Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired | Hacker News Reader

Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

208 pointsdchhugani160 comments

Hi HN! I’m Deepak, founder of The Lobby, from YC’s W18 batch. We’re building a marketplace where you can buy mock interviews, resume reviews, and coaching calls from company insiders, starting with top finance roles. (https://www.thelobby.io/)

I went to a school where the big banks, consulting shops, and tech companies didn’t come to recruit on campus. As a result, it was really hard not only to get interviews and job offers, but also to figure out what these companies were looking for in candidates in the first place.

I got lucky and landed jobs at big banks and it was always because I somehow found someone on the inside who was willing to coach and mentor me in a very personalized way. I used that experience to help 50+ friends from similar backgrounds land jobs at top firms, and that’s what inspired the idea for The Lobby.

We have some incredibly happy users who’ve already landed jobs, and a very high repeat purchase rate both amongst students and career switchers because of the value in speaking to people in the specific teams and companies they're interested in vs. generic company-wide advice.

It has, however, been challenging to get everyone receptive to our new approach. Even though people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on college (to ultimately land a good job), it's controversial to build a recruiting-focused company that charges job seekers instead of just the companies.

We’ve had 2 schools buy packages of calls where they subsidize the costs for their students, and are thinking through ideas to pass the cost away from students, even though this service is not just meant for college (our best users are career switchers). We’ve also received a lot of interest from companies who are interested in getting access to our best-rated candidates because they’ve been pre-screened by real humans who’ve done the job, vs. recruiters who have not.

Any feedback and ideas from the HN community on how to convey the cost/benefit of what we’re offering to students, recent grads, career switchers, parents, and even schools is much appreciated.

View on HN

This is extremely smart. I hope you succeed, especially considering I was initially filled with cynicism for the first five seconds until I read your marketing type. Others might disagree, but it won me over because it reminded me of similar products in other markets.

A good analogy in the audit space would be a pre-assessment. You pay for a pre-assessment to get an informal walk through the process on a much smaller timeframe to get a better understanding of your gaps. Examples could be SOC1 or SOC2 pre-assessments, where failing the pre-assessment is a no-impact matter. Failing an actual assessment which produces results could mean having an exception-filled report to give to clients or potentially even deciding that disclosing such a report poses more downside in converting sales, meaning you just wasted a six figure assessment by burying the report.

Lobby conversations/interviews could result in referrals, which means these effectively act as no-risk interviews with people in the know with hiring processes at the desired firms.

This looks like a potentially solid initial go at a practice market, where the risk of utterly bombing an interview and potentially getting turned down for future opportunities at a desired firm might actually run high.

There's a market for practice runs in anything where the final result will be materially impactful in the long term, especially where final results pose potential significant downside compared to the base state.

Exactly! Do you have any thoughts on how to convey this benefit to users? Most of them get it, but sometimes we get people who compare us to "reaching out on LinkedIn" which clearly is not the case, since any other kind of conversation isn't really a practice run - it's the real thing!

Let's talk. I have some ideas, but I also have another vertical in mind that thrives on connections. I'm on keybase as bryant.

As for the simplest way: convey the benefits of practice runs (even if you don't want to call them "practice" -- maybe pre-screens?) not just as means for improving the odds of suitable outcomes but also for reducing the odds of adverse outcomes in an environment where character testimonials spread fast. It's not just the careers that are in demand, it's the desire to gain upside for a person's own brand.

You may benefit well from investing in strong marketing type

Reaching out now!

Love this - amazing ideas. Writing all this feedback down to improve our offering.

Hey Deepak. First of all congratulations on the launch. If you want to take away one major sticking point for me try to address the 'candidate pays up front' issue somehow. It strongly correlates with 'start-up pays up front' or 'pay to pitch' models in the VC world and I absolutely hate those.

If you could fix that either in the form of a delayed invoice until after the applicant has found a new job or by some form of no-cure-no-pay guarantee then I would be happy to refer people to you.

best of luck with your company!

Lastly - thank you very much for the kind words!

About 10 years ago, I had a similar idea (called RungJump).

It allowed you to fill out a detailed job dossier about your position at a particular company, and then users could purchase the dossier; RungJump would take a cut, and the person who wrote the dossier would get the rest. It was kind of like a premium version of Glassdoor, where the expectation was the dossiers would contain more candid info.

Here are some of the problems I ran into:

* You had to solve the chicken-and-egg problem twice. Once to attract insiders and once to attract paying users. It was hard. I would imagine The Lobby will face the same problem, and in fact possibly even to a larger degree, since my dossiers were "write once and then forget about it" whereas The Lobby is scheduling phone calls, so the insiders need ongoing availability.

* Quality control is hard, because of the information imbalance. Who's to say whether a particular insider is actually giving you information that's worth the price of admission? If you knew enough about the company to call B.S., you wouldn't be paying for the service. I would imagine The Lobby will face the same problem.

* Employers really, really do not like their employees being paid on the side to dish about the company. And employees were (rightly, I think) hesitant to potentially put their jobs on the line to make a little side cash. In fact, the more exclusive and well-paying the job, the less likely it was worth the risk for insiders to participate. I would imagine The Lobby will face the same problem, especially since it's starting out with a narrow focus on "elite finance" roles, and promising anonymity only goes so far.

* As Deepak noted, it can be hard to persuade job seekers to pay. One big reason for that? If you don't have a job, money is probably tight. And when your target demographic is, in general, hard up, it can be a very difficult business model to get right. The Lobby is trying to get around this problem by partnering with colleges who subsidize the costs; I think that's a smart move, and I wish them luck!

thanks for this! Great points. Here's how we think of them:

chicken & egg: we build hyper local liquidity the way Uber tackles neighborhoods or cities, hence the initial focus on investment banking. The few similar products we've seen try this inevitably try to do dozens of industries or hundreds of roles and this makes it impossible to achieve true liquidity or to allocate marketing dollars properly.

Quality control: To me, this is the beauty of The Lobby. We're not trying to get the best written content, or to get the CEO of a company with highly specialized knowledge. It's junior level people talking about how they got their job. If you're bad at this or your quality sucks, our ratings will indicate that and you won't be picked further. If you're a great insider, your ratings will indicate that too and you get more demand + more money.

But the main point here is: this knowledge is not rocket science. Any analyst at a specific team in Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch will have very similar answers on how to land the job. That's what we see at The Lobby too.

No one can guarantee that the information the insider is giving is 100% accurate, but we think with the right reward & incentive systems in place, the best insiders rise up and the crappy ones get booted out.

Edit: To the last points you added. The myth that because you're a job seeker you don't have money is the one we're fighting with our analogy. People spend money on all sorts of things they don't need and absurd amounts of money on schools, bootcamps like GA, and more. Those are all for career advancement.

If you believe our premise that learning from insiders about what life is really like, what it takes to break in, getting personalized tips, etc. is the way to get the best careers, then suddenly a large portion of that spend can go to something like The Lobby, which I profoundly believe is a better use of your cash.

One example that I kept hearing from the YC partners themselves: "If I had your service when I was a freshman, I would have spoken to 2 lawyers, asked them what they do all day, only to realize that I don't want to be a lawyer." Think of the massive opportunity cost of learning what to do or WHAT NOT to do way before even pursuing a career or becoming a full-time job seeker.

Last point: our best users are career switchers, they already make money and want to make a career move. For me, moving from finance to tech was borderline impossible and I had money to spend. I just didn't know what to do or what path to take. The Lobby would have solved or mitigated that too.

"But the main point here is: this knowledge is not rocket science. Any analyst at a specific team in Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch will have very similar answers on how to land the job. That's what we see at The Lobby too."

Isn't this generic info on 'how to get a job in investment banking' already available on numerous websites for free? What unique value will insiders add compared to what has already been published? You've already stated the answers would be very similar between analysts/banks.

My point was not that the advice is generic, but that you don't require super specialized knowledge to give it that needs extensive "quality control."

