This week on The Chad and Cheese Podcast: It's a world of layoffs, aliens, and bad burgers as Chad brags about sunny Portugal while Joel freezes in the Midwest. From AI pimps hustling Instagram to job board dinosaurs facing extinction, the duo dives into an Acquisition Palooza that proves even startups can have a midlife crisis. Plus, they tackle the age-old question: How much Shake Shack can you eat at 30,000 feet? Spoiler: Not enough. Strap in for hot takes, cool beers, and the slow but inevitable collapse of humanity—now with a side of influencer drama!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Joel (00:30.78)
Awwww yeah, it's the podcast that's as hot as Bitcoin bombs and bad decisions in DC right about now. Hey kids, it's The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your cohost Joel bomb cyclone Cheesman.
Chad (00:43.714)
And this is Chad Gravedigger Sowash.
Joel (00:46.776)
And on this week's episode, Pimp's Private Equity Pickles and Acquisition Palooza. Let's do this.
Joel (01:00.902)
Well, this is a tale of two locations. I woke up to snow and Chad is like basking in the sun, living his best life. I appreciate that. Chad. Yeah. Yeah. Can we, can we talk about the state of the world real quick? as if, as if we don't need more stress, like Trump's back. We're missiles deep into Russia.
Chad (01:04.33)
yeah, yeah, that sun coming in. Yeah.
Chad (01:14.727)
sun. Yes. Back home again in Portugal.
Chad (01:22.798)
Yeah.
Joel (01:29.804)
Aliens are apparently in our oceans. We got bomb cyclones, which I've never even heard of before. And we got Mike Tyson fighting Jake Paul. Like which of those is the most like, are you even paying attention to the travesties of the world? Are you just immune to it? They're in Portugal.
Chad (01:48.298)
No, mean, well, they I'm not paying attention. And after the election, we have gone away from news. Plus, I mean, we were bouncing all over Portugal, Spain, Gibraltar, drinking, eating wonderful food, seeing the sights. Then we capped it off. Julie surprised me with a quick trip to Amsterdam and Utrecht for a couple of days. It went to a couple of really cool place. I mean, few good places we've never been. Never been to Nazareth before.
Joel (01:55.772)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (02:07.483)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (02:17.848)
Kadis, Gibraltar, Utrecht. So we've been busy. We've been busy and we haven't been watching the news. So no, not doing that shit.
Joel (02:26.204)
I'm sorry. I'm a bit of a downer today. I apologize. Did you see the fight? Did you see the fight? Did you see Tyson's ass? Did you see? Did you see any of it?
Chad (02:33.834)
No, no, Because everything nowadays, especially with these guys like the Jake Pauls of the world, it all seems to have a script. It almost feels like, remember like WWF when we were growing up? Not that it's any better today, but I mean, like the, you know, it felt fake. just, the whole thing just felt fake.
Joel (02:54.47)
Sure.
Chad (03:00.952)
It's like the whole smack at the weigh-ins that it was like, come on, man. I mean, stop it. It is? It is. Well, yeah.
Joel (03:04.122)
Yeah. Just felt like a big grift, just like we were all taken. We're all taken, which is sad because you and I are of a certain age where boxing, we remember real boxing. Like I remember sitting with my dad watching Sugar Ray Leonard and Hagler and Ali and it's a show now. can fill up what 70,000 people showed up live. I don't know how many people watched on Netflix at global scale. Huge.
Chad (03:15.438)
yeah. Yeah.
Yep.
Chad (03:26.392)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Netflix? Yeah.
Joel (03:33.5)
I don't, maybe, maybe we like the grift. Maybe we just like the show. We just like the, we like the slap and tickle. I don't know. We did vote. Yeah, we voted for it. It's in the white house. It's on our TV. Yup.
Chad (03:37.154)
We must, we must. We voted for it. We voted for it. To be clear, I did not vote for it. But I mean, I remember watching a young Mike Tyson break Ferguson's nose. I mean, that kind of stuff, stuff that just wasn't fake. was true sport. And it just seems like we've gone off the rails a tad, all over the place.
Joel (03:52.688)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (04:02.32)
I will say the, the, the, the, the white before that with the women was pretty solid. Like that was a knockdown drag out fight. And the first fight was, was an Indian fighter. I thought, wow, this shit's global. Now I've, I've never remember seeing a boxer from India. Like if, if we can get countries all fighting each other, like I think that would be high entertainment value.
Chad (04:08.005)
okay.
Chad (04:17.014)
yeah.
Chad (04:23.982)
Have you never seen the Olympics before? That shit happens in the Olympics every four years.
Joel (04:29.66)
I've never seen a medal winner from India and, and boxing before. Maybe I, maybe I missed that. Maybe there you go. There you go. man. I don't know the world. Shit's falling apart, man. Let's get to, let's get to shout outs. As you know, Chad taken sponsored, sponsored by the great white North company. I feel, I feel like I'm in the great white North this morning. Kiara that's text recruiting.
Chad (04:34.74)
I didn't say a medal winner, just that they have boxers.
Chad (04:50.807)
Yes.
Looks like it.
Joel (04:56.06)
made easy and affordable. Chad, what do you got for your first shout out this week?
Chad (05:00.674)
So my shout out goes to Indeed Flex.
Chad (05:11.807)
I know, I know, stick with me here kids. So you go on LinkedIn and you perform a search for flex jobs and the results are dominated by Indeed Flex on LinkedIn. Okay, then you go click on the job, watch the URL and see the job was actually distributed by talent.com. Yes.
rival indeed and their indeed flex jobs are getting posted on LinkedIn, which that's not even the best part. The best part is that talent.com another indeed rival is posting them. So shout out to indeed flex for watching talent.com apparently dig their own goddamn graves. The stupidity and our space is utterly amazing.
Joel (05:43.26)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (06:03.258)
Yeah. All the inter love, if you will, all the incest that goes on in our industry. think job seekers are getting on. They're on to us. They're on to us. The employer's not so much, but think the job seekers are almost on to us. Well, here's one Chipotle missed in my shout outs, Chad. I know that.
