In this episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast, Euan Cameron, CEO at Willo, returns for a Firing Squad reunion. The conversation covers the journey of Willo since their first appearance on the podcast in August 2021, including their fundraising efforts and product evolution. Euan shares that Willo recently raised $2 million in funding, bringing their total funding to over $3 million.
He also discusses the importance of maintaining a frugal mentality and the challenges of dilution. The episode concludes with a discussion on Willo's customer base, which has grown to 12,150 customers in 195 countries, and their global reach in interviewing candidates from every country in the world. Willo has experienced significant changes since their last conversation, including the shift to candidates being comfortable on camera and the move upstream to larger enterprise organizations.
They have developed a platform capable of interviewing and assessing candidates through video, audio, text, multiple choice, and assessments. The company has seen success in the US market, with 60% of their revenue coming from the US. They attribute their success to word-of-mouth referrals and delivering the best customer experience. Integrations have been important for SMBs, but not a major acquisition channel for larger organizations. The team has grown organically and is doubling in size over the next year. Willo is focused on automating the onboarding process and improving the efficiency of the next steps after assessment.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Joel (00:05.388)
The music's not playing and that's a problem.
Chad Sowash (00:09.198)
Yeah, no, that is a problem because we've got a thing. got a thing. Yeah, want to fire squad it. Well, we also need. There it is. There it is.
Joel (00:10.282)
That is a problem. And we want firing squad intro, right? Let's let's try this. Let's try this again.
Chad Sowash (00:23.481)
Ahem.
Joel (00:36.78)
Let's go. What's up everybody? It is your favorite guilty pleasure, AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. And this is Firing Squad reunion episode with our friend Ewan Cameron, CEO at Willow. He's back since he first aired his Firing Squad in August of 2021. Ewan, welcome back to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast.
Chad Sowash (00:43.672)
I just gotta be guilty.
Chad Sowash (00:53.897)
yeah.
Euan (01:02.969)
Thank you, Joel and Chad. It's lovely to be here.
Chad Sowash (01:05.05)
a much, much, much different setting than before, because we were in the heart of COVID when we went through the firing squad with Ewan in August, I think it was mid -August of 2021. That seems like forever ago. So Ewan, kind of like recall what was going on back then with you and the team there at Willow.
Joel (01:12.076)
Mm -hmm.
Euan (01:29.034)
Yeah, I mean, if we cast our minds back, that was our first year and we had just raised our first £250 ,000 of investment. And it was me, my co -founder, Woody, and one salesperson. That was the extent of the company. And yeah, like you said, it was COVID. I was sitting in the office on my own. It was 9pm. It was dark. It was great. Actually, it was really nice. I loved that time.
Chad Sowash (01:32.311)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (01:57.69)
God, and then he to talk to our dumb asses. So for the kids at home who did not listen to, shame on you by the way, who did not listen to the August 21 firing squad, give them just a Twitter bio of you. We'll obviously get to the company later. Tell us a little about you.
Joel (01:57.868)
The Scotch was going down nicely.
Euan (02:00.317)
Yeah, yeah.
Euan (02:20.202)
Okay. So my, my background is actually marketing. So 15 years ago, I started my career in digital marketing at the time when digital was just becoming the thing that marketing departments were doing. They were sort of grappling with social and websites and there was a real transition and that was where my career started. So didn't really know traditional marketing and yeah, I got caught my teeth in marketing for a number of years, different organizations, all startups. And in all of these startups, I was.
deeply involved in the hiring because in most startups you don't have hiring recruiters. You don't have anyone to do that. You're doing that yourself. And I was exposed to the process of hiring and also just the pitfalls of hiring, particularly for startups. And I'm sort of growing my experience and my career.
Joel (03:09.236)
It's a Twitter bio, Ewan. I hate to bring out the crickets on Firing Squad.
Chad Sowash (03:10.094)
Yes, we want to hear about Glasgow and Scotch. You haven't even hit any of those things yet. I mean, come on,
Euan (03:13.022)
but with her as a longer bio.
