top of page
Indeed Wave.PNG
Parental Advisory.jpg
Color-YouTube-logo.jpg
Apple Podcast.png
Spotify.png
Chad Sowash

Firing Squad: Sourcr's Chris Almond


Review sites are hot and valuable. Just ask Glassdoor, which sold for over a billion dollars last year. But do reviews translate to staffing agencies and recruiters? Startup Sourcr thinks so, and their founder, Chris Almond, is willing to face the Firing Squad to pitch his business. Will this Australian-HQ’d biz survive the harsh Q & A or be flushed like a rotting bloomin’ onion?


Gotta listen to this PandoLogic exclusive to find out.


PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:


Pandologic (1s):

Programmatic recruitment advertising platform helps employers source talent faster and more efficiently than ever thanks to predictive algorithms, machine learning and AI. Buzzword, overdose alert. Yeah. Pando was on the cutting edge of Programmatic, while being deeply rooted in the recruitment industry. pandoIQ provides an end to end Programmatic job advertising platform that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance without any waste spending to maximize the ROI on your recruitment spend. And their AI enabled algorithms use over 48 job attributes and more than 200 billion historical job performance data points to predict the optimal job advertising campaign.


Pandologic (51s):

The machine does all that shit. That shit sounds expensive! Think again Cheesman pandoIQ provides an end to end job advertising solution that delivers a significant increase in job ad performance without any wasteful spending. Sold! How do I get started? Go to Pandologic.com to request a demo and tell him Chad and Cheese sent you. Ooh. They have a chat bot too, that we can talk to. Oh, kill me now.


FiringSquad INTRO (1m 20s):

Like Shark Tank? Then you'll love Firing Squad! CHAD SOWASH & JOEL CHEESEMAN are here to put the recruiting industry's bravest, ballsiest, 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.


Joel (1m 42s):

I just want to know why we don't do all our firing squads during happy hour? We need more Australians on the show, I think guys, welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast! I'm your cohost Joel Cheeseman joined as always by not quite drunk yet Chad Sowash.


Chad (1m 58s):

Dude, we both have BrewDog beers, which we didn't plan either.


Joel (2m 4s):

No, no, no brothers from another mother for sure, which is always the case. Well, anyway, we have a, we have a, an Australian company, Goodday, you bastard as we always enjoy the Ozzies, our first firing squad was an Australian company. Welcome to the show, everybody. Chris "don't call me an almond brother" Almond. Chris, welcome to the podcast, buddy.


Chris (2m 27s):

Hey Joel. Thanks for having me mate.


Joel (2m 29s):

Sure. Well, give us a quick Twitter bio of you and then we'll eventually get to the company stuff.


Chris (2m 36s):

Yeah, sure. So I'm actually not originally an ozzie, like you can probably see by the accent, I'm from the UK originally actually got a background in finance, but then when I moved to Australia, like a lot of my compatriots ended up falling into recruitment and then a few years ago is when I started Sourcr.


Joel (2m 55s):

Good enough, Chad, tell him what he has won.


Chad (2m 57s):

Chris, you will have two minutes pitch sourcer at the end of two minutes. You're going to hear that bell then Joel and I will hit you with rapid fire Q and A. If your answers start rambling or you get boring, you're going to hear the crickets, that means tightening, get shit moving. At the end of Q and A, you're going to receive either a big applause. That means you're cooking jumbo, shrimp and lobster on the Barbie cruising on that new yacht.


Joel (3m 27s):

Ignited out back with a bloomin' onion, baby.


Chad (3m 30s):

A golf clap, ah, we kind of dig it, but it's Fosters and microwave chicken for you until you can get your shit on course, or last but not least a firing squad, start hoarding that Vegemite now because you're going to starve if you keep this business up running this way. Man, are you ready?


Chris (3m 52s):

I'm ready.


Joel (3m 52s):

Yeah, let's do this. In three, two, one.


Bells (3m 56s):

Ding, ding, ding.