Chad (06:09.952)
incestuous
Chad (06:14.058)
That's it.
Chad (06:26.6)
Joel (06:30.236)
I know that you and you and Julie love you some Delta airlines, much like much like my wife. Well, they announced this week a partnership with Shake Shack. Yeah. Shake Shack the burger, the burger makers, that they will, they will start, offering Shake Shack on Delta flights. they'll start December of this year, Boston every it's flights over 900 miles.
Chad (06:33.71)
So yeah.
Chad (06:40.866)
What?
yeah.
Joel (06:56.86)
That's the good news. They're, they're offering this. Now the bad news is like, you know, I'm, I'm kind of a downer today. Sorry, but you have to be on a, you have to be on a first-class flight to get your Shake Shack burger. and it has to be 900 miles. the, quick upgrade I get like going from New York to Indiana, like that's not going to qualify. Yeah. gotta, I gotta like pay up. I gotta pay a lot of money for my $20 Shake Shack. You get a brownie.
Chad (06:57.102)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (07:15.992)
Yeah, not happening.
Joel (07:25.461)
think fries and like little salad thing, but Hey, it's a start, man. It's a start. I've always thought these food companies are missing a huge opportunity to like get their brand and their food, in the mouths of a lot of people who have no other option, but to eat that food. So a shout out to our friends at Shake Shack.
Chad (07:34.36)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad (07:42.296)
Dude.
One of my favorite things that Alaska Airlines did, I actually flew to Alaska, the very first time flew Alaska Airlines, they had the Alaska Brewing Company beer on the airline. I was like, that is amazing. It's incredibly smart and I don't have to drink a Budweiser.
Joel (07:49.19)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (07:58.732)
Okay.
Joel (08:04.922)
Yeah, that's easy. You don't have to cook it. It doesn't have the same quality that you get in the restaurant. That's a no-brainer. However, Chad, you know you don't have to be first class to get free shit from Chad and Cheese. We give it to the dregs of society, to the CEO. Everybody gets free shit from Chad and Cheese. Tell them what they could win if they sign up.
Chad (08:07.606)
It's too easy. Yeah. Yeah, it's too easy.
Chad (08:18.158)
You
Chad (08:28.95)
Well, listener, just so you know, Chad thinks that you're not the drag of society. You got to sign up for free stuff at Chadcheese.com slash free where you could win. You will get sent a T-shirt, right? You're to get one of those sexy Chad and cheese T-shirts, Aaron app on the back. Aaron sponsoring that bourbon barrel aged syrup forum. Your boys up north, Kiora beer, craft beer.
from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, whiskey, two bottles of whiskey from your friends at TexKernel slash Bullhorn. And if it's your birthday, you're gonna want some rum from Plum. And you can only win if you play chadcheese.com slash free. Mm-hmm.
Joel (09:18.3)
That's right, Chad. Some listeners are celebrating another trip around the sun. List was kind of sparse last week. It's a little meatier this week. I'm happy to see Jeff. Jeff the caveman Herndon is celebrating another year. Michelle Meehan. Meehan so horny. That's right. Kyla Frazier. Quincy Valencia. Love Quincy Valencia. Jen Levine Riley. Tracy Harmon. Victoria Conley. Katrina Polanski. Jennifer Sheridan. David Phoebus. Christopher Mannion.
Chad (09:26.254)
But robust.
Chad (09:32.504)
love her!
Chad (09:37.784)
Thank
Chad (09:44.332)
There we go.
Joel (09:47.504)
Brad DiPaolo, Felix Bendals, Joe Antonio, Tom Putral, Jennifer Brooks, Kevin Wheeler, Tony Lee, and Matt Charney all celebrate another trip around the sun. Happy birthday to those listeners.
Chad (09:55.181)
Wow.
Chad (10:03.286)
And as you say trip, no, we're not traveling kids. Well, I am traveling. It's more personal. But when we do travel, it's all because of Shaker recruitment marketing. And to be able to be reminiscent of that travel, you can go to YouTube or you can go to ChadCheese.com and you can watch or listen or listen to the green room sessions that we recorded at RecFest. That's right. The Shaker green room sessions. They were fun.
They were short, nice and snackable. Go check them out.
Joel (10:37.124)
Yep. Now where Chad was traveling last week was the loser column in fantasy football. That's right. He ran up against a brick wall called the number one ranked Joel Cheeseman, this week. So, you know, that's, that's where he was traveling. That's right. That's right, kids. It's football season, which means fantasy football, fat, fat sponsored by our friends at fact, that's a lot of Fs factory fix fantasy football, with Chad and cheese,
Chad (10:42.071)
Hahaha
Chad (10:49.005)
yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one.
Joel (11:04.692)
Our leaderboard looks like this. Four weeks running. I'm in the number one spot. this is the, the bi-week apocalypse, however. so I, if I'm going to lose, it's going to be this week. think, number two, Dean, the daddy Mac mackerel, man, he's, he's, he's solid. David Stifle. I got him this week. Then the number three spot. He's looking pretty, pretty scary. Chad, you're holding up, you're holding firm at number four and based on your point, your point.
Chad (11:10.936)
Damn it.
Chad (11:23.296)
Yeah.
Chad (11:31.118)
Tryin'.
Joel (11:32.484)
Your point production, get to get some things drop your way and it could, could be top tier for you. Jennifer, Jennifer, Terry, Tharp, Keith, the commission Sonderling. Dude, Keith has had two weeks, where if you totaled the combined points that he's lost is less than four. If he wins those he's in first place. sorry, Keith, that's how the ball bounces in fantasy football. Christie Lisbon, Laura Martinelli, Dina, Perot for pyros.
Chad (11:38.849)
Won't be this week though. Damn it.
Chad (11:47.118)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (11:56.334)
you
Joel (12:01.452)
action Jackson Dalquist. Sean Horton, here's a who he's like rat now he's out of the cellar. He's in the 11th spot, which leaves you guessed it, but never the number 12 spot goes to our second favorite Scott, Adam Gordon, he might want to call up his friend and get some help there at poetry because he is at the bottom of the leaderboard.
