It was another wild week in the world of work. The boys cover a wide range of topics. Here's a breakdown of some of the highlights:
PageUp: U.S. tech investor Battery Ventures is looking to cash out of talent management platform PageUp, which it funded in 2018. Despite efforts to expand globally and through acquisitions, PageUp struggled to gain traction in the U.S. market.
HireRight: Investment funds affiliated with General Atlantic and Stone Point Capital are acquiring background check solution HireRight for approximately $1.65 billion. The sale suggests a smart move to sell while the stock is high.
Beamery: Beamery's CTO and co-founder Michael Patterson has exited the company, amid rumors of acquisition by Workday. However, Workday may wait to acquire Beamery at a lower price, as Beamery has faced layoffs and client loss.
The Hatch: Australian startup The Hatch has raised approximately $4.6 million to create a job platform targeting Gen Z professionals, aiming to disrupt traditional job boards by using AI to match users with jobs based on their values and skills.
In addition, Chad and Joel discuss various topics related to current events and news, including the National Labor Relations Board's disputes with Amazon, SpaceX, and Trader Joe's, LinkedIn's legal troubles, North Korean hackers using AI for phishing scams, and more. Join us for a lively discussion on labor rights, privacy, and corporate ethics!
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Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman 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 and Cheese podcast.
Joel: Oh. Yeah. Two guys who have never taken and will never take a cognitive test. What's up, kids? You are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel person woman man Camera TV Cheeseman.
Chad: This is Chad sorry I'm late Sowash.
Joel: And on this episode, LinkedIn feels violated a Gen Z job board hatches and page up hose down. Let's do this. What's up, man? How's the shoulder? How's the wing? How's the wing treating you?
Chad: Had physical therapy for the first time this morning. All is well in the, you know, in the Sowash hood. I'm just getting used to not being able to use my dominant right arm. Number one. And sleeping is really the biggest bitch because I've gotta wear this thing. I can only sleep in one position.
[laughter]
Chad: And when you get into like, you know, six to eight hours, you know, you start to get sore when you
can't move. So, I'm not sleeping a good eight hours.
Joel: Is the one position on your back.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah, 'cause I've gotta wear my sling.
Joel: To the back. To the back.
Chad: Not the best.
[laughter]
Joel: So this...
Chad: It works.
Joel: So this is wild. So last, last week here in central Indiana, we got a little bit of snow.
Chad: We did.
Joel: We had the Allstar game. If you're an NBA fan. So it was kind of a busy week here.
Chad: How much did you guys get? How much snow? We got about six inches.
Joel: Yeah. I'm gonna say four to five. Yeah. Easily. So I go, I go to my local Kroger. I know that's your favorite store to get your products. And I'm pulling in and it's packed. And I'm thinking, oh, did I miss the apocalypse announcement? Did I mi... Like, we're gonna get a few inches of snow. This is not that bad. So I'm walking in. And there's this huge line of people, and at the end of the line is 50 Cent. 50 Cent...
Chad: Oh my God.
Joel: Was at my local Kroger signing bottles of...
Chad: Was he on stage? Was he rapping? What was going on?
Joel: No rapping. He was signing bottles of cognac. Apparently has launched a 50 Cent brand of cognac. So he was there signing bottles. Of course. It's a great trick to say, you have to buy the bottle. If I'm gonna sign it. These are probably a lot of people who hate cognac or have never had it. I personally am against the whole celebrity booze trend. I don't know how you feel about it. I know you love Ryan Reynolds. He's got a gin.
Chad: Why are you against it?
Joel: I just think it cheapens the whole history of the booze, man.
Chad: You're turning more into a socialist day by day.
Joel: Every liquor is rooted, is rooted in, you know, history.
[laughter]
Joel: And old people that made this stuff. And then some celebrity. It's not like 50 Cent has a distillery in his mansion, you know, brewing this stuff. He private labels it from whoever's making it. And then they try to sell it. I don't, I just, I don't buy it. If you do, that's all good.
Chad: I'm not a cognac guy. Aviation gin, definitely have some of that downstairs. I mean, gin is gin. Give me a break. There's some really good gin.
Joel: You and I could make some gin.
Chad: Really good gin in...
Joel: Chad and Cheese gin.
[laughter]
Chad: In Europe though. Really good gin. I think they're the storied pasts. Those are the ones who actually get more, they get more dollar value outta them. Take a look at like, some of the Snoop Dogg wines. I mean, they're going for like 14.99 or something like that.
[chuckle]
Joel: Martha Stewart. P Diddy. I just, I just, I can't get into it.
Chad: Well, and again, it's interesting 'cause here in the US we productize the shit outta everything.
Joel: Hey, I'm all for the abundance of American consumerism. I just don't like a celebrity, you know pouring in my drinks. All right. Enough of that talk. Let's get to shoutouts. My first one goes to our friends at Fama. Of course, you know, Fama is run by our friend Ben Mones. That's right. Ben Mones. So they have, if you don't know what they do for our listeners, they track Twitter, social media. So if your new hire is spouting off about Nazism or, you know, like racism, et cetera, they'll give you a heads up that, Hey, here's a red flag about this new candidate. Well, they just announced that they can now monitor TikTok videos, which I think is huge. If they can pull that off. Because I think that the Glassdoor write a three-paragraph review of the company that I work for is like, so...
