Richard Collins, serial entrepreneur and founder of C Squared Technology, discusses the art of the startup pivot and mastering the challenges and opportunities in the recruitment advertising industry. He shares his experience with building a platform that connects job boards and employers, focusing on delivering qualified applicants. Richard emphasizes the need for a shift from quantity-based metrics like cost per click to quality-based metrics like cost per qualified applicant. He also highlights the importance of community-building and reinvention in the job board industry. Richard also discusses the funding and growth plans for C Squared Technology.
Checkout his recent post on the move: https://www.cvwallet.com/post/our-journey-from-smart-cvs-for-jobseekers-to-solving-recruitment-advertising-for-the-ai-age
TRANSCRIPTION
Joel (00:24.92)
OHHHHHHH YEEEEEEAAAAAAH!
Joel (00:30.286)
just going to roll with it kids. It is your favorite podcast, aka the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co -host Joel Cheeseman joined as always. Chad. So wash is my copilot as we welcome sir Richard Collins, serial entrepreneur, a man with three successful exits, a new company, the best car collection in the UK and a man that proves behind every great man is a great woman. Richard, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast.
Chad (00:49.835)
Ha!
Richard (00:59.831)
It's a pleasure to be finally.
Chad (01:03.569)
thought Jesus was... What? What was the first time?
Joel (01:03.718)
It's your second time. It's your second time.
Richard (01:07.944)
Who's the first one? no. Did I? I don't I never did the show then. Yeah, I did. Eh, I wouldn't talk to you guys then.
Joel (01:08.108)
the click IQ stuff. Wasn't he on the show? Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, six years ago, five years ago, who does? Some didn't listen to that show, Richard. Some haven't heard that show. Give us a quick Twitter bio about you.
Chad (01:10.573)
yeah.
Chad (01:15.077)
I don't think he did. I don't think he did. I can't remember.
Richard (01:26.479)
Me. Okay. Hi, I'm Richard. So been in the industry since 1995, I guess, ran a job board, run some ad agencies, built some businesses, did some tech stuff, sold some businesses. More recently, I guess I was known for the whole click IQ thing, which was a demand side programmatic platform that we sold to Indeed in 2019.
stayed on there a couple of years and freedom soon after that. And we started C Squared two years ago. So yeah, been around a bit quite old, like doing a bit of tech, bit of advertising, that kind of thing.
Chad (02:14.657)
Bit of tech, bit of advertising. Also funny story, listener. We were actually at Wreckfest and first time I think we'd actually had a chance to catch up, Richard, face to face. I'm like, Richard, what's going on here? Because AppCast had just been sold, right? And I'm like, okay, you're next. Who is it? Who is it? And he was about as tight lipped as he could be. Really didn't know him that well at the time. And then the next day, guess what?
Richard (02:26.253)
because yeah
Chad (02:44.025)
the announcement went out. yes, that was a...
Richard (02:46.861)
Well, what was amazing about that day was that we didn't even get the call till like, was nine o 'clock at night and they were ready to sign. And we were, we've been at this breakfast all day, so we were shit faced. And we literally had to jump into a taxi, come back to the lawyer's office to sign this deal at midnight. And we're just given this like, there's no one else there, just the lawyer and an empty office. We're getting this big biro to sign this deal.
Joel (02:47.648)
Always sandbaggin' us.
Chad (03:02.475)
You
Richard (03:16.647)
And we did all the signing stuff and our daughter then came to pick her up in her crappy old micro car. And it was just like living the dream and literally nothing has changed. was the most surreal experience you've ever had in your life. And then the next day when we're trying to tell the team, you know, we're trying to get them all to tell them, you know, this has happened. And several of them were in the toilet puking because they drank too much from Wreckfest. And was the most weird experience.
Chad (03:46.129)
What a great story, right? Everybody's like, what is Wreckfest? Well, it is. It's it's team bonding kids. It is team bonding. And for some, it's a team bonding on an entirely different level, apparently.
Joel (03:53.56)
Mm
Joel (03:59.81)
And then it goes straight from that into working at in the belly of the beast, working at Indeed, for like a year or so. how was that? Was that a good time too?
Richard (04:00.209)
you
Chad (04:05.541)
belly.
Richard (04:10.039)
Yeah, we did three years in total. I don't know that Indeed would necessarily hire me on the normal circumstances, let's just say that. But, you know, it was good during COVID, let's put it that way.
