Share, share, share! Everyone's sharing everything on social media. Employers and recruiters who are sharing, however, aren't really doing it right most of the time. That's why Cliquify was founded. Think of them as "Canva for Recruiting." Amit Parmar, CEO at Cliquify joins the boys to pitch his company, and its concept, on Firing Squad. Are employers ready to embrace The Share? Does he make it out alive? Gotta listen to find out.
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Fring Squard Intro (0s):
inLike Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, and baddest startups through the gauntlet to see if they got what it takes to make it out alive? Dig a fox hole and duck for cover kids the Chad and Cheese Podcast is taking it to a whole other level. Level. Oh yeah. What's up everybody? It's your favorite degenerates, aka the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheesman, and as always, the Bert to my Ernie. I am joined by my co-host Chad Sowash and our victim today, everyone, let's please give a warm round of applause.
Joel (42s):
We have Amit Parmar. He's the CEO at Cliquify, spelled like Liquefy with a C. Amit, welcome to the Firing Squad.
Amit (54s):
Yeah. Hey guys, glad to be here Joel and Chad, been waiting for this. I, hopefully I don't walk away with too many bruises.
Joel (1m 1s):
Geez,
Chad (1m 1s):
No promises.
Joel (1m 2s):
I hope it lives up to your expectations. Hope it lives up to your expectations. Well, before we get into all the company stuff, give us a quick Twitter bio about what makes Amit tick?
Amit (1m 13s):
I grew up in India, lots of travel, so I love traveling, exploring different cultures outside of work. Flag football. So I've been coaching for the last seven years. That's the NFL Play 60 for those in America. And I will say, I do like to read, articles, not books, like short form articles.
Joel (1m 34s):
Real intellectual, Chad Intellectual.
Chad (1m 37s):
Blogs.
Joel (1m 37s):
Well, tell him what he is won today, Chad.
Chad (1m 41s):
Well Amit welcome to Firing Squad. It's actually the post Us election edition. At the sound of the bell you're gonna have two minutes to pitch Cliquify. At the end of two minutes, we're gonna hit you up with about 20 minutes of A and A. Be sure to be concise or you're gonna get hit with the crickets, and that is the signal for you to pull your shit together. At the end of Q and A, you're gonna receive either a big applause, the polls are closed, the results are in, and it was a runaway win. Pack your bags and get ready for all that lobbyist money flowing into your bank account. Golf clap. You haven't won yet. Actually, it looks like you're going to a runoff.
Chad (2m 23s):
More shaking hands and kissing babies is necessary. Just make sure that you keep that concession speech handy. Or the firing squad. No time for a concession speech on this one. You'd better exit stage left because you're gonna be run out of town on a rail. Are you ready?
Joel (2m 41s):
Jeez,
Amit (2m 41s):
I am ready. Let's go.
Joel (2m 44s):
All right, pitch this baby in three, two.
sfx (2m 47s):
Ding, ding, ding.
Amit (2m 48s):
All right. Hey, thanks guys. I'm Amit Parmar, co-founder and CEO of Cliquify. Been in the HR and talent space for over 17 years in large enterprises. So what's Cliquify? We're basically an employer branding platform that helps enterprises build, activate, and measure their employer brand to attract talent. What's the problem that we're solving? Well, Cliquify was born out of a need that I had as a talent leader, along with my recruiting teams, which was really, how do you attract talent through networks on social media channels? There's tons of tools out there that'll automate your content and stuff. And what we're finding, and we all know that candidates trust workplace content about three X more than any sponsored ad out there.
Amit (3m 32s):
So the problem that we had, and my recruiters had around the world, was, how do you easily create content? The marketing department simply or no help. They're too busy. The employer branding person was a team of one supporting hundreds or thousands of recruiters. Any piece of workplace related content took days to curate. And, we lost, we used at least three different tools to elevate our employer brand. So for example, we used to use Adobe and/or Canva earlier and a separate tool for capturing employee videos. And yet a third tool to activate employer brand content across the social channels. So this caused a lot of confusion for my teams and friction with hiring leaders and employees, and ultimately just heard it adoption.
