Welcome to the RAG podcast, the weekly show where I interview recruitment owners who are prepared to tell their unique story of growth.This is all in aid of helping future and existing recruitment businesses who are looking to do similar things.
Now, growth means different things to different people.So by tuning in every week, you're no doubt going to find information that's relevant to you. On today's episode of the RAG podcast, I'm joined by Jordan Schlossberg.
Jordan is the founder of Atlas, the only AI-first CRM on the recruitment market today.Now Jordan, I've known for a while and I'm proud to say that himself and the business are our newest sponsor on the rag.
And in this episode, I wanted to find out his story.So Jordan has already launched a business called ProSapien, which reached 40 million in revenue turnover in its fifth year, and he successfully exited the business.
In this episode, we talk about how he took an industry that was very similar to recruitment, and he completely disrupted the sector through AI and technology with ChatGBT2.
He then exited the business and realized that recruitment was such a similar industry, he wanted to do something similar again.He launched his own recruitment business and his own CRM and now they are going live with over 1,000 users.
And ultimately, imagine having an assistant who would listen and watch everything you're doing as a whole recruitment company and
then do all the admin, absolutely no note taking whatsoever, all the admin for the whole team and provide the information back at the click of a button at any time, that is what Atlas will do.And we're gonna find out so much more in this episode.
So if you're thinking about your CRM right now, and thinking, we're not really using AI in ChatGPT, then you've got to listen to this episode.Without further ado, Jordan, welcome to the RAG podcast.Thanks for having me.Very excited to be here.I know.
Sunny Sheffield.Sunny Sheffield.
You've come up from London on a train.You're not much of an early riser though.I was a bit worried about you. Give you a 12 o'clock recording slot and it was like, I need to be awake, I'm not sure I'm going to make that.
To be fair, it was like an 11am one and I was like, I've got three kids at home, going to leave the house at seven.That's different, that's different, you've got the kids.Yeah, exactly, I put them in the afternoon, I want a leisurely morning.
To whereabouts are you living at the minute?I'm a North Londoner, so yeah, Muswell Hill.
I know it, my mate used to live there, he went to school there.It was the first, so when I was at uni here, I came over from Manchester to Sheffield with one of my two mates from Muswell, and I used to go down to come out with them.
It's Alexandra Park Road.Did you really?Yeah, yeah, yeah.I didn't realise, I got to London at 19, and I wasn't old enough to drink in most places.It was all 21s back then.And I was like, what?I'm 19.Up north, I've been drinking for over a year.
Oh, was it the... In London.Show us your ID, we'll make sure... But they wouldn't even let me in.There's clubs that wouldn't let you in.And this was, what year was that? 20... 2005 maybe, something like that.I was like, yeah, it's crazy.
I was like, I don't think it's like that anymore.But I remember Muzzle Hill.I remember it well.Cool spot.So. Jordan, we've known each other now on and off for about a year.
I'm super excited for you to be on the show to tell your story, but also to announce the partnership with Atlas, which I'm buzzing about.So just quickly give us a bird's eye view of who you are, what Atlas is.
I'm talking like a minute synopsis, and then we're going to tell the whole story and stuff.We're not going to go into the detail, but who is Atlas and who are you?
Gotcha.So I'm Jordan. This will be my second company.The first business that I made is an expert network, very similar to recruitment.We got that to 40 million bucks revenues in five years, which was amazing.
And second time around, I wanted to take this fantastic new era of AI and build something in the recruitment space, which is Atlas.And this is
the most foundational change for technology for this industry, because it is an industry filled with unstructured data.Unstructured data, phone calls, emails, and PDFs.The PDFs.I love a PDF.The doc files on occasion.
And all this data is happening, and everyone is sitting in their silos doing their work, yet all this information is flying all around them, yet we can't capture all of it because we're only human.
AI or the technology that's been brought with generative AI is perfect at taking that unstructured data and essentially making it available to people with ease.
We've written poems about random things on ChatGPT, but imagine if everything your entire agency said, heard, read or wrote was ingested by Summit, which meant
If you asked a question about a candidate, about a client, about anything, you're going to get the full intelligence of your company immediately.
So Atlas essentially is this, a perfect memory of your entire agency, and also this assistant, which is going to be doing almost all of that low value admin work that you have hated for you.
So gone are the days as bosses of recruitment agencies saying, how do we get people to put the data in, to enter that data, to code things up? Those days are done.And this is exactly what Atlas is trying to achieve.
