Love unicorns? How about triple unicorns? Well, we have two of those - Lattice and Handshake - to talk about this week. Yes, you're taking crazy pills, but the boys might have the remedy. Want more bangin' content? WorkStep, Deel, Bolster, DriverReach, Jobfindah, Vangst and Circa are in the news. Fairygodboss shows everyone how layoffs are done, Microsoft bets big on the metaverse and, of course, OnlyFans is continuing to help fuel The Great Resignation. You're welcome.
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INTRO (1s):
Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Joel (21s):
Oh yeah. Starbucks is no longer requiring employees to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing following the US Supreme court's rejection last week so order me at cafe mocha, extra omicron. Hi kids. It's the Chad and Cheese podcast, the sugar in your coffee. This is your cohost Joel "It's five o'clock somewhere" Cheeseman. And
Chad (43s):
This is Chad "I have a headache" Sowash.
Joel (46s):
And on this week, show Microsoft bets big on the Metaverse, cannabis jobs are smoking! See what I did there Chad? And not one but two triple unicorns. Let's do this.
sfx (1m 4s):
Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
Chad (1m 6s):
Yes. I think we should definitely transition from the pink, fluffy unicorns to the taking crazy pills. Cause that's where we're at right now people. That is exactly where we are fucking at.
Joel (1m 20s):
Yeah. When we w we totally skipped over the 2 billion valuation, we went right from one to three. So shit. It is crazy pill time. Shout outs.
Chad (1m 30s):
Yeah. So first and foremost, shout out to Julie Calli, AKA Jules, former CMO over at Recruit X and new president CEO, HMFIC I guess, at a recruitmentmarketing.com. She came to Indy to hang out with us court and intro and the relaunch for the cult brand series. We had a blast, man.
Joel (1m 54s):
We did have a blast. We haven't been face to face for an interview for a while, and throwing in a throwing in heavy metal music and beer made it all that much better. So that was great. I got a shout out to DEEL. That's D E E L, the remote hiring company that has acquired Roots by the way, that is not the Canadian apparel company.
sfx (2m 23s):
Take off you hoser.
Joel (2m 24s):
That's right. They're an HR software platform that enables the remote organizations to collaborate more effectively and reduce burnouts. DEE EEL, acquires Roots. Shout out to them.
Chad (2m 36s):
You actually predicted that DEL was going to go down, that they were going to go down and flames, do you still feel that way?
Joel (2m 45s):
That was kind of a loose projection or prediction kind of the Canvas crashing and burning at this point. I've kind of changed my vote a little bit.
Chad (2m 54s):
Okay. Okay. So a big shout out to Australia for kicking Djokovic's ass to the curb. That was awesome. We've got Starbucks, who is a, I think they were kind of hoping that the US would have a, have a fucking spine and say, yes, everybody gets your shit together, this is good for the community. And go figure that did not happen, so they had to back away. But Australia after fucking with Djokovich for weeks, I think, and making him stay in a hotel locally, they finally said, you know, hit the bricks motherfucker. So Serbia-bound, he was.
Joel (3m 30s):
As now you've been following this much more than I have, as I understand it, he could risk not being able to go to Australia for up to three years.
Chad (3m 39s):
Yup. He was deported. I mean, when you are deported, if he would've just left on his own volition, none of this shit would have actually happened, but I'm going to predict that Australia, when everything starts to clear up and they don't have the lockdowns and all this things, and people, people start to forget, which is what we do. We have very short memories. He'll be back next year.
Joel (4m 2s):
Yeah. That's a lot of money to leave on the table if he can't go to Australia as a tennis player for three years.
Chad (4m 7s):
Yeah.
Joel (4m 7s):
Now that he's hurting, I got a shout out for someone who is hurting just a little bit. Fairy God Boss out in the news this week. So Romy our girl, we've interviewed her twice and I recommend you go check those out in our archives at chadcheese.com
Chad (4m 23s):
First interview view of this year.
Joel (4m 25s):
Oh, that's a good point. Good point. Good call. So they had expected some financing that unexpectedly fell through as a result they had to immediately restructure for long-term stability and success, this is according to Romy and they also took the quote "gut-wrenching step" of saying goodbye to several high performing and talented colleagues as a result. Now, a couple of things on this for me, one is the default for most CEOs is to quietly lay people off, write them a check and make them sign a paper that says they'll never talk about the company.
Chad (5m 0s):
Yeah.