Euan (03:19.69)
Yes. Yes. So let's, let's fast forward. Elon made the bio longer. I think we're good. so yeah, career started that and then I'm like hiring and hiring sucks. I'm thinking to myself hiring is tough as shit. How do we make it better? Started inviting people to send me in videos and you know, that's where the company was born was basically this, this really crude rudimentary idea that I had back in 2015 was basically just, you know, don't send me a CV, send me a short video.
Joel (03:23.244)
Speed it up.
Chad Sowash (03:43.159)
Mm
Euan (03:48.36)
People put them on YouTube and started sending me and it was great. And that was really the start of it. And then, yeah, like you said, based in Glasgow, got a five year old daughter who back when we spoke with like two, so she's much, she's actually at school next week. So that's pretty crazy. Yeah. It's a very exciting time. And yeah, all, all, all good. So yeah, basically, you know, throughout my career, moved from marketing, hired startups, and then decided that hiring was broken as, as we all know, and you know, decided to flip it on its head and change, change it up for the better.
Chad Sowash (04:04.44)
Yeah, it's a great time.
Chad Sowash (04:18.552)
Mm -hmm. So.
Joel (04:18.7)
And your favorite scotch is?
Euan (04:21.898)
Highland Park, Highland Park, 15. Yeah. Yeah?
Chad Sowash (04:23.418)
I'm a big fan. I am a big fan of that. That's not that smoky, peaty shit that Cheeseman likes. Viking heart. That sounds nasty. Okay, so here on Firing Squad, kids, what we like to do is we like to go back into the annals of Firing Squad and bring back some of the...
Joel (04:28.992)
Not, yeah, not, Pete enough for me, but I can, I like their Viking heart.
Joel (04:38.442)
It's a white
Chad Sowash (04:51.928)
founders and obviously Willow in this case, to talk a little bit about not just what we heard then, which we're going to listen to here in a minute, but then start to look at how they have moved forward. So let's go ahead, Joel, cue up that beautiful bean footage and let's hear that first two minute pitch.
Joel (05:07.852)
Here we go back. Let's go back to 2021 everybody. Here we go.
Joel (06:44.103)
Hahaha!
dog bark during
Joel (07:09.632)
So he's not nervous enough, the dogs are unleashed.
Euan (07:13.428)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Joel (07:29.974)
Very nice. We sounded so young back then, didn't we?
Chad Sowash (07:31.736)
There it is. There it is. Yeah. Well, that just encapsulated, think it brought us all back to the COVID days because back then somebody would go fucking crazy if they heard a dog in the background. No, you just carried on just like a trooper. You didn't even stop. It was like, look, this is every day. in a pandemic. Fucking dog's OK. Not a big deal. Let's just let's carry on business. So that was that was that was definitely a feather in your cap on that one.
Joel (07:49.194)
Mm -hmm.
Joel (07:58.892)
So looking back, you proud of that performance? Do you feel like you nailed it, did a good job? If you had to pitch that again, would you be an improved U -1 or is it about the same?
Euan (07:59.779)
Thanks, yeah.
Chad Sowash (08:04.28)
Was it cringy?
Euan (08:10.162)
proud of that performance. think it was quite clear, concise. I like that.
Joel (08:12.086)
Good for you. Good for you.
Joel (08:17.74)
And it was pretty close to two minutes. a lot of founders come on. It's like 35 seconds and we're done. Yeah. So you, you did a good job of, of, of putting up. So, let's remember real quickly, Chad, our reviews of Willow. we know how the Scots get really defensive and they're real sensitive. if they get a bad review, Adam Gordon. so, so my, mine was a, a golf clap. My underlying thing was I thought you needed to make.
Chad Sowash (08:21.356)
It was, it was a little short, a little short. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
Euan (08:21.375)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (08:31.951)
Yes.
Chad Sowash (08:37.722)
sensitive.
Yes.
Joel (08:44.288)
more money, which may bring us to some breaking news after we get to this portion of the show chat. But I said, if a little bit more money came in that I was going to be a fan, your review was a little less positive. What did you say about Willow?
Chad Sowash (08:50.887)
good call.