Amit (4m 18s):
We simply weren't able to scale content. So with Cliquify, what we created was an all-in-one platform that helps in a very easy way, you don't need to have a marketing degree, for employers, recruiters, hiring managers to create content, activate it across their employee base through social media channels. And ultimately, the most important thing, which is how do you measure how it's all performing? How is content resonating with candidates out there? Anybody can post content, but really what we're driving is a big data play around what kind of content will get you the most engagement. So I'll wrap this pitch by saying, according to LinkedIn study done recently, marketing is the number one skill required of recruiters of the future.
Amit (4m 60s):
That's what we're helping build through Cliquify, through recruiters and hiring leaders around the world. I'd welcome the list us, cliquify.me.
Joel (5m 9s):
Thanks. All right, Amit, thanks. Thanks for the pitch. Pretty tight, pretty tight, pretty tight. Let's get to the name. That's what we always cover first. So Cliquify with cliquify.com, which is spelled correctly. C L I CK is an Australian ad agency.
Chad (5m 27s):
But is that really a word though? Is Cliquify really a word?
Joel (5m 30s):
Well, if you were to spell Cliquify on a game show, you probably wouldn't use q but either way.
Chad (5m 37s):
Just wondering if it's in the dictionary. Okay, guys.
Joel (5m 39s):
Talk about the Q, the qu, but, but more importantly to me, you own the.com with the QU, but you're promoting it as the.me. Help me understand that even more so than where you landed on Cliquifywith QU.
Amit (5m 56s):
Yeah. Yeah. So the.me is really about how do you personalize your content? Everybody is moving towards personalization. So the.me is really about a more personal touch to your content, which is what candidates are in a favorable way reacting to these days, right? So that's the.me and the Cliquify is the C L I Q is, it actually comes from, you know, forming cliques and, and that's the whole networking element of what we're trying to drive.
Joel (6m 25s):
Ah, okay. All right. I I can buy that. I guess I can buy that, I guess. Sorry, let's talk about money. You guys are founded in '19, apparently our totally bootstrapped at this point. Who's funding this baby? Is this seed round coming? Talk about the financial situation.
Amit (6m 40s):
Yeah, look, we couldn't have launched at a better time. You know, just a lot of need out there for companies to get efficient with how they're attracting talent and smart with how they're attracting talent through scalability. We got AE Ron from Ben Franklin Tech Ventures, which is a Pennsylvania state fund. We we're actually based in Pennsylvania. So we got a hundred k. That's you know, gone a long way for us along with revenue from operations. And we are raising a seed round of $2 million at the moment.
Joel (7m 10s):
Have you nailed down the $2 million or you're shopping it for $2 million?
Amit (7m 13s):
Yeah, we're shopping it at the moment. We've got a lead investor interested, but of course it's, we're going through some valuation discussions at the moment, and that's always gonna be a discussion.
Joel (7m 23s):
Okay. So it's not, it's not a firm $2 million at this point. Okay. I just wanted to clear that up.
Amit (7m 30s):
Correct, yeah. We're actively raising it and we have a runway of about 24 months at the moment, so we're not, we're not too worried yet.
Chad (7m 38s):
Well then you have, you have revenue then, which is a good thing. So talk about revenue. What's RR or ARR look like today?
Amit (7m 46s):
Yeah, so we, we launched our product in September of 2020, so literally 2022 is our second year in business. We broke even in our first year on revenue. And currently our ARR or our MRR rather is around $25k is, is what we're at right now. We're tracking some big logos or deals at the moment, or clients that should move up our MRR to close to $35 to 40 K.