Chad: That shit's dead. That shit's dead.
Joel: So old people shit. And...
[laughter]
Chad: It's Reader's Digest worthy.
Joel: Video is how people are, are doing it. They're not doing it anonymously. They don't give a shit. Like they're gonna, they're gonna talk shit about your company, their boss. And if I were recruit holdings, I would back up the truck to call Ben, write a check, and put this into Glassdoor. And Indeed, because the reviews that are going on those sites and text are going down. So they need to be able to track all this video stuff outside of the text world and put that on for employers to watch. So I think personally, this is a huge innovation at Fama, way beyond text on Twitter. That stuff's easy. This stuff is hard if they can pull it off. So big shout out to our friends at Fama.
[applause]
Chad: I think that's how you take some of these old crotchety background check companies and you make them worthwhile.
Joel: That's another one. Yeah.
Chad: You absorb a Fama and then you start to do those types of things. Yeah. I think Fama has a great exit opportunities all over the place.
Joel: Yeah. Checker startling.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Well, my shoutout is more around a market watch. Let's just call it that. What are you streaming these days? Are you guys watching anything? Netflix, anything like that?
Joel: Sure. Better Call Saul is a big one. Streaming The Masters of the Skies or the Air? It's on Apple. It's World War II B17s flying. Yeah. The whole campaign there. For sure. Yeah. Streaming all the time. I'm mad that I can't get Six Nations easily. And we got some big matches coming up in rugby that our friend Adam has...
[laughter]
Joel: I can't get, I gotta get Peacock or Paramount or some shit. Like it's too much. It's too much. So like...
Chad: It's too much. It is just too much.
Joel: Back to your point of what am I streaming?
Chad: So, I mean, we, we actually just finished up on Brothers Sun on Netflix, which is great. So check that out. But what I wanted to be able to fade into here is the streaming market. And Walmart acquires these, the smart TV company, Vizio for $2.3 billion. So I haven't personally been in a Walmart for about two to three years. Might even be four. I do remember that Vizios were very prominence in the TV section, and I thought Walmart owned them already. But the question is, how does Walmart's purchase possibly outflank the Apple TVs, Amazon, Fire Roku, and Chromecast? I mean, you take a page out of Apple's playbook, you become the OS you know, the operating system, the rails to how people actually stream. And if you've bought a TV over the past few years, you've probably purchased a smart TV, which is connected to the WiFi, has preloaded apps in an app store which means I don't need to purchase a separate Roku or Chromecast.
Chad: I mean, that's really where where we're moving. Now, if you don't need to buy a streaming stick boxes or whatever the hell they come out with, will Walmart then charge a vig on purchases made through the Vizio TV? You in a movie through the Amazon app? Does Walmart get a cut? Very Apple-esque. So then there's the advertising network aspect of it, which is very large. So as the US market continues to consolidate and we have less and less choice of places to spend our dollar, as we've seen a lot of these organizations, Disney plus consolidation, pulling content off, HBO Max doing the exact same types of things. What happens when Walmart has a acquisition and a play like this in this space? I think it's pretty big.
Joel: Yeah. That's pretty interesting. You know, the phone screen is that that's played, the iPad or tablet that's played? The TV and I guess maybe the car. I mean, the Internet of things really isn't happening. My refrigerator isn't a TV yet. So it is kind of open field to make a really big move. I think that Amazon recently allows you to have multiple services. So it's like one login, and then you can get Access Hulu or Netflix or all the different ones you have. So they're trying to have like, be a platform for all the streaming services. So I could definitely see a day where you buy Visio TV you give it your username for all these streaming services, and you just turn on the TV and it's all there already logged in. And then, of course, you mentioned the shopping thing. Hey, you like, you know, you like Ted Lassos, Nike's or Nike's maybe bad.
[laughter]
Joel: Does Walmart sell Nike's? I have no idea. But they could have something where like, Hey if you like, so and so's outfit, you know, we have it on sale, click here. And then you got your credit card in there.
Chad: Then they deliver it to you.
[laughter]
Joel: Deliver it to you, in an Amazon van. I don't know. But that's, yeah. That's pretty interesting.
Chad: A Walmart van.
Joel: Good for Mo, because no one's buying the Walmart phone. I can tell you that. No one's buying.
Chad: No. It and I mean, they're just trying to, they're trying to outflank each other. And while that's happening, a lot of these smaller, very innovative companies are, are getting either acquired or crushed. And again, that's what I'm talking about. Our choices here in the US are going down, down, down. These big companies are buying all of those brands. And either putting them under their umbrella or they're just absorbing them entirely. So this is definitely a space to watch. I think.
Joel: Chad's new favorite store. Oops. Winning Walmart. Well, no word if only fans is gonna be on these Walmart TVs of the future, Chad, but probably you're probably familiar with Alex Navalny in Russia. Putin's...
Chad: Rest in peace. Yes.
Joel: Putin's doghouse for sure is one dog, lighter this week, however, there's a new Public enemy, number one in Russia. Her name is Lolita Bog Nova.
Chad: Is that her real name?