Chad Sowash (08:59.232)
Yeah, it was, there was a lot of shit that needed to be tightened up at the time. A lot of shit and there was a lot of marketing pieces that the puzzles, you know, just they weren't fitting together. And Ewan being a marketing guy, I just wasn't going to have it. So I wanted to send a signal to Ewan and kind of stiffen his spine a little bit. And I think that's happened. I think I helped. I think I might've helped.
Joel (09:24.14)
And at the risk of having flashbacks, you and I just, want to remind that he, got the guns, everybody. He, he got the guns, but he took that. And we always say on the show, Hey, look, we hope that you come back in a few years, stick it in our faces that you've been a big success. This must feel pretty good to you to come back three years or so later and stick it in Chad's face.
Chad Sowash (09:28.792)
Hahaha
Euan (09:41.14)
Here we are.
Chad Sowash (09:43.836)
he's not acquired yet. He's not acquired yet. Don't be starting that. Don't be starting that. We're like, we're probably in the third quarter right now. He's doing really well. Don't get me wrong, but we're about in the third quarter. Yes. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Yes. I didn't say you're going to go away. That's a sexy t -shirt.
Joel (09:52.896)
He's still in business. That's, that's, that's, that's saying something. Not just still here. You and you, you, you have some breaking news that we want to report before we get into rehashing where you've been from, from the beginning till now. So what kind of, what, what, what's your news? What you got?
Euan (09:53.565)
Yeah, Yeah, we're still here. Yeah, Got the t -shirt to prove it.
Chad Sowash (10:07.38)
what? Huh? What?
Chad Sowash (10:14.255)
Mmm.
Euan (10:15.178)
Breaking News, thank you. So Breaking News, you mentioned obviously funding and over past four years we have raised a very moderate amount of funding until recently. We did our most significant round last month. So this is the first time I've shared this news outside of the company. We raised 2 million US last month and that 2 million US, yeah, in the bank.
Chad Sowash (10:33.806)
Mm
Joel (10:36.236)
All right.
Chad Sowash (10:36.686)
Wow.
Joel (10:40.62)
Congratulations.
Euan (10:41.783)
And that's a big milestone. It really gives us the headway to really push forward now, which is exciting.
Chad Sowash (10:48.442)
That's awesome. That's awesome. So the first was from 1818. And how much was that? Was that like around three -ish? Yeah.
Euan (10:59.018)
Correct, yeah. So over the past few years, we have raised 700, 800 ,000 from 1818. Yeah, so a million in total, including angels.
Chad Sowash (11:06.498)
Okay, okay.
Gotcha. Okay. So your total is a little around three, a little over three right now. Okay. Excellent. So you had 1818 and they're based out of, they're based out of Europe. They're based out of England. Okay. Yours. And so who's the new investor?
Euan (11:15.016)
Yeah, correct. Just a little bit over three.
Euan (11:22.416)
It's currency. Yeah. Yeah.
Euan (11:28.766)
Yeah, great. So our new investor is Mark Bilge. So he is basically co -founder, sorry, Peter Bauer, Mark Bilge and Peter Bauer, co -founder of Minecast. And they came to us three years ago, invested a small amount in the company. And that was great. We were super appreciative of that. Essentially an angel size check. And then we approached them about six months ago and said, hey, we're raising again.
Chad Sowash (11:38.404)
Okay.
Chad Sowash (11:44.1)
Mm
Chad Sowash (11:51.619)
Nice.
Euan (11:56.854)
And between Mark and Peter, they decided to give us a really healthy capital injection of the two million, which is amazing. And it was a great process as well. it was, I think a large part of that was down to the fact they invested quite early and they've obviously been getting updated. We've kept them in the loop. So this was a really enjoyable and fairly easy, painless round.
Chad Sowash (12:05.166)
Nice, nice.
Joel (12:19.54)
And one of the things we talk about on the show is companies rarely fail because they didn't take enough money. They fail because they took too much money. And I think listening to you, some people might say like, why wouldn't you take more? you've been, you have a proven model. You're like, you're doing well. Was there a reason why you sort of tempered your check amount to what you did?
Euan (12:26.804)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (12:41.23)
dilution.
Euan (12:41.578)
Absolutely. Dilution and you're spot on though. You're spot on as well, Joe. Obviously the past four years we've built the company on a shoestring, some would say, but that frugal mentality is I think a large part of our success and you don't want to lose that. So yeah, dilution naturally for all of us. Everyone in the company is a shareholder, but there's also this frugal, keeps us fighting, which I think is important.