Joel (5m 1s):
So big applause for me that she was transparent about this. She put it out there. She was honest about, Hey, we didn't get the financing. We wanted it, which is also most CEOs will not sort of admit that, Hey, we didn't get the financing we were looking for. So on two fronts, she really put herself out there in my opinion. And the second thing is people in our industry love hiring people in our industry. So sales folks, marketing folks, et cetera. They can find a job. The problem historically has been, oh, well, they're based in Boston and I'm in San Francisco so we can't hire them.
Chad (5m 32s):
Not anymore.
Joel (5m 32s):
Well, that's not the case anymore. I was really impressed that she put that out there. I saw multiple people from big companies that we know Jobcase and others that said, Hey, we're looking for people, send them our way. So hopefully all of these folks land on their feet. And I just think it's a real hat tip and shout out to Romy and team that they were transparent. And that I think they put their people in a really good position to find work and stay in the industry.
Chad (6m 2s):
Yeah. And female leaders are more empathetic. And I have to say, you know, these female founders, another story of female founders, not getting funding, which is a huge problem in our industry. Right. So could Fairygodboss tighten up their model. Could they do a lot of different things? Yes. But do they have a voice? Do they have a pool of talent? Do they have, you know, pretty much followers, you know, like types of? Yeah. They totally do. So I think, you know, this is something that we've seen over the years and it's totally unfortunate. So here's to good luck to Romy and the crew, this will give you time to tighten up focus and hopefully get out there and get that funding that you need.
Joel (6m 47s):
Yeah. I think she did mention that they were finally cash positive as well in light of this move. So yeah, hopefully it's a better days ahead for the company and the folks that they had to let go.
Chad (6m 58s):
Talking about people moving Dave Tuttle, you might know this guy, he's an industry veteran all around good guy. He actually left his post at ZipRecruiter for a CRO position at Origin, which is an employee financial wellness app. So it's got to make you think really hard about what's happening over at Zip. You've got an industry vet who leaves for a boring ass startup. Now we've talked about how boring can make big money for like mandatory software like payroll, right? Any ideas on what's happening over there at Zip? I mean, last week we talked about how there were pushing out Indeed-like emails, narratives, those types of things.
Chad (7m 41s):
And now this?
Joel (7m 42s):
The sort of emergency raise of 500 million, which was sort of mysteriously, you know, junk bond. It's definitely curious. But yeah, I mean, I think since the ZipRecruiter IPO things are pretty curious over there and it doesn't seem to be, you know, the lightning bolt that may be a lot of us thought that it would be since going public
Chad (8m 2s):
Ian buddy, what's up, man. Our ears are open. Our phone lines are open, let us know.
Joel (8m 6s):
Yeah, he'll get right on that. I'm sure. I'm sure he'll get right on that. I got a shout out to Bolster the marketplace for on-demand executive talent. I think they were one of our buy or sell companies a while back anyway, this week they announced a series B financing round of $11 million. This totals their amount raised to $13.8 million. And I think we both bought it as a buy or sell. We both liked the idea of sort of renting or being able to take executives off the shelf and bring them into startups. So shout out to Bolster.
Chad (8m 42s):
Agreed, agreed. I've got a couple of companies who have their shedding jobs. First and foremost, we knew Facebook was shedding jobs, but I have somebody who actually provided kind of like some internal comms and the whole team, the whole Facebook team who was working on jobs didn't know that it was going to shut down until a few days before it went public. The main reason is they need engineers working on their new quote unquote "mega stuff." The engineers were reassigned immediately. Everybody else who was working, was distributed through, you know, different other Facebook products. Jobs is one of the many projects that has been shut down after the Meta rebrand and their 5-10 year strategic plan was announced.
Chad (9m 33s):
So remember also GoogleHire.
Joel (9m 35s):
Google for Hire.
Chad (9m 35s):
Google For Hire, GoogleHire whatever it was axed. And we had heard all these great things coming out of their clients and out of Google and out of nowhere, they were axed. And it's basically for the same reason, as you know, there's bigger fish to fry than TA. And then that being said, Stack Overflow on their Meta blog said that on March 31st, 2022 this year, Stack will discontinue Stack Overflow Jobs and developers story. Goodbye, job listings, saved searches, applications, messages, all that stuff, right? But Stack will continue to support the advertising components on their talent offering specifically focused on employer brand.
Chad (10m 19s):
So this next bit was actually telling for Stack Overflow while talent and jobs helped us get to where we are over the past decade. The talent acquisition space is not one where we have a strong, competitive advantage developers as you know, don't have a hard time finding job opportunities. The problem is the effort it would take to truly differentiate in this space would not be one we could justify.