Chad (04:24.763)
Yeah, yeah, I bet it was. bet it was working, working from home, working from home. Yeah. Okay. So let's get past this stuff. So the funny part is, know, we, we, we, we originally wanted to talk to you just to be able to kind of clear the air about CV wallet, resume wallet. What is this thing? What does it look like? So on and so forth. And then generative AI slapped you square in the face, which I mean, every single
Joel (04:26.242)
He sounds real excited. He sounds real excited about his time there.
Richard (04:28.131)
I
Chad (04:53.913)
founder that's out there has had to have had this type of experience one time or another. And I think for you, it happened at a very apropos time. So let's hear that story a little bit. CV wallet, the vision, and then the slap in the face and the pivot slash evolution into C squared.
Joel (05:13.847)
Jesus moment.
Richard (05:15.511)
Yeah. So we originally sort of, started with this idea and the idea was quite simple. It was really based off the experience that our daughter had had and she'd left university and she was applying to work in the big four accountancy firms and she took an assessment
for one of them, then she went along to the next interview and she took exactly the same assessment and it basically repeated. And we thought, you know what, this doesn't seem very efficient. What if you took an assessment once, you stored that assessment of proof of your skills, and then employers could basically find you based on the assessments that you'd taken. So it happened at the same time that I'd read this book about the whole Web3 blockchain
And there are certain elements of that that really sort of resonated in terms of people owning their own data and that kind of stuff.
Chad (06:15.678)
Mm
Chad (06:22.161)
Well, and Europe is going that way, right? I mean, they really want the people to be able to control their own data and own their own data. So, I mean, kind of, there's a confluence there.
Richard (06:32.589)
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it seemed like quite an interesting space to be in because, know, there's a whole time of skill shortages. So how could we help employers find those people with the right skills? How could the, how could job seekers actually prove that they had skills and, know, we had this sort of idea that you could fast track your application based on that, that, that proof. So we, kind of set out when we, we built an app and got it all sort of going and put together and out there.
Chad (06:40.454)
Mm
Richard (07:02.795)
And then we were starting on the next stage, which was now the commercial, but how do we kind of turn this app when it's users and assessments? How do we now commercialize it, take it to employers so they can basically source on the back of that?
Chad (07:17.371)
So it's like a guided missile at that point.
Richard (07:20.653)
Yeah. So we're in November, whatever the year was and open AI kind of, launch chat GPT. And you look at this thing and you think, this is, this is amazing. You know, what it does is incredible. I remember sending, a friend, know, they were talking about, they wanted to do an employer brand piece. And I literally plugged their company name in an employer brand statement and just sent it them and said, there you go. And, you know, everyone was, was completely blown away.
Joel (07:34.403)
Mm
Richard (07:50.765)
But the thing that kind of struck us immediately is if job seekers start adopting this stuff, we're going to start to see some problems in the market. We're going to start to see, first of all, it's generative AI. So who's going to trust the data going forward? And secondly, we started to see the emergence of a couple of tools that allowed people to apply for multiple jobs very, very quickly in one go. So we thought, you know, we can see a world where if everybody adopts this thing or even a small percentage actually, then
all the employers are going to get completely deluged with lots and lots of unsuitable applications with information they can't trust. And if we're working off a model that says, do you know what, source more because you need more skills, we saw the entire market flip. that suddenly just going from not enough responses to way too many responses. that kind of from there, we started sort of scratching our heads thinking what the hell are we going to do?
Joel (08:43.011)
Mm
Joel (08:48.802)
Where are you on just blockchain in general and blockchain in our space? Are you still bullish on it? This wasn't a blockchain or a heart. can't sell this thing or this idea. You're still bullish on this, correct?
Richard (08:59.223)
No, no, I mean, we actually never built anything with blockchain in it in the end, because the reality was we wanted to build a platform that we could integrate with third parties because the idea about assessment pieces you or any any kind of credential you you want to verify with a third party that that person has what they say they have. So have you taken assessment piece? And we thought that eventually in time
We could see a world where those assessment providers stored that information on a blockchain and we would then integrate into it. The reality is you can do exactly the same piece with just a database and an API. And what do you actually need a blockchain thing for anyway? And in the end, just didn't see the need for it. So, I guess not that bullish, if I'm honest. I think the technology is really smart. And I think there is stuff that will get done with it in the future.
But is it a business? No.
Joel (09:59.95)
So we have a lot of startups.