Joel: That's a horrible, sexy name if that is her sexy name.
[laughter]
Joel: She is an OnlyFans model. And two years ago she posted some pics in front of Saint Basil's Cathedral Church, which is one of the real popular, like, has those Russian top, you know, little bubble things. That you've seen online. Anyway, she...
Chad: Cool architecture.
Joel: Posted topless, put these things online. And two years, two, three years later, Putin is fit to be tied. Apparently, she is Public Enemy number one. She's hiding out in the US somewhere. Unlike Navalny. I don't think she's gonna go back to Russia and Face the Gulag. Uh, but, uh, for now, she's safe and happy in the us but she better watch out 'cause Putin has a way of finding you and making you pay. No word on whether or not he's subscribed to her OnlyFans channel. But I wouldn't be too surprised.
Chad: Probably mad that he didn't get free access and, or this is literally just something that she made up so that she can get a story out there, which is, you know...
Joel: They have pictures online, it's pixeled out for the kid-friendly websites that...
Chad: I'm not saying that the pictures don't exist.
[laughter]
Chad: I don't say that the pictures don't exist. I'm just saying the story around the pictures. I don't know. But you know what Lolita can do? She can enjoy free stuff of Chad and Cheese. She can go to chadcheese.com/free where she could possibly have, oh, I don't know, craft beer delivered to her front door from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs. Whiskey. That's two bottles of whiskey from Joel and myself, from Text Colonel, our friends over there, the AI matching machines. T-shirts from who? Who, who, Joel.
Joel: We, we have a new T-shirt sponsor. Chad. We're very excited. They almost tripped over themselves to sign up...
[laughter]
Joel: To be the sponsor of let's be honest.
Chad: I'm always there.
Joel: Let's be honest. The industry's most popular t-shirt, the most popular, comfortable, cool t-shirt. Sexy is from the Chad and Cheese podcast. So we have a new design in process. We're hoping to have these for a futures conference coming up soon. But our friends, ERIN, to learn more about these guys, they do, employee referrals, just go to ERIN, that's erinapp.com and we're real excited to have them on board. Is this year's T-shirt sponsor?
Chad: Yep. New designs. Looking good.
Joel: Almost as happy as the birthday. The birthday folks.
[laughter]
SFX: Can you feel the tension in the air right now? I know. I can feel it. I can feel it all the way down in my plums.
Joel: That's right. Chad, I don't know if you mentioned it or if you've heard, but Plum, the folks at Plum are sponsoring a bottle of rum for one lucky winner who's celebrating.
Chad: Oh, I've a birthday. I've heard.
Joel: Celebrating another trip around the sun are Chad and she's listeners, Ryan Fillman. Maria and Nia. Ross Granger, Sarah Mara, Rebecca Horn, Mike Wiston, and your homeboy. Ethan Bloomfield are all celebrating. Another trip around the sun. Happy birthday everybody.
Chad: Excellent. Well, and hopefully we can see some of those people when we're doing Guess what, events, kids events. That's right. We're gonna be at Transform March 11th through 14th, where we're gonna be at The Win in Vegas. Over 3000 attendees. A hundred plus investors, hundreds of startups. Shit tons of speakers. And it's gonna be a good time. We're going to give away five free tickets. Five free tickets, winnings. That's right. Just go to Chadcheese.com. In the header you'll see, just click on win free tickets. I tried to make it easy for you. Win free tickets. What you're gonna do is you're gonna register for free stuff. That's right. All the stuff we talked about before. The possibility of winning free beer, whiskey, t-shirts, maybe even on your birthday, getting run from Plum. Also, you might get an opportunity to win a free ticket into Transform. So check that out. Then play the Ki Boo. Oh yeah.
[laughter]
Chad: You know what that means, right? That means we are going to Amsterdam. That's right. When we dance.
[laughter]
Chad: We're gonna, we're gonna hop on a plane to Amsterdam. That was the official ere recruitment Congress KBU playlist or at least the start of the KBU playlist. March 19th. It's the ERE Recruitment Congress where the knowledge will be flowing, the beer will be flowing and hopefully leaving brings enough beer for everybody because I'm gonna tell you right now, we're gonna get ours. Okay. Uh, it's gonna be a full day in Amsterdam dedicated to filling your brain with all the good stuff from this industry, uh, all around the AI shift and recruitment and technology. Uh, and we also have a special discount that you can find. Listen up kids chadcheese.com. Click on the events link in the upper right-hand corner, or just go to chadcheese.com/events. We had to wrestle that discount code away from leaving.
[laughter]
Joel: We made him drink a six-pack of Heineken or threaten him with a six-pack of Heineken.
[laughter]
Joel: Or else we were gonna, we're gonna really go.
[laughter]
Joel: Can't wait to get back to Europe. Alright, well, before we get to some news, Chad, we've got layoff news. Oy, oy, oy. All right. The year of Efficiency marches on Chad, Nike. Nike. CEO John Donahoe took responsibility for the company's recent underperformance and announced layoffs of more than 1500 employees. To "Reignite growth" the decision reflects broader trends of companies, including Google and meta-cutting staff to enhance efficiency and address changing consumer behaviors. The stock was down on the news. Chad, your take.