Joel (10m 47s):
How refreshing is that too, you know what? This just ain't worth it. We're out. By the way, I got to think the marketplace for Facebook. Are you, are you familiar with Open Sea? Yeah. Okay. It's like eBay for NFTs and that like that's coming to the Facebook marketplace soon. Like Facebook marketplace is going to compete with Open Sea. That was not in my prediction show, but I got to think that they're going to be doing that at some point. And a lot of resources are going to stuff like that.
Chad (11m 13s):
It's amazing. And for all of those listeners that are out there that said, no, this is just Facebook kind of pulling back. They're going to come even stronger into the jobs market. Again, we're seeing this is happening at more than just Facebook. It happened at Google. It happened at Facebook. It's happening at Stack. There are only so many technical resources that they have and they're putting it toward products, services, new projects that have bigger outcomes. Yep.
Joel (11m 43s):
And I'm pretty sure we talked about that. That resources have to go to Meta and that elsewhere. So that's good on us for predicting that. I've got a shout out to a JobFindah, remember when JobFindah was a silly name.
Chad (11m 59s):
It's still a silly name.
Joel (12m 0s):
They have been acquired by Circa. This is more your lane than mine, but this is obviously a OFCCP compliance play one fish gobbling up a smaller one. I don't have much else to say about that, but a congratulations to the JobFindah team for being acquired by Circa shout out today,
Chad (12m 20s):
I sent an email to Patrick, the CEO of Circa and said, I hope you didn't pay more than 200 bucks for fucking JobFindah I mean, right now, Circa in the compliance space, what they're trying to do is they're trying to gobble up portfolios and you know, somewhat makes sense. It somewhat makes sense.
Joel (12m 39s):
Do you remember who founded JobFindah?
Chad (12m 42s):
Yeah, Rathin.
Joel (12m 42s):
Rathin that's right. And how does this, how many players are there now in the OFCCP space with JobFindah table. Just a handful, right? Not very many.
Chad (12m 52s):
There aren't a ton of them, but there's kind of like the big fish you've got direct employers and you have Circa, and then you have kind of like everybody else. And when I say everybody else, it's because they're more transactional. Not that they don't make money. It's just, they're more transactional types of platforms. Gotcha.
Joel (13m 13s):
Gotcha. Another shout out for me. Torchy's Tacos. If you're in Texas, you know what the hell I'm talking about? So Torchy's Tacos is fantastic. It's a staple and an icon in Texas. Well, mysteriously last year, a Torchy's Tacos opened in Jeffersonville, Indiana, which luckily my sister lives. So I got to have Torchy's two or three times a year when I'd go visit my sister. I talked to the management. I said, Hey, when are you guys coming up north? And they said, well, we're looking at opening a place up north in the next 6 to 12 months while I'm driving down the street the other day. And I see coming soon, Torchy's Tacos within 8 to 10 minutes of my house.
Joel (13m 54s):
I can't be more excited. It's it's also right across from Chipotle. So I'm thinking like I could rock some combo Torchy's tacos with a burrito bowl. Like I could really rock this shit. So Torchy's thank you for coming to town. I'm very excited.
Chad (14m 12s):
We're talking about social distancing this is going to be much more than six feet in getting around Joel.
sfx (14m 19s):
Don't wreck our show you hoser.
Joel (14m 20s):
What else you got anything?
Chad (14m 21s):
We had a great whiskey tasting last night with our buddy Robert Ruff, Scott from a Textkernel, Rob Bursey, who was the winner? He was sporting two fifths of awesome bourbon. So yeah. Had a good time. Had a good time.
Joel (14m 37s):
Yeah. And if you want to join us yourself for a whiskey tasting or beer tasting, or you just want to style some dope threads, AKA our t-shirt. You got to go to Chadcheese.com/free today. We're talking t-shirts by Emissary, beer from Pillar and whiskey from our friends at Sovren/newfriends, TextKernel who joined us on the call as well. So you've got to do that. Let's get to birthdays.
Chad (15m 6s):
Yes.
Joel (15m 7s):
And one of our close friends to the show is celebrating a birthday.
sfx (15m 11s):
Welcome to all things. Scottish our slogan, is if it's not Scottish it's crap!
Joel (15m 13s):
That's right. Our buddy, Adam Gordon, at Candidate ID celebrates a birthday.
Chad (15m 18s):
We need a scotch tasting now.
Joel (15m 23s):
We need a scotch tasting. Yes we're working on that. Also a friends of the show, Jason Roberts, Robin Schooling, Justin Miller, Merrell, Tom Eckhart, and Chris Amato all celebrate birthdays.
Chad (15m 34s):
Holy Shit. January's a big month.