Chad (10:00.055)
Seems to be expensive as well, Seems to be expensive too, right?
Richard (10:02.575)
Say again, sorry.
Richard (10:06.179)
I think it can be. the big problem I think you always come across, because there are people in the space doing this stuff, is how do you persuade an employer to buy crypto, to use that crypto to basically pay for the blockchain calls? There is no point. So you have to then have a crypto piece, then you have your own bit. So you perhaps sell credits that buys a crypto, in which point, why are you even bothering? Just sell people access to your database. It's way easier.
Joel (10:36.504)
Something that is pertinent to our listeners is we have a lot of startups that listen to the show. And I think a lot of them, if not all of them come to a pivot quote unquote moment. Have you, is it, I assume this wasn't your first moment. Like what tips would you give a startup to say like, yes, this is the point where you need to change direction. Don't be bullheaded and stick with the vision that you had when you started.
Richard (10:59.759)
You know, that's such a tough question because sometimes you have to be bullheaded and sometimes you just have to keep pushing because if you quit when it gets difficult, you never do anything. So you kind of have to keep pushing through. think there comes a point of experience where you say, when I'm looking at the future, you know, is the problem that
I'm not doing what I should be doing well enough or has the world changed and therefore the problem that I'm solving is no longer the problem. And I think that that's, that's the point that we got to. We saw this world where we went from a massive shortage of applicants, job seekers in the market to people being overwhelmed. So that switch basically caused us a problem. you know, we're suddenly in this world where you have a lack of trust, too many unsupportable applicants and the skill shortage. How do you...
How do you solve to those problems? So, you we were sort of building out tech and you know, our tech applied to several of those if we expanded it. And that's what we started doing. So rather than just answering the skill shortage problem, because we didn't think it would be as much of a problem, we thought the bigger problem was how do you get to the applicants who are actually qualified for the job? So we started building around the tech that answered those three problems. So I think in terms of advice for other startups, I think you have to...
Chad (12:09.243)
Mm.
Richard (12:24.495)
Trust in your gut. think if the world hasn't changed, then why should you? Just keep pushing at it. But equally, if the world does change, get your head above the parapet, see that actually, know, which way the wind is blowing and find yourself a better wave to surf on,
Chad (12:42.425)
Let's talk a little bit about the change because Joel and I have been talking about this for years. mean, performance driven ads, cost per click. mean, that's quantity, not quality. Cost per application, that's just a heightened price that you're going to pay for not necessarily quality. When we're getting to the actual validating, number one, that they're a person and number two, that they have the certifications.
You have the qualified and then you have the interested, right? Which are the two, I think, main pieces that, know, someone's got to be interested in the job in the first place. Then you've got to make sure that they actually hit the requirements. Now that, to me, would be the panacea, in some cases, for talent acquisition, staffing. mean, anybody who really wants to get to the qualified individual first. Why are we still having this conversation about CPC, CPA?
Why aren't people moving quickly like you guys are to the qualified and interested side of the house?
Richard (13:45.967)
think, you know, any change is difficult, isn't it? And someone has to enable that change and the change requires technology to do so. You know, we've been building this stuff for two and a half years, you know, and so, and there's nothing that we don't use to do it. So it is not a small thing to sort of take on. I think that recruitment advertising as an industry, as you rightly say, there's this disconnect at the moment between the buyers and the sellers.
Chad (13:55.28)
Mm
Richard (14:13.235)
the job boards and the sellers, you know, they get rewarded for more. Whereas now we have this situation with, you know, with AI and job seekers and lots of these applies where what the buyers want, the recruiters, the advertisers, they actually want better. So you've got more on one side, better on the other. And how do you bridge that gap? Well, if you're a job board, you know, most job boards don't have the tech to do this stuff. So they're kind of relying on the employers, I think, to start a build.
technology into their own tech stacks to screen out to get to those qualified applicants. But the problem is, you have to take ownership and responsibility for this stuff. And you have to say, do you know what? Rather than waiting for them to build it, why don't we build it? We'll take responsibility for the quality and we'll deliver you qualified applicants. Because if we don't, what they build may not actually be good for us. And if we can shift that.
Chad (14:44.475)
Mm.
Richard (15:06.201)
conversation that we're having close to the higher. And this is something that indeed believes in a lot. know, it's one of the things that I really bought into and that Chris Himes used to say, you know, about moving close to the higher. If you do that, you you deliver, you move up the value chain, you access more budgets and you deliver more what the clients want. But I think to enable that, you need a certain piece of technology and who's going to build it.