Chad (8m 13s):
Okay. So you were the VP of talent at Unisys, Global Director of talent at Thermo Fisher Scientific, HR consultant at IBM. Why the hell did you even think about getting into the vendor space? I mean, you're not an old dude, okay. You might have a little gray, but you're still not old. Okay. You got plenty of time to get your ass into a C-suite position. Why did you switch over to the dark side?
Amit (8m 40s):
Oh, man, you know, I'm a problem solver ultimately, you know, I saw white space, I had a $30 million budget in my previous job and I would go to these HR tech events and just see all the massive amount of fragmentation that's happening in the HR tech space. And frankly, this was an idea or a problem that, along with myself, a lot of my peers, my former peers I guess in the industry now, struggled with. And it's a huge opportunity that I wanted to just take a leap of faith and try this out. And so far it's been a great ride.
Chad (9m 14s):
Okay. Okay. So you actually told us what problem you're trying to solve. I was kind of confused. Are, are you actually creating content? Are you a conduit for distribution after somebody else creates it? What do you guys actually do? What do you perform on the platform?
Amit (9m 30s):
Yeah, so we are able to create content on the platform. We do have a services engine where if a client needs our help, we can actually create branded templates right within our platform. But, we do have clients, if you're a large enterprise, nine out of 10 times, they already have a branding person who's creating the content on a platform. We're driving scalability. So there's a lot of controls, as you know, that need to be put in place with content. We're crowdsourcing it in one place. So we're basically a content management engine. And that's essentially what we wanna be is the content engine that drives it.
Chad (10m 11s):
Are you curating or creating?
Amit (10m 13s):
We're creating, we're not curating. Yeah.
Joel (10m 15s):
So you're like an agency.
Amit (10m 16s):
Yeah.
Chad (10m 16s):
How are you creating, you, you actually have like free agents doing this or how are you creating?
Amit (10m 22s):
Yeah, so we have a survey. We have designers, not in-house, literally like contractors, just like Canva does, where we're actually creating templates that are very specific to that company's, you know, vision statements, they're benefits, like basically everything that you end up that ends up on a career site that frankly never sees light of day. So we take a lot of that content and basically bring it back to the company and say, here are your assets that, you know, they might have already created their EVP or their value prop statements and so on. So our go-to place is the career site initially to start to build that content.
Chad (10m 59s):
Okay. Okay. So, well that being said, it sounds like you're a social amplification platform, really. You did more distribution, better content. So took a look and on LinkedIn, you guys have 728 followers. Facebook 135 followers on Insta 82 with about 141 posts, and on Twitter 30 followers with a hundred posts. So why are you not eating your own dog food?
Amit (11m 31s):
That's a great question. So we have we've actually had content and we want, you know, there are a lot of these automation tools out there. We believe you need to have a person creating the content to drive that one-on-one, you know, followership, it's a longer end road and that's essentially what we tell our clients as well. It's not like your recruiter's gonna start using Cliquify, and like, you know, a week later you're gonna get a thousand followers. That is not the business we're in. Chad, the business we're in is how do you slowly help build quality talent and the followership, with amazing content that people want to resonate with. You know, there are all these tools.
Amit (12m 11s):
I mean, you know this Chad, right? I could go out there and buy followers. A lot of companies do that for 200 bucks, I'll get a thousand followers, right? That's not what we wanna do. We wanna actually have content that resonates with people.
Chad (12m 25s):
Well, and that's all well and good, but if I'm throwing great content that's resonating with nobody because it's hitting nobody, shouldn't you also be the engine to drive following?
Amit (12m 41s):
Absolutely. You know, that is certainly a case, but we're not in the business of driving followership through the Cliquify's followership, right? We're in the business of driving followership Chad. When you use Cliquify, we're basically telling you, we're enabling you to create followership. So when the end user interacts with the content, they have no idea whether it's Cliquify, all they see, it's Chad's content. Does that make sense?