Chad: So I ultimately hold myself and my leadership accountable. Said John Donahoe from the CEO of of Nike. How did you hold yourself responsible?
SFX: You lying lies lies.
Chad: Yahoo. Finance reports. John has a market capitalization of $153 billion with the B Kids. A total annual CEO comp was reported at 33 million for last year, the year 2023. That's an increase of 14% over the year before a failure receives 14%. It took wage earners in the US 40-plus years just to hit that mark in wage increases. Took 40 years. This motherfucker did it while he was failing in one year. ZipRecruiter reports the median income of Nike employees is 56,000, which means the CEO, good old John, the failure, is paid nearly 600 times that of a Nike commoner. So that doesn't include the comp for the rest of the failed Nike leadership team. So blowing these employees off will not reignite growth. Firing yourself would provide an opportunity to get a leader in the seat who's not a pure fucking failure.
[laughter]
Chad: Fire two others from the leadership team and allow all of those 1500 workers to keep their damn jobs. This is the problem with the whole structure that we're in. These motherfuckers are getting paid 600 times. Some even more than the people who are actually doing the work. They look at themselves and say, "Yeah. No. I failed on this one, but I'm going to gonna cut 1500 heads." No. Fuck you. You should be out the door. This is not the way that business should work.
Joel: How the hell does... How the hell is Nike not one of the most profitable companies in the wor... All I see is fucking Nike's on people from the kids to the old folks to me. Anyway, that's an aside. What I found interesting was that the stock didn't move much. I assumed with Meta doing what it did in Google, I thought firing some people would really ignite the stock.
Chad: You're talking tech versus material goods.
Joel: Yeah. So, so the question is, is tech the only segment that can say year of efficiency and actually get rewarded for it on Wall Street? I guess time will tell, but that surprised me. I thought there would be a domino effect of companies talking about efficiency and layoffs, and that's... And that Wall Street would go nuts unless every penny in Wall Street is going to NVIDIA, which would not surprise me at the moment...
[laughter]
Joel: This was kind of shocking. Yeah. NVIDIA's like Barbie for dudes. It's just... It's like...
Chad: Oh, dude. Don't... I'm going to gonna tell you, and again, this is the... This is not me, this is all in my opinion. I have put some cash. Actually, Julie, we've put some cash into some NVIDIA over the last months. I mean, just watching what's happening and you know they are actually gauging demand. They know what demand is, and they're not producing to demand. They are not. They never have and they never will.
Joel: We have some hidden audio from the headquarters at NVIDIA.
SFX: SFX.
Joel: Things are good at NVIDIA, to say the least.
Chad: Super yachts and hoes. Yeah.
SFX: SFX.
Joel: All right, Chad. Here's a roundup of some interesting news that our listeners might enjoy. Financial review is reporting US Tech investor Battery Ventures is ready to cash out of talent management platform, PageUp, after writing a check in 2018 for an undisclosed amount. Launched way back in the 90s, PageUp is headquartered in Melbourne, but the service... But they service 190 countries. Want some more fire of-sale goodness, background check solution, HireRight is being acquired by investment funds affiliated with General Atlantic and Stone Point Capital for approximately $1.65 billion. The transaction is expected to close later this year, but wait, Chad. There's more.
Chad: Oh God.
Joel: Sources, particularly sources that you are connected with are telling us that Beamery, CTO, and Co-founder Michael Paterson are out and that they're primed to be acquired by Workday. Chad, everything must go. What are your thoughts?
[chuckle]
Chad: Let's take this one by one. PageUp. So, how do you say fire sale without saying fire sale? I think they did a really good... They had a good example there right now from the BV funding press release back in 2018. "PageUp will use some of the new funding to increase its already significant focus on product research and development. In addition, PageUp plans to continue its global expansion and may seek acquisitions to offer more products to more customers in the complimentary markets." So, we did see some acquisitions clinch, eArcu, and Path Motion. Those really didn't move the dial much. I know that they were trying to get into some of those markets. The UK markets mainly. Path Motion was a French company. It's interesting that these organizations like PageUp only took $10 million prior to this undisclosed major funding events. Why did they do that? Right? They've been around for a very long time. Were they looking to try to gain explosive growth? They might have. The problem is, if you remember, I know we talked about this, PageUp was trying to target the US. Right? An Australian company trying to target the US. Not easy.
Joel: Only Outback Steakhouse has accomplished such a feat.
Chad: Yeah. If you've got a blooming onion, you might be good. If you don't, you're probably fucked. They went to the UK and they did some acquisitions in the UK, which helped them, I think, from a portfolio standpoint, but it didn't really launch them like I think they thought they would be in Europe. They really had no chance in the US unless they bought something. So this doesn't surprise me, and we've been talking about this for months now. We're going to see a lot of this happening.
Joel: Yeah. If Crocodile Dundee is still around, he's kicking somebody in the ass because this was a lot... Old company in internet terms. It was a company that had three, 400 employees. The average tenure is 3.7 years, which is a long time in our world. So by all accounts, you had a long-term company that had happy employees. I hear everyone's happy in Australia, but maybe that's an outlier. So 2018, we had a lot of money going into the ATS space. ICIMS was getting money, Greenhouse, SmartRecruiters, like you can go back in our archives and this was a time when a lot of money was going into these platforms. PageUp clearly said, "Oh shit. If we're going to compete, we gotta go get some money. Call up Battery Ventures in the US. Everyone... The US has the money. So, let's get some cash."