Chad (15:29.777)
I think, well, standardization number one is, I think, key because if you go through every employer's process, there's no standard that's going to be set, right? So as the actual vendor, you, I mean, you're all over the place. You have no clue who's really qualified, who's not qualified, et cetera, et cetera. I also think that cost per hire is literally, it's bullshit, okay? And the big reason here is if I send you 10,
Highly qualified individuals right and they meet all your requirements and you have a shitty process or you have shitty management or shitty leadership That's not my fault not to mention also. I'm only getting paid for one of them one when I sent you ten, right? So I think from that standpoint we take a look at the staffing model I think the staffing model is completely flawed and there should be Slates and we should be focusing on again on qualified and interested which is at one point
This is funny where Zippercouter was going. Zippercouter was going down this road. They went IPO and everything went to shit. Right. So I mean, I'm sitting there on the sidelines waiting for this to actually happen. But it finally seems like we're starting to get there because many companies, especially startups, are starting to look toward qualified and interested. just about how they're getting there. And I think you guys are doing it in an entirely different way. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Richard (16:55.689)
Yeah, I mean, that's that's we share that sort of view. We think that the per hired thing is it just doesn't feel right, does it? There's a point where you pass over. And I think as a as a publisher, their job is to deliver qualified applicants. And then it's down to the employer to figure which of those qualified applicants they want to We we kind of scratched our head about, you know, how do we kind of deliver this? How do we how do we productize it, etc. And we came up with this idea of
of exchange traded feeds. So we call them ETFs. So the idea behind ETFs, it's like in the stock market, you where you group together similar stocks together, where they all share some kind of common factor of some sort. But for us, we do jobs. So we bring in jobs from the programatics and from the ad agencies, and then we turn them into specialist feeds so that the...
Chad (17:41.062)
Mm.
Richard (17:51.227)
So that our job board and publisher partners can just pick up the ones that are relevant for their audience and are the best jobs that will basically allow them to maximize their revenue. So that's what we started from. We then realized, do you know what? Okay, CPA, CPC, all of that kind of stuff. Well, you know, it can do that. But what we want to be able to do now is move it close to the higher. So by grouping similar jobs where you've got a similar sort of requirements,
then that allows the job boards to effectively pick up those higher value jobs. So for example, right, let's say that you, you, you're, you're a job board and you're paid 20 bucks for every nursing application. That's, that's great. But what if you got paid a hundred bucks for everyone that actually verified their nursing license, for example, in that situation, the job board gets paid more money.
The advertiser agency and their programmatic does a better job and the employer at the end of it gets delivered a qualified applicant that they actually want to interview. You know, that's basically the process that we've got. So group similar jobs together, create these exchange traded feeds and then deliver them into the job boards in a much more sort of bite -sized manner where they can maximize their revenue off the back of that.
Joel (19:09.102)
Richard, you mentioned paper hire, which is an idea that's over 20 years old. people have tried it. It just doesn't seem to work. Another idea that's been around for a while is, the capture. And I've always thought that it was odd that we don't just put captures on apply to job buttons or look at more jobs. And you mentioned this, obviously it's a problem where lazy apply. People are applying to thousands of jobs on these job sites. And then like.
My initial reaction is why don't we just put job captures so that you have to be a human being, just to apply to these jobs. At least we, that would be an easy solve. But then I look at the vendor side where there's an incentive for traffic, for applicants, for clicks. Like we're, we're in this market where an easy solution is going right against the business models of the companies that we trust to get us candidates. Like, are you trying to solve that middle?
Chad (19:54.769)
for shit.
Joel (20:06.892)
divide and that misunderstanding, like talk about that because that's always seemed to me just insane that our, that our market does that.
Richard (20:12.631)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's, what I mean by this disconnect between the buyers and sellers, you know, one gets paid for more, one actually wants better. And our role, as I see it, you know, for the technology is to sit as a quality layer between the two. What we don't try and do is tell people what quality means, because it varies massively, right? So quality might be
We are using IP screening to make sure that the applicant is in the right country or the right city or whatever it might be. You could use capture to get some idea of intent that they're not a robot, but you know, there are ways around it, but equally it's, it's, it's a good start. But actually most people worry about, do I want, I want someone with a specific thing for this job. I want a nurse with a specific license, a drive with a specific license. You know, I want to verify someone's identity or whatever it might be.