Joel (15m 40s):
It is a big big month. A lot of sex was going on. Let's see that would be October. I don't know.
Chad (15m 48s):
Carry the one.
Joel (15m 48s):
My math really, really sucks.
Chad (15m 52s):
TOPICS!
Joel (15m 53s):
We got some insight information recently on UKG. We talked about them a few weeks ago. I think it was December that they had been ransomwared.
Chad (16m 1s):
Yep. Mid December
Joel (16m 1s):
Checks weren't going out to people, chaos ensued, dogs and cats living together. It kind of quieted down and we sort of forgot about it. But apparently we have a source telling us that shit has hit the fan at UKG they haven't fixed anything. People are getting paid manually if they're getting paid at all, like it's a total shit show.
Chad (16m 20s):
Spreadsheets.
Joel (16m 21s):
UKG is in really bad shape. Is it fair to say our source said they're out of business?
Chad (16m 29s):
It was the prediction. The prediction was that when you have infrastructure fail like this, getting back to where you were before is nearly impossible. And when you grow to that, of the size of, of UKG you have to be ready for these types of issues. These types of, you know, ransomware threats. And they weren't, and now they have customers who can't pay their employees. So, I mean, this has to be the nightmare mode for UKG the problem is it wasn't nightmare mode prior, or they probably would have had the shit figured out.
Joel (17m 4s):
Yeah. And apparently they really touted their security, protecting data, et cetera. I mean, these are, these are big companies that use them to, you know, make sure people are paid in a timely manner.
Chad (17m 21s):
Yeah, it's bad.
Joel (17m 22s):
So if you have any more insight for us hit us up on the socials, but yeah, UKG's in pretty rough shape.
sfx (17m 29s):
Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
Joel (17m 31s):
That's right. We got, geez. I don't know. Triple unicorns. I don't know what you call like multi-billion dollar unicorns?
Chad (17m 38s):
Bigger unicorns.
Joel (17m 38s):
Number. Yeah. I don't know. And when they die, it really hurts. I think we'll find that out at some point I'm sure. Handshake announced this week, a series F round of $200 million for a grand total of $434 million at a valuation of $3.5 billion.
Chad (17m 58s):
Bam!
Joel (17m 58s):
Worth roughly the amount that ZipRecruiter is that we talked about earlier. This is more than double its valuation of 2021. They help people start, restart, jumpstart, their careers, CEO and founder, Garrett Lord said in a release quote, "LinkedIn is focused on your past and Handshakes focused on your future." So they're taking aim at LinkedIn. The company says over 1.7 million relationships were forged between employers and candidates on the platform last year. Handshake's community includes 20 million students and young alumni around the world from 1400 educational institutions. Customers include Alphabet/Google and Nike, and they are reportedly on track for our 100 million ARR that's annual recurring revenue, Chad.
Joel (18m 42s):
Are you ready to go back to school, Rodney Dangerfield style and get with Handshake?
Chad (18m 48s):
So the amount of dilution that is happening here is staggering. Right? Take a look at the numbers. Anyways, Handshake is smartly aligning their brand with LinkedIn because they know LinkedIn was sold to Microsoft in 2016 for $26 billion. But LinkedIn only had total funding of $155 million at the time. And Handshake is currently over $440 million in funding. So what is Handshake trying to achieve and why is it so valuable? Handshake is trying to do what Monster couldn't get done back in the mid two thousands.
Joel (19m 24s):
That Monster Track?
Chad (19m 25s):
Yeah. Monster Track. They bought Job Track and they became MonsterTrack. Well, they were trying to take over the college career center. So basically trying to funnel all college students into their platform. The joke is that current college career centers don't represent a hundred percent of their soon to graduate students. So this is more of a smoke and mirrors campaign. And also, as we've said before, I think it's incredibly smart messaging. And this is exactly what Handshake did before to align yourself with a much bigger brand, very successful brand and say, we're coming after you.
Joel (19m 58s):
The narrative here is pretty obvious. I think, I mean, I've been wracking my brain all morning, trying to make sense of this whole deal. And I'm really I'm frankly, struggling. I hate the college space for some of the reasons that you mentioned. We've seen multiple companies try to penetrate and they're kind of hip for a while. Students leave and then someone else comes along. That's cool and they pick them. And so to me, like there's a ceiling on this business, a hundred, a hundred million ARR is nothing to sneeze at, but they're clearly spinning a story about, we can take this bigger into LinkedIn territory, I guess, sort of like how Facebook went from colleges to say, Hey, we'll just, we'll hit everybody with social media.