Chad (12:06.656)
Chad (12:12.622)
No.
Noooo
Chad (12:28.928)
You might want to watch it though. Keith Sonderling might send an auditor your way to audit all these points.
Joel (12:36.496)
Fortunately, I don't think he has any pull in the Scotland area for any of those any of those offerings. Geez, let's get to some news here,
Chad (12:41.399)
You
Chad (12:47.675)
Topics!
Joel (12:50.844)
Yeah. Well, let's start with a little bit of layoffs here. it's a rumor. Rumors are starting that, NAS recruitment advertising, or I think it's recruitment innovation now, again, with the, changes at this company, apparently they've cut some heads. Someone that I taught to describe that as quote brutal, including, vice presidents. The COO is rumored to be gone. it looks kind of ugly. They haven't been able to apparently get.
Chad (12:54.294)
Not layoffs.
Joel (13:20.496)
get new business, keep old business. Things are looking bad for this, for this agency. And I've known them for a long time. We were sister companies, the first job board I worked for job options. Like I've known them since they were going to, going to expose, going to sherm with a velvet booth with literally newspaper ads cut out and Velcroed on the booth. And they would show people the different ads that they did.
Chad (13:22.123)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (13:29.25)
Yeah,
Chad (13:37.902)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (13:45.144)
Yeah. Yeah.
Joel (13:47.036)
They've gone through different ownerships. They've gone through tons of leadership, like tons of volatility. It's kind of a tale of two agencies in our world. have like, what the hell's going on? Don't know who's in charge. What like what's going on? And then with NAS, and then you have like shaker, which is like three, three generations deep, like, like loyalty, acquisitions make like, so if you're a customer, if you're a prospect, who would you rather
Chad (14:08.824)
Constant, constant, constant. Yeah.
Joel (14:16.922)
you know, sign, sign a deal with a volatile mess of a mess, mess of a bomb cyclone. Yeah. The bomb cyclone, or are you going with a stable stable one? But anyway, maybe there'll be official news, but right now the rumor is that NAS is going through some, pretty bad times at the moment.
Chad (14:20.878)
ComCool collected shaker or an ass.
Joel (14:40.198)
Any comment about NAS chat? No, you're All right.
Chad (14:42.806)
No, no, they were a Goliath at one time. It's sad to see this decline and it hasn't been overnight. That's for damn sure. they were huge. mean, just huge. And now, I mean, they're obviously dwindling down to just about nothing. And again, as you said, know, Shaker has been very steady, incredibly steady, and it's been a steady climb.
Joel (14:56.356)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (15:06.524)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (15:09.238)
Right. It hasn't been, you know, steady across the board, but it's been a steady climb. you know, watching many of these companies, I mean, even the raiden sees the the old TMP worldwide at the time where they became tech companies instead of just being agencies and whatnot. Shaker stayed true to who they are. And again, for better, for worse, TMP becoming a tech company, they got acquired. Right. So, I mean, there are those times and timing means a lot as well. So.
Joel (15:19.377)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (15:33.872)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (15:39.171)
Sorry to hear that about NAS.
Joel (15:40.848)
Yeah. You know, there will be a book written one day about the impact of classifieds, the death of classifieds on more than just the news, all the agencies and people who service them. Like I'm sure you saw in the election, how the Washington Post didn't submit an endorsement for a candidate as well as the LA times. And that all goes back to classified ads. Like classified ads funded the newspapers, which funded the news. if you're, if you're unhappy about the state of news, like
Chad (15:58.21)
Mm.
Chad (16:06.149)
yeah. Yeah.
Joel (16:09.86)
We caused it by killing, killing the classifieds. Thanks, Craigslist. Thanks, Craigslist and everybody else that was, that was in there. all right. Well, let's get to, geez, talk about change. Acquisition Palooza this week. Holy crap. let's get to, Linkup first. Global data has acquired, Linkup, a company near and dear to our hearts. If you haven't listened to our data show, we've got those in the archives.
Chad (16:14.494)
Ha ha ha!
Chad (16:21.164)
Yes.
Chad (16:24.621)
Wow.
Joel (16:36.688)
But they've acquired Linkup, also known as JobDig, to enhance its intelligence offerings, adding Linkup's real-time indexing of numerous job listings. Shares rose 1.4 % after the announcement. Chad, all hail the Sasquatch of statistics and let us know what your thoughts are on this acquisition.
Chad (16:58.732)
Yeah, mean, Toby and the crew over at Linkup are just damn smart. They saw the need for better and faster workforce data because the BLS is looking 30 days backward on every report and Linkup can provide day by day numbers of job flows in specific sectors, specific companies, specific job categories, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's not even the smart bit though.
Instead of trying to sell this tool to the government for their use or sell it to HR and TA leaders to better understand their damn market, Toby and the crew sold to financial markets. You know, the markets with mad cash. So this pivot made a vendor link up selling data to the government and or markets probably 50 times more.
valuable by pivoting to financial markets. And here's a great example of what this actually means. And this is Toby's post earlier this week about Nvidia. Quote, Nvidia's job openings are up 35 % since July's hiring slump with a growing demand for software developers, sales reps. In fact, posting for sales jobs have tripled over the period supporting Quang's claim of insane
demand for the new Blackwell chips." So Toby knew if LinkUp data could translate jobs into predicting company growth or loss in the financial markets, that LinkUp could easily surpass anything they could do, even dream of doing and selling products in the HR space. So this type of acquisition is a must for the company who bought global data because to be able to hit their revenue targets,
which they're looking to target 500 million British pounds, which is about 630 million USD by 2026. You gotta make these bold moves. And it was a hell of a bold move by Linkup in my book. This is one of the biggest applause that I think we can give. And that's not just because he's a friend and they were a sponsor, but they did it right and smart.
Joel (19:15.804)
Not only an applause, but it's dead sexy.
Chad (19:18.848)
very much, very.