So can I create a process that allows me in as light a touch as possible to deliver that as proof? Because by proving it, you will also demonstrate it intent. You've also demonstrated that they're qualified. And then for the job seeker side of things, if they choose to then save that particular proof within the app, which I mean, they don't have to have the app to do the process, but at the end of the process, if they don't want to save that in the app, the next time a job comes along,
they no longer have to prove that again. It becomes completely frictionless as opposed to if every single, for example, job board or agency, whatever it was, or employer built their own sort of process, whereby they all, every time someone applied for the job, had to do the same assessment or proof point or whatever it was every single time. You know, that friction, it causes a problem. But if you do it once, you save it, you have this sort of zero knowledge proof, as they call it. It means you can complete a completely frictionless process thereafter.
which can only improve things.
Chad (22:04.293)
So talk about infrastructure real quick because we have all of these job boards who
Chad (22:13.489)
We have these different programmatic players who are CPC, CPA, right? They don't have the ability yet to be able to get into the qualified side of the house. So where do you guys fit in when we're talking about the lower level job boards? They don't have it. And then also the programmatic players out
Richard (22:35.907)
Yeah. So, I mean, we effectively want to be a middle layer. So we partner with both sides of the house. What we don't want to be is a demand side programmatic. Again, we kind of did that with ClickIQ. We don't have any bid management tools. We don't have any of the stuff that you would need to be that kind of thing. We also don't want to compete with the people that we want to partner with. And the same applies to the job board side of things. You know, we are not a job board. We don't sell advertising, et cetera. We just want to be that layer that connects the two and effectively enables our partners to move
Chad (22:47.302)
Mm.
Richard (23:06.009)
close to the higher, you know, to make advertising fit for this AI age that we live in. Because if it doesn't change, it's got a major problem, frankly. And if we can help them enable that, then we're doing our jobs well. So we literally sit as infrastructure between those two things, and that includes screening, verification platforms that we built. That means the app piece, you know, having a media network and, we will connect. We believe that you should connect to a very, very wide
broad job board network. And historically, the reason why that hasn't happened is if you think about it, if you're an agency, right, you can't manage 10 ,000 relationships with job boards. It's just not possible. And you also have this massive worry that the latest job board that you've added to the list is just going to shovel a load of crap to you and click fraud and all this kind of stuff. But actually what you want, because we have this skill shortage, we actually do want to throw a really wide net over it.
Chad (23:37.647)
Mm.
Richard (24:05.145)
but we need a quality control in the middle that then delivers only those qualified applicants. So we then work with the agency and programmatic partners and we say, you know, what are the prerequisites of this? What is your definition of qualified in all of this? And you can make it as light touch or as heavy as you want, and then you'll just get the applicants that you want at the end of it.
Chad (24:24.689)
So from an infrastructure standpoint, you're really a part of the process and mainly data layer. I mean, you're providing process and then also being able to collect the data necessary to be able to go against what the requirements are and then also be able to provide more money downstream, which Joel was talking about earlier. A lot of these companies, they just want to be able to provide traffic. It could have been shit. But if you're only getting 25 cents per click, imagine getting a hundred dollars.
per qualified individual. So it doesn't make any sense that you're trying to get a bunch of crap through the pipe when you can actually make more money in being able to target the right types of people.
Richard (25:07.247)
And you know what's really cool about this, right? If you are paying on a qualified applicant basis, the network automatically optimizes based on that quality. So I'll give you an example, If you advertise, let's say you've got two job boards and you're advertising for this nurse, whatever it is, and both job boards deliver 10 applicants and $20 a piece, both of those job boards would have got paid 200 bucks. Great. But if you, you know, and
Chad (25:22.458)
Hmm?
Richard (25:36.495)
In that scenario, one of them is really poor quality and one's really high. So let's say one delivers zero qualified applicants and the other one delivers five qualified applicants, but they've still both got paid exactly the same amount of money. Now, if you rewarded, let's say $100 for every qualified applicant, the poor quality job board suddenly gets zero money and the high quality job board gets 500 bucks.
Chad (25:47.519)
Mm.