Chris (3m 57s):

Cool. So Sourcr really exists to help build credibility in recruitment. And we're actually on a mission to help build stronger connections between candidates, employers, and recruiters. And the way that we do this is through the power of reviews and social proof. So really the reputation economy has continued to grow and influence the way that we all make buying decisions. And now the way is the organization's must build and maintain trust and even own credibility continues to evolve. We've got a world now, even with COVID, that's probably more in line than ever before. And that means that almost all of our customers have already formed an opinion of us by doing their research online.


Chris (4m 38s):

And that's a lot of the time before they've even spoken to us. And it main goal of that research is, is reviews, the stats down 91% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. I know I wouldn't have been probably most builders wouldn't have to a new restaurant book, a holiday or even and buy a TV without checking reviews online. And these same customers are deciding which recruiter will help them with their next career move or even help them find their next critical hire. So that's why we created Sourcer to give recruiters a credible way to highlight their experience and showcase their positive feedback from candidates and clients. So whether you're a recruiter or an agency owner, we can help you get real customer feedback.


Chris (5m 20s):

And that helps you attract new customers, retain existing and really stand out above the other competitors in your market. So the way it works is Sourcr helps recruiters collect reviews on autopilot after every placement they make. And we've got a bunch of digital marketing tools in the background and integrations to make sure that those reviews are everywhere that their clients and candidates could be looking. We've actually also recently released a full capability in net promoter score tool designed specifically for recruitment businesses as well. So they can capture real time insights on all their client and candidate interactions and then segment that by the things that matter. And that could be


Bells (5m 57s):

Ding, ding, ding.


Chris (5m 58s):

Cool well, there we go, guys, tying it up.


Chad (6m 1s):

All right, Chris, first right out, right out of the gate, employers hate Glassdoor in the review system. They believe it's an extortion racket. So why are recruiters and staffing firms going to feel good about reviews on Sourcer?


Chris (6m 16s):

Well, it's a great question. I think one of the, one of the challenges that I see with Glassdoor is the lack of control that recruiters have over where these reviews come from. And it, and probably the lack of verification as well. You know, anyone could leave anyone a review on Glassdoor. So the lack of control that the recruiters have over their reputation becomes a challenge. Whereas a big part of Sourcr is the verification. So we, we verify that those reviews are legitimate by tying them to a placement. So we know that that relationship or transaction in the sense of recruitments actually occurred.


Joel (6m 50s):

Let's talk a little branding, Chris, you are sourcer.com. There's no E at the end of that, I'm curious sourcer.com. The, the S the S the actual spelling of it goes pretty much nowhere. Was there any attempt to buy or acquire the.com? Is there any desire to do it in the future? Is it a hurdle to have to spell the name to everybody that you talk to from a sales side? How did the branding come about, and is it a strong point, or is it a hurdle for you?


Chris (7m 20s):

Yeah, it's a good point. You know, originally we looked at the branding cause we were really focused on getting that sourcer.com. We will focused on getting the.com, but as with a lot of, a lot of businesses nowadays, the.com is, is hard to hard to get. So that's when we came up with Sourcr and knocked the E off it, so we could get the.com. We thought a lot of work on our SEO recently because being a public sort of online directory, it's really important that we do rank. So we've done a good job recently of improving that. It was historically a bit of a problem, but now, you know, I've not seen a problem and I don't know whether you spell it wrong, but sourcr.com does go through to our website, not when I'm not with the E though, not with the


Joel (8m 4s):

Sourcr.com. Right. So my next, so there's no, no desire to sort of obtain the, the common spelling or you don't own sourcer.co.uk or .au or anything like that?


Chris (8m 16s):

No, not with the e. No. Maybe in the future, we'll, we'll check that out or it's off brand as well. So it's a tough balance. Right.


Joel (8m 24s):

Okay. Okay. So my next question again with branding, when I go to the site, it has me select, you know, UK, New Zealand or Australia. So one of my questions is why wouldn't you just redirect based on IP address. And secondly, are you only going to be focused in those three markets for the foreseeable future? Or are there growth opportunities in your strategy to go to other markets?