The Telecom, Media & technology group at Goldman Sachs will have specific bankers, preferences, and things they look for in candidates, as well as industry-specific things you need to study to truly prep. But any analyst WITHIN THAT group is capable of providing that information, and they already are when they interview candidates, help their friends/alumni, and more.

To reiterate - the information of how to land a job in a specific group is very unique and not easy to commoditize across an entire industry or with generic blog posts, but the complexity of that knowledge is very low, hence many are qualified to accurately give it without having to have some crazy "quality control" monitor.

Does this make sense?

> Employers really, really do not like their employees being paid on the side to dish about the company. And employees were (rightly, I think) hesitant to potentially put their jobs on the line to make a little side cash. In fact, the more exclusive and well-paying the job, the less likely it was worth the risk for insiders to participate. I would imagine The Lobby will face the same problem, especially since it's starting out with a narrow focus on "elite finance" roles, and promising anonymity only goes so far.

I think you skipped this point, or I misunderstood. I work as a management consultant and get regular request to help people (eg is the job something for them, practice interviews, etc). It’s internally encouraged to help in this way, but I’d be extremely hesitant about taking money for it because I don’t think it passes the blush test (couldn’t tell this to a colleague without blushing), and creates wrong incentives (eg there are things about the recruiting process that should not be shared)

Anonymity only strengthens the impression that it’s not ‘kosher’ for me

What are your ither ideas to tackle this? (And perhaps you get sufficient people with just anonymity, that’s fine too :)

Thanks for pointing that out - I missed it here. Answered a similar question elsewhere in the thread:

"Definitely agree that this could be a problem. Practically speaking - we keep identities anonymous and so employees are protected.

Ethically speaking - if you have a buddy inside the company, they'll tell you how to prep for these questions anyways.

It all comes back to our main point - if you don't have an inside connection, you don't get the juicy insights someone with that advantage does. So your odds of landing the job, let alone knowing what it takes to land it, are always lower. We bridge that gap - everything else in our view is a solvable problem because this engages current/former employees in the recruiting process + helps companies discover more talent."

The summary is that we're fine with keeping it anonymous now and here we have to take a bit more of a disruptive approach. Airbnb and Uber were both illegal (As in literally breaking laws) and still scaled and ultimately succeeded because they believed in the fundamental benefit of their service to the world.

The Lobby is completely legal, just maybe against some company policies, but we feel the benefits far outweigh the cons of some random company policy, even for the company itself as described above.

Advice: tell this story! Create a video where you describe this same thing, and promote it on the right channels. You can even add production value by showing b-roll of specific points of your story, such as footage from on-campus recruiting. Perhaps include interviews/testimonials from those happy customers that you mentioned.

Your point about spending thousands on education while simultaneously having an aversion to paying recruiters is especially prescient. When presented in this manner, it’s likely an aha moment (was for me), and is probably going to improve conversion rates.

Stories sell, and you have a good one here.

thanks! this is an amazing idea. I'm going to write down that you gave it to us and let you know when we do something about it :).

agree that we need to be much better at telling the story, because the idea itself without the story doesn't get the reception or the "aha" moment it seems most of our supporters get when they hear it from me.

thanks!

Another part of the story that I didn't see in your launch HN summary that you should definitely play up:

Companies _desperately_ _want_ to hire people from schools they don't cater to with career fairs. They don't want to be perceived as monocultures where they only hire from the same three schools. At the same time, they can't feasibly do career fairs at the next 50%ile of schools. Great candidates from "top 100" schools get passed over all the time.

... Well the monoculture observation is at least true of tech companies. For finance companies, hiring only from Harvard/Yale might be an explicit goal. I have no idea.

Thank you! This is awesome feedback. We know that banks also want to diversify where they recruit people from. They're having trouble finding people from the non-Ivy schools, females, and also diverse backgrounds. We've heard that from people who handle recruiting there and it's an important initiative. We think that's an emerging trend in other industries like tech too, as you say!

Reading your answers below, I feel you haven't really addressed the issue of breach of company policies / confidentiality, and specifically about people being paid for it. It is true that many people will, for free, help their friends get interviews at the companies they work for. This does not mean that doing the same thing for money would be acceptable to their employer.

To use a distasteful analogy: in the US, two consenting adults having sex is legal - two consenting adults having sex where one pays the other for the 'service' is not.

So I think there will definitely be a subset of companies and employees where this will be a problem. One way to allow this subset of employees to take part in your service might be to offer some (non-political) charitable donation in exchange for their time. That way they can contribute, feel like they did some good in the world, and still be able to say to their employer (if it ever came up) that they didn't receive any compensation in exchange for helping potential new hires.

Assuming for now that the basic business is legal, and that the only issue is compliance with company policies, another potential 'hack' might be to just let people get 'karma' that builds up in their account at The Lobby, that can be converted at any time into cash. Then the people providing this info could choose to 'cash out' later, when they leave the company, or use it to pay for intel about other companies when they themselves are looking to move

Feel free to contact me if you want to chat :)

Hello! Appreciate your deep dive on the thread and agree that if we look at bits and pieces of my comments, it's not totally clear. So let me write up a unified answer here.

In some cases, this is definitely against the company's policy. For those companies, we focus on former employees most of which are no longer bound by any contract (if any).

We protect our insider's identity and that leaves them protected, but we also encourage them to check with HR to make sure they're allowed to do this.

I already addressed the ethical/moral bits - we are simply giving more people access to the same insights you would get if you had a friend on the inside. You're just paying for it in this one interaction, whereas the privileged person paid for it by being born into or falling into the right circles (higher kindergarten, middle school, high school, college tuition, and being in the right families or circles).

Without The Lobby - the alternative is to live your life cold emailing and trying to find these connections, which is both inefficient and in our view very different. If you get some of these folks to answer you - you're not sure if they're going to be helpful or just discount you as a non-eligible candidate because you don't have what they're looking for. Being in a friendly dynamic where their goal is to help you makes this the opposite.

In terms of legal risks, please look up GLG, AlphaSights, and other expert networks. They have been doing this in what I consider to be a real ethical gray area with higher up executives and much larger dollar sums - and still is legal. Let me be really clear here - I'm not agreeing with what they do, I'm just pointing to it as an example where this has worked with much more sensitive information than "interview prep" and has maintained to protect its supply side and operate, which is why I'm confident we will be able to as well.

The only thing I hope this thread proves is that HN or those seeing The Lobby execute is that we have the right intentions. That goes a long way - whether you agree with our particular approach or not.

This was a personal problem, and our solution we've seen solve a real problem mainly as an information gap. Solutions like the ones you're suggesting on karma points or donating to charities as suggested below are on our roadmap- but for now we're staying focused on making this work well first :).

Hope this answers the question and if anyone wants to chat on this topic further - please reach out! deepak@thelobby.io

I sit squarely in the "insider" role here, and normally would be very interested in anyone who is proactively calling me up and saying "i want to work on your team" - but to avoid breaking any protocols / laws we would want the interviewee to come in the front door as usual.

All I suspect that is happening here is if I sign up as one of your insiders, you drop me interesting candidates and then they have to go through the normal channels. So I may be missing the point but if an individual reaches out through LinkedIn looking for a job that's a plus sign, of a recruiter does it, that's just the usual noise. What is being added?

Also, why are the interviewees paying? It cannot be to pay me (the insider) cos that breaks many ethical and probably legal rules. And if they are successful I am guessing you get a cut?

> Also, why are the interviewees paying? It cannot be to pay me (the insider) cos that breaks many ethical and probably legal rules.

Why?

Because that’s equivalent to bribery?

I respect that this is a new way of doing things, but would disagree. With The Lobby, they're not obliged to give you a referral, a job, an interview or anything of the sort.

They only get paid for their time and insights. Our thesis is that the "insider" has in their head (even in the junior-most roles) incredible insight into what it takes to land a job they have, how to position their story, what recruiting timelines are like and more.

This information is not available online always. Sometimes, it's never posted online at all. For the most competitive roles, you tell your team and they tell their friends and a pile of resumes come in before any "outsider" has a chance to figure out they're even hiring.