Joel (20m 39s):
I think these guys think they can do the same thing. They've hit a ceiling in my opinion. They raised $80 million back in may to do what remember virtual job fairs. So that was like the next phase of the story. Like if we just do virtual, we'll make that much more money. Now the story is obviously with more money we can take on, you know, , this narrative from the CEO that quote "LinkedIn is focused on your past and Handshake's focused on your future." Like really, they argued that most students don't know anyone on LinkedIn so it's sort of pointless to be on it. You know, from my perspective, connecting to a bunch of other 20 somethings is pretty unproductive, right?
Joel (21m 20s):
Like the old people on LinkedIn are the ones with dollars and influence and job openings. Handshake is I think over their skis. And now they're too pricey for most acquirers. So IPO is in their future. And I don't think the IPO market, the public markets are going to be real positive. Once Handshake tries to take on LinkedIn and become bigger. I just don't see a lot of growth. I see a really, really hard ceiling to crash through. Yeah.
Chad (21m 46s):
You talking about a hundred million in ARR versus, you know, LinkedIn and 2020 was $8 billion. Right. So, you know, again, bringing a knife to a gunfight. Yeah.
Joel (21m 55s):
Yeah. And there's got to be pressure from investors to say, Hey, Hey, where's our next a hundred million coming from right? Where's our next growth opportunity. And I think the people in charge know that there's a ceiling on the college career center space and that they're spinning this narrative to raise more money. And it's not gonna end well, I don't think. I hope I'm wrong for everyone involved.
Chad (22m 20s):
Crazy pills!
Joel (22m 20s):
Yeah. The next, the next unicorn.
sfx (22m 24s):
Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
Joel (22m 27s):
So this, this one I'm much more bullish on, I don't know about you, but let's summarize the news there. So Lattice, hold the Lattice, people management platform focused on employee engagement and development said it has raised $175 million in fresh funding bringing its grand total to $328.3 million. The San Fran startups said the funding round increases its valuation from $1 billion to $3 billion. The threefold valuation increase is particularly notable given that it took place in under a year TechCrunch reported that the startup has added over a thousand customers since last March and now has north of 3,500 organizations on its install base Yowza.
Joel (23m 10s):
Chad, are you putting some lattice on this cheeseburger?
Chad (23m 14s):
It's all about the lattice and it's going to be an Impossible burger. So quick quote from a Lattice investor, "people strategy is no longer only a concern for HR departments, attracting, developing and retaining top talent needs to be a company-wide effort in order to better accomplish company goals." So that in itself resonates in the landscape we are in today. Just another great reason why they got, they got cash. Remote work isn't going away. You can either have, you know, this disconnection with your employees or you can find new ways to connect. So back in March of last year, we both bought Lattice during, a buy or sell segment of the pod.
Joel (23m 54s):
We're so smart.
Chad (23m 55s):
Yeah. Well, I'm going to repeat what I said back then. Organic growth is great, but when the weather is right, you have, and you have access to funds, you launch that motherfucking rocket ship. The difference between Handshake and Lattice is systems versus transactions. Can Handshake become the dominating platform like LinkedIn did? I don't think so. Yeah. Lattice on the other hand is solidly in the platform space. And when you buy a platform, whether it's good or bad, you're stuck with that platform for years and a people and performance management system is a prime target for a larger HCM or ERP.
Chad (24m 39s):
ADP. Lattice is prime for growth and acquisition.
Joel (24m 41s):
Yeah. Yeah. These guys are an overnight success, seven years in the making. It's a really, really pretty cool story. So they've been around since 2015. Yeah. They've steadily been growing each year. They sort of raise a round the money every year. And I think that they did the groundwork to when the pandemic hit it, put them in hyperdrive. It made that the calls, the outbound calls to people pitching the product that said no quickly said yes, because they realize this is a work from home issue. We have to engage people. We have to like keep them involved in the company. They've also done a really good job of narrating diversity as part of their offering so they've built a sort of a double whammy for growth in terms of the work from home phenomenon, as well as the diversity play.
Joel (25m 27s):
And it's just a kind of a fun company like before funding, Lattice, the CEO and the co founder, the CEO's a Princeton grad. He's probably not even 30. I don't think these guys are even that old, but they were, they were doing biz dev for a custom t-shirt company before they founded this business. The co-founder was a developer at the same t-shirt company. So I could only imagine what, like lunch dates were with those guys talking about Lattice. They're going to have to go public, unless your prediction of like a big, big, big blue whale comes in and gobbles them up.
Chad (25m 57s):
Yep.