Joel (12:42.444)
Setting them up.
Chad Sowash (13:10.232)
We've seen we've seen tons of startups who have gotten tons of cash and they are flailing and I think because they they don't have to focus right they feel like they've got enough money in the bank They can just go out after everything and you can't I mean you still have to have a lot of focus a lot of discipline I think a lot of startups that are out there today They find themselves needing cash tomorrow, right? It's like we need cash tomorrow
And every one that I talk to is like, you've got to start the conversations years in advance. This isn't something that you do tomorrow, right? Other than if you have an idea and you need some pre -seed or something like that. So when you started the conversation with 1818 and then obviously the new investors, what kind of a timeframe and was it a constant courting of those investors? And do you continue to court other investors at the same time?
Euan (14:07.161)
Yeah, that's a great question. We have a CRM and the CRM is basically an investor CRM.
And you have to, right? I I basically treat it like a big sales process. Since we started speaking 2021, I've been building that CRM out. It has about 150, you know, BCs, angels, syndicates in there. And yeah, to exactly your point, I keep them warm. I court them, keep them all in the loop. You never know when you're going to need them. And like I just example there, when you do approach one of them, it's, if you've been courting them for four years, it just happens. It happens a lot more quickly.
Chad Sowash (14:16.953)
Yeah.
Mm
Euan (14:42.804)
There's the trust, the credibility is already there. It's also really fun. Like I actually really enjoy that process of, know, there are a lot of them want obviously to deploy capital. The VCs are trying to deploy capital. So let's ourselves in the most attractive position possible. And yeah, just running that, running that CRM. I'm going to continue running that for as long as it goes. It's exciting to see how you keep that kind of going. Absolutely.
Joel (15:05.196)
So when we spoke in 2021, you touted 4 ,000 customers in 135 countries. What's it look like now?
Chad Sowash (15:05.754)
relationships. Yeah.
Euan (15:18.858)
So 12 ,150 countries. And the figure that makes me even more proud about that is that we have interviewed to date millions of candidates, but all those candidates are located in all 195 countries around the world. So we've actually interviewed a candidate in every single country around the world, which is exciting. Yeah.
Joel (15:23.21)
Nice.
Chad Sowash (15:40.174)
Wow, that's awesome. That is awesome. So talk a little bit about, because when we talked before, mainly, and talk about the evolution of the product itself, text -based from the standpoint of, I would read the question and then I would respond via video, right? Is it still the same kind of process? What have you changed? What has evolved? Where have you pivoted? Give us some ideas of where you've changed since we talked last in August.
of 2021.
Euan (16:10.634)
Absolutely. So biggest change first and foremost is when we spoke, we were obviously in the midst of COVID. As we came out the other side of COVID, the really stark realization was that candidates were in the main comfortable on camera. So that was something that we didn't have before we spoke. mean, literally 2019, 2020, candidates weren't comfortable on camera. They didn't do this. They didn't have cameras. Like a lot of their laptops didn't even have cameras. So they couldn't be on it even if they wanted. So that obviously changed.
Chad Sowash (16:16.484)
Mm.
Chad Sowash (16:30.244)
Mm
Chad Sowash (16:38.232)
Now we have these things. they're, they saw this on. Yeah.
Euan (16:40.2)
Yeah, exactly. And everyone selfies. Yeah, exactly. You do more selfies than you do take pictures, right? Your phone's filled with your own face. And that is a massive change that we have obviously benefited from as an organization because of the natural video element is kind of commonplace. But as you mentioned, it has obviously evolved. One of the biggest evolutions, which we never really spoke about in the show because we didn't know at the time, but our biggest evolution has been our move upstream to larger enterprise organizations.
Chad Sowash (16:45.038)
Yeah.
Euan (17:09.13)
And the move upstream has obviously pulled the product along with it. That was obviously intentional from a product perspective was like, we don't really know what we're going to build here. Let's just listen to the customers. you 2021, we have a fairly basic feature list product. 2022, it starts to evolve with the customer. By 2024, we have today a platform that's capable of interviewing and assessing candidates.