Chris (8m 50s):

Yeah. Good question. So we did actually originally redirect based on IP address, but we found that often people wanted to check out the other websites as well. So we want it to give control and flexibility over checking them all out. We were originally Australia, New Zealand. We launched in the UK crazily during COVID and yeah, that's, there's not plans to stop there as we start to scale and build the team out. We'll be definitely looking to other, or the recruitment heavy markets, like the U S where you guys are over there as well.


Chad (9m 24s):

So what are the major differences between you and a company like a recruiter inside?


Chris (9m 29s):

Yeah. Great point the way, I suppose, the way I like to put it is, you know, if you want a learning and development tool, and you're really focused on that performance management side of things, Recruiter Insider, it probably more fits that mold. If you want to use your reviews for sales and marketing and really amplify your brand and use that to grow your business that's really where Sourcr comes up top trumps.


Chad (9m 53s):

Well, who, who are you selling to? Are you selling to just staffing companies and recruiters, or are you also selling experience and data over to the employers?


Chris (10m 5s):

Our customers primarily are the recruiters at the minute. So we, we really pitch ourselves as a digital marketing platform for them. And, I suppose, the engine that does that is the reviews and the placements that they collect to showcase on their profiles. But over time as we start to grow and we start to build the traffic to our website, a secondary customer does actually become those employees and candidates because they're able to come onto our website, they can search by location, search by recruit, especiality, and then see a ranking of all the recruiters that we've got based on the reviews that they've received. And as we get more and more data and information, we can super drill down on that. So not only looking by location, especially our age, but we can also eventually look at, you know, specific job titles or things that are even more relevant to the employees and candidates out there that are doing the research.


Chad (10m 54s):

So most top notch recruiters that we've actually talked to here in the US will tell you that 95% of the recruiters out there are horrible. They're just shit. But your platform makes everyone look like they're top 5% or at least the ones that I've seen thus far. So I feel like there's some cherry picking going on. Are there reviews being cherry-picked by recruiters and staffing organizations? Can you kick out bad reviews? Can you contest them? How does, how does the process work with regard to the actual review system itself?


Chris (11m 28s):

Yeah, so sure thing. So there's no cherry picking involved the way it works for the agencies is we connect with their applicant tracking system. So a resident example, when a placement gets recorded by a team member that triggers an event tours, and then we flick off the review request to the candidate in glide. So they receive that once the reviews received back, we verify the review and we verify the placement and then that sits on their profile and is available for them to use elsewhere. So, because that's an automation, there's no way that they can cherry pick. Now the reality is, you know, because we're focused on placements, at least currently, you know, most reviews are going to be good, but our job at the minute isn't to highlight bad recruiters is to highlight good recruiters and highlight good work that they've done.


Chris (12m 17s):

And we think we do that in a pretty verified and controlled manner.


Chad (12m 21s):

And you're only touching a very, very small percentage of the individuals who are actually having interactions with those recruiters in the first place. So if it's from my standpoint, from a staffing organization, that's worthless to me. I mean, obviously that recruiter did a good job and the candidates going to love that they got a job for the most part. So all the data that I really want are those shit interactions that you're not going to provide me. Is that, is that true?


Chris (12m 51s):

Well, that's a good question from the performance management perspective. Yeah, absolutely. You want to get the feedback from all the client and candidate interactions. So internally we've got an NPS or net promoter score tool that does that for them, but externally the goal for the recruiters and the agencies is to showcase all their good work in a verified manner through a third party. So that's where the agencies really see the value it's, Hey, we've already done this good work by making this placement. We've already got a happy client. We've already got a happy candidate. How can we project this across all our other digital investments, whether that be our website, LinkedIn, or any other channels that we work on to make sure that any of the prospects that we're working with can see that.


Chris (13m 34s):

So it's all part of brand management.


Joel (13m 35s):

Chris, it looks like in, in 18, you got 300 around 300 K in seed money, correct?


Chris (13m 42s):

Yes.