Joel (19:21.584)
Yeah. So I think we, we, kind of saw this coming. you and I knowing Toby as we do, he kind of went like, CEOs do this thing where they kind of like ignore you a little bit and you go like something's going on. there's negotiations. They don't want to fuck shit up. Like something's going on. So I don't think we were surprised by this. And I think that his, his, his activity on social media, which you outlined, which he's generally not, that's not a thing with him. So he started posting about
Chad (19:27.279)
Yeah.
Chad (19:34.67)
Yeah.
Joel (19:48.784)
companies and job. I'm like, so I'm like, something's going on. Something is, is, is a foot. And here we go. job dig, who I think you probably know was an early job board, back in the day. And then they, launched link up, I think in the mid 2000, maybe 2010 or 11. And it was, it was kind of a direct employers, competitor. They, they basically took jobs, direct employers, job search, kind of like indeed with, just, jobs or the old job central.
Chad (20:10.284)
Yeah. Job search engine.
Joel (20:16.676)
And then, I think that Toby being the, brilliant guy that he is saw the data, realize that data is the new oil. So if I can like sell this data, as opposed to just sell access to knucklehead job seekers, like I might make a little bit more money. and certainly I think that that has proven out. it's interesting to me how much job search or job posting data, is, is being embraced by other,
Chad (20:21.666)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (20:26.35)
.
Chad (20:31.331)
Yeah.
Joel (20:45.838)
industries. So it makes perfect sense to say, if someone is posting more jobs, then maybe they're doing pretty well as a business. Maybe it's a good company to invest in and those jobs are real time data. whereas quarterly reports, not so much. so that, that makes perfect sense. Or you see seeing someone like does profile data, how does that enhance other things that a company can learn about or what wall street can know about? The one thing I think that's interesting though is
Chad (20:52.755)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (21:07.406)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (21:12.248)
As we, as we go into a world of more automation, more AI, more headcount reduction, how important is the job posting data going to be if we're replacing so many people with, with robots? So no big deal. doesn't matter now the deal's done, but I think long-term, job posting data. I don't know if it's going to have the impact that it does, does today, but major kudos to Toby. we love those guys love him.
How can you hate anyone from Minneapolis? mean, Minnesota, it's like, it's like beautiful. All right. We got a lot of, lot of these acquisitions to go through. Let's hit up. what's next? Let's talk about ad Zuna. the UK job search platform has acquired CESA, a French company specializing in social media recruitment, advertising the financial deals were not disclosed. it aims to position ad Zuna as a leader in full funnel recruitment advertising across North America and Europe.
Chad (21:43.555)
You
Chad (21:52.43)
Do it.
Joel (22:11.184)
Now, something new that Chad and I have done is we've reached out to the CEOs, in this case, Doug Monroe, to get his take on exactly what was going on. So we will play each of these videos. We asked why the acquisition, what's the immediate impact, what's your long-term vision and how much was the deal. This is Doug talking about why they did the acquisition.
Joel (23:42.0)
Yeah, okay, super excited, did his research, yada, yada, yada. Now let's hear about what the immediate impact will be on the deal.
Chad (24:26.072)
Full frontal? Did he say full frontal?
Joel (24:27.452)
full frontal, that would be better.
Chad (24:50.508)
Okay.
Joel (24:51.324)
Yeah, That's like the old days of SEO. like, we can get you in front of eight billion, whatever it was, everyone that was on search, we can get you in front of like, okay, all right. Yeah. Cause it makes us look huge that we can put our ads on Google, like make us make us look bad. All right. So what is, what is the long-term vision of this deal? Let's hear from Doug.
Chad (24:57.518)
Yeah, right. we get you in front of them. Okay, sure. Again.
Hahaha
Joel (26:16.814)
Okay. let's, let's get your take on, the move by at Zuna to buy Sisa says, or whatever. Can we require all the British CEOs if we do this again, to have to say bottled water, if they're in Britain, I love, I love hearing British people say, okay.
Chad (26:24.106)
Caesar. Caesar.
Chad (26:31.566)
Yeah
Chad (26:37.656)
So I think it's interesting we hear that AppCast is putting resources into social distribution and now Adzuna buys a social distribution company. I understand the need to meet people where they are in a social standpoint. It's also interesting that we're not hearing this from Indeed. Now the mention of the focus on frontline workers, that is big. And one of the biggest reasons is because
we're looking at the prospect of deportation, right? Whether it's self deportation, I mean, it's going to happen and we're going to need people to be able to fill roles that immigrants are currently filling. Whether we can do that or not, no fucking clue. You'd better have a deep bench people so you better start using platforms quick. So I think this is kind of like skating to where the puck is, unfortunately, because it's not a good situation.
He says 79 % of job seekers have used social media in their job search. I went to, I did a little anecdotal thing, right? I went to TikTok to check on a friend of the show, JT O'Donnell's account, where she gives advice to job seekers. She has 1.2 million followers on TikTok and posts with over a million views. So I think this thing has got legs. The only problem is
Joel (27:47.848)
Yeah.
Chad (28:02.712)
How do you execute ads on Insta and TikTok? Users don't want to see clip art videos or traditional static ads. They want to listen to people like JT, influencers. So will Caesar use influencers? Right? This whole optimization with AI doesn't mean anything. Okay? If you don't have the right ads or the right people. So from that standpoint, I believe a platform like, I'm gonna give a big shout out to our friend,
Joel (28:17.724)
Caesar.
Chad (28:32.312)
Tracy Parsons over at Flockety, they have more traction since that whole platform is built as an influencer centric platform. So if Adzuna were smart, they'd look at acquiring a Flockety. If Adzuna's competition was smart, they'd look at acquiring a Flockety because if this is a thing, and it seems as it is, as it said early indications with AppCast really focusing on the social side of the house, Adzuna's
Joel (28:34.598)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (29:01.026)
focusing on the social side of the house. The social side of the house doesn't mean old style bullshit ads or job postings, okay? It has to do with influencers. So how are you going to engage influencers? The only thing I've seen out there thus far from a platform standpoint is flockety.
Joel (29:07.782)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (29:22.766)
You
Joel (29:25.446)
So I find this evolution of, first we saw it with job boards and we'll talk about a job board getting acquired here in a second. But the evolution of programmatic and sourcing and some of these tools that I guess you could say are getting commoditized or at best it's a race to the bottom. Whenever you're a middleman in these industries, it's like who can offer the cheapest price and you just keep going lower and lower.