Joel (13m 5s):
I thought for sure he was gonna give us the old, it's always the cobbler's kids that have the worst shoes. Cause he's so busy fixing other people's shoes. But he didn't, to his credit, he didn't bring that one up. All right. Admit it. You're a younger guy. A little history from my perspective, I interviewed Jobvite15 years ago, and their whole thing was like, we're gonna put share buttons on jobs. We're gonna give people the ability to, you know, throw the jobs all around their social media. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna kill job boards, you won't need job boards anymore, et cetera. It turns out that people don't really like sharing jobs to randos in their network. I mean, if it's my family, why do they care about you know, an accounting job at my company?
Joel (13m 50s):
Like, it just didn't take off. And you rarely see, I mean, you still see share buttons on jobs occasionally. Why is this different? I get that it's more a little bit visual, a little more billboardy. Convince me how this is different thanJobvite touting. Hey, we're putting share buttons on all the jobs and we're gonna change the world.
Amit (14m 10s):
Yeah. Great question, Joel. So right off the bat, we're actually not about just sharing jobs, we're about telling stories about your culture, right? So jobs just happens to be one little component of what can be shared and built through Cliquify. So it's what we're finding, actually, we have data on this. We're finding that when candidates see other content, like flex work benefits or say environmental responsibility that the company is driving, those are the types of assets that are actually driving more engagement than just, Hey, I've got this job that I'm looking to share. And that's a big difference from like, we don't even compete with job boards, Joel, right?
Amit (14m 50s):
Nor the ATSs actually, because the ATSs are so focused on the job, which is super important. What we're here to do is actually tell a bigger story of what your company's about beyond just jobs.
Joel (15m 1s):
Okay. What's the call to action on on these images? Like what's typically, is there a URL on the image or you just building brand talk about that?
Amit (15m 10s):
Yeah, so the URL is hardcoded as Cliquify. So, that's the tracking mechanism that we do automatically so the recruiters don't have to worry about it. It could be anything if it's a post related to your benefits, maybe it's linking to your career site that has a benefits section in it. If it's a post related to your corporate social responsibility initiatives, maybe it's a video from your CEO talking about on YouTube, right or wherever video? Talking about how they're protecting the environment. So the beauty of what we've built is a super flexible tool where the user can decide the CTA.
Joel (15m 50s):
Okay. How often do you refresh the content? Because obviously you can't just share the same image every week. How often are people refreshing these images? And also resizing, because every different social media has different sizes. Talk about how you manage that.
Amit (16m 5s):
Yeah, great. Great question. So, the resizing our software automatically takes care of, so there's no need to think about the resizing. That's something that is something we do on, on the backend from a software standpoint.
Joel (16m 17s):
So if I wanna share something about our D E I program, I'll get it in a Facebook size, II'll see it in a Twitter size and, and I'll share those each accordingly. Like you just automatically make different sizes.
Amit (16m 30s):
Exactly.
Joel (16m 30s):
Okay, got it.
Amit (16m 31s):
All the user has to do is which channels they wanna publish it on. All right.
Joel (16m 35s):
So talk about the refresh then.
Amit (16m 37s):
Yeah. And then the refresh piece is super important cuz you don't want content getting stale. And the way we handle that is through variety of content. So we have about 10 different EVP categories or value prop categories. And before the tool even goes live internally for an enterprise, you're looking at at least a combination of about 800 plus assets that are already preloaded before the first user even accesses it, right? So there is a dearth of content already. And then we also allow so that the enterprises can allow interchangeability for the user. So they can say, okay, within this card, I want my user to have the ability to change this piece of the content or that piece of the element, if you will, or the content.
Amit (17m 23s):
So we do allow that level of flexibility for the user to actually put their fingerprints on it.
Joel (17m 30s):
Okay. So if I'm a recruiter, my network is probably people I went to school with, people in my local area, people that are also recruiters. But if I'm recruiting something that isn't any of those three, for example, what value do I get sharing something my company that isn't really connected to my network of people? Do I have to build a whole different network of Ruby on Rails Developers because that's what I'm recruiting for and hope for the best. It just seems like there could be a real disconnect between what my network is is in companies and what I'm trying to actually recruit for.
