was built and will continue to be built on immigration, right? And we've been asking as our professionals and professional associations and really the largest professional association that's out there today, SHRM.
Chad: Where are you? We're still waiting to hear from our standpoint, to have an interview with somebody at SHRM to be able to talk about the responses to their support of the current administration immigration laws.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: We know that they're focused in and what they're trying to say is they're focused on just the workforce stuff. But as we all know, this country is blended and we can't find people to fucking fill jobs as it is right now period, right?
Chad: So, the fuel of immigrants from the start of this country has never stopped. It has always helped us to diversify and to innovate and to be able to think that we can just change that overnight and stop it makes no sense whatsoever.
Chad: We need a professional organization like SHRM to be able to address this and to be able to answer questions and find out why they aren't moving the dial on this conversation.
Chad: They should be on the show. We should have a conversation about this because this matters.
Joel: I think for me historically speaking, the way that workers uprise and sort of let their voice be heard is really unique to this time and period. Back in the day it was there was a labor union and a labor boss and they would express the views of the workers.
Chad: Right.
Joel: And now workers are just saying we're just going to mobilize ourselves and have a view point. What's amazing to me about the Wayfair story is these workers went to management and said we don't want you to do this. And management said fuck you, we're doing it. And the workers said, oh is that the way it's going to be? Then retaliated.
Joel: That's a really interesting dynamic in the world. The way that workers are saying screw the company and we're going to mobilize and let our voices be heard. And that companies because of low unemployment have to take it, is just really an interesting dynamic to me historically.
Joel: And from labor unions to sort of now, it's just a really intriguing evolution to how workers are sticking it to the man.
Chad: Yeah. I'm not a big De Blasio fan. But he said something on stage last night that really kind of resonated with me. He said, "People of America don't look at these immigrants as the reason why you aren't progressing in life the way that you want to. Look at your employers. Look at the companies who aren't paying you the wages to be able to actually get you there."
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: That's where the focus should be and we need to get our heads on straight and we need an organization like SHRM to step the fuck up and actually start addressing these things because if they're going to get on Twitter and they're going to say they appreciate certain aspects of what this administration is doing, great. Let's go ahead and open up this conversation. Let's have a real conversation that's not all warm and fuzzy.
Joel: All this excitement has really worn me out and I think I'm ready for a nap.
Chad: I'm going to go drink one of those Denver beers. We out.
Joel: We out.
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