Chad (29:30.68)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (29:52.2)
and you could talk more about this in your capacity as, the job board doctor. but I would have to think that programmatic click throughs are, are going down and it's just like, if I'm advertising, who's the lowest price. So they're in a position where like, geez guys, we're in this, we have cash right now, but we're slowly getting to like less than what we have now. We have to make some moves to, be a platform.
or to be more than just post your jobs. And in Adzuna's case, we've talked about what Indeed has done with their sourcing stuff and ZipRecruiter with God knows what this week, trying to be more than just being jobs. And in Adzuna's case, it's like, let's be a platform for marketing. So it sounds very like much like hire easy or candidate hubs slash candidate ID, maybe even like an out hire. How do we become more, how do we become a place that people come?
Chad (30:23.672)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (30:50.438)
to market, to drive traffic, to be that full frontal funnel or whatever the hell it was that he's talking about. They're all coming to grips with this whole job posting thing is not going to be long-term successfully. It's not going to be appealing to our investors. have to do outside the stuff. I think you're going to see a lot of acquisitions. You mentioned Flockity, the companies I mentioned, think they're
Chad (30:58.606)
That's a better name, by the way.
Joel (31:19.056)
they're on the, they're on people's radars as well. If you're not looking at a marketing platform, an advertising platform, social media stuff, texting is part of what, CESA does as well. So they do kind of a whole, whole holistic thing and not just put your shit on social media. to me, it's smart. think it's going to be hard to take a culture that is kind of like, low margin, like high frequency, get like,
go big and then like get really personal and get really sort of granular around what a customer needs. So I think they have their work cut out for them, but in the short term, I think it's the right move. You're in an industry that's going to the bottom. Don't be that company that wakes up one day and says, shit, we're done. We're done.
Chad (31:48.067)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (32:02.638)
Yeah, the beautiful thing about the acquisition of the job board doctor was that most of those job boards were doing exactly what the applicant tracking system companies were doing. They were setting it and forgetting it, right? Or at least the companies who bought the applicant tracking systems. So they were setting it and forgetting it because it was just a money machine, right? I mean, look at Craigslist. They were making a billion dollars and they had less than 50 employees. So it was set it and forget it. Well, we're not in those times anymore, right?
Joel (32:15.857)
Yeah.
Chad (32:31.19)
you have to do something different. Whatever that different might be, in this case, Adzuna wanted to do something different than Indeed. And again, taking a leading indicator from like an app cast, okay, great. The thing for me is don't tell me about AI. Don't tell me about matching. Don't tell...
Joel (32:43.292)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (32:49.48)
I want to hear specifics on how these things are actually going to help. I love hearing that there are business cases and there are percentages and obviously sounds like they've got RPA built into this thing. That's all great. Let's get into the details. Let's start talking through this so that we know again how the fucking sausage is made. Right. That's what we want to know. That's what we want to know. And I think Doug will get there. It's really early.
Joel (33:10.032)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad (33:16.583)
I did give him a little shit on LinkedIn this week because I said, look, this is a bunch of fucking smoke. want to see, you know, I don't want to hear the sizzle. I want to eat the steak. Right. And I think he's going to start giving. I hope he's going to start giving us some steak.
Joel (33:27.185)
Yeah.
Joel (33:31.12)
Yeah. Yeah. In addition to downward pressure, I mean, it's, harder to drive traffic these days. Like email spam filters are better. SEO is harder. Paper click is more expensive. Like every, everything's compressing on these businesses and they're, they're, they're doing the smart thing in this case of, of, of getting out of, the old business, the old business ways. All right, let's get to, job get, they've acquired snag a job.
Chad (33:43.021)
Yeah.
Chad (33:53.422)
You
Joel (33:59.174)
merging their databases to reach over what they call 100 million hourly workers in the US. Both will operate independently, but share job seeker data. Financial details were not disclosed. We had Tony Liu, CEO and co-founder at JobGit talk to us. First question was, why would they make this move?
Chad (34:01.304)
Big.
Joel (35:12.45)
Okay, and what is the immediate impact that Tony sees?
Chad (35:39.296)
Easy and smart.
Joel (35:39.484)
All right, easy and smart. To the point, long term vision.
Chad (36:15.51)
He's teasing us. He's teasing us right now. He's teasing us.
Joel (36:18.652)
By the way, before we get to the last one, isn't Tim Hawk running marketing over there? Can we give him a better background than just some like target stock photo frame picture? Jesus, how about some greenery or some like real artsy fartsy shit? My God, it's the sea. Tim, come on, Tim, geez, Tim, come on now. All right, the amount.
Chad (36:23.721)
Hahaha
Chad (36:28.952)
big job get Tim should be holding a job get flag in the back.
Chad (36:38.83)
Yeah, I gotta get new stuff around here. I gotta get new stuff.
Chad (36:52.622)
come on. Tony. You had me at hello, Tony. Yes. No, no, no. He, he, no, he, he sent it. I just didn't send it to you because it was, it was like a minute of him telling us why he didn't couldn't tell us. It was like, okay, Doug, I don't need that.
Joel (36:57.584)
At least he sent a video. Doug didn't even send a video. He just like brushed right over it like a true, like a true Brit. Like I didn't see that. I didn't. What are you talking about? Acquisition amount.
Joel (37:14.668)
Hahaha
Chad (37:14.99)
Between the two CEOs, think Tony understood the assignment, right? He teased us a lot. So definitely got to get him back on the show. Not just to talk about this, but also to talk about future acquisitions, because I think I think they're are right. They're definitely right for that. Anyways, so we saw this fire sale happening. We had Snagajob's CEO at the time, Matt Chu Stevenson on the show back in July of 19...
there are for God's sakes when they were focused on rebounding from the failed rebrand snag in app launch. I don't know if you remember that. It just never seemed like snag had the firepower to pull off what they had envisioned. And it reminds me of the Blackberry movie where the CEO says to Mike, one of the founders, quote, I thought you said we had the best engineers in the world.