Joel: This is 2018. 2024, if my math is correct, that puts us into year seven of this relationship. And clearly, things aren't going the way that Battery Ventures had hoped that they would. Queue the SmartRecruiters news from last week of a failed deal that didn't go go through. We'll talk about some other things as well. I'm sure you'll talk about Beamery. And so anyway, we you have an environment where a lot of money went in, people took that money six, seven years, henceforth, it didn't turn out. All these venture capitalists want their cash, and now it's time to pay the piper. PageUp ran out of time, they made a stupid decision when everyone was making stupid decisions and now it's time to say, either acquisition or maybe private equity comes in and chops it up. All that career builder style. But by all accounts, this was a kind of cool, happy, long-term company and bye-bye. Will it be a boomerang? I doubt it. PageUp.
Chad: No. I don't think it would.
Joel: Page down PageDown more like it. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying?
SFX: SFX.
Chad: HireRight. So they raised 422.2 million. A little bit more than PageUp did. Jesus. Their net worth to date is about 960 million as of... That was February 20th. So this is the highest the stock has been in the last two years. So it's probably smart they sell as soon as humanly possible. With sales seems smart. But what about the buy in this case? What do you think? Was this a smart buy?
Joel: I don't know enough about it to say if it was smart or not. I've been on record many times saying that the background check industry sucks.
Chad: It's boring. I've... Yeah.
Joel: It's awful. I mean, HireRight ball accounts is the number two player. Stocks hit a low about a year ago. Sterling for sure has been on an upswing since then. I think the year of efficiency, they've been very efficient in what they've done. The market cap on HireRight is $950 million. So they paid one and a half or so for that company. So, I mean, it's a good company. It's got customers that aren't leaving. Look, when you... It's like an ATS. When you select a background check provider, you stick with that provider. 'Cause it's not like there's much difference in any of them. So they have a client base that's probably not going anywhere, you're not going to gonna get a 10x return on this. So take it private, get out from under the Wall Street criticism, and it's probably a fine deal for a private equity or company that bought this deal. But the background check business sucks. I mean, they're going to gonna chop this thing up. They're going to gonna fire people. They're going to milk as much profit out of this as possible. So if you work at HireRight man, woo. Time to update that LinkedIn profile for sure.
Chad: Not going to gonna be fun, kids. It's not going to gonna be fun and not... Another place where it's not going to gonna be fun. Where there is smoke, there is fire. And when there is fire, in this case, there is fire. What do I mean by that? Beamery CTO/co-founder, Michael Paterson, exited stage left earlier this year. Prior to that, in January of last year, 2023, Beamery laid off 11% and then ended the year with a 25% layoff in November. My sources say Beamery is doing their damnedest to get acquired by Workday. That's the rumor. So if the rumor is true, I would expect Workday to wait Beamery out to get more of a fire sale price. I do know that... I believe Workday does have money in there, but it's still... It's going to gonna be... It's pretty much paying yourself. So try to get that price down. And I would strongly suggest, this is just my personal opinion. Strongly suggest that any company dropping an RFP anytime soon should not include PageUp or Beamery. Okay? That's just my opinion. But turbulent vendors are not where... I would not personally spend my budget kids. Okay? And this is just end from an anonymous source out of Scotland.
[chuckle]
Chad: Anonymous. Quote...
SFX: SFX.
Chad: "Beamery was never more than Avature with a shinier pitch deck."
SFX: SFX.
Joel: Dude, I'm on record as Beamery is a shit show. You talked about the money that came in. Like from... It's... Yeah. I got nothing but just like...
SFX: SFX.
Joel: How bad the situation is. So Workday is interesting. I don't that... You're right. I think they were in on the series C. We don't know exactly how much publicly that they put in. But these were big rounds that Beamery was... Beamery was a unicorn. It ain't anymore, that's for sure [chuckle]
Chad: No.
Joel: Chance. So that means, most of the employees stock options are for shit. This company, from what I understand, is bleeding. Clients can't get new clients. It's just a bad scene. If Workday could buy it on the cheap, the TJ Clearance sale rack and save face...
[laughter]
Joel: And there may be a situation where all the other investors are like, "Come on Workday, do us a solid. Exit these guys so we can, with our dignity, get out as well." But if Workday comes in, the Beamery brand is done, everyone that works there is probably done until they segment into all the clients that are Beamery into Workday. If they're not already, they'll take some of the tech, I'm assuming. But this has all the writings of dead on arrival for Beamery. And it's just bad news. Couple other thoughts on the background check thing. Sorry. We kind of jumped around there, but...
Chad: Circle. Circle. Go ahead.
Joel: Checker is interesting. Checker took a ton of money. At one point in, 2019, they were valued at $4.6 billion. Nowhere near the market share of like Sterling or HireRight. And HireRight just sold for a billion and a half. So think about... Talk about bad situations. Checker is a bad situation in terms of stock options. I mean, there's no way that Checker is in that $4.6 billion universe. And by the way, Sterling, who's the biggest 800-pound gorilla in the background check business is now at a $2.5 billion market cap. So, it's not unrealistic to think that Checker has gone from four plus billion to Yeah, well under a billion in valuation. So talk about bad situations. I wanted to highlight that as well. I think Checker's in a bad spot for sure.