Chad Sowash (17:18.724)
Mm
Euan (17:35.934)
So it's video, it's audio, it's text, it's multiple choice, it's assessments, all wrapped up in one. And that's what the enterprise and the larger multi -region organizations are looking for. They essentially come into us and they're saying, hey Willow, we want you to assess our candidates rather than in the previous conversations. was, you to do the interview stage, that pre -screening interview. So it's a really interesting space that we've managed to take up over that four years.
Chad Sowash (18:05.572)
How do you assess? mean, because, tell me it's not facial recognition, number one. I was kidding, I was kidding. That was a higher view joke. But how do you assess?
Euan (18:12.478)
So this is, guess, yeah.
Euan (18:18.162)
Yeah, it's a great question. And this is one of the most fascinating pieces of work that we're doing at the moment around AI and the introduction of AI. Because customers again, are coming to us and saying, hey, we want to assess that skill, and we want to use AI. And you can't just, you know, say, we're to use AI to assess candidates because every employer is looking for different things. And, you know, a candidate that looks good to you could be terrible to them. And that's obviously true with what we're doing today as well. So what we allow you to do as an employer,
or as a recruiter is build your own assessments in the platform. So if you want to assess their numeracy skills, you build the numeracy skills questions. Or if you want to assess their copyrighting skills, you build the copyrighting questions. The beauty of that is, well, there's a couple of reasons. First of all, it allows the employer to customize exactly what they're looking for. And every employer is different. But it also allows us to be that multinational company that we strive to be in the first place.
countries, you can't operate in 150 countries if you just have this blueprint of what a good candidate looks like and what an assessment candidate platform looks like, because what they're looking for in this country isn't the same as what they're looking for in this country. And even the countries can be more biased or less biased or introduce different factors, external factors is really up to them. We can't say, and it's not our place to say how they should be hiring or how they should be assessing candidates. So we give them the framework and we give them the tools to build their own assessments. And that's, think,
know, large part of our success today is that flexibility.
Joel (19:48.608)
Yeah, you touch a lot on the global growth and it's the dream of most European startups to come to America. We know that the list of failures is pretty long, but you're one of the success stories. What has been the secret sauce? What advice would you give to others looking to grow into America and elsewhere?
Euan (20:07.754)
So 60 % of our revenue today comes from the US, for a company based out of Scotland is quite an exciting prospect. Quite a nice thing to say and a large part of our success.
Chad Sowash (20:24.174)
He starts every call with that.
Joel (20:25.644)
It only took 20 minutes before me to play that. Please.
Euan (20:25.962)
Well, why not? a large part of, would say a large part of that success is actually just word of mouth, delivering the best customer experience. US customers love to tell other customers and other prospects about, you know, great tools that they have experience with. So huge part of that is down to the word of mouth and the success of our customer success and support teams. And it's been key since day one, I've always felt like even the smallest customer, and this is a great point to actually touch on.
from an internationalization perspective is that we aim to be the SaaS platform that's accessible to all organizations. So whether you're a coffee shop or whether you're PWC, we have a product for you and we also treat you the same. And that's obviously been completely key to the success in the US. For example, when we started speaking, we had one Chick -fil -A restaurant as a customer.
Chad Sowash (21:21.347)
huh.
Euan (21:21.738)
And that's obviously grown into multiple Chick -fil -A restaurants, but then we also have the New York DMV as a customer. And we treat them the same. We treat them with the best customer experience possibly can, because you never know who they're going to speak to. And that's been really the flywheel in the US for the past four years. It's just been delivering that great customer success and then just driving it more and more and more. And customers are joining the flywheel either through self -serve or through the sales team. And they're telling other people about it.
Joel (21:47.542)
So you're saying Chick -fil is the secret to growth in America is what I'm hearing. A chicken sandwich is behind all of this.
Chad Sowash (21:48.068)
So you talked about integration.
Euan (21:52.212)
That's the key to your flywheel. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (21:53.914)
Chick -fil -A, Hobby Lobby, not being open on Sundays. So integrations, we talked about integrations during the first podcast too, right? And that was something that was really driving your focus. Is that what got you to where you are today? Is that where you were able to acquire all of these Chick -fil -As as a...
as clients and then also to be able to grow just because of being connected to some of those core talent platforms.