Joel (25m 57s):
But that's going to happen sooner rather than later, I would think. So this is just going to be really fun to watch. I'd love to get the CEO on the show just cause he seems like a really interesting dude, but this is one to watch. And I think they hit the timing was just right. The business was just right. And the team that they built, hit everything at the right time. And yeah, it's fun to watch. Congrats to them. Let's go to WorkStep announced a $25 million series B funding round led by New Road Capital partners for a grand total raised of $43 million.
Joel (26m 39s):
The San Fran based company was founded in 2017 and matches workers with jobs provides automated interview scheduling and has a tool for employee surveys to measure engagement. It focuses on positions in warehouses, production, trucking and skilled trades said Chris Sultemeier operating partner at New Road and former executive VP of logistics at Walmart quote "WorkStep is uniquely positioned to address the talent shortage at scale, by radically improving how enterprises source, engage and invest in frontline workers" end quote. WorkSteps last raise was February of '21. Chad, are you stepping up to WorkStep or were those boots made for walking?
Chad (27m 20s):
So WorkSteps promises to help, for example, hire and retain workers at Kroger or at an Amazon warehouse and much like Factory Fix, which who we talked about last week, it's a two headed monster with job postings and a candidate database and a system to help, you know, get a pulse on the client's employees. Okay. Here's the problem. A pulse survey isn't going to fix the problems like inequities, bad wages and customers treating you like shit. Kroger knows they have problems. Amazon knows they have problems. The tech isn't going to be able to tell them something that they don't already know, and it's not going to help them fix it. And what we're doing is we're over promising and we're going to under-deliver on smoke and mirrors platforms like these.
Chad (28m 2s):
If it was just a job board with a platform like Factory Fix, right? It's a site that draws in candidates matches them and gives you a platform to be able to manage that whole process. That's one thing, but promising that it's going to fix a lot of this shit is just total bullshit.
Joel (28m 21s):
You feel pretty passionate about this. So I know less about this than I probably should. So I went, I went to Supply Chain Quarterly, Chad. Supply Chain Quarterly, yes, there are publications for this. So I wanted to better understand this. And I felt like how many times do we push startups to answer the question "what pain point are you solving?"
Chad (28m 40s):
Right.
Joel (28m 41s):
Many don't have an answer to the question like what pain are you solving? These guys are clearly at least spinning a narrative that they're solving the problem of, look, there's a vicious cycle of spending big bucks to recruit only to see your team churn and new hires, walk out the door. So the cycle keeps going like we're going to help you engage with folks, keep them on, you know, increased retention. So the narrative to me is solid. Obviously you feel differently about the business as a whole, but if you can do that in the logistics business and the companies that they're targeting, it's like take my money if you can actually solve that problem. But they can't, according to you.
Chad (29m 19s):
They can't.
Joel (29m 20s):
Well dammit.
Chad (29m 20s):
They can't raise a company's wages. They can't, all these issues that they're talking about, the companies already know fucking exist, but they're not fixing them now. They don't need tech to tell them that there's an issue because they already know there's an issue.
Joel (29m 34s):
Are you saying like a little emoticon, isn't going to make people stay on the job longer than they would?
Chad (29m 47s):
That's my feeling, yes.
Joel (29m 47s):
A little video from the CEO saying great job. Keep it up.
Chad (29m 52s):
No, but a quick note, but a quick note in this space. Driver reach here in Indianapolis, they just got $7.5 million in funding. Total $8.2 million overall. They developed recruiting and compliance management platform for trucking industry. And this is one of those companies who they're going against the 800 pound gorilla at 10th street in the trucking space. And we need truckers. We need drivers. This whole logistics thing is it makes sense. But these guys aren't promising things that they can't deliver. And they're in a great position to exploit a very slow moving gorilla in 10th street and a market that needs and deserves more efficient tech.
Chad (30m 32s):
So congrats to Jeremy and the crew here in Indy.
Joel (30m 36s):
Well, I think we know which one you think the sexier company is those two. All right. Speaking of sexy, we'll take a quick break and talk about what everyone's talking about the metaverse. All right, Chad, big news.
Chad (30m 56s):
Yes.
Joel (30m 56s):
Big news this week and technology Microsoft may have just significantly upped its standing in the future of the metaverse by spending nearly $69 billion. I said 69. To gobble up gaming powerhouse, Activision Blizzard. When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world's third largest gaming company by revenue behind 10 Cent and Sony with franchises like Warcraft, your favorite Call of Duty and my wife's favorite Candy Crush. Side note Activision's CEO, Bobby Kotick, who's had a year of full of sexual harassment allegations will continue to lead the company, but will report to Microsoft gaming chief Spill Spender almost said Phil Spector when I read that. This follows the reach and acquisition of Zynga by Take Two for almost $13 billion.