Oh, I was not personally saying that what you are doing is wrong, I was just replying to parent on how remuneration to an insider can be seen.

Got it, I misread that!

To reiterate part of the above comment, we think that this is really life-changing insight and advice. It's definitely free to ask people for help on LinkedIn or go through your network but think of how inefficient and random that is.

If I don't happen to be a 2nd degree connection of someone at the company and group I dream of working in, and they don't answer my cold email - then what do I do?

Further - if you have interviews coming up, people with friends on the inside have a HUGE advantage in how to prepare. We think that should be accessible, and it's a paid service because as much as I'd like, most people won't do this for free unless it's for a friend or family member.

I was one of those people who'd spend hours helping for free, but I could only help people who wanted to work in my specific team. When time came to refer them to someone else, it was really hard to get busy people to agree to do this.

Thanks for the feedback. I should be a bit more clear - the calls today are not really meant as a way for you to refer the person to your company. We started that way, and learned it was both shady and really ineffective (i.e. what are the odds that if I choose to speak with someone at team A in Goldman Sachs that they will want to refer me, and that that referral will result in an interview or a job).

Instead, today this is mainly coaching and practice. Later, we're aiming to get insiders to "Rate" the candidates they speak with and have the best-rated ones get sent over to 10,20,100 companies that we partner with as qualified leads.

This helps candidates get noticed more and "credentialize" themselves because someone (or many) in the industry screened them over 30m calls and thought they were a good fit. This lets companies see an added signal that is not their resume, their school, their GPA, or their LinkedIn.

It also helps companies discover diverse & non-obvious talent, something we know first-hand is an important issue to them. Even for the companies who don't care about diversity in the traditional sense, they need to diversify their pool because everyone is going after the same 2% of "good-on-paper" candidates from Harvard and Stanford, because no one can cost effectively vet candidates from the much larger rest.

Interviewees pay because this is time-consuming and valuable insight from the insiders, and because otherwise we rely on altruism which we feel does not scale.

I don't think you understand what this product is. Looking at your bio/comment history, I don't think you work in a field that this product is targeted to.

I should also add - when people call you up directly and say "I want to work on your team" the dynamic is incredibly different than when you use The Lobby.

On the candidate side, this entire conversation is about impressing you and making you potentially like me. I'm not going to ask you real questions that I'd ask a friend on the inside on culture, compensation, recruiting process.

And on your end, it's basically an interview. You're not really on the "candidate's side," you're evaluating them and judging everything they say while comparing that to other candidates you speak with.

I think I get it. I would personally be more comfortable perhaps with a meet-up style arrangement - there will be 8 candidates and 2 or 3 "fintech insiders", and there is some speed dating style chats, and group style feedback.

Otherwise, and I can read you are earnest and have thought about this, otherwise I just feel it is the wrong side of a very grey and vague line. The paying for one on one advice seems ... odd.

But, and I suspect this is very important, I only have the perspective of a white well educated english speaking middle aged male with attendant confidence. If I was missing any of those I suspect that my perspective might chnage.

If the university alumni team for any university / boot camp called and asked me to do the group style approach I would probably clear my diary.

So I am not sure why the pay for advice part bothers me so much.

I think I understand why it bothers you. I think if you heard one of the calls or how it happens you'd understand the magic behind them.

Paid dynamic just makes it all about making it valuable to the candidate. It also lets the candidate say/ask anything in a 1-on-1 private & personalized dynamic.

The problem with AMA's or meetup style things is again it's not as personalized or private.

But those are things we want to tinker with as well.

  Also, why are the interviewees paying? It cannot
  be to pay me (the insider)

It's a question of whether the insider is on your side of the table or the company's.

There are some pieces of career advice that are, if not employer-hostile, then at least not entirely employer friendly.

For example, will my strong foreign accent block me from promotion into the upper echelons of your company? Someone on the company's side of the table would tell me what the recruitment website says: "We're an equal opportunities employer and don't discriminate, communication skills are important of course" whereas someone on my side of the table might give a more frank response, like "Yes you're going to need to work on that"

Exactly right. Any kind of professional conversation is very different than a conversation designated to helping the candidate prep. The goals and motivations on both sides are fundamentally different.

> For example, will my strong foreign accent block me from promotion into the upper echelons of your company?

The thing is, if people can’t understand you when you communicate, you will have major league issues with your team in my experience.

I had a rockstar “10x” programmer on my team who was fired because his communication style was...let’s just say he wasn’t a fountain of unbridled optimism. He would yell at interns and generally treat people like shit, that was his communication style. The thing is, he is a genuinely nice person. It’s just that his negative view of the world seeped into his communication style, and rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

I’m not disagreeing with your original point, though. You can get unfiltered career advice that may or may not align with whatever ideals the company claims to have.

As several mentionned, "spilling the beans" about the ins and outs about a current employer, and getting paid for it, is really frowned upon in some industries.

At least in Europe, in the industries I worked in, I always had a clause in my contract about releasing company information that was ground for termination without pay and/or damages. Being paid to reveal intel would be ground for termination.

I get it, we all do spill the beans at industry gatherings for instance, even sometimes publicly on hn! I also try and help young graduates get good jobs at great companies but I do it as a former student...or as a side help when I part-time teach classes at universities. (and I pay attention to who I mentor and where I suggest them to apply to)

While I don't agree with this state of mind, I know quite a few companies where a prospective employee is considered a potential asset but still an outside. The interview process is gamed to bring the brightest at the smallest pay possible. Be paid to counter these tactics...not good.

Being paid to essentially deliver intel to an outsider will not go well at some companies.

The interview process is confidential/privileged information. Revealing specifics would/could be in breach of employment contract. Being paid by TheLobby would be actual proof/reasonable doubt that you breach the contract.

(Despite this comment, I like your idea and your personal story and I'm glad someone was there to help you/mentor you when you needed it, I just wanted to expose what was, to me, a potential pitfall )

Thank you for the kind words and feedback! I'm copy pasting some stuff from the thread below.

"Definitely agree that this could be a problem. Practically speaking - we keep identities anonymous and so employees are protected.

Ethically speaking - if you have a buddy inside the company, they'll tell you how to prep with information the company wouldn't want you to know anyways.

The Lobby is completely legal, just maybe against some company policies, but we feel the benefits far outweigh the cons of some random company policy, even for the company itself as described above."

You're probably not going to launch very soon in Europe/France/Belgium but please do pay attention to these issues on the other side of the pond (which might still exist in the US, I guess you'd know better than me :-) )

The fact I anonymously revealed company information does not bring meany immunity wrt my current contract. I can still be terminated if they find out. Would I risk getting fired for $100? No way. If I don't want to take this risk, I'm not going to be a "customer" of The Lobby and thus, you get the chicken & egg problem others talked about.

I think I'm primarily "opposed" (for lack of a better word at 2AM, but you get the idea) to your pitch for ethical & risk profile reasons. These reasons are inherently personnal and the next guy over can be entitled to a very different pov.

However I think that the legal risk for the employee and thus the marketing/sourcing risk for The Lobby, still stand?

Wish you all the best :-)

Yes! See your points. We'll have to agree to disagree :). Good night!!! Appreciate the candid feedback.

It’s going to be tough for your consultants to stay truly anonymous. Presumably you’ll be issuing them 1099s, they may need to adjust withholding, they’ll have decide whether or not to incorporate in order to limit their liability, and so on.

Nor am I so sure this would be completely legal. It might run afoul of the honest services statute even as narrowed by SCOTUS.

Again here would suggest you check out GLG, Alphasights and other expert networks. They deal with much more sensitive info than "interview prep,"and much larger dollar figures; they do this with 1099's and have no issues for their supply side (which are employees or former employees at highly regulated institutions).

You are not required by law to report 1099's to your employer from what I understand - but we still encourage them to check with employers before agreeing to join The Lobby.

Last point, we've learned that if you use marketplace features on Stripe or PayPal, you potentially don't need to issue 1099's if you make less than $20k in a calendar year, which we don't know any of our individual insiders will make even at scale (if they make $20k, I suspect they’ll find a way to make the paperwork work!)

