Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mallyvai 4123 days ago
Why did you guys pivot away from employee referral amplification? The original idea seemed incredibly powerful - we all know hiring is broken, and amplifying the referral graph seemed like a great way to add a lot of value to growing orgs.
1 comments

There are a few reasons.

#1 This new idea is better. It's a bigger opportunity with larger barriers to entry that we're especially well positioned to take advantage of.

#2 Deployment of the recruiting app was challenging. The old app worked like this: you connect to Facebook, LinkedIn, and email, and we parse and rank your contacts to find matches for a job rec. But that means employees go through multiple auth flows -- and recruiting teams need to push their team to do it. Recruiters are pitched new products weekly, and have a barrier to getting their team involved. As a result, most recruiting teams are incredibly inefficient and make poor use of technology. It is hard to change that.

#3 We saw better traction with pilot customers for the new idea. That is how I decided to change directions: sell the idea before making the product. I highly recommend people focus on customer development when thinking about a new product -- rather than just on what is technically possible.