Joel (31m 40s):
Chad, I know you love you some call of duty, but what do you make of all this news?
Chad (31m 49s):
Yeah, I think first and foremost, if you have not seen the movie Ready Player One, watch it ASAP. While Facebook focuses on Oculus and tries to leap into Ready Player One immediately Microsoft is focusing on how millions are engaged in the metaverse today. And in doing so collectively spending millions of dollars every single day, their users are spending tons of cash every day in the metaverse that exists within Microsoft infrastructure. So with video games, you have a construct that already exists and then you have an opportunity to expand that growing landscape, which means you're just taking an experience that everybody already uses, it already exists.
Chad (32m 33s):
And then you're opening up the prospect of real retail shops. And those were worlds. I mean the opportunity is enormous. So enormous Walmart's looking at getting in the game.
Joel (32m 41s):
Yeah, thanks Facebook. It's starting this feeding frenzy. So this reminds me of, and this is why it's good to be old it reminds me of the rush to social media. This feels like, holy shit, this could be the next big thing, let's all place our bets. And you remember that News Corp bought My Space. Yeah, that made a lot of sense at the time Yahoo bought Tumblr for a billion some dollars, which was crazy at the time. Facebook bought Instagram, well, that turned out pretty well. I guess it's smart for a social media company to buy another social media company. Google plus, that was one of your favorites back in the day.
Joel (33m 21s):
And Microsoft bought LinkedIn, which also worked out pretty well. People scoffed at social media becoming an influence on hiring, but it clearly has. LinkedIn is an obvious example. So the question to me is, you know, if gaming is ground zero for the metaverse, that's where the money's flowing.
Chad (33m 41s):
Yeah.
Joel (33m 42s):
Will these platforms eventually become hiring zones, right?
Chad (33m 43s):
For gamers.
Joel (33m 43s):
Well for anybody, apparently we're all going to be in this world. So everyone should be up for grabs. Is it an employment branding opportunity? Probably. And that's why we talk about it on the show. What will this all look like? I don't fucking know. I'll probably be dead when it matters or at least we won't be recording the show anymore, but maybe recruiters in the future will suit up, take on the shape of a lagger that's a lion/tiger combo Chad, and start connecting with others in a place like Minecraft or Fortnite. I mean the future could be crazy dude and Chad and Cheese are going to be here for as long as we can to help make sense of the craziness.
sfx (34m 26s):
Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
Chad (34m 28s):
Like the Napoleon Dynamite reference?
Joel (34m 29s):
You like that? Like her, she loves my skills, my bow hunting skills. All right. Speaking of it's getting crazy. Let's talk about cannabis jobs. Yeah. All right. Vangst, that's an angst with a V a Denver-based cannabis jobs platform announced a $19 million funding round this week. The round was led by level one fund with participation from Cheech and Chong. No, sorry. I didn't read that. Right. And previous investors, which may include Cheech and Chong, it provides workers on a W2 and independent contractor basis. Vangst was founded in 2016 by Karson Humiston, and raised $10 million in a series A round in January of '19. Vangst currently works with 1200 cannabis companies said James Stewart, managing partner at level a level one fund quote "cannabis is an undeniably large and fast growing market.
Joel (35m 18s):
And Vangst is the only company offering scalable recruitment solutions tailored for the industry's unique needs" end quote. Chad, are you taking a hit off this deal or are you passing the Dutchy on the left-hand side?
Chad (35m 37s):
I'm more of an edible kind of guy?
Joel (35m 39s):
Yeah.
Chad (35m 39s):
In the past 12 months, the sector 25% increased full-time employees, right? Yep. 400,000 individuals. Now back in September of 2017, you and I, my friend actually covered Vangst and the prospect of weed jobs as states start to accept and decriminalize marijuana. So, I mean, I love this. There's no question this is a growth sector. I mean, because you are growing things, but it is a growth sector. I love it. But here's the base basic issue I have with this platform and any other platform that gets into the space, it looks good. Although it's literally the exact same type of system we built back in the late nineties and early two thousands. I should be able to get my information into the system into a 2022 system quick and easy, tap into LinkedIn APIs, parsers for a resume to be able to get my information into the right spots.
Chad (36m 32s):
This is more of the fill out more shit kind of platform. So I love it. It's a growth segment. I have great hopes for this industry and Vangst, but they can do better, much faster, if they learn from the last 20 years of online recruitment. They need to bring people in who understand that this space, specifically recruitment tech, because what they're doing now with our technology, we always talk about technical debt. They're not going to have technical debt. They're going to have a technical anchor around their neck unless they start to change for the future.