I'm not quite sure if this is a communication due to my recent 1099 status contractor employment with Lionbridge and just wanted to make sure that I hadn't missed anything that I needed to submit. Thank you, Sarah

> Ethically speaking - if you have a buddy inside the company, they'll tell you how to prep with information the company wouldn't want you to know anyways.

I feel there are two views on this: From the candidate's perspective, his/her buddy might "owe" it to them to provide additional info which will give them a leg up in the application/interviewing process.

From the buddy's perspective, if they (company/hiring manager) have already decided on one candidate, it _might_ be fruitful to help them get the job, otherwise it would amount to unethical behavior by not giving all the candidates an equal footing.

I know this isn't quite on topic, but this is the best possible crowd and I can't resist mentioning. I'm looking for a technical partner/CTO for The Lobby in NYC (I'm the founder/CEO of The Lobby to be clear): https://blog.usejournal.com/im-looking-for-a-technical-partn...

I would specify that you're actually a founder of The Lobby, because otherwise I thought this post was spam until I clicked into your user page.

Thanks andrestan - I specified in the first few words of the blurb - is there anywhere else you'd specify it? Would not want anyone to think it's spam :).

In the comment here

Just did that! Thx

I for one don't readily assume that a top-level comment will be from the OP (since you could just add it to the OP), so I would just say prefix "OP Here" as the first sentence of your comment.

Advice: You could write a book "How I got into YC without a technical cofounder" and sell a million copies to solo non-technical founders.

Haha will keep it in mind!! Thank you!

Just a quick note - your pricing page seems to have a mathematical error that would turn me off as prospective buyer. The "Standard" package offers three calls. The crossed out price ($190) should be equal to 3x the basic price ($60), or $180. Seeing sales pages with lies or mistakes around the savings makes me worry that I'm getting cheated.

Hey benmanbs. Thanks for the kind words. We'll fix this, but this wasn't meant to be misleading.

It's actually more because not every call costs $60. For example, ~90% of our users buy calls that are in the $65-$70 range as one of their many calls.

We tried to convey that even in the 1 call option it's an "Average" price of $60, but we still haven't done a good job of conveying this.

Assuming you choose 3 calls that are more than $65 or $70, the number is actually even higher than $190, but we still discount it down to $170 no matter who the 3 insiders are, to entice you to buy multiple calls.

Hope this makes sense and will work on improving how this is communicated.

Now that I've looked back, I noticed the "Average Price" bit. I understand the model now, and would definitely recommend making that a bit clearer.

Will definitely make it clearer. Thanks for the candid feedback.

When I was job hunting about 10 years ago I came across a recruiting firm who pitched me well enough to come in and bring my wife. Their pitch sounded similar, in that they had "inside info" on companies, an extremely high success rate, but they needed me to pay them money.

Being in high demand (tech/programming) I scoffed at them and found my own job. I think they were asking for around $3-5k?

I think the only way this would work for me personally is if I was having trouble finding a job, and if I paid them after I got hired.

I need to somehow confirm this company's actual worth in the hiring process, without feeling like I'm being given a sales pitch.

Thanks! Definitely, when you're in high demand your needs are very different than the vast majority of people The Lobby helps today. Also - our cost is much lower (calls range from $60 - $100), instead of the $3-$5k your recruiter asked for.

Further - they are asking you for $3-$5k up front to get a job, so until they deliver you said job, they're failing.

The Lobby asks you to pay for specific tactical things you do on a 30m call - a mock interview, a resume critique, strategy & actionable tips to improve your interview outcomes.

The value is delivered instantly.

This is an awesome idea. Any plans to allow someone to pay for this based on their success of landing a job? (taking a % of their future salary kind of like Lambda School).

We've had people suggest it - but right now we're too far removed from the actual moment someone gets hired to even consider it.

I think that's a very creative model with good alignment of incentives, but frankly I don't know if it works well. A few friends who tried something similar told me they felt that in that model, the people who end up getting jobs the most are typically the ones who needed you the least and can make for some very unhappy customers who don't know if it's worth paying you a % of salary well into their jobs.

We'll consider it though :).

>paying you a % of salary into their jobs

Wow, that's a very ambitious idea.

Thanks for the kind words!

Isn't % of first year salary how most recruitment works? Except the employer pays.

Are the insiders paid, and do their employers know they're working with you guys?

Insiders are paid as individual advisors. We don't work with employers, so we ask insiders to make sure this is OK with their company. In some cases, there are employer policies against them doing this, and in those cases, we focus on former employees.

Former employees still have the network and the knowledge on what it takes to land the job, what the culture is like, and how to help someone prepare for interviews.

I'm helping build a similar service in a tangentially-related market. I hope you don't mind a few questions:

Do you offer "insiders" a percentage cut of each service purchased?

How do you find "insiders"?

We're planning on paying our "insiders" via Stripe and letting "insiders" sign up themselves and go through a short vetting process.

We're still about 3 months from being launch-ready, but I'm intrigued to see a service that operates so similarly to our plans.

Best of luck!

Hi Deepak,

I met you at TreeHacks this year, where I was critical of your product. I saw your post looking for a CTO and I feel compelled to warn you against pursuing this idea, again. The lobby is a bad idea because:

1. The careers space is crowded

2. Your customers are not earning money and have a multitude of free alternatives

3. Your product is extremely expensive

4. Your product is a liability for the supply side (it is a risk for employees to advise outsiders about careers at their company)

5. You overvalue the time of the customer and undervalue the time of your business side users. Being the middleman in a low-volume business like this makes no sense.

You seem like a nice guy and I don't want to see you fail. This is a terrible idea. You don't have product market fit and your CTO is going to quickly burn through your capital. The people here seem optimistic but do you really think you're going to make your million off of these interviews? I advise you to pivot/restart as best you can.

If you still believe in the lobby, just put a phone number on the website and handle everything yourself until you're up to your eyeballs in customers.

Best of luck.

Hello! Thanks for the candid feedback. Only time will tell :). best of luck

This seems pretty interesting and useful!

It does seem like the pricing structure does not incentivize people actually getting jobs though. With a small pool of people (people looking for top finance jobs) it seems like the way to make the most money is to perpetually sell job seekers mock interviews, rather than prioritizing a job seeker to find a position on the first go. Is this a fair reading of the situation?

Hello! Glad you see it's merits.

As discussed below, today we focus mainly on coaching & prep. We think that it's a service that should exist no matter what for the reasons discussed in the thread.

Beyond that - we are working on creating a structure where job seekers can get "assessments" from these insiders and if they are above a certain threshold, we can help them get noticed by employers.

If they do poorly on the calls, then at least they get real feedback on how to improve. We've also learned that most employers have liability reasons that prevent them from telling you why you didn't get hired, so here we also solve for that in the "worst case scenario" which is that the insider didn't think you are a good fit for the role today.

At least you'll know why and how to solve for it.

First thing that comes to my mind is will any of these calls violate part of an employment agreement.

Consider a tech company that has unique problems for candidates to solve. A service like this could encourage an employee to get paid to release these problems to the public. In theory you'd hope an NDA stops this type of thing, but in practice a bit of money could incentivize people to do otherwise.

Definitely agree that this could be a problem.

Practically speaking - we keep identities anonymous and so employees are protected.

Ethically speaking - if you have a buddy inside the company, they'll tell you how to prep for these questions anyways.

Hey Deepak - love the idea. I was fortunate enough to go to a "target" school but still had a tough time doing finance recruiting without the help of some very kind classmates. Your post brought back some memories of how much wasted effort could have been redirected positively if I had some initial guidance instead of learning everything the hard way.

One of my "side projects" when I was still in school was collating what I and some other friends had learned about the recruiting process into a doc for younger students to use. It was helpful for some, but The Lobby is doing it in a much more democratized manner.

I'm a few years out of the finance game, but let me know if you'd be interested in chatting as I'd love to help (no strings attached.)