Amit (18m 1s):
Oh yeah. And that goes back to our earlier conversation with Chad around, you know, we're in the business of this long-term followership based on the domain of that recruiter. Meaning, you know, today that recruiter might not have that followership, but that is the reason why with Cliquify, they're able to start to build that followership. So if I'm hiring Ruby on Rails, you know, or developers or n AWS architect today, I might have five followers, but the more content I start to share and, and you know, through my network or maybe the hiring managers network, because this is not just for recruiters, Joel, this is also available to hiring managers and employees.
Amit (18m 42s):
You are starting to build that followership and we're seeing that, you know, we've been in business now two years. We're actually seeing data where one of the recruiters had about 1500 followers when they first started, and now their followership makeup has completely changed to their domain and they have about 3,500 now.
Chad (19m 2s):
Okay, So you kind of turned your nose up when I said, do you curate content? So it's like, is there something wrong with curating content? Why don't you curate content? Talk to me about that Amit.
Amit (19m 16s):
Yeah. You know, it's, look, there's nothing wrong with curating content. A lot of companies do it. We're believers in our DNA is , when you build content, like when a recruiter or hiring manager builds the content, they own it. Like there's this whole like personal aspect to being involved in the sourcing or the attraction process. Look, we can go out there and purchase, I mean there are all kinds of tools to curate content. We just, we feel, and we actually believe this in our DNA at the core of who we are, is enabling the recruiters and hiring managers to actually get involved in the recruiting process through content.
Chad (19m 58s):
Yeah. Okay. You do both. I mean, because here's the problem that I see in our industry right now. We create too much fucking content. And, here's the problem. We create content and then instead of planting the seed, watering the seed, allowing it to grow, going back to it, having more conversations around it, we go on to the next piece of content, we go onto the next piece of content. It is total content bullshit. Man, it is ridiculous. So why, why don't we reuse the same content, parse it. I mean, there's just so many opportunities that we have to be able to use curated content, not to mention old content that we've created that is still relevant for today.
Amit (20m 38s):
That's right. No, you're right. I mean there, and it's not 'or' proposition, it's an 'and' proposition. But
Chad (20m 46s):
Is it with Cliquify though? Can you do that with Cliquify?
Amit (20m 50s):
No, not at the moment. Chad, maybe in the future, potentially if we see a need from our clients that hey, there's a need for us to start to curate content automatically for them, we can certainly explore that. But at the moment, Chad, we're built to get recruiters and hiring managers engaged in the process early on.
Chad (21m 9s):
Okay, I can feel you on that one. So what's the process? I create content. You guys create content. How is it shared? Do I use my mobile phone? Is it sms? Is it an app? How does everything actually get to the point of execution where I'm getting it out to our network?
Amit (21m 27s):
Yeah. Because we have a build component. We actually tried this on the phone, so mobile first and the feedback we got from users is it was too difficult to create content on the phone. So we're a desktop version only, at the moment. You can certainly access,
Chad (21m 41s):
So not creating content, but distributing content. So let's say for instance, somebody within the actual hub staffing hub comes out with some great content that's relevant content. Can I actually receive that on my phone and share it out to my network?
Amit (21m 56s):
Yeah, you would get that in your phone through an email. There is an app version we are looking to build in the near future here where, you know, people get notified of new content, but at the moment it's through an email notification that goes out to like a hiring manager just, you know, from a recruiter that says, Hey, I just posted this, you know, let's say something about, you know, what you are as a leader, right? Can you review it? And so they'll actually get a link in an email that'll take them to Cliquify to start to actually edit and build that content.
Joel (22m 29s):
Video is becoming more and more prominent in social media. I don't have to tell you that gifs or gifs, however you pronounce it, are also becoming.