Richard (26:00.643)
So you've actually expanded the actual amount that the client is paying because we're moving close to the higher. So there's more value created in all of this. And you're rewarding the job board for delivering high quality applicants. So in that scenario, then everybody wins. The employer only gets qualified, the job board that's high quality gets paid more, the other agency's done a better job. So that's kind of cool. And if you then apply that to...
a universe of lots of job boards with that sort of same level of filtering in and those products that allows them to do that, then everybody delivers more qualified applicants and generates more revenue.
Joel (26:36.046)
Another entrepreneurial question, because you've been at this a while and I think it's, have, it's your rare guests that can kind of speak to this, particularly in the, the work tech space. You have a post on sort of this whole journey, which we'll put it, we'll put a link in the show notes to that, but you had a comment in that, that I thought was intriguing. said essentially that we live in a world where things that we build today are likely to be antiquated shortly thereafter.
And we had a talk with Adam Gordon recently where he said, you before you thought about startups in a five to seven year cycle. Now I think about them in a two to three year cycle because the flip happens quicker. Tech is moving faster. You've been doing this for a while. Talk about your take on that and how you look at starting up a company today versus when you did it, you know, back in the day.
Richard (27:25.731)
Yeah, I think, I think there's two types of companies really that you end up starting. You're either building a piece of tech that solves a specific problem that probably is just a feature of something else. In which case you can build it and flip it pretty quick, as long as it's a genuine problem. And, and in that particular instance, you have to think short term, but I think the other alternative is you're building, you're building a platform play.
And, that's what we're doing in this particular instance. You know, we're interested in providing the pickaxes and the shovels to the industry so that we can shift to adapt recruitment advertising in light of the changes of AI. we, think we've taken a longer term view. I think, you know, the way the stuff that I talked about was, you know, we actively made the decision. We could build tools with AI, but we kind of felt that
It was moving so fast that by the time you built the thing, it's immediately out of date. So did we want to be in that world? Or could we say, are the problems that are being caused by this? Do we see that changing? Actually, no. And the reason why we don't see the problems that are caused changing is because employers are basically screwed. You employers, you've got a one -sided war here. On one side, you've got job seekers who can have all they can eat in terms of AI, right? They can do...
Chad (28:45.755)
Mm.
Richard (28:49.711)
There's a post the other day, a thousand applies overnight, interviews gained kind of stuff. And then on the other side, and that's X screen, don't get me wrong, I don't think this is normal. I think normal is using chat GPT to help with applications, but that does mean that you do more as a result. On the other side of the thing, you've got the employers who are being swamped by this stuff, except it's been legislated that they can't use AI particularly to actually...
get to the ones that they want. And I think this hope that that's going to change is not. So, you you've got this very one -sided thing going on. So our view is let's look at the problem that we foresee and let's ride that way. Let's try and provide the spades and the tools and what have you, the shovels to enable the rest of the industry to get themselves in a place where we want to be. So that meant that we were probably looking at a longer timeframe than perhaps somebody that's just
building a bunch of tools on the back of their eye that frankly could be out of date within a month even.
Chad (29:50.609)
Yeah, so Peter Weddle had an estimate of 150 ,000 job boards that are out there. I don't know if that's higher, lower. I had no freaking clue. But at the end of the day, when it comes down to the actual job site ecosystem, really, can't get those hires without having all those points of light that are out there, right? So guess the question is, but, but, but...
that whole ecosystem is really getting old really fast. So I guess the question is, with technologies like yours, and there are going to be others, do you really think that the job site, job board industry can be reborn to be able to provide real and better technology and better experiences for those seekers that actually have been using those job boards for years?
Richard (30:46.927)
I do. And I think they need to think less as a board or where, you know, a notice board where you just pin your database of jobs. And I think you need to think more in terms of community because, you know, there's some really great examples where communities of not just job seekers, but professionals come together.
where they have similarities, niche boards where, it goes beyond just that transactional looking for a job, it becomes career long stuff. So I think there's a certain level of reinvention here, but I think the biggest problem that they've got is because of this oversupply of applicants and clicks is you see that those, the yield on advertising drops. So you have to start cutting staff and it becomes a cycle.
Chad (31:09.456)
Mm.
Richard (31:36.163)
you only have to see the most recent results from pretty much every board. You you guys talked about it on the show recently and, you know, we see revenues falling and it's quite a tough cycle to break out of. And I think people hope that, you know, the economy comes back or whatever, but I don't think that's the issue. I think the issue is that the model is broken and the model is broken in the world that we now live in. So what we're trying to do is get out there with a new model. But, you know,
Chad (31:58.298)
Yes.