Thank you! Glad to hear you saw the same problem and would have benefitted from The Lobby. I was personally surprised by the amount of people we get from "Target" schools using the service because it's also very competitive to get the 5-10 spots every bank allocates for hundreds of applicants at those schools. Feel free to email me at deepak@thelobby.io - would love to get you involved!

Many companies offer mid to low four figure referral bonuses for referring candidates that are hired in hard to find fields like finance, engineering.

Perhaps you can pre-screen “long-tail”[1], high potential candidates and connect them with insiders.

You could give a portion of the insider’s referral bonus to the candidate to drive that side of the market.

Candidates don’t have to come out of pocket to incentivize training (if your candidates have a good chance of getting hired) as the insider will get paid by the company.

Different take on this idea. Maybe it already exists?

[1] edit: maybe not the right term of art here, but I mean under the radar candidates (non-ivy, good grades, good work ethic, etc.).

hello! i like this idea - we'll keep it in mind.

again my only concern is when The Lobby does pre-screening without giving any coaching, we again resort to arbitrary measures such as resume, good grades, etc. instead of trying to be a source of coaching, insight, & improvement for candidates.

For the candidates that reach a certain threshold on The Lobby (say, 3 insiders screened them over a call and see potential), then something like this makes sense so they can make their money back. Vettery gives candidates a $500 incentive to use them to get hired, which is a nice idea. Thank you!

This is awesome! FYI - I entered my email at the top of the page and clicked "Get Started", and nothing happened.[0]

Would love to know when the jobs expand to tech. Junior-level software engineering positions are becoming more difficult to get as the number of CS majors has exploded, and allowing them to practice with CS managers would be very helpful.

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Thanks for the kind words! Thanks also for the bug - we're working on fixing it asap.

We want to move to tech later on - we think the right move is to win in one industry and move onto others. Also, this is the industry we have more domain expertise in and that has seen much less innovation than tech for example.

But we're definitely planning to expand soon!

Can you try again now?

Do you also charge the companies?

Seems to me that would turn you into a regular, standard hiring website - but it could be remunerative if you could capture the 20%-of-first-year-salary companies will pay for recruiters.

Hello! Today we don't charge the companies. We only want to charge them later on when we can just send them the candidates that did best on our calls (a.k.a qualified candidates).

If we charge companies today, the only we could do that is to let them choose who does these calls on their end, and that defeats the purpose because you get company-filtered advice.

We're going for a more personalized version of Glassdoor. Does that make sense?

This sounds like a really interesting idea outside of just jobs. For example, I would really love to use this service for market or industry research. I tried to sign up, but there's a form that requires me to enter a bunch of info related to job-seeking. I'm not sure why that's necessary if all I want to do is pay to talk to people in companies?

Also a few nitpicks: The frontpage sign up didn't work for me on Firefox and there's a 24 char max password length, which shouldn't be necessary if you're hashing passwords.

Thank you! We are changing the onboarding flow to make it simpler to just book a call and not have to give us all that data unless you're about to book it. However, we are laser-focused on job hunting because otherwise we'll suffer the same fate of everyone who's tried similar ideas: losing focus.

There are 1,000 things you can ask professionals inside companies - by starting focused on careers it's easier to market and attract the right audience and get our supply used to those kinds of interactions as well. Industry & market research is more like GLG - and that can be much more complex from a regulatory standpoint (i.e. insider trading).

Makes sense regarding trying to focus on a niche and scale up. It's very hard solving the chicken and egg problem for marketplaces, I've been there before.

As for regulatory concern, I'm not familiar with the laws, but is it really your responsibility to prevent things like insider trading? It doesn't seem like it would be any different from someone just waiting outside of a company's office to approach its employees.

Exactly on chicken & egg - but we feel the hyper local approach is a really actionable way to solve it, we're already seeing it work in our niche.

It's not really our responsibility at all, even to make sure people abide by company policies or to prevent insider trading.

I still however answer all these questions because we think about the ethical implications a lot and we thought through everything in detail before choosing this model. I'm comfortable with the risks, I believe the rewards far outweigh them. Thank you!

[Slightly off-topic]

There are a lot of people here talking about how it is impossible to find a job at one of the top investment banks without any connections.

Why do you need to have connections to land a job? Why aren't the best candidates filtered from the job application pipeline like it happens at all of the big tech companies?

By requiring connections to get in, Investment Bankers are biasing their employee tool from "the best" to "the people that went to their school".

Maybe that's intentional...

Hey konschubert - understand what you're saying, but I'd strongly disagree that this is only a phenomenon in investment banking.

Roughly ~65% of hires for all Fortune 500 companies come from employee referrals, and top companies in all domains continually compensate existing employees with bonuses for helping hire their friends (because they know them well).

While it may be more prominent in some industries over others, connections matter everywhere. Instead of trying to change that reality, we're trying to find a solution that mimics parts of the magic that happens when your "insider" friend puts in a good word for you.

If someone on The Lobby thinks you're a good fit for the industry, we're aiming for their "Rating" to help you get some of that benefit you might get if a friend on the inside referred you and vouched for you.

[Slightly sarcastic, but my opinion based on working in banking for a 3 month internship and then bailing to tech after graduating from college.]

At the lower levels, investment banking doesn't take much brainpower. Analysts spend 95% of the day: making PowerPoint slides, doing research online, or un-doing the changes they made the day before because the VP on the team didn't like the changes the Associate wanted.

The most interesting part of the job (financial modeling) can be learned in a couple of weeks. And then the Managing Director will just tell you what they want the model to spit out and you fudge the numbers to make it happen.

There aren't really 10x investment banking analysts like there are 10x engineers. In investment banking, once you know the basics of finance and get your foot in the door, the hiring becomes very behavioral. I've found that people want to hire other people they'd like to hang out with.

This is very insightful and perceptive, especially for just doing a 3 month internship. I agree with pretty much all of it.

However - you'll find most people hate IB for the same reasons, but also know their only way to more interesting roles like private equity, hedge funds, and more is to do investment banking first.

Engineering is no doubt more challenging in many respects; IB after a certain point becomes more about endurance, politics, and being good at repetition. But it's still a high-paying job, a gateway to other more interesting careers, and at least for me, a good way to develop a crazy disciplined work ethic.

I'm sure you can get many of those other ways too - just thought this was worth mentioning.

Completely agree with your analysis. Wish you the best of luck with the company, it seems like it could definitely add value in the space.

Sidenote - might be able to help you with some introductions on the technical co-founder front. I'm NYC-based as well, contact info in my profile.

Thanks gringoDan! Reaching out to you now - really appreciate the help + kind words.

"Why aren't the best candidates filtered from the job application pipeline like it happens at all of the big tech companies?"

I am sorry but this simply not true. Referrals based hiring is the norm in SV tech companies and I am not talking C-level, this is prevalent in even the rank-n-file roles. We are happier not rolling the dice on the stranger, skills be damned.

exactly!

> “how hard it is to find jobs without connections”

To developers — here’s a connection.

I’m hiring 50+ startup-style engineers (mix of pure software, DevSecOps, and SRE) with 80th percentile abilities and current skills — no finance background necessary — right now in New York City.

Send me a resume and a GitHub link.

Notes:

1. You shouldn’t need insider info to get hired. Interviews should be collaborative, not gotcha. Both sides of table want to discover if this is the right thing, you only get there through directness, openness, truth. We bias to full disclosure to combat the usual information asymmetry between the big corporation and the single individual. The job matters to you a lot, “big co doesn’t care”. So we try to tilt in your favor.

2. Insider info — if you can think of a security (such as prevent, detect, automation, or operation) capability that AWS, Azure, GCP, or Kubernetes is missing, and describe to my head of security engineering how you would design and implement it, you’ll be on the top of the stack.

To “The Lobby” —

Consider the edge case where the company wants the candidate to know everything they need to know. If your model supports paying insiders, consider offering to donate to a non-profit such as the EFF instead.

I really love this concept and hope it succeeds. Lowering the barrier to entry to highly technical fields is a win-win for everyone. Congrats on your progress so far!