Chad (22m 38s):
It's gifs. Jifs is peanut butter.
Joel (22m 39s):
Yeah, GenX says gifs. Yeah, Jiff is peanut butter. Like that obviously creates a whole level of comp, you know, complexity to your product. Talk about video.
Amit (22m 50s):
Yeah. Video is super critical to us. We're super excited to be launching it. We're actually just finalizing the finishing touches on it, what we have done with video. So I, by the way, in my previous job, I actually had a video solution that I paid a pretty penny for it. I paid $50,000 a year for it. The biggest challenge I had was people just didn't wanna submit videos. Right, there's something about videos that, and what we found was, I think it was just ultimately how easy you make the process frictionless for people to just submit videos in the rawest form. And that's what we're building and have built is a crowdsourcing.
Amit (23m 32s):
So now clients and prospects will be able to crowdsource videos straight from Cliquify based on various assets. It's not just about the job, it's the culture attributes and all of those things. And the employee will just receive literally an email that says, Hey, Amit has requested you create, you know, submit a video and it'll be on your phone back to Chad's point. So it's very mobile friendly all the employee has to do, and they'll get those key questions that are, that the admin has asked for the employee to, to provide and they'll just record it on their mobile device and submit it. My job as an employee is done the raw footage on the receiving side. You'll be able to, as an admin or creator within the platform, you'll be able to take hundreds of footages and figure out what makes the most sense for you to actually curate within Cliquify to be able to then share it outwards with your employee base to then share it with their networks.
Joel (24m 28s):
So these are actual employees that you're targeting to create content as opposed to like say stock footage of videos or gifs, which is sort of different than how it currently works. Where you guys are making the images and they're easily sharing, there's a lot more complexity with the video portion of the program. Who is your normal client? Is this an SMB thing? Because I tend to think of this kind of stuff being very big company. We have an agency do this, like they're the ones that handles this. Is this a small midsize business play in terms of customer?
Amit (25m 5s):
Yeah, you know, ironically that's how we started when we launched it was our target market, was the SMBs. But we're starting to, I mean, 90% of our accounts right now are large global enterprises. And I think the reason for that
Joel (25m 20s):
Do they have agencies?
Amit (25m 21s):
Yeah, they do. Which is very interesting.
Joel (25m 24s):
They use this alongside the agency. The agency's not managing this for them.
Amit (25m 28s):
No, the agency's not managing it for them. Maybe in the future that's a possibility, but what we're finding is there isn't, there's this gap or this need for people to scale this content in a controlled way. And that's the sweet spot that we're providing, so the bigger the organization, the bigger this problem is for you. And that's what we're seeing right now. Now having said that, we do have a mid-market play where, you know, companies, you know, that can't afford an agency, companies people have never heard of, but they're amazing places to work for. There's a whole market there that we haven't even tapped into Joel at the moment just because of where we are in terms of our scalability.
Joel (26m 10s):
Talk to me about automation. Any plans of the future to say, Hey, you won't have to manually go in and share these things. We're gonna integrate into your account every week, every Wednesday at three or whatever time you set it, we're gonna share this stuff without you manually doing it. Is that something in the roadmap or is that something you don't want to touch?
Amit (26m 31s):
So it is something we have discussed internally and with our existing clients, and generally speaking, about 60% of our clients we spoke with, they actually prefer that, you know, they wanna be able to touch and feel the content. So, you know, we'll continue to monitor the automation component, Joel, but we're not sold yet that that is the answer to attracting talent
Joel (26m 57s):
Boosting posts or advertising. Is there an element of that either currently or in the works?
Amit (27m 1s):
Yeah, so we actually have a relationship with PandoLogic. If a client is interested in taking our content annd doing sponsored ads with that content, they have the ability to do that through PandoLogic.
Joel (27m 17s):
And that's advertising on Facebook and Instagram, not job boards or?