Euan (22:25.898)
wish it was and it's actually not become the reality. The reality is that most of our mid -market enterprise customers just expect the integration. So we have to have integrations because they're expected and we have over 25 integrations now, most of the key kind of ATSs, but they're just expected. And we have an open API. The key really for us with the integrations has been for those very small SMBs.
Chad Sowash (22:29.452)
Okay.
Chad Sowash (22:44.088)
Mm
Euan (22:54.238)
The SMBs, go and buy Ashby or they go and buy Greenhouse, they buy like a single user license. And then they go into the marketplace and then they go, what does this work with? And then Willow obviously pops up. So it has been great from an SMB perspective, but really in the kind of main revenue generating segments of the business, it's unfortunately not been. And as you will know, it's obviously a lot of time invested in building and maintaining these integrations. But yeah, they're definitely not an acquisition channel for us, like we thought they might be.
Chad Sowash (23:17.892)
Hell yeah.
Chad Sowash (23:21.786)
What's the percentage of SMB revenue versus enterprise revenue right now?
Euan (23:28.554)
SMB revenue is about 40 % of the organization. So it's a healthy base, and I love that. I that's obviously nice for de -risking the whole organization.
Chad Sowash (23:31.52)
Okay, okay. Yeah.
Well, and it sounds like it's coming through those integrations so you don't have to try to go out and sell SMBs, which is a bitch, and or try to advertise to SMBs, which is a bitch. So you guys are literally just focusing on direct market, going direct to these brands to be able to introduce Willow to them.
Euan (23:41.928)
Yeah.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Euan (23:56.264)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Through integrations and also again, through word of mouth, we do quite a lot in terms of the sharing aspect of Willow. For example, we have the affiliate program. We also have a lot of branding on the platform itself. So when you share, for example, a candidate with someone else in another SMB, they know that it's Willow. They can't mistake that. And then they get of get involved in that. So yeah, it's an interesting strategy, which
Chad Sowash (24:03.009)
Mm
Euan (24:24.434)
Yeah, when we originally spoke, felt like integrations were the key to our acquisition and that was going to be the real hack, but it didn't really play out.
Chad Sowash (24:31.524)
Mm -hmm.
Joel (24:33.868)
Talk about the team for a second. When we last spoke, it was a bit of a skeleton, skeleton crew to say the least. And you've grown head count pretty organically. you know, according to LinkedIn, you have 43 associates. were talking to me earlier about 20 or so, actual employees. according to LinkedIn, you've grown over 20 % in the last two years. You have very few,
sales and engineering in the last year or so that that may be just be something LinkedIn misses in translation, but talk about growing the team, how you thought about who do we add first? When, does certain people come in? How has the year of efficiency and AI impacted how you look at engineering talent? Talk about the team.
Euan (25:15.944)
Yeah. Great question. And this is really, you picked up on the engineering and the sales piece. The funding that we just took really unlocks a lot of that. We've sort of maxed out in terms of those heads, but in terms of the overall head count now, yeah, as you said, across multiple countries now. So we're actually UK, Philippines, US and Canada is where our team are. The engineering team based out in the Philippines. And yeah, the team has evolved and grown.
As I mentioned at the start though, hiring for a startup is different. We've really taken each hire very seriously, very carefully. Everyone has to get four votes from existing employees before they get hired. It's been a real challenge to try and find the right people to work. As you said, it's still small team, a small but mighty team. We're doing quite a lot of heavy lifting for who we all are here.
Joel (26:11.265)
Are you leveraging contract work? Are these all sort of your employees? Did you use more contract at the beginning? How did you balance that?
Euan (26:18.698)
Yeah. The balance is about the same. yeah, 20 build time and then about 20 contract. And those contractors can be, you know, anything like translators and things. been, it's been useful to have those folks, but they're not always necessary to be full time.