Joel (37:45.372)
Yeah.
Joel (37:51.546)
Yeah. Yeah, I do.
Chad (38:09.066)
And quote, then Mike said, no, I said we had the best engineers in Canada. That's where I think snag hit their biggest snag. See what I did there? I don't believe they had the right resources to pull off the rebound that we talked about in that episode flash forward to today. Job get gets a big fucking name in the space. High volume space.
Joel (38:14.331)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (38:19.74)
Yeah, I did. That's good.
Joel (38:27.964)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (38:36.834)
that aligns perfectly with their own total addressable market. I think it's great timing. I think it's great deals. And if anybody can breathe life into this poor, poor, sad beast, I think JobGet has a chance.
Joel (38:49.51)
Hmm.
Joel (38:55.868)
So the kids won't appreciate that there was a time not that long ago, well, 20 years ago where snag was mentioned in the same breath with monster career builder. mean, it was a top five job board. and, it turns out the, asteroid that is indeed doesn't just kill, the carnivores, it kills the herbivores and everything else. And, and snag ultimately was a victim of indeed just like a monster and career builder. Now we've seen.
Chad (39:00.14)
Yeah.
Chad (39:05.782)
Easily, yeah. yeah.
Joel (39:25.178)
monster and career builder merge. whereas, whereas I look at that as sort of two dinosaurs snuggling to survive the winter, the nuclear winter. This feels a little bit more like the vulture snacking on the carcass. That is snag a job. Like you mentioned two years ago, we talked to these folks. The CEO was not from the space. Literally, I didn't come away with any confidence that they were going to turn this around.
Chad (39:33.953)
Easily,
Chad (39:42.03)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (39:51.292)
It was kind of like, I'm learning on the job. We'll figure it out. Yada, yada, they have a good brand. A lot of customers love us and good SEO, et cetera. And a lot of that I'm sure has been dwindling significantly. Snagajob had raised $65 million in its past. JobGet has raised $40 million, according to Crunchbase. So JobGet to me is basically getting something that at one time was valued quite significantly. I'm sure they still have a nice database of clients.
Chad (40:18.883)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Joel (40:21.602)
I'm sure they have a nice email database. but there's not a whole lot going forward. You think it's a strong brand. I don't, I'm not convinced of that anymore. it could be, again, I, I, I would say it's a better brand than job get. And if they, if job get changed their name to snag a job, I wouldn't be surprised and wouldn't criticize that at all. Sure. I get, I get, get job and job get confused all the time. And I'm a genius.
Chad (40:41.4)
Think of the trust, the trust on that domain.
Joel (40:49.114)
So imagine what the, the average person has a problem with now. Now job get is, is very app oriented native apps. and looking at their metrics there, it's a little challenged. I mean, it's, and Google play, have, 10,000 reviews, about a million downloads on Android. Now that sounds like a lot, but if you look at zip recruiter,
Zip recruiter has 400,000 reviews versus 10 and they have a 10 million downloads versus a million. So job get has its work cut out for us. And by the way, zip recruiter doesn't really tout itself as an app. People just kind of download it because they know the name. so yeah, is it a good move? Sure. is job get now this juggernaut that's going to like take over the world. I don't, they got the work cut out for them. I still think job case has a strong, has a strong case pun intended.
Chad (41:37.614)
Not yet. Yeah.
Joel (41:41.788)
in that spot as well. So it'll be fun to watch. Easy acquisition, smart acquisition. I don't know if it's going to change the world, but yeah, good for them. Good for them. Good for them. All right, we're done with our videos. Did you think that was successful? I guess our listeners will tell us like that sucked or it wasn't. wasn't. So let's go to some more winning with the acquisitions. This time recruiter.com.
Chad (41:53.038)
Good for them. Breeze by bounty.
Chad (42:00.92)
We'll see. We shall see.
Joel (42:09.552)
has acquired Bountyjobs aiming to enhance its recruitment offerings, focusing on integrating Bountyjobs referral-based hiring into its services. No financial details were disclosed. Chad, your thoughts, recruiter.com and Bountyjobs.
Chad (42:24.908)
Yeah, I mean, this to me doesn't seem like much of anything. I mean, we you've got a lot of services that are being provided that I think will go away, to be quite frank. mean, a lot of these a lot of these services are their connections, right? And people are becoming connected so much faster and so much easier through technology that who is is putting in place?
Joel (42:33.371)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (42:38.736)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (42:52.731)
the companies, the actual companies are actually putting these things in place. We talked to companies at client board that I mean, shit, they're connecting the dots very quickly. So I think bounty. It's been a brand for a very long time, not a big brand, but it's been a brand. It's been a moneymaker. But maybe it was the perfect time to sell maybe it was a clearance clearance rack sale. Either way, I don't
think it was going to last for too much longer anyway.
Joel (43:23.736)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (43:27.836)
So, I, you never hear in acquisitions who made the first call. it the seller hoping to get a buyer or was it the buyer looking to buy, you know, the company that eventually sold. that, that is a very telling story that we never get. And in this case, was this bounty jobs calling recruiter and saying, Hey guys, we're interested. Or was it the other way around? I remember when bounty jobs launched, 2006 at a conference.
Chad (43:35.583)
Yeah.
Chad (43:43.406)
Yeah.
Chad (43:54.413)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (43:56.188)
And they were kind of like this eBay for recruiters. So you would go on, put your job and then recruit or recruiters would like bid for it. And you'd pick the winning bid. And then they would do like, it was kind of a cool thing at the time, which obviously didn't, didn't have much legs long-term. kind of became a competitor to what recruiters are doing. So they came to came to the other side. what I have to think is prevalent in so many companies is looking at.
big Goliaths doing stuff. And although it may not impact me today, it's probably going to kill me in the future or really, really hurt me in the future. And we've been talking about indeed getting into staffing for quite a while now. And they've talked about getting into staffing for quite a while now. If I'm like a bounty jobs, I'm looking at that writing on the wall and I'm thinking like, Hmm, is it maybe time to get out while the getting might still be good? And I think that that could be part of the challenge.