Amit (27m 25s):
Well, Pandologic is job boards specific, Joel. And so there's a whole social media element to that, that they're not yet able to sponsor if they wanted to take that content. It's their content, our client's content, they're welcome to do that directly with LinkedIn and so on. Joel,
Chad (27m 41s):
Joel, this sounds expensive.
Joel (27m 41s):
So expensive, and the pricing isn't on their pricing page. So I'm scared to know how much this is.
Chad (27m 47s):
I gotta know. Yes, if you can't put the pricing on the pricing page, I'm just not, I'm kind of afraid to ask, but I'm gonna ask. Amit, how much would this cost me?
Amit (27m 56s):
Yeah, so, you know, as a buyer, I'm very, very, you know, cognizant of the pricing, you know, the budget pressures that all of the HR leaders are under, currently, and they will continue to be. The way we price is unlimited users, unlimited content. So it's like an unlimited data plan with your cell phone. We don't charge by the seat. And so the basis of our pricing is based on the size of your organization. So, and we'd cap it. So if you are an organization with a thousand employees and hiring on an annual basis, let's say 500 employees, this product will cost you $10,000 a year, right? If you're an organization that is, you know, 50,000 employees and hiring, you know, 8,000 people a year, this product is capped at $75,000 a year.
Amit (28m 45s):
That includes the video capability. So what we're doing, Joel and Chad, is we're basically consolidating all these point solutions that you have to, you know, measure your manager employer brand. We're basically consolidating it all and saying, you don't need an Adobe anymore. You don't need a separate video solution anymore. You don't need a social engagement tool anymore. We're basically more play to try that. All right, I'll stop. I just heard the crickets.
Joel (29m 14s):
Before we go too long. I don't normally do this, but I'm on the fence. I want you to answer this question concisely for me. Talk about the numbers. You guys track results, talk about that.
Amit (29m 26s):
Yeah, so there's so many ways to cut your brand, right? Your, your employer brand. We're seeing roughly 11 x more candidate engagement than any sponsored ads that that's out there, with the same piece of content. We're seeing 11 x more candidate engagement. We're basically driving cost down of ads so you don't no longer need to spend on ads because you can get your employees involved in the recruiting process. We're driving the cost per click down about three x at the moment.
Joel (29m 56s):
Okay. And what do you want to be when you grow up?
Amit (29m 59s):
We wanna be the content engine, Joel. That's essentially who we are, is a content engine that basically enables attraction right now of candidates. But there's a use, there's a whole, you know, use case there around the marketing function.
Joel (30m 15s):
All right, Amit, you've had your time with the firing squad and it's time to face that firing squad. Are you ready?
Amit (30m 21s):
I am ready.
Joel (30m 23s):
So I'm gonna go first. I always look historically at companies and Chad and I have part of the magic of our show is that we're old and we have context to like startups and what's come before and what hasn't. And sometimes it's just a bad idea and sometimes time catches up with the idea, right? Mobile catches up or technology speed, video, you know, things kind of catch up to these ideas that are early. And I wanted to go into this hoping that, you know, maybe the social thing and the sharing thing, maybe the world is just cut up to that. And I also think about culture, originality, authenticity. And I think that today is really, really important in what we do and companies that want to just out of the box, build a brand with, you know, either stock photos or different fonts, and we do different images.
Joel (31m 12s):
Like I, like I get the value of images on social media and creating simplicity around that. The question for me is, the world is changing so fast, what is this product actually mean? And, is it a product or is it a feature? And to me, social media is so fast moving. Video is so relevant to people, ages different ages. You know, what shares on LinkedIn isn't necessarily effective on what shares on Instagram. And I fear that people just think, I don't have to think about this, I just have to like, share this thing everywhere. And it's sort of this mass post and pray mentality, fire at everybody and hope that, you know, 1% responds. So on one hand, I like the simplicity, but I also, you know, just having a Crello or Canva account and having somebody in marketing like create these things every week that's more custom to my brand, more about us, actually taking pictures of who we are and as the company.