My only question is how a highly productive individual at a top bank or startup justifies taking the time out of their day to speak to a newbie. I know they get paid, but I would imagine it's peanuts compared to their 6 figure salaries. What is their main motivation in scheduling calls?

Thanks for the kind words jakemor!

We're surprised at this ourselves - they seem to enjoy being in the "expert" seat because most of them are junior level people who aren't traditionally thought of as experts or people whose insights are worth money.

I think we're learning it's a powerful combo - get paid to talk about yourself, show off how smart you are + help other people out who are struggling to overcome what you already did.

Very cool. Just signed up and will give it a try :)

If you have any questions whatsoever, email me at deepak@thelobby.io. let me know what you think!

You may want to reach out to the founders of HackerRank (S11) via bookface or whatever if you haven't already. They started with what sounds like a similar business model (and got turned down by YC) before pivoting to their current model. I'm not affiliated with them in any way - I just happened to listen to a YC podcast featuring one of the founders last week (and Baader-Meinhof has been hitting me hard since then).

I heard this podcast too! I've also heard of people trying similar ideas. I have many strong opinions on why it didn't work for them and others. The main reason for Hacker Rank (And he says it in the podcast) is that in India the money you make per session is insignificant to build a business on vs. the US - and they didn't start focused enough on a few companies or an industry. It was just "software engineers" at large.

It still might not work - like I say below, our guiding compass is happy users + growing numbers and we try not to bias ourselves with what others have / haven't done. In true PG fashion I hope!

Great idea Deepak and all the best moving forward.

I am currently considering moving away from tech. When I started out, I had dreams but absolutely no contacts. I am especially bad at bullshitting my way through recruitment agencies and nothing has changed in 10 years. I am still at the same job.

Somewhere along the line I wish a service like this existed as it would have made all the difference.

Hey Fifer82! Really appreciate your kind words. It sounds fluffy, but this is the kind of thing that inspired me to do The Lobby.

I went to a school where no one really gets the "top jobs" but a select few of us figured out how to do it, and that expanded to over 50+ friends who now all mentor their own networks to do the same.

I think these things have a crazy ripple effect and I think beyond what can be measured from a few calls, the insights people get and the jobs they can land thanks to them can have really exponential (positive) effects.

Thanks again!

OP here: Thanks so much to the HN community for all the amazing support + critical feedback. Deeply appreciated! Apologies if I don't see / respond to more comments, will try to check back and answer when I can. If you want to keep chatting, please reach out here: deepak@thelobby.io.

How do you prevent companies from sending you fake applicants to find internal leakers?

An anonymous person whose known to work at a particular can be easily identified by the information to which they have access and possibly their communication still itself.

definitely a concern. For something like this to happen, The Lobby has to have already reached a very large mass (i.e. employers wouldn't care otherwise), but we'll think of guard rails or measures to avoid this from happening. I think something to verify the candidate's identity in the onboarding before booking calls is a good way to do that - but haven't thought through it.

What a great idea, Deepak.

I went to a school where the big banks, consulting shops, and tech companies didn’t come to recruit on campus.

Many, many of us went to schools like this. Thanks for championing this cause.

hey maxtynan! appreciate the kind words. I'm glad you see the problem we're trying to solve, most of our users tell us the same thing and you'd be surprised how many users even in target schools need more help.

This is the most important decision of your life at any given time (maybe except for who you marry) and we still rely on generic forums, our own networks, or spamming people on LinkedIn. We hope this makes it more efficient & accessible.

Interesting idea but I left the site once I got to the pricing page as it goes super thin and impossible to read on my iPad.

Thanks LiamPa - we'll look into that on iPad. I'll reach back out when it's responsive there.

This is great!

One way to offset the cost for job seekers is to take some part up front, and the rest in ~90 days when they get hired.

I like this! We'll consider it :).

Low priority: On the blog, the newsletter popup is added to the browser's back queue. A bit annoying.

Looking into this - thank you very much!

Deepak, if a company in the Finance industry wanted to be added to the pool, what is the process?

Please reach out at deepak@thelobby.io and I'll onboard you personally!

Deepak, how are mock interviews performed?

In our process of booking a call, we ask you to specify your objectives, just write "mock interview" there and any other relevant info (behavioral, technical, etc.). Does that make sense?

So, you are essentially paying for 30 min of time to do with whatever you want - got it. Thanks Deepak

Yes! We are working on segmenting the calls but really up until a few months ago, it was still all MVP and the different use cases helped us realize they need to be segmented differently (and sometimes even priced) differently. For example, having someone tell you about their job can probably be done in 15m and at a lower cost than someone who goes through the trouble of prepping for a mock interview. Working on it!

Deepak first let me say I choose to view this community as a group of people who win together, therefore I want you to win, and sincerely wish success for your team. Now let’s get to work on your feedback.

>>[It’s challenging to get everyone receptive to our new approach]

This provides no information. It’s an entrepreneurial truism. Do you think a large percentage of startups visit sand hill road and never get rejected? Even most of the unicorns have their stories. Google, E-Bay (good luck selling barbie dolls), etc.

Big caveat though: Listen carefully to every person who rejects you. Yes some comments will be dumb, but in general you’re asking smart people and their comments can often be uniquely invaluable.

>>[it's controversial to start a recruiting company charging job seekers instead of hiring companies]

Are you sure this is the controversial part? I see no inherent controversy in the concept of applicants being customers, although if you mean there’s limited precedent of success that makes it more difficult to get people’s buy in, that makes sense. It can always can be a problem.

It’s also a signal to your team to reflect, and question yourselves regularly on what’s so different about what your doing that hasn’t been tried before? Why will you will be the ones to show it’s possible to disrupt conventional wisdom? Why are you so sure it will ever happen? Don’t answer those, the questions are rhetorical. I know you have your answers. The real point is I’m suggesting you never stop trying to find flaws in those answers. Every flaw you find makes you more powerful because you can harvest them to adapt, fine tune, improve.

I’ll try to comment more directly on the model now. I try to keep an open mind on these things, but haven’t heard enough (not that my opinion counts :) here to get on board.

Ironically I was in a boat similar to the one you were in coming out of school. Strong ambition to get into the hottest software company in the world, which at the time was Microsoft, even if nowadays a lot of people think of them as about as hot as IBM, or lesser so :).

The problem was I also was still too immature to not be lazy and spend all my time with friends, and ended up earning my CS degree from Whatever University, which for some reason was one MS was no too interested in recruiting at.

You would think being so irresponsible I didn’t have the chops anyway, but it’s just been my thing forever and ironically I had a lot of projects under my belt already to show people - if they would have ever responded to my emails or resumes - which they never did, despite being clearly marked as from a WU graduate.

If I were in finance, doesn’t it sound like a possible customer scenario for you? Assuming it could be, how could someone have lived the scenario, but still not be bought in the applicant customer concept?

Because today I believe there are already ways to solve the problems you are trying to sell solutions to (and to my old problem), that are free yet not necessarily any less effective.

As one example, a while back I suggested one possible path with specific steps on how to do it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15096335

It’s important note again, software development and finance are two different things. However I know just a bit about finance from startup experiences, and also from a best friend who’s a VP of finance and whenever we go out won’t stop ranting about it while all I’m trying to do is hang out and enjoy my beer. Do I mention algorithms to him? No, but I’m digressing...

The point is as different as the professions are, it seems like there are also a fair amount of parallels w.r.t. getting a job.

Therefore I would be concerned that there may be some similar path to my example above that allows a person a chance to show what they’ve got and land a job at a top company, given the right talent and hard work on preparation, and tailoring approaches to specific goals.

The Internet itself seems to be a big problem here. It’s just not that hard to contact even executive level folks if you’re willing to put in the time to get to them. Once in a while they even reply to your first LinkedIn request if your intro note happens to interest them.

Then again, everything I have said could be wrong and I hope it is, so that things can really take off big.

Good luck.

hello! firstly, thank you very much for the kind words on wanting to help win + the thoughtful response.

