[mseebach]

Ok, so I'm confident in declaring your assumption false. This isn't a green-field market where the first credible entrant has a reasonable chance of capturing a large part in one go, it's a mature, slow and conservative market. They are extremely unlikely to read about a new shiny thing on a blog, decide that afternoon to start using it, and in that decision cut out the superior product that launches two months later.

Sure, by the time they've decided to use a new thing, they are unlikely to change again soon, and if, at the time some team is evaluating a new system yours isn't on the market, you wont be considered.

So take a deep breath, stop sweating "first to market" startup tropes, build a good product and start thinking about how you're going to sell into this market instead that's probably a much bigger challenge than building the product in the first place.

[mtrimpe]

Having sold a product to the recruitment market for a while I can wholeheartedly confirm this.

There's no first mover advantage here; there's only a "most able to convince people to switch from 90's tech to 00's tech"-advantage.

FWIW We sold video interviewing software and decided to abandon recruitment because the market had low requirements for software quality / innovativeness and high requirements for stability and track records; which was the polar opposite of what we offered.

Additionally; ATS integration was paramount for all large players. ATS providers knew that and charged for it at levels only heavily funded companies could afford.