Joel (13m 43s):

And so is there, is there a plan to raise more money? Is that going to be enough and particularly what did you do with the 300 seed money? I actually don't know if that's Australian dollars or exactly what that is. So you can clarify that for me, that'd be nice. And then marketing wise, I'm curious, you know, you have to hit a pretty high level of scale and critical mass of recruiters to sort of be valuable to a large set of people. So I'm curious about the marketing strategy and how you're growing that number of recruiters.


Chris (14m 12s):

Yeah, sure thing. So to answer the first question. Yeah, we raised 300 and I think our first round was AU$310K and that was Aussie dollar we've raised in printing around since at the start of COVID just to help, you know, put a bit of buffer in the bank account, while we go through what's happening at the many, well, absolutely I'll go list to be raising a Series A early next year. We, you know, we're already already revenue making, which you'd obviously hope after 2018. And the goal for us really is to get pretty close to that break even point. So when we do raise that Series A round, you know, we're not, we're not in the pockets of the investors. We have a bit more flexibility over who to choose, but yeah, absolutely, it's a bit, and that really folds into, I suppose, the second question, which is around that marketing piece.


Chris (15m 1s):

So our, you know, I, I would go to market is we we're a free product as well. So we've created direct a directory of what we think is about 80% of the recruiters in Australia. So we can mark out to them to claim their free profile, it is free to claim the profile free to collect their reviews. And then when they wouldn't really want to take that branding and marketing to the next level and get access to some of those or the features to help them integrate it elsewhere, that's all, you've got the paid models on top of that. So by doing that, it allows us to help that help achieve that critical mass that you mentioned, because it's absolutely, you know, something really important for an open online directory like this, like, you've worked out.


Joel (15m 44s):

Yep. And so you, you, you talk a lot about SEO benefits of via the profiles being find-able and I'm sure that plays into your marketing. And I'm curious about sort of the cultural angle of this. So in the States, there's very little of searching for, you know, staffing agencies or recruiters. It's usually, you know, we look for a job and if we apply and if it's a recruiter, great, if not, if it's the employer, great. Culturally do Australians and Brits actively search for actually, you know, recruiters and maybe even names of recruiters. Does it get that granular?


Chris (16m 17s):

Well, I suppose as a first, as a first point of call, the answer's no, because there's never been older than LinkedIn, which is sort of difficult to compare one to the next, there's no way to look for recruiters. So you may type in something like best recruiters, Sydney, or best recruiters in technology and check out what comes up. Where it sort of really works and helps with the agencies in that in SEO is post engagement. So the likelihood is, you know, I think it, I think this starts 82% of people will probably Google your name or Google your business's name once you've got in touch. And that could be before they even respond to an email. So we want to make sure when they do do that, the first results that come up as a Sourcr and we can showcase those reviews in Google search results.


Chris (17m 2s):

We're yeah. Yeah. So we're actually a Google review partner. So what that means is we can show up reviews in search results. I don't know whether you've ever seen before review snippets on other platforms. I think like Glassdoor, we've, as a verified review partner of them, we've got that same ability to do that so it really helps us get them ranked high and make sure that those reviews are visible for anyone on page one.


Joel (17m 26s):

And can you break down your free, the, you know, what, how many people are using the free product? How many are paying, or maybe a percentage ofwhat that is, if you don't want to, if you don't feel comfortable revealing the actual numbers, I'm curious how many you have in each of those sort of universes.


Chris (17m 43s):

Yeah, sure. So I'll just, enough to muddy up the waters, I'll just pick Australia, as an example. So I think there's about 17,000 recruiters that we've got profiles for on the platform. 1500 of them, thereabouts, who've been claimed and collecting reviews and around 30% of our claim profiles, or maybe just under are around unpaid accounts.


Joel (18m 7s):

So are you collected, is there a database that you're pulling from, and then putting those on your site, like, or people actively putting on profiles, are they sort of claiming the profile that you already have? So there's one more, it's three? So there's three buckets there. One is our directory that we pulled fromm two is the actual people that have claimed their profile, and three of the actual paid members.