Chad Sowash (26:35.101)
Let's talk about efficiency because that was really one of the big, one of the big pushes that that you had. We actually talked to GM not too long ago and they were talking about taking their schedule to interview from six days to six minutes. And back in 2021, you were talking about 15 minutes of schedule, which is, mean, that was really fast. So talk about just again, we're talking about flywheel here. Everything is starting to spin. It's starting to become much faster.
Euan (27:02.139)
And that's the end of the talk. Thank you.
Chad Sowash (27:04.482)
There's a hell of a lot more competition out there today, even though some of it's new and they don't know what the hell they're doing. There's still a lot of noise out there. So talk about how you guys are using, whether it's AI, automation, new process efficiencies to be able to take Willow to that next level.
Euan (27:23.562)
And you mentioned the space. mean, the space since we spoke has grown significantly. The number of entrants in the market, we're like 180 competitors in our space now, which is a huge change. mean, we're literally, you could probably count them on like two hands before. And most of them are, you know, AI powered or claiming to be AI powered as well. It's a really interesting change over the past few years. The focus for us really has been, how do we keep delivering on the time to hire that we promised?
But the real focus over the past few years has actually changed and evolved into that quality of hire as well. Because you can hire quickly, but if we aren't hiring quality, then no one really cares. The kind of time to hire thing, it's a nice kind of outcome, but the outcome that employers really care about, like Toyota, for example, we have Toyota as a customer in the UK and the outcome they really care about is the right people. And the time to hire thing is just a nice.
you know, side effect of abusing Willow. So the 15 minutes still stands today, but the quality and the retention of those folks is more key to us. And that's, that's interesting, particularly when you talk about AI, because there's, there is obviously a lot of noise around AI and hiring, like most industries, but for some reason, a lot in hiring. And what you end up with is this strange scenario where you have candidates are AI powered and your recruiters that are AI powered. And you end up, well, okay, who are we actually hiring here?
And the time to hire might be like seconds because that's how it could be. But the quality of the hire is completely shit. so I think there's, there's a real balance to be had. And this goes back to, thankfully, the vision that we had at the very start, which was let's make hiring about people. Let's make hiring human. And we are in the midst at the moment of obviously developing AI, like I mentioned, but the AI that we are introducing is about giving and surfacing the right information.
from the humans rather than replacing humans. And that's a real challenge. You for example, at the moment we're transcribing all the videos and all the audio content, and then we're allowing you to search and filter that content. And that in itself is a superpower of AI. Like you literally couldn't do that two years ago. You'd have to do like, you know, horrible like control find and the transcript is never very good because it's literally a transcript of what the person said. So an AI transcript is obviously much better.
Euan (29:47.924)
You can do really cool stuff as well. You can, for example, interview people in different languages now. So I can interview a Spanish person without having any Spanish knowledge, thanks to the AI transcription in Willow, which is really cool. So there's like small AI, you know, superpowers, which we're giving our customers, which don't allow or don't make it possible to replace that human. And that's key. I think that's key for us as we move forward into the future. I just can't see a world that's going to work out very well where you go, okay, time to hire three seconds.
Joel (29:56.266)
Wow, that is really cool.
Euan (30:17.342)
And then you go, okay, cool. What's quality of hire? What's retention rate? And they're like, yeah, shit and shit. But we can hire people really quickly.
Chad Sowash (30:24.855)
Are you pushing the transcription into the applicant tracking system? Are there some clients that they want that as a record? Okay.
Euan (30:31.69)
Both, both, yeah, both. And customers also, they ingest it through our API or through Zapier. And then they can do their own cool stuff with it as well. Some of them, for example, will like to summarize it. They can send it down to their hiring managers or they can use it as a recruitment agency and pitch people. A lot of cool stuff you can do with the transcripts.
Chad Sowash (30:37.998)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Joel (30:50.989)
Tell us a story, every startup has a curve ball or an unexpected event happen that they have to really think on their feet. Tell us a story about where you were like, fuck, and how did you respond?
Chad Sowash (30:56.538)
Storytime.
Euan (31:06.086)
Every day. We have one of those.
Euan (31:11.85)
the biggest, the biggest, the biggest moment is, and I think it's, it's, it's symptomatic of our enterprise customers, enterprise customers. come along at the same time for some reason, you know, I would love it if we just did one enterprise customer at a time, but they never do. No. So like the biggest, the biggest enterprise customers that you can imagine in the world came to us at the same time and they both had their own requirements. And we obviously wanted to win both of them because the opportunities there are huge.