- To your points on challenging & controversy:

understand it's ambiguous, was trying to be concise. Basically the point is conventional wisdom is that in recruiting, companies pay, job seekers don't. And if you charge job seekers, certain people think you are preying on the vulnerable. We are continually tweaking our message to make sure people understand this is quite the opposite - giving the outsiders an advantage or at least a level playing field.

- To your thoughts on the model 1. It sounds like you described a perfect scenario. You were immature, but had projects and other things to show you were qualified. Still people wouldn't answer your emails or interview you. Hindsight is 20.20 and it sounds like today you have a successful job, but maybe it could've come much sooner if you would've landed some of those interviews. What's the price you can put on that?

2. It's easy to say finance, software, and others are fundamentally different industries and that's why one will work better than the other. That's probably true in some ways, but the core insight is the same - the best way to get a job is to figure out what they're looking for and despite what you're saying - that most definitely is not available online. You can google Glassdoor forums and chats, but they become outdated only a few months after, and most of those are not at the specific group or team-level, they're generic. I cannot think of a better way to get timely, accurate, and personalized information than by getting it from a human being who is / recently has been on the inside. can you?

I am convinced that your advice is amazing - we have to continually ask ourselves if we're working on the right thing, if we're the team to beat conventional wisdom, etc. The best way I know how to do that is to see the numbers grow and focus on our initial niche before expanding.

Thank you!

>What's the price you can put on that?

As you might guess, I would have paid anything. I did eventually find a way in but that doesn’t change the point.

Let it commence then. Ramp this thing up and make it scale. Do it so well I’ll want to brag about even trying to challenge your ideas. For real man, make it so.

Thank you! On it :).

> it's controversial to build a recruiting-focused company that charges job seekers instead of just the companies.

There is no controversy.

It’s just plain wrong.

Respect that you see it this way, but I disagree, for all the reasons discussed here.

If you're a candidate who goes to a 3rd tier school dreaming of getting a top-tier Wall Street job, you have no alumni to reach out to, half of your cold emails don't result in anything, and you're applying online with a poor resume, preparation, and no insights.

What's the solution? You can definitely grind it out on your own for months googling, cold-emailing, trying to catch a break. However, I've seen first hand from my own school and friends that a few targeted & tactical conversations with the right people can catapult you ahead way beyond any textbook, course, bootcamp, and more.

The conversations I had that helped me land my jobs were way more valuable than what I paid for in school or even in tutoring or others.

As someone who went to a 3rd tier school and spent the next 5-7 years grinding to get to a top tech company in a country that I had just immigrated to, I want to say Thank You for addressing this problem.

I cant speak about banking/finance industry but in tech, most jobs should be level playing fields for everyone who knows how to program but they are unfortunately not.

Nepotism is ripe in tech and in SV, that means you need to be from the ivy leagues.

There is a definite market here and as long as you keep the supply side of high quality, buyers will come.

Also, read your story of being a solo non-technical founder. Kudos to you man!

amazing to hear your story! and thanks so much for the kind words. we'll try to move into tech asap :).

It might be wrong to charge for filling positions but there's plenty of "recruiting-focused" activities that I'd be happy to pay for.

Exactly - we're not a "pay to get a job" site. There's plenty of those. We just think that the insights people have inside companies are incredibly valuable and if you want to make them free, then you'll have the same pitfall every "mentorship platform" has today: it doesn't scale.

I'm a mentor who helps 5 people a month for free + everyone else in my network I already agree to help. What about when that reaches 10 or 15 people? Do you still keep doing it enthusiastically out of the goodness of your own heart?

I'm sure some would, but I'd rather they get compensated and do a good job of helping everyone. Some of our best insiders ask us for 7-10 calls a week, and before adding the monetary incentive, I couldn't get my friends to take even 2 calls in the same week because "they're busy".

Care to try to explain more, Ronilan?

Would also love to learn more about your thinking. Also happy to chat offline if you prefer, I'm at deepak@thelobby.io

It should be one of those things that are self-evident, but since YC backed this “thing” I guess it is not. So in the shortest possible form:

There exist an imbalance of power between the people “on the inside” (or “on the couch”) and the people on the outside.

Generally speaking, a business meant to exploit the imbalance is wrong. One that does so at the expanse of the outsiders and for the benefit of the insiders is just plain wrong.

Specifically, job seekers are, while seeking, a “vulnerable” population (just as an example, so are renters and migrants). These are people, who for a certain period of time, and due to certain circumstances, find themselves, on the outside looking in, at that very thing they desperately want or need.

Charging a jobseeker for the job (via commission on future salary for example) is wrong, but debatable. Charging, a jobseeker for the “hope” of getting a job is just plain wrong.

What about charging someone for education? Isn't that what this is? Education about the job from people who actually do it.

Personally, I don't have the idea that this is for people that don't currently have jobs - I see the main target as people that are unhappy with their current position and are looking to switch into investment banking. There are a lot of those but it's hard to know how to do something like that or who to talk to, particularly when you may have very specific questions about retraining or the consequences of shifting industries.

I really like this answer. This is something else we struggle with. It's not really "job seekers" it's for people who want to consider other roles, companies, or careers, which slowly is becoming every working professional who isn't planning on staying at their current role or company forever. Thanks for making this distinction!

thanks for the detailed points. again - merits to all your points but i think it's worth trying to think objectively about how to change and eliminate the imbalance.

we're not charging job seekers for the "hope" of getting the job. we're charging them to get the information that can begin to remove that imbalance - so they get the same information that insiders have on how to progress and penetrate elite careers.

if you don't think that's worth paying for, then it's the same as saying that paying for a private or Ivy League university is also wrong, because by attending one of those schools you become an insider and those in 4th and 5th tier schools are condemned to forever be outsiders.

If some novel solution doesn't creatively start bridging that gap - then what would you do to fix it?

The system could be gamed easily. How do I know the jobs are real?

Disagree. Main reason why I don't talk to recruiters is the incentive mismatch - they work for the company, not for the job seeker, and I can't really trust their advice.

In a model where a recruiter is paid by the jobseeker; i.e. he's the agent, this problem mostly goes away. A recruiter who say takes 5% of my next years salary if I accept a job, and therefore is incentivised to find me the best job possible... That's a different story.

I agree with a lot of this. One thing to note is that with this model the recruiter is incentivized for you to take the highest paying job, maybe not the best job for you. As stupid as that may sound (because everyone generally wants to make more money), it also means the first high paying job offer you get, they will probably push very hard (against your own interest) for you to accept it. That's the only way they'll make money.

If insiders (like at The Lobby) are just paid for their time and insights, then there's no added or alternate motive.

I still think the % of salary model is very interesting, but there are probably challenges to it that aren't visible externally. Check out what happened to MissionU, a venture-backed free 1-year college alternative that took a % of your salary: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-05-30-acquisition-autopsy-...

They had the best possible founder to do this and $11m in VC-funding, but shut down after their 1st cohort.

To be fair, they didn't shut down so much as the founder sold out.

I don't know the details, will trust you on it :)!

I have trouble understanding what significance the "so much as" means, nor even the "sold out", since it appears to have been an acqui-hire, with the (cash) assets being returned to investors.

The company did shut down.

We can only speculate on the founder's motivation.

Usually, "shut down" implies that the company failed. And usually, when VCs give you $11M, it is not with the expectation that you will simply return that amount a year later. You have sold them on the idea that you care about your startup and you actually want to see it grow and succeed. It says right in the article that WeWork offered the founder $5M in comp and "reactions from the company’s investors have included surprise, disappointment and a desire to forget the deal ever happened."

If that's not selling out, I don't know what is. Not that I'm particularly worried about those poor VCs, in fact maybe they should hire the guy, great demonstration of unprincipled opportunism.

> Usually, "shut down" implies that the company failed.

Of course it failed, from the standpoint of the VCs, at least. It just didn't run out of cash.

That doesn't say anything one way or the other about the business model of taking a percentage of salary, which is what is under discussion.