Chris (18m 28s):

Exactly. Yeah. So for, for the most part, we've got a data team that runs in the background to get publicly accessible information on who these recruitment agencies are and who these recruiters are. And that allows us to go to market with this claim profile strategy. Now. Yeah, we can market out to recruit as individually, whether that be paid advertising or email marketing and a lot of content that you might've seen. And then we encourage them to claim, activate them, get them collecting reviews, and then the next stage is hopefully moving them. Okay.


Joel (19m 1s):

Just so, so it's 17,000 total of that, how many have claimed?


Chris (19m 6s):

About 1,500, yeah fifteen hundred.


Joel (19m 9s):

1500 and paid?


Chris (19m 10s):

About 30% and that's just in Australia and then we've obviously got people in New Zealand and under the UK as well.


Chad (19m 18s):

Okay. So yeah, it was funny. I reached out to a couple of recruiters in Australia and they didn't realize I actually had a profile on your site and they were, they were somewhat astonished that you had data on them and one of them, it wasn't correct. Tell me about the candidate reviews. They're really more like Facebook comments. Why did you decide on freeform reviews instead of pointed questions so that you could provide structured data that the employer, the staffing company could use?


Chris (19m 55s):

Yeah, it's a good question. I think there's two parts to it. We do provide limited structure day, which is at five star review. So they leave a five-star review and the testimonial. The first part to that is, is speed and conversion. The more, the more questions that you put within a survey or review request, the less likely it is that someone's going to leave that now we're fully mobile responsive survey. Our response rates sit between sort of 35 and 40% depending on the industry. So that's really important. It means that we're collecting reviews on most, from most candidates that they've obviously been placed.


Chris (20m 34s):

And then the second part of that is the testimonial is actually probably one of the most powerful parts of the review for anyone who's looking and checking out that recruiter, because it provides context to the actual service and experience that candidate has. You know, people mostly look at the overall rating, so it could be yeah, 4.5 stars out of five, over X amount of reviews. But when they're searching through the profiles, they really want to see what the comments are from the people that they've actually worked with, because that's really what helps build that trust and credibility in inexperience for anyone considering using that recruiter. Yeah.


Chad (21m 9s):

I love the transparency, but I'm sure there are a few firms that have pushed back. Have you actually had firms say, look, I'm not going to participate, get my recruiters off your platform.


Chris (21m 21s):

Yeah. We know there's always going to be people who aren't early adopters. We, you know, our, one of the goals of the platform is to make sure that we have a fully transparent online directory as well. So we work with the RCSA, which is a member organization for recruitment agencies over in Australia. And we want to maintain that online directory so if they don't want to participate, that's great. The basic profile will still say that there is no detailed information as such on who that agency is. You know, it's pretty much just their name, location, and what markets they work in if you've been able to gather that and it really sets it up.


Chris (22m 1s):

Now, if there's incorrect information, they're more than welcome to claim and change that information. There's nothing that forces them to collect reviews book for as if it is a legitimate recruitment agency in the market, we do still want to include them in the directory, but much as a Yelp word for businesses or anything else, like a trip review for restaurants or cafes.


Joel (22m 23s):

What's the biggest threat to your business? Is it a giant, like, you know, Google, like Google launch, sort of these profile cards in search on their India sites, which I assume will sort of sprinkle out into the world at some point. I mean, LinkedIn is a behemoth? Is it firms have been that have been around for a long time that could just sort of replicate this, this review, this review technology or feature, like, what do you, what keeps you up at night, if anything?


Chris (22m 55s):

First mover advantage, or at least from number one, number two is probably really important in a space that we're in. So getting market, getting, getting that critical mass that you mentioned before me is, you know, that that's pretty critical. I think, you know, if anything up, I'd say that's the thing that keeps me up at night, looking at, you know, unique ways that we can add value, provide content and you get up to the market, so we can get as many people as possible claiming their free profile. Because the way that we see is, you know, there's no limitations to that, we're helping the individuals and we're helping the agency brand themselves better. And there's that SEO element even behind it. So just claiming your profile and collecting a handful of reviews is better than not.