Richard (32:04.975)
150 ,000 job boards seems a lot. I've heard 30 ,000 of which maybe a thousand are worth talking about. But I also saw that was it, I think Peter also said that 67 % of applicants come from job boards maybe. But if those job boards are producing something that clients do not want, i .e. unqualified applicants, then clients will reduce their spend because they're also getting a ton of applies coming through their own website. So...
Chad (32:07.739)
does.
Richard (32:32.309)
If as an industry, we can actually change the narrative of that and say, here are qualified applicants. These are the people you want to interview. You know, we're not saying that this is the exact one you want to hire. We have no idea what that is and what that might mean. And then we ever will. But these people based on the job are qualified. They have high intent, want to meet you, want to work for your company, interview them, five of people, and then you hire one off the back. I think that if we can deliver that, I think you're in a good place.
Joel (33:00.162)
Does anyone really know how many job boards there actually are?
Chad (33:06.731)
Peter Weddle's been around for a while, so I have no clue. He might know of the ones on the dark web that none of us know, Joel. I have no clue.
Richard (33:09.293)
He's counted them.
Joel (33:13.422)
There's a lot of successful frozen yogurt shops in the world too. Sir Richard, my final one. You said you want to be a platform and I know that you've had three successful exits. All right. I know your ability to bootstrap is deep, but if you're going to build a platform, that usually means money. So talk to me about what's next for this new organization.
Richard (33:41.763)
Yeah, it's a pretty good question actually. You know, we've raised a couple of million bucks today. I've also worked basically and B has basically worked for free, which kind of hurts, but you know, just what it is and you do what you have to do, but no one's crying, right? So we've got to this point. We are growing like crazy. We're kind of at a point now, I think, where we talked about doing
a small round with existing shareholders in the next sort of six months or so. And we may do that. We've also been talking to corporate finance types with a much bigger number of a much bigger valuation. And it's hard, isn't it? Because, you know, personally, you don't want to dilute, but equally, you need to do what is right for the business to make it a success.
Chad (34:35.257)
No, Richard, I do not want dilution. Go ahead.
Richard (34:39.823)
And I'm the same, know, we, we, end the 85 percentage of the company and the team or share in it as well. So there's a, there's a big share option scheme as well. so, you know, everyone's in it for the, the right reasons and we want to be successful, but you know, it's very easy to get diluted out of sight and a lot of companies, are not as fortunate as we are, and they take, more investment early on as we did with ClickIQ. And it means you, you end up and you come out of it and you have a lot less than you thought you did.
And before you know it, you're kind of thinking, well, maybe I need to do another one. And that wasn't, that wasn't our thinking in this particular instance, but I know that a lot of companies do. So we're kind of scratching our heads and thinking, what's the best way we, if the growth rate continues as it has, then we might not even need around, but you know, we don't have that many people we need to talk to. There are 20 ad agencies and programatics that we really want to talk to.
probably already talking to frankly, and we just brought in a surge from recruitment flex podcasters are our VP. Yeah, good old surge to run the agency side of things because that's really important to us. The media network side of things. We've got Matt, Matt Woodcock, who we've worked with for us for a while. And, you know, he's ex app cast and recruitix and all those guys. So he knows outside of the house.
Joel (35:48.216)
search.
Richard (36:06.627)
So we're talking to a lot of people and there's huge interest and everyone's very positive and they want to engage with it. They see the opportunity and I think the timing is right in terms of what is happening in the market and people, know, job boards want more revenue, simple as that. Clients want more qualified applicants, simple as that. And if we can provide the technology and the mechanism to deliver both of those things, then, you know, I think it has a potential to reinvigorate the industry and...
You know, we will raise whatever monies I guess we need to do that. So we shall see.
Joel (36:40.058)
We have some hidden recording from when I went to Richard about investing in the company. Let's hear that.
Richard (36:45.741)
out.
Joel (36:54.798)
Sir Richard Collins everybody. Richard, for our listeners who want to connect with you, learn more about the company, where do you send them?
Richard (36:59.142)
Thanks.
Richard (37:05.197)
Yeah, you can you can find me on LinkedIn. The website is C Squared Technology dot com. You can tell I haven't said that very often. But now LinkedIn is probably the best. Richard Collins, you'll find me.
Joel (37:19.126)
Always a pleasure. Give, our best. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out.
Chad (37:24.689)
Way out.
Richard (37:25.347)
Thank you, gents.