Chad: Whew. Well, let's get into some small startups as opposed to these unicorns. These dying unicorns.
Joel: Let's move away from this madness.
SFX: SFX.
Joel: Someone may have been bitten by a venomous insect in Australia. Australia's Hatch has raised roughly $4.6 million US dollars. Self-described as "SEEK." If you don't know what seek is, American listeners, it's sort of the equivalent of Monster in Australia anyway. SEEK for Gen Z. That's right. The platform uses AI to match Gen Z professionals with jobs based on their values and skills aiming to disrupt traditional job boards. Of course, they are. Chad, what are your thoughts on yet another job board?
Chad: This is very interesting. Not just the job board aspect of it, but Australia's population is smaller than California or Canada. So around 26 million. And then they're taking that size down dramatically by targeting Gen Z, which makes their market... Their user market roughly 4.7 million at best, right?
SFX: SFX.
Chad: So I love me a focused company, but here's where they're going to be spending that money. Number one, product enhancements, including AI matching technology. Never heard that before. Have you? User growth, geographic growth expanding nationwide over two-year period before becoming a global platform. They're not even national yet. And then growing the Hatch team with ML and AI. So in Australia, competitors are SEEK, Indeed, and the National Workforce Australia site, right? So now, your competition are big names, although they're not excessive, and they're not going to gonna create an entirely new user experience for all job seekers across Australia instead of just target Gen Z.
Chad: So my personal opinion, Hatch doesn't understand the basic math as they're too narrowly focused on a small 4.7 million cohort of possible Gen Zs. Could the same strategy fly in the US where Gen Z represents 68.6 million people in our population over twice that the entire population of Australia? Yes. It's a numbers game, kids. I don't think these guys understand numbers. My advice to them, find an MVP, sell the MVP in markets that you've already penetrated, drive revenue. That's the big key. This is the time for slow and smart growth. Plus, everybody needs a damn job. So yes. You can have those areas on the site for Gen Z, but go general. You don't have a large enough population to play this incredibly super niche game. I like the idea, but from a mass standpoint, it doesn't work.
SFX: SFX.
Joel: I'm glad you took it into the cerebral realm of math 'cause I'm going to gonna take it somewhere else. Seriously. Somebody smoking some poisonous frog juju. Look, history is riddled with targeting younger consumers with a cooler hip product that isn't your father's and your mother's. It works. It works.
[chuckle]
Chad: This isn't your mother's job board.
Joel: When it works, it works. Okay? Ford released the Mustang. It's like, this ain't your daddy Studebaker. It's not the Model T. This is the car for the new generation. That works. It usually does not. I'll bring up the Cola Wars. You might remember Virgin Cola, you might remember Jolt Cola from the 80s. You probably remember...
Chad: God. That was horrible.
Joel: Pepsi's the choice of a new generation. Okay? All the cool kids are drinking Pepsi, right? It's all... Hopefully, it'll... It's supposed to make you look cool, make you more accessible to sexual partners like...
[laughter]
Joel: Sometimes it works. It doesn't. Now to think that it's going to work in the job search arena, give me a break, man. I mean, it's not your daddy's job board. That just doesn't really play to anybody. And these guys are putting like holistic job board, full self connect... They're using words that are so snowflakey. Sorry to try to... Sorry to get anti-woke on you, but it's so snowflakey. It's just, it's so bad. It's like Handshake and Polywork saying, "We're not LinkedIn, we're for the cool kids. We're the cool LinkedIn." So these are going to gonna be the cool job board, right? We're not SEEK, we're not those old fogies that listen to NXS albums from the 80s, right? I just... I think it's... You know I'm not big on job boards anyway. To launch a job board and say we're not your daddy's job board, basically, I think is a failed venture. It reminds me a lot of ADA. You remember ADA from about a year ago? You...
Chad: Yahoo literally just got bought.
Joel: Okay. Paul Forster invested in that and it was sort of the same thing. Like, we're different than Indeed, or we're different than these guys. What happened to Ada? They kind of like snuck away...
Chad: The best thing ADA did was their advertising. That was the best thing they did.
[chuckle]
Joel: Which I don't even remember. It was so good I don't even know what the hell it is.
[chuckle]
Joel: So they kind sold in the dead of night. There wasn't even a press release, I don't think. It's like somebody found out about from some public announcement that they had been acquired by somebody. So, that's where...
Chad: Yeah. UK.
Joel: Hatch is going. Hatch needs to go back in the egg, go back in the uterus, and go home. 'Cause this is just not going to gonna work out well.
Chad: You've been hatched.
Joel: I love Australia, I love the spirit and it... The thought behind this, but yeah. This is... This is like...
SFX: SFX.
Joel: Beamery or any of the other crash lands that we've talked about. Oh my God. I'm...
Chad: I need a break.
Joel: I'm worked up. Chad, let's take a quick break.
SFX: SFX.