Chris (23m 39s):

And that's what we want to try and encourage all agencies to do.


Chad (23m 42s):

So Chris, this is a marketing play, pure marketing play. What's the next step past what you're currently doing today?


Chris (23m 50s):

Yeah. It's look for us for this, for the staffing agencies that we're working with the next play that, you know, we've already sort of dipped our toes into is that performance management or candidate experience side of things as well. And that's where the net promoter score tool tool that we've built sort of falls into that bracket. So we've got all these public reviews and, and the ways that we integrate them as part of LinkedIn, Google, and a few of the other things that we've got, which is sits on the marketing side of reputation. But as a reputation management platform another part of that is managing the team to make sure that they, you know, they deliver the reputation that you've built to the other clients and candidates that they work with.


Chris (24m 34s):

So we're starting to build that out as well. So that sits internally so they can measure their performance and segment it by team or by outcome of all those interactions that they have with the nine candidates that they didn't place or the employer that they weren't, they didn't manage to fill a job with.


Joel (24m 50s):

I wanna give you some kudos. Chris, your transparency in pricing is refreshing. Most of the companies we bring on, you have to schedule a demo and they're sort of a lot of mystery around pricing, but you guys have laid it out pretty, pretty clearly. It looks like you can obviously have a free account, which you guys set up for them for the most part and they can claim. Up to about $150 per month and then $49 per additional user for agencies. So you're, you're right around the 100 to $200 per month for an individual user. I don't know what your average average pricing would be, but I'm curious, you know, when you, when you have a freemium model to have that incentive or you know, those features that are gonna, that are gonna turn people to the paid version, what is your hook to really get someone to go from claiming their profile to then actually paying you guys to sort of get that boost?


Joel (25m 48s):

What's the catch? What's the hook?


Chris (25m 51s):

Yeah. Look, first of all, the most important thing that we encourage them to do when they claim is collecting reviews in the first place. And then once they do collect reviews, to be honest, the way that we pitch or demo and have conversations with moving people onto pricing is showing the results that we've managed to provide to other agencies that are on paid. You know, showing examples of where they type in, you know, a particular agency or particular recruiter's name, how they rank on Google or the testimonials in the full case studies of how we've been able to deliver support for other agencies on paid is, you know, it's, it's an ROI question for a lot of agencies.


Chris (26m 32s):

You know, marketing is something that more and more of them are investing in which is awesome, but they just want to see ROI, which is often quite difficult in marketing because it's, it's sometimes indirect. So, you know, our goal is, you know, we'll rely less on paid advertising. You can reduce your paid advertising spend if you can implement reviews in all these various different areas online.


Joel (26m 56s):

And you said, you're looking for a Series A funding, what kind of valuation do you think you'll be looking for? How much money can be made? Cause it, it seems like it's a little bit restrictive in terms of how much you can grow. There's a finite number of recruiters. There's a finite number of markets where this would be really valuable. What would, what's your valuation when you're shopping this company?


Chris (27m 17s):

Yeah, look, I'd be lying if I knew the exact valuation now, cause it depends where, what sort of position that we're in come March or April when we're looking to raise. But you know, given where our projections are in terms of revenue, we'd be looking to raise it, you know, around that six mil mark to really help accelerate into the UK and Australia more. And then the next step after that is how can we get into, you know, the older markets like, you know, we look at your represent example. There's I think there's, there's more recruiters per capita in France than pretty much any other country apart from the UK.


Chris (27m 57s):

Germany is really high recruitment, so that there's plenty of markets out there. That means that, you know, there's a good total addressable market to go up. And then I suppose outside of that is once you've got the buy in and the trust of the industry, there's, you know, whether it's, whether it's mark single performance management or even something else that's closely related, there's other revenue streams that we can potentially open up to look to provide more value to the agencies that we've obviously built trust with them in a working with.


Joel (28m 26s):

Gotcha. Gotcha.


Bells (28m 27s):

Ding, Ding, Ding.


Joel (28m 28s):

All right, Chris, are you ready to face the firing squad?