Chad Sowash (31:29.737)
That's how works. Yeah, no.
Euan (31:42.186)
and we just don't have the physical team to do it. this is like last year, what we had to do was literally just deliver both projects exactly at the same time. All of the enterprise customers, as you folks know better than me, need features. They always want specific features that are specific to them. And they want it like, yeah, yeah, they want it tomorrow.
Chad Sowash (31:58.254)
Yeah. That they don't use Yeah.
Joel (31:59.18)
This is like that interview question where they say like, what's your biggest weakness? And the answer should be like, I have trouble delegating. I wanna take on all the work. Ewan's like, we get so many enterprise customers that it's a total freak out. So great answer on that one. Good answer startup. Yeah, when someone asks, what's your greatest challenge? I always say, so many customers. We don't know how, it's so many customers and they're so huge.
Chad Sowash (32:11.491)
Hahaha
Chad Sowash (32:17.464)
He was talking about, he was talking about two. He was talking about two.
Euan (32:18.418)
You
Euan (32:26.036)
Yeah
Joel (32:28.748)
We don't know. We don't know what to do. Yeah. All right. I'm to let you out on this one. what does the company look like in 24 or 36 months? Is it big changes? Stay the course? Like, what are we looking at? You got, you just got money. What's going to, what's going to happen?
Euan (32:29.14)
Hey, it's the reunion.
Chad Sowash (32:33.594)
Let's get, let's get, let's get.
Chad Sowash (32:41.039)
acquisition.
Euan (32:43.784)
changes. So team headcount is doubling over the next year. So please apply and yes, be good. But send your applications in that'd be great. The other big changes we are really moving more aggressively towards the automation of the onboarding piece. there's obviously Willow is obviously very focused on this this part of the moment. Assessment and screening, but there's this there's this really
Chad Sowash (32:49.135)
Wow.
Chad Sowash (33:07.16)
down funnel.
Euan (33:11.73)
Attractive direction for us, which our customers are going to pulling us in and you know, you see at the moment the kind of the move between willow to offer or Willow to next stage of interview process or assessment process quite clunky and they all have their own natural ways of doing or funky ways of doing it so that the natural stream for us is to move this way into the onboarding and the next steps and Really just take away a lot of pain, know, for example, we
We see customers at the moment, know, they're literally copying and pasting the email address of the person you want to offer into like a spreadsheet. And then someone picks up that spreadsheet and writes an offer letter. It's dead clunky, not good. And when you're doing that enterprise level, you're literally doing that hundreds of times a day. Sometimes it just doesn't make any sense. It blows our mind. So we're trying to make that a lot more efficient over the next few years. And that really allows Willow to take on slightly more of the picture, but also just still focusing on a tight part of
We're not going to go the other way, you know, towards the attraction or anything like that.
Chad Sowash (34:14.094)
hear that Joel we've got Willow offer letters coming soon. All right kids.
Joel (34:17.044)
That's right. If only there had been some layoffs recently in our industry that you and could could grab some talent.
Chad Sowash (34:26.042)
There's some people out there, my friend. So Ewan, thanks again for coming back on. Great to hear the story. Definitely keep us in the loop. But for all those kids that are out there who, maybe they want a little taste of Willow, where would you send them? Or maybe they want to connect with you. Where would you actually send them?
Euan (34:43.21)
Absolutely. I would send them to willow .video and that's w i l l o dot video. And they can not only book a demo, but they can also just try the platform for free for 15 days. Anyone can do that forever. Yeah. You can jump into the free forever. Actually you can. So you can use it one job for one year free. so check that out. That's obviously a great way to get into things, whether you're an SMB, mid -market or enterprise.
Chad Sowash (34:53.614)
Forever. Forever.
Joel (35:07.436)
If it's not Scottish, it's crap, Chad. You and thanks for joining us. Keep doing what you do. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out.
Chad Sowash (35:08.281)
Beautiful.
Euan (35:14.036)
Thank you.
Chad Sowash (35:14.286)
That's right.
We out.
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