Joel: I had to have a cold fosters to chill me out there. I need...
[laughter]
Joel: I needed some Alice Springs.
Chad: A whole oil can by yourself.
Joel: Alice Spring chicken to make me feel better about myself.
Chad: The bloomin onion with some Alice Springs chicken.
Joel: Oh. All right, Chad. Well, no show would be complete without talk of Elon, SpaceX, Tesla, or all of the above.
Chad: Oh. That's fun.
Joel: So in the news this week, Amazon, SpaceX, and Trader Joe's, one of these things is not like the other, are challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board or what the kids call the NLRB in, and disputes related to workers' rights and organizing. Amazon argues the NLRB structure violates the separation of powers and denies due process, echoing similar claims by SpaceX and Trader Joe's. Chad, your thoughts on the latest from the NLRB attack?
Chad: Whew. So the National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency with the power to safeguard employees rights to organize and to determine whether to have unions as their bargaining representative. The agency also acts to prevent and remedy unfair labor practices committed by private sector employees and employers and union. Unfair labor practices like, I don't know employees having to piss on Amazon warehouse garbage cans, unfair labor practices like allowing children to work on construction sites, slaughter houses, and eight to 10 hours jobs instead of going to school, I mean, Amazon alone has faced over 250 complaints alleging unlawful practices. Musk's SpaceX is under fire from the NLRB for retaliating, it's not a good thing to retaliate, against eight engineers who criticize Musk in a letter to the company executives. So Seth Goldstein, who's actually an attorney who represents both Amazon labor union and the labor group, Trader Joe's United, Stated quote, since they can't defeat successful union organizers, they now want to just destroy the whole process. Goldstein also said that pending cases could emboldened other employers, to refuse to bargain with unions on the behalf of the courts. We're in an age of chaos right now, these companies are looking to try to break the system, they want this to go up to the Supreme Court in the hopes that they do the Roe versus Wade dance, and they just, they kill this too.
SFX: Another one.
Joel: Yeah. You took the words out of my mouth. For the most part, I think there's blood in the water and the sharks are circling, people see this as an opportunity to take a conservative leaning, heavily leaning Supreme Court and basically up turn a lot of things that have been the law of the land in this case, since the '30s and destroy it, and you mentioned Roe vs Wade affirmative action which... A couple of interviews we did this week, I don't think we appreciate the impact that it's had on companies demeanors in terms of DEI. So now it's like if we can overturn Roe in affirmative action, this should be a piece of cake. So let's get the Supreme Court one on this, let's hear this case in the Supreme Court, which is something that would have been unbelievable 10 years ago, five years ago, now is reality like this organization that you so eloquently put in terms of protecting workers that don't have unions to sort of protect them, now that could be gone.
Chad: And then also, I didn't mention this, but they're also looking for... I think Musk was talking about or Trader Joe's looking for a jury trial, fuck you. All you're trying to do is extend out how long this happens, and they know that the NLRB, like any organization within the government, only has so many individuals, so they can only take on so many the cases, so if they can extend out to the amount of time those individuals are taking then they cannot enforce the law, right, so they're literally just trying to fuck the system.
Joel: Tell this Trader Joe's getting involved in this mix. That shocked me. Trader Joe's, the good folks at Trader Joe's, come on, man, that's a bummer, man.
Chad: Now they're being aligned with Elon Musk and Amazon.
Joel: That's a party, man. That's a party. All right, let's get on to LinkedIn.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: Well, they've had a pretty rough month Chad, I know you're sad about that. Anyway, North Korean hackers are using AI tools like chatGPT to conduct phishing scams on LinkedIn aiming to fund their nuclear weapons program, but wait Chad there's more. A new class action lawsuit against LinkedIn alleges the company unlawfully tracked its members activities on the California DMV website to obtain personal disability information, which was then used for undisclosed purposes. The plaintiff seeks to represent a California class and claims LinkedIn violated privacy laws, demanding damages and a jury trial. So Chad, from the DMZ to the DMV. What are your thoughts on LinkedIn? No, good bummer of a month.
Chad: This is about as ballsy as it gets. I mean, not only are we gonna big brother the fuck out of you, but we're gonna thumb our nose at the government while we're doing it, where LinkedIn fucked up as they did this in California if this happened in Utah or Indiana or any of the other red states, they wouldn't give a shit. They wouldn't care about it. It would go off. It wouldn't matter. Right. Whatever, they were making money, right? They add to this advertising thing, we got a GDP. It's all about GDP. California is an entirely different animal.
Joel: It's the Europe of America.
Chad: Yeah, the only one that keeps most of us straight, so yeah, it's interesting, it will be interesting to see how this progresses and then who gets smacked around for this. LinkedIn again, really focusing heavy on trying to generate revenue apparently they went too far. I mean, apparently, they went too far.
SFX: 60% of the time, it works every time.
Chad: When nobody's watching.