Chris (28m 33s):

Go on. Let me have it.


Chad (28m 36s):

I'll make this quick. I just finished my beer, so I needed to open. Alright, Chris, so the site looks great. I got to say, you know, going into this, I wasn't really sure where your focus was going to be in, you know, it is around looking good, feeling good and being able to promote whatever brand is on the site, right? Unfortunately, the candidate reviews are ambiguous and fairly useless from a user standpoint. I mean, I felt like I was on Facebook as I was reading through some of them. The hiring company reviews are more structured, but there's still much to be desired. And from a staffing standpoint, you want structured input or data points to provide better guidance and training for your staff.


Chad (29m 23s):

And, and really, if you take a look at the NPS score overall, I mean, you are dealing with a cherry picked group. If you did allow every single individual that you connect with, or they even gets touched by the recruiter to provide data to you, that be something that would be worth much more. But once again, I think you're being smart with regards to saying, Hey, this is warm, fuzzy, this is a great way to at least push your brand out there. Because most of the individuals I see on the site of the recruiters all have nearly five star reviews, which doesn't feel like a real world to me, but transparency does win the day.


Chad (30m 6s):

And SEO is obviously another great way to drive recruiters and staffing companies into your platform. Overall, I think you're going to have to get beyond the warm and fuzzy marketing play and being able to do, to try to ask for more data. Unfortunately, it doesn't feel that's where you're at now, so that my friend is why you're going to get a golf clap.


Golf Clap (30m 34s):

Hands clapping.


Joel (30m 37s):

All right, Chris. All right. So it's my turn. All right. So I always have a hard time with these sort of geographic plays where the culture is different than it is in the US. I'm American that way, so it's hard for me to wrap my head around how staffing agencies are so important, but I can wrap my head around the business of reviews. Certainly restaurant reviews and in our own industry, company reviews, employee reviews have been big business. Chad and I have talked in length about Glassdoors, exit of one point, whatever billion to recruit holdings who owns Indeed as well so there's definitely money and them thar reviews.


Joel (31m 23s):

So for me, I think you have a limited ceiling, but I don't think you need to have a billion dollar plus business. And if you're talking about, you know, 6 million, five, 6 million, you have to have a fraction of what the global sort of employer review business has to be successful. I also think that I loved being able to hear you say, looking at adding new things and features as we sort of build out the company because Glassdoor, although they started with just reviews, obviously are basically a job site now, and they're an employer branding play and they're making money in a lot of different ways.


Joel (32m 6s):

So I think that, you know, the key for you will be if assuming you get the funding that you're looking for is how do you take reviews to the next level and add things on top of it? I think Chad is right when he says, look, you can't just continue to be a marketing play and have longevity because that is, that's a moat that can be penetrated in my opinion. So to have like a unique technology and something that can build that moat for you, particularly in markets that you're in, are going to be important. As I understand it, the UK is incredibly competitive, but I also understand there's a ton of money in that market as well, even much more so than I'm assuming Australia and New Zealand.


Joel (32m 49s):

So as you grow new markets, the value obviously goes up. But I think the opportunity to have an exit where a UK staffing company, a big company over in Europe, just write you guys a check because you're getting some critical mass with reviews and engagement is a real future for you guys. So for me, I'm a little biased on the review side, cause I've talked about it and have businesses around that. But for me, I mean, I think there's a real opportunity here and my Australian friend bring out the bloomin' onions, there we go applause from me, my friends. How do you feel?


Applause (33m 27s):

Clapping.


Chris (33m 27s):

Yeah, thanks guys. It was good feedback as well, you can't complain with a good clap and a golf clap, so I'll take that.


Joel (33m 37s):

You could because you're Australian. And with that, we out.


Chad (33m 43s):

We out.


OUTRO (33m 41s):

This has been the Firing Squad. Be sure to subscribe to The Chad and Cheese Podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you're a startup who wants to face the Firing Squad, contact the boys at chadcheese.com today that's www.chadcheese.com.

Comments


bottom of page