Again, we go back to automation and, and that, that, that reality. Like things are in flux. They've been around since 2006, the founders and people that have been around are probably ready to get the hell out of Dodge. They've been at about a 53 person or so head count for a long time. They have long tenured people. It might simply just be like, guys, are we kind of bored with this shit? Like let's call recruiter.com or somebody and see if we can get a bar that may, that may be how this, this.
Chad (45:09.196)
Yeah.
Joel (45:23.662)
unfolded. As far as recruiter.com, this is a public company. I don't know what the hell they're doing. Like they're buying weird shit. Like Matt Charney mentioned, like they've changed their name to Nixie on the stock exchange. So they go from recruiter.com to Nixie and their stock symbols in IXX. It's a penny stock. I
Chad (45:24.958)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (45:48.376)
I just, I can't get excited about what they're doing. I can't get real excited about where bounty jobs is going. So yeah. Did you say nothing burger? I, if you didn't, then then I, I will go ahead and say nothing burger. I don't, I don't think the stock did much on the news shocker, although with the penny stock, if it goes up two cents, it's like a big day in the market. And that might've been, been what happens, but yeah, a lot of acquisitions. What do you make of all these, these, these sales? I mean, we we've been talking about, we're going to see consolidation and we're finally seeing it.
Chad (45:58.826)
Paraphrased, yeah.
Chad (46:14.03)
We called it. It takes time. takes time. It takes time for a founder or CEO to actually realize that, you know, look, we're not going to make this runway. We're just not going to make it. And with the way that, you know, money's coming out or not coming out, you got to start making those calls. yeah. And so it takes a minute.
Joel (46:29.71)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Joel (46:39.568)
Yep. I, I suspect, I suspect we'll be talking about more acquisitions in 2025, but till then let's take a quick break and get to some more news.
Chad (46:41.388)
takes a minute so it's not surprising we knew it was gonna come.
Chad (46:47.384)
Yep. Yep.
Chad (46:54.178)
Let's do twine and then skip Georgios because we were running late.
Joel (47:00.041)
Okay, I'll skip George, yes. All right, Chad.
Chad (47:04.195)
Yep.
Joel (47:09.468)
All right, Chad, and the humans are not necessary anymore news. Twine has secured $12 million in a seed round established just this year. The startup addresses the cybersecurity talent shortage by developing AI driven digital employees, starting with their first named Alex, just another digital employee highlighting the fact that companies are working hard to replace the carbon based employees. Chad, what are your thoughts on Twine?
Chad (47:37.922)
So here's a quote from a CA tech, the article quote, the cybersecurity industry is facing a severe talent deficit with the world economic forum, citing a shortage of nearly 4 million cybersecurity professionals. 78 % of cybersecurity leaders acknowledge that their organization lacked the in-house skills necessary to fully meet their cybersecurity objectives.
This shortage heightens organizational exposure for and forces chief information security officers to focus on firefighting instead of taking proactive approach to risk management." quote. Means we don't have enough people kids. So allow AI to do the firefighting for you. What could go wrong? I mean, seriously, but what happens when your AI gets hacked and then gets turned on you, right?
think of this. We just saw, and again, this is more of a macro, China just unveiled their robotic infantry wolves. Okay. While the U S has unveiled the collaborative combat aircraft, AKA robots that could kill people without supervision. Welcome to a combination of black mirror and fucking Skynet, my friends. I mean, this, this shit is getting freaky and somewhat scared.
Joel (48:55.718)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (49:00.421)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (49:05.76)
Okay, very scary.
Joel (49:08.188)
Literally, I'm not sure I have anything to add. The numbers you quote are the ones that I wrote down. yes, look, security, warfare is happening under our noses that don't show up on news is the cyber attacks that are every day that the governments of the world work with to do. mean, corporations are at a disadvantage unless your name is Microsoft or Amazon.
Chad (49:12.099)
Fuck.
Chad (49:21.142)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Chad (49:33.773)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (49:34.982)
hacking is just the part of it getting shut down. We've seen, you know, water facilities we've seen like utilities like this. These are serious issues that no one wants to deal with. And we don't have enough people. I don't know if you mentioned the Biden administration launched an initiative, last year to encourage cyber, security careers, as buzz as businesses try to figure this stuff out. So our government is aware of it. We need it. An augmented cyber co-pilot is like a no brainer to me.
Chad (49:52.856)
Mm-mm.
Joel (50:03.814)
This company is, going to, it's, this is boats and hoes at this company. If they can pull this off, they'll probably get bought by CrowdStrike or Palo Alto networks, at some point and make a ton of money. But yeah, this is Janie. mean, we talk about digital employees for sales and marketing. Like this is one of those things that people need. I may not need a digital marketer, but I sure as hell need something else than what I have now, protecting my company.
Chad (50:12.745)
Yeah
Chad (50:25.698)
They do, but man, you're walking, you're walking a fine fucking line right there, my friend. I mean, the, the, the supervision has to be so, so close and for a human to supervise it, you're going to have to have another program supervise that program. I mean, it's just, it's, this is how scary it's getting. Right? So yes. Is it going to be necessary? Yeah. Because you've got to be able to, you don't have the people to be able to fight what's going on on the cyber war front.
Joel (50:38.95)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (50:43.387)
Yeah.
Chad (50:55.158)
So you gotta have AI fight what's going on in the cyber war front unless somebody finds a back door into your AI and starts fucking your shit up with your own AI. I mean, it's just like too much. Too much.
Joel (50:58.928)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (51:06.48)
No, when, when Sam, when Sam Altman of open AI goes in front of Congress and says, need a, you know, a national plan, a Marshall plan, if you will, around AI to combat what China and the evil doers or our adversaries are doing like that serious stuff. And I don't want to wake up one day and my utilities facility is down. my electricity is down. My like, everything is down.
Chad (51:15.316)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Chad (51:25.624)
Yeah.