Joel (37m 4s):
You know, the company was founded in an era where it was taboo or even illegal to post jobs for cannabis online. And that's only changed fairly recently as more states make it legal. It's still federally not legal. So a lot of companies or job boards probably shy away from it, particularly if they're local to a state or city where it's illegal. So they had about five years of little to no competition. I mean, they were it, there were a couple of others, but they came out as the strongest brand. And I think people that are in the system feel a strong loyalty because of that early mover strategy. And I think that'll remain strong for probably years to come and they have a community. I mean, they're kind of like LinkedIn for pot.
Joel (37m 45s):
I don't know how long term that can be successful.
Chad (37m 48s):
Their tech is not like LinkedIn.
Joel (37m 50s):
Well, they try to like profile. And I mean, if they build a community, they tout community, look, I'm not on the site, but.
Chad (37m 57s):
I am.
Joel (37m 58s):
You're on this site. Okay. Then you can speak from a position of strength on this one, but longer term, you know, assuming weed goes legal at the federal level, which I think we all kind of think it will eventually, I think Vangst has a tough time competing. I think they do now. Most people don't have a hesitancy to post these jobs on places like Indeed and ZipRecruiter. And at some point they just become another industry for people to find employment, right? Like I just go to Indeed or Google or whatever to find marketing jobs. I don't have a cannabis career, which is what they're touting on the site. I'm just a mom. I'm just a person with a marketing degree who wants to get a job and it just so happens to be in the cannabis industry.
Chad (38m 39s):
Right.
Joel (38m 40s):
There aren't going to be many cannabis career folks out there. So long-term, I'm pretty bearish on this company, you know, for the next five to 10 years, I think they'll just do just fine particularly as more and more states open up legal marijuana.
Chad (38m 54s):
Agreed. Agreed. Your, your point exactly is why they can't just be the standard 1990s tech. They have to be something more.
Joel (39m 2s):
Yeah. They got to have some really good shit to build in the next couple of years, all right, let's take a quick break and get to the story. Everybody wants the final story this one about Only Fans. All right. Chad, more tales from the great resignation.
Chad (39m 19s):
Is that tales. T A L E S?
Joel (39m 21s):
I'll let the listener make up their own mind on that one. Yeah. We've talked about a nurse who found Only Fans riches. Now it's a former preschool teacher and nanny. Danielle Zavala, a big beautiful woman model in the New Orleans area. That's what the story says that's not me reading that, has traded in her pencils and ruler for big bucks as an Only Fans, adult model. 40 hour work weeks and the pandemic had her feeling underappreciated so she quit her dream job. And now works under the adult entertainer name Devy thick and makes twice as much as she did as a teacher in half the time. And maybe most importantly, she lives life on her terms.
Joel (40m 5s):
Zavala wrote in an article quote "I don't have to let people treat me poorly. I can set my own boundaries with customers and if they break them, I simply don't have to do business with them" end quote. So, Chad, what do you think of my new stage name? Cheesy thick?
Chad (40m 24s):
I think it's a full of cholesterol. So, we talked about a nurse. A nurse, very hot nurse, but a nurse leaving her job for only fans making like $30,000 a month. And now a teacher, if you think about it, nobody wants to be going to work on a daily basis and treated like shit either by customers, by patients, by your peers, by staff, you know, managers doesn't matter. Nobody wants to be treated like shit. So in this case, it's a nurse and it's a teacher, but I can almost guarantee you, there are many other tales that are out there of the Kroger worker or the Amazon, you know, warehouse worker.
Chad (41m 5s):
These people who just said, fuck this, I'm going to try it a different and better way and good for them. Is it good though? Why not?
Joel (41m 11s):
Well, I don't know. I don't know this whole world baffles my mind.
Chad (41m 15s):
You know, $15 to $30,000 a month and they can sock some away and they can retire early. Good for them.
Joel (41m 20s):
Is there a ceiling on this? Like, is there a moment where like, you know what 80 million people on Only Fans is too much.
Chad (41m 29s):
There could be a saturation point.
Joel (41m 31s):
Like, I don't know. It's just nuts, man. And I love talking about it, but I just, every week it's like, man, the world just gets crazier and crazier and now we're opening up the fucking metaverse.
Chad (41m 48s):
As soon as Only Fans comes to the metaverse it's over.
Joel (41m 53s):
No. When Chad and Cheese come to the metaverse, it's over. And with that, this show is over.
Chad and Joel (42m 3s):
We out.
OUTRO (42m 33s):
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.
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