Joel: So let's touch on this North Korea thing. This sounds like a Seth Rogen comedy. So North Korea is utilizing AI tools to look like recruiters to contact people on LinkedIn that I don't know, have nuclear physicist and whatever else, in their title, these are not dummies or unemployed like rubes, and they're chatting them up almost like that whole, what do they call? Like pig slaughtering or whatever, when you get a random text saying like, Hey, are we still doing lunch? And then six months of chatting with this person, they're like, it's on your crypto. That's what this sounds like, that they're chatting up as a recruiter, getting you to be friends, and then I don't know, they're asking your nuclear secrets or something, or trying to hire you to North, I don't know how, that's how this isn't working because people are realizing like, "Okay, the English is a little bit off, something doesn't quite seem right here," but how far do we have to go until they do sound like they're credible, till video comes into it until actual voices come in. So this to me is a preliminary fear factor element that we should be aware of that North Koreans were trying to recruit with AI nuclear physicist to build bombs and missiles and all kinds of shit.
Joel: So that's kind of scary. It's a little bit of off the beaten path in terms of like legitimacy, but it is scary. It's a little bit weird like. Watch out there kids. And by the way, we had a call with the Job Board Doctor, and we talked about threats to the industry. To me the biggest to the Job Board, whatever industry is, the call is from inside the house, whether it's... We don't do a good enough job of protecting our users, whether people are getting phished and scammed and our data is getting breached on a regular basis, to me that's the biggest threats, is they're gonna shoot themselves in the foot, And LinkedIn is walking a tight wire with stuff like this to really put itself in jeopardy. If I were LinkedIn, man, or any big tech company, this is a real threat. GDPR needs to happen in California, which it kinda has already.
Chad: In the US.
Joel: In the US.
Chad: In the entire US. When the European Union is ahead of us, and they're so far ahead of us on all this stuff, 'cause they actually give a shit. And that's the problem that we're having, we care more about the profits that are being made other than the people who are getting fucked.
Joel: And worse on that Chad, the Chinese are way ahead of us as well. Let's take a quick break.
Joel: All right, Chad, as is normally our sin for the recording the show during lunchtime, let's talk about some food, Starbucks has introduced a braised pork flavored latte, let me say that again, a braised pork flavored latte in China to celebrate the Lunar New Year, priced at almost $10 USD. Reviews are mixed, with some finding it surprisingly delicious and others deeming it, "disgusting." Well, more food and beverage news, Chad, Gabriela Rodriguez, a cleaner at a top London law firm was fired after eating a leftover tuna sandwich valued about to two quid, as they say in England, from a meeting room. Devonshires Solicitors, the law firm, reportedly did not make a formal complaint, but her employer Total Clean gave her the axe anyway for stealing, Chad. UVW, a union representing migrant workers is taking legal action over claims of unfair dismissal and race discrimination. It's enough to give you indigestion Chad, am I right? What are your thoughts on our food block of stories?
Chad: Salty sweet coffee? I'm gonna go ahead and eject out of that one right out of the gate, and again, there are many different tastes all over the world, right, this one just ain't for me. The sandwich thing, if she found the sandwich after hours like it was just laying there, in a conference room...
Joel: For trash.
Chad: Wasn't in the fridge.
Joel: It was prepped for trash. I didn't have barb on it.
Chad: Yeah, even if it did have barb on it. It was in a conference room. So big fucking deal. To me, again, retaliating against employees over stupid shit like this, makes no sense whatsoever, and for an... I understand a lot of businesses, they're like, well, we don't wanna lose the business, well, you also have to say, "Look, anything that you don't want us to throw away or eat or drink, get out of the fucking way." It makes no sense whatsoever. And then back to the porky coffee. Again, I don't get it. I might have Julie go get one, and then we'll see.
Joel: Clearly Chad your palette is just totally wrong on this one, coffee and bacon, sign me up my friend. We already have it in the form of eggs and bacon with coffee, we're just taking a step out and throwing the bacon in the coffee. I mean, look, it's like a Bloody Mary for a new generation, instead of tomato juice and everything else, we're taking coffee and throwing everything into that.
Chad: We're gonna call it the hatch.
Joel: Breakfast in a cup is what this is. On-the-go breakfast, bacon in your coffee. You know what isn't better without coffee or without bacon Chad?
Chad: What's that?
Joel: Nothing. Everything is better with bacon. Everything is better with bacon. All right, now, let's get to our friend...
Chad: Almost got a heart attack. Yeah.
Joel: Let's get to our friend Gabriella, by the way, I had my physical last week and I'm good to go, man, another year of debauchery and overservice for me, my friend. So let's get to Gabriela, she's a single mother from Ecuador, she had been an employee for two years prior, so she wasn't like "Your first week on the job, get the hell out of here." This was done right around the holidays, and like I said, the sandwich was prepped for the trash, it wasn't like she stole it out of the fridge, or it was nice and hot in the microwave, it was trash. Seriously, these fuckers at Total Clean should have to eat a shit sandwich, there's no bacon on the shit sandwich Chad because it might actually be edible if you put bacon on it, my friend, it might actually be good with bacon on it, free Gabriella, I say, free Gabriella. We out.
Outro: Look at you, you made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Jay's podcast, or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end, either way, there is no doubt you wish you had that time back, a valuable time you could have used to buy in a nutritious meal and Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey or just watch big booty latinas and buck fights on TikTok. No, you hang out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap, because you'll be back. Like an awful trainwreck, you can't look away and like Chad's favorite western, you can't quit them either.
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