> It says right in the article that WeWork offered the founder $5M in comp

Again, not particularly relevant, other than an indication that the founder thought that money "now" was a much better deal than risking it on that startup's business model.

> If that's not selling out, I don't know what is.

I'm not confused as to the usual meaning of the term. I'm just confused at to the significance to the conversation.

> unprincipled opportunism.

Even this doesn't make any sense to me, since the primary principle at play is making money, on all sides. Nobody was swindled here. Investment in startups hardly translates to indentured servitude.

I misread your comment, I didn't understand you were asking how the exit is relevant to the business model, and you're right, it's not.

the primary principle at play is making money, on all sides

Well the thing is that, when pitching or promoting their companies, and especially when rallying employees, startup founders pay a lot of lip service to other things like "the vision," "the mission," and "changing the world." They don't say "by the way guys I'll happily disband this whole thing the instant someone offers me a wad of cash."

But yes, for those who agree that making a personal fortune fully trumps every other principle one holds, this behavior is fine and rational.

> when pitching or promoting their companies

...and the whole point of pitching or promoting a company is...making money!

> "changing the world."

That isn't falsified by putting 5 million dollars in exchange for dropping a VC-funded startup. It may well be easier to change the world with that kind of money absent the attached strings.

> They don't say "by the way guys I'll happily disband this whole thing the instant someone offers me a wad of cash."

Well, a big enough wad of cash. They don't have to. This is one of those "well duh" situations.

This is actually a business risk, that one or more of your key/critical employees will get lured by an offer they can't refuse. (As I keep trying to keep this on-topic) This is particlarly so for founders with unproven business models, who VCs might otherwise pressure into much less attractive equity/control positions.

> fully trumps every other principle one holds

This is a strawman. You've implied violation of principles you hold (without stating them outright) but haven't demostrated violation of any of that founder's principles. I've pointed out at least one that we can presume that was upheld, in the return of assets.

wait...recruiters do take x% of your salary if you take the job, that's what pays for all the spam.

Yes but recruiters are paid by a specific company usually not by the job seeker. So their allegiance is with the company and filling the role, not with the job seeker and making sure you get the best possible job.

A phrase that often passes through these forums is, "if it's free, you are the product!"

I encounter a lot of clowns when I work with recruiting firms. I'm open to new ideas where I'm treated as a valuable customer instead of a product.

[Edit] This is because I'm finding that recruiting is turning into spamming. Every recruiter gets lucky from the few candidates they place so they make a decent income from their commission.

[Edit] If I pay to work with someone who handles a high volume, would it streamline the process? Avoid the spam? I don't know, but I'm frustrated enough with the process to keep an open mind.

agreed!!!

If you read the privacy policy you'll realise you're still the product:

"The Lobby may create co-branded webpages with our third-party partners or contractors and in connection with these relationships we may pass your personal information to these partners in order to offer these co-branded Services."

Like 99% of startups, we didn't write up each section of our privacy policy in an effort to be evil. We worked with templates and modified the parts that seemed more specific to us. Please don't villanize us for the wording here - it probably came recycled from others. We would never share important data without user's consent, and in the case of recruiting, they're usually joining because they want us to share certain data with employers (which we don't do at all today yet).

Indeed, most companies' HR would ban their employees from monetizing their positions at the company in this fashion.

If this works, how about vendors paying IT personnel for inside dope on how to sell to the company, or paying them directly to come in and make a pitch? Where do you draw the line?

There are gray areas, how different is it to pay for a fancy night out to 'pick your brain' about networking? Or use 'expert networks' for research. Internships are another area that can be useful, or abused in the sense that people have to be able to work for free to even be considered.

You'd have to make a very good case that it will improve hiring. But if it improves hiring, maybe the company should be paying, to improve their internal outreach and give their people proper incentive to spend time on the recruiting process.

I agree that if not controlled properly - it can take all sorts of shapes and forms. The best we can do is work with good intentions, put measures in place to avoid bad behavior, and focus on driving more of the positive kinds of interactions.

I think our model is worth trying because the alternative is the status quo, where the only ones with access to this information are family members, top school alums, or people in the elite circles. If you have ideas for how we could do this differently or put measures in place to avoid all the negative examples you gave - I'd love to hear them. deepak@thelobby.io.

I don't think there's a black & white answer here - it will be nuanced and require good execution. Think of all the ways something like Airbnb could go wrong without security checks, going against landlord laws, etc. It still seems to be an overwhelmingly positive addition to the world - we think this can be the same.

> the alternative is the status quo, where the only ones with access to this information are family members, top school alums, or people in the elite circles.

As you yourself pointed out in another sub-thread, "this knowledge is not rocket science" and someone responded, essentially, that it stands to reason that it is already available on numerous web sites.

Some of that knowledge may even be borderline proprietary (for, an admittedly shallow, example, how to prepare for puzzles in interviews), where the site offers anonymity and publishing in exchange for that information.

As such, I'm not convinced that the status quo is how you say it is, unless you actually are trying to offer access to insider knowledge closer to the "rocket science" level.

repasting what I addressed above.

My point was not that the advice is generic, but that you don't require super specialized knowledge to give it that needs extensive "quality control." The Telecom, Media & technology group at Goldman Sachs will have specific bankers, preferences, and things they look for in candidates, as well as industry-specific things you need to study to truly prep. But any analyst WITHIN THAT group is capable of providing that information, and they already are when they interview candidates, help their friends/alumni, and more.

Additional comment: I meant rocket science literally, not metaphorically.

This knowledge is exceptionally valuable, but it is not hard to deliver if your personal experience & network has given it to you. Those without that network & experience don't have it.

If you really think the only knowledge worth paying for is rocket science, then every university degree in the world except for that one is worthless.

> the information of how to land a job in a specific group is very unique and not easy to commoditize across an entire industry or with generic blog posts, but the complexity of that knowledge is very low, hence many are qualified to accurately give it

I think that's the key assertion I was missing, the uniqueness of the information to each group.

I suspect that, because that generally does not apply nearly as much in the tech industry, HN readers (including myself) are more likely to respond with skepticism.

This may even be the case for people coming from other industries, so you may want to find a way to emphasize this particular value proposition.

I'm very scared to speak about something I don't know in-depth, but my engineer friends (And even some HN readers in the thread) are very vocal that even in tech this is the case.

For example, the product marketing team at Facebook has pretty different skillsets & requirements they're looking for than the product management team for a specific silo (perhaps even more so than in banking, where the skills are still kind of similar in terms of Excel/PowerPoint and financial analysis).

In tech - I'd bet it's even harder to commoditize advice and every team is even harder to prep for. One team might focus on Python, the other on mySQL, the other might have a manager that likes to test in some weird way. And tech has very high turnover (banking alike), but interviewing processes are more flexible from what I hear so it must be even more dynamic (as in if your manager changes every 12-24 months, interviewing processes for that team change too), whereas banking interviews have largely remained the same for years and still people crave for this advice.

This is what I've heard- so feel free to refute any of this, it's not primary knowledge.

if it doesn't add value to the company and make it better, kind of the same as putting the company office supplies on Ebay. absorbing team members' time monetizing company resources.

They already spend time doing this for friends/alumni/family. Whether or not employees are fully productive at work is a completely different discussion - we're just trying to give people without inside access the same benefits someone with access would get. Also most of our insiders do these calls on weekends, not on company time.

to re-phrase, if it's not something an HR department would want to encourage people to do, like being on LinkedIn and sharing opportunities and referrals, it's essentially parasitic.

Sorry, I think this is a jackass comment, ironically even though I agree with the conclusion.

I hate to be rude, but people are dedicating potentially years of their lives to these ideas.

I don’t doubt at all you have valid arguments or wisdom to offer here. I just wish your comment could be a couple sentences longer so some of it could be more effectively extracted.

We don't need recruiters nor resumes nor tests. Any programmer is able to evaluate another programmer just by talking. All methods of recruitement are biaised. They are harmful, unefficient and they alienate people (both the recruiter and the candidate).

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