Joel (32m 8s):
To me, this is a shortcut to thinking and actually doing the work, that has to go into building a brand. I think that the sharing can happen without the piece of it. I think the automation piece is a way that you should focus on. I think the boosting of post is something that you should focus on, but for me it's just not enough to get me excited. I think there's a lot of work to do. I think the seed round, hopefully you have some visions of more sexy shit that'll get me excited. But for me, as of right now, man.
sfx (32m 38s):
Firing squad rapid fire bullets
Amit (32m 39s):
Oh no,
Joel (32m 39s):
It's nothing personal, but I just, I can't get on board, man. I can't.
Amit (32m 43s):
It's all good, man. Hey, I appreciate that, Joel. No worries.
Joel (32m 47s):
All right. Maybe Chad. He Chad's in Portugal drinking beer. He's gotta be nicer than me.
Chad (32m 53s):
I'm chill man. It's my, it's almost end of the day here.
Joel (32m 56s):
Chad, chill, baby.
Chad (32m 57s):
That's right, that's right. So let me tell you what I love. I love 25,000 MRR. You're about a third of the way there. You get to around a million then people are gonna care. They're gonna want to look at prospectively buying you, right? Get to $2 million. There's no question. I love the engagement numbers. Content is king. So you're going down the, the right path. But on the chess board of life, my friend, you want to be the queen, and to be the queen on the board, you need to start pulling in and blending brands like Forbes, right along with your current content that adds validation for any stream of content.
Chad (33m 38s):
And everybody will understand that. Having a Joel Cheesman blog right next to Forbes, makes Forbes look so much better anyway, so yes.
Joel (33m 48s):
True.
Chad (33m 48s):
There's a need for content blending. Invalidated names, email for distribution. Come on, man. 2010 called and they want their process back. Email is not mobile friendly. Quit telling yourself that. Text is mobile friendly. WhatsApp is mobile friendly. I mean, Facebook Messenger for goddamn sakes is mobile friendly, right? These are the areas that you need to go down. And I can't say this enough! Do not have a page on your website that says pricing and does not give me pricing. That is the most clickbaity shit that drives me crazy. Put the pricing out there and if it's too complex, then you have a problem with your pricing.
Chad (34m 29s):
Right? Simplicity.
Amit (34m 29s):
That's fair.
Chad (34m 30s):
Keep it simple, stupid. Okay. And finally, if you're gonna focus on content, you need to be the shining example for content. And I believe that you have the heart, you have the soul, you have the idea, but I believe it's a feature at this point, not a platform. Work those relationships with core talent management platforms. Get tight in there with integrations. Get that ARR around or one to 2 million. And I think you are going to find a quick exit because content creation is not easy. I agree. Cliquify i is pretty damn cool, but keep the concession speech handy because it's a golf clap for me.
Amit (35m 11s):
Oh man. No worries guys. Hey, look, I enjoyed the conversation, of course. As we always do, we always learn from these conversations and we'll take, I hope so. We'll take it from there, right?
Joel (35m 19s):
Take it for what it's worth, man, it's nothing personal. I hope you come back in a few years and tell me to stick it up my ass. Cause you just, you just sold for a hundred million dollars!
Chad (35m 29s):
Or maybe you took some of those changes, you implemented those changes and you took off like a fucking rocket ship. You're welcome man!
Amit (35m 35s):
And, you know what? I'm optimistic. So it's gonna happen. I love you guys regardless. I look forward to seeing you guys in person at the next event somewhere.
Joel (35m 43s):
All right, we appreciate that. For our listeners that wanna know more about Cliquify Amit, where do you send them?
Amit (35m 51s):
Cliquify.me.
Joel (35m 53s):
We out.
Chad (35m 53s):
We out.
Outro (36m 45s):
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.
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