Joel (51:36.506)
That's yeah, we live in a really scary time, and stuff that we don't even see. did I mention there are aliens in the oceans? Chad, did I mention, did you see, did you see the, the, testimony at the congressional hearings on aliens in the ocean people? It's the, it's the end. It's the end. can't, we can't, I'm sorry.
Chad (51:44.889)
God. Go to an advert. Jesus.
Chad (51:52.738)
No, no, no.
Chad (51:58.217)
As we know it.
Joel (52:00.412)
Thanksgiving can't come soon enough. Let's take a quick.
Chad (52:07.384)
Here come the AI pimps.
Joel (52:08.124)
Can I interest you in some AI pimps, Chad? This is from Wired. So Instagram is facing a surge of AI generated influencers who steal and monetize content from real creators using deep fake technology. Gee, did we see this coming or not? This practice has become widespread impacting genuine creators visibility and more importantly, their income.
Chad (52:27.139)
Yes.
Joel (52:33.818)
Despite some app removals, Instagram's response to this issue has been criticized as inadequate, possibly due to the traffic these accounts generate, aka the dollars, baby. It's all about the dollars. So Chad, your thoughts on AI pimps.
Chad (52:54.072)
Hmm inadequate aka Mark Zuckerberg. So here's a quote from the Wired article quote Instagram is unable or unwilling to stop the flood of AI generated content end quote so if the content on Instagram were deep fakes of politician or politicians or billionaires the platform would be fucking shut down or it'd be fixed right that being said
We're still in the wild wild west of this technology, but it's maturing incredibly fast and way too fast for legislators to catch up. And to be quite frank, US legislators haven't and won't do anything meaningful anytime soon. So the best chance that these lovely ladies have, these sex workers have is that the EU create anti deep fake legislation because they're really the only
mass that can do this and that will move on something like this because the US legislators are just going to continue to flounder. They still haven't done anything, right? So then the workers can focus on content for countries like the European Union. That's what's going to have to happen. And these individuals will have to start creating content for wherever they can get it to. And it can't be deep faked.
Joel (54:17.788)
So one of the things that I noticed in my feed was, like, I think it's one thing to deep fake Joe Biden or a major star. What I think is really dangerous is sort of this tier two, vertical celebrities. Some might call us vertical celebrities in the HR space. Like if somebody deep faked us, who would know? Like we're just sort of, a few people know us. like that looks like Joel, that's Chad.
Chad (54:34.157)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (54:43.544)
Yeah. Yeah.
Joel (54:46.638)
So, I get a lot of CNBC or like financial people in my feed and it's, it's, it's, it's really bad, but it goes beyond just like watching and clicking ads and stuff. So this was, so Josh Brown is sort of a financial guy. he's really pissed off about this. he wrote a post recently. and he said, quote, the entire financial industry.
A services industry is experiencing an increased volume and type of sophisticated scams, which are becoming more challenging for consumers to identify. criminals are turning to phone numbers, spoofing, texting, and imposter social media tactics to gain unauthorized access to accounts. So you'll see someone that you've seen on CNBC that says, Hey, I've been trading stocks for forever. You know, join our community to know whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then you join this community. The next thing you know,
They want your bank account info. They want you to join the site. They're spamming you crypto and it's your they're selling this at the face of someone that you know, and they're selling you and scamming you and shit. problem that he outlines is that Facebook doesn't give a shit. Like they will, they will contact Facebook. They'll, they'll take the ad off, but then another ad will show up very shortly. And he's like, look, we know that from, we know that from our research that this is coming from Russia.
Chad (55:54.36)
No.
Chad (56:00.963)
Yeah.
Joel (56:07.488)
Africa, et cetera. Like Facebook can say, you're getting scammed. if something comes in from Africa and you're a financial expert in America, maybe we'll check it to see if it's legit. And they're not, they're letting it go through. I think legislation, like you said, someone, I don't know if an orange jumpsuit is necessary, but legislation needs to happen where if Facebook keeps doing this or social media does, they need to get smacked around a little bit for doing it.
Chad (56:32.632)
Well, and real quick, it can happen because we had a SNL skit on one of our shows and YouTube automatically knew what it was. It flagged it and it wouldn't allow us to actually post it. Right. So we had to actually retool that. But YouTube knew that before it even went out to the masses. So don't give me it. And they put out a lot of fucking content, dude. Second best or second most trafficked search engine in the world.
Joel (56:52.934)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (56:57.494)
Right? So you can't tell me that Instagram or Facebook can't do this. It's bullshit.
Joel (57:03.216)
Yeah. So it can facial recognize the person, the personality and say, if someone tries to put them an ad that isn't us, that is this is me like flag it and don't let it go live. So definitely the tech is there, but the money, the money's just too good, Chad. The money is just too good. Almost as good as my dad jokes, Chad, but this week we're almost at Thanksgiving. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to save you from the dad jokes. You look like you're in a good mood and I'm kind of in a shitty mood, but
Chad (57:12.952)
Flag it.
Chad (57:23.05)
what? Yes.
Joel (57:30.948)
I came across a social media share this week that cracked my ass up and it's Thanksgiving related. So let me set the stage here real quick. This is a Detroit sort of daily news show, you know, sort of like good morning Detroit kind of show. I know you've seen these shows before. So it's, it's a white man, a black woman and a white woman talking about dark and white meat. And I think it'll be, it'll, it'll be, it'll be obvious as to who's saying what, but here, here's the scene. If you're not watching us.
Chad (57:34.423)
Okay.
Chad (57:44.748)
Yeah. yeah.
Chad (57:53.816)
Thanksgiving.
Joel (57:59.736)
on YouTube. Hopefully hearing it, you'll be able to make sense of this. I had a really good laugh. I hope you do too.
Joel (58:47.292)
dear.
Chad (58:53.496)
She's sending a message.
Joel (59:02.844)
We're still talking about Turkey, right? We're still talking about Turkey. yeah, Chad, next week is our Jive Turkey episode, by the way, one of my favorite episodes we're getting on our holiday episodes, but I had to share that because it got me a good laugh. We out.
Chad (59:05.048)
Yes.
Chad (59:11.715)
Yes.
Chad (59:20.782)
We out.