[ammon]

So, under the old model, order 200k engineers applied to us. Because we were exclusive gatekeepers, around 3% of those were "accepted" onto the platform. Around 2/3 of accepted candidates received an offer, and around 1/2 of offers were accepted.

[mikeg8]

So you accepted 6K onto platform, about 4k got offers, and just under 2k accepted. Roughly a 1% conversion rate for those who applied? Yikes.

[meowface]

I don't know much about them, but the post does say their goal was to be "exclusive gatekeepers". If you consider it from that perspective, they had more like a 1/3 conversion rate (2/3 * 1/2). But conversion kind of seems like the wrong metric.

[mikeg8]

What metric would make more sense here, though? I can agree that from TBs perspective, they may not factor total applicants as their base # (although that is clearly their market). However this exclusivity of only using the small percentage they accept doesn’t seem to be a scalable business model. Having 1% of the devs who try their service actually accept an offer would not entice me to try their service.

[meowface]

>However this exclusivity of only using the small percentage they accept doesn’t seem to be a scalable business model.

For sure. That's very likely why they're making this pivot. Exclusivity was their goal, but it just turned out to not be a very profitable goal for them, it seems. I was basically just saying it seemed to be a "theory" issue rather than an "implementation/execution" issue.

[twic]

No, the conversion rate is the fraction of companies who sign up which eventually hire someone.