Amazing.Because note-taking and admin in general is a recruiter's nightmare.It's a recruiter's kryptonite, right?They're just typically shite at it.And I don't know a single recruiter that enjoys admin.I was probably quite good at process stuff.
I always believed in it.I think it was because of the boss I had in Australia.When I started, he was like, you write everything down.And he was pretty strict with it.So I always got it.And then I started Huxo with HubSpot from day one.
on the free version, and we were like, use it.We were putting things in, but not knowing why.
Now I'm really grateful we did, because we've got a really good database, really clean data, we've got a really good structure to it, it works, we run a whole business through it.
So I get it, but the amount of people in our industry that see it as a bit of a chore, they don't really get the value, and then once they recruit for a period of time, It's like having a big fucking messy wardrobe.
You're like, I'd rather just ignore it or I'll just keep throwing clothes in it but it's not really that useful. aren't actually a traditional agency recruiter background, right?So I want to talk about your story first.I want to find out about you.
I want people to know, because what I love about, the reason I've decided to partner with you guys, and we had a lot of options to go with, and we've been speaking for a long time about this, and obviously I've worked with another CRM provider for a long time, and it was, you know, I didn't really want to go down that route, but I've just been so excited by your product.
And it's because you've not, this isn't your first rodeo, right?You're not just some random guy creating his first system.You've proven to build successful revenue-generating products that solve industry-wide problems, right?So, let's go back.
Tell me about, where did it all start for you?Tell me about your upbringing.
Yeah, so, I come from an entrepreneurial background.You're from London originally?I'm from London, I've always has been.My dad, immigrated here when he was 26.My mom is from here.
But he built, entrepreneur from day one, built seven companies, some more successful than others.And this was everything from a Dutch paper trading business to a jeans company, which I don't know how true this is.
This is the story my dad tells me, that he went bankrupt because his partner ordered too much denim.It's the story that he tells me.I think I've gone a bit overboard with denim.I've got double denim on.
Even the guys filming are laughing at me right now.I've got like Kanye West on people today.But anyway, go on.And then he went into the family business of my mum, which was curtains.
Built quite a big business in that, sold that, and then did jewellery retail and wholesale.
Do you think there's something about that immigrant profile of coming to a country like the UK or the US? You're already behind the eight ball because of language skills and the fact that your name's different.
Especially in light of current events with all the riots about immigration.My family came over from Ireland.I wouldn't say they're the most entrepreneurial people, but they still had a grit to work.
And do you think there's something in that, that people come to this country and they're like, I've got to make this successful.I've got to work hard.
Yeah, I think you're probably right.My dad, he came from a really poor background.It was a four-person family and they had two bedrooms with four of them and then one other room. So it really was sharing everything in a very small shoebox apartment.
They didn't have much at all.Obviously, both my grandpas are Holocaust survivors, so less than nothing.So he grew up contending with this quite difficult shadow that hung over the house.
And I think that created this drive because there was such persecution.And it wasn't distant, it was his parents, both of them. And yet he, from day one, wanted to build himself.And even through till he retired.Well, he hasn't officially retired.
He never officially retired, but there definitely was a time when he did work less, thankfully.But he had this insane, still has this insane work drive.And even as successful as he got, he still got this peculiar poverty mindset.So,
It was still, you know, it's still... You'd feel like it could all come crashing down.
Yeah, at any point.And that's what I think most people I talk to come from a similar background.They say the thing.I feel like that.I feel like every year, cup of the year, it all comes down.
And I think that's... I actually think I'm driven more by fear than success, if I'm genuinely honest.I think I get up out of bed every day because I'm like, I ain't going backwards more than I want to go forward.And it's worked well for me.
That's an interesting observation.I'm wondering now if I'm the same way.Because obviously I've had a different upbringing.I haven't come from that.My dad did well.And so we were comfortable.
So where do you think you've got that desire to be an entrepreneur?If you had a nice life?I do not know.
I always say to my dad, because I'm now a parent, he's a parent, and I'm thinking, how do you impart a drive when you are a different person?My dad was very poor and was driven to not be poor. he gave us a very comfortable life.
and then it skips a generation and then they have a tough life and squander the money and their kids have it even more and then it comes back and I think this one thing in my mind holds.My kids are going to benefit from my success.
They're not going to feel it in a negative way.I do not want them to grow up just beating my sponges and just wanting to live off other people.It's not worth it.
Yeah, I think you're right.He definitely had this, and I think I do the same with my kids, is that you want to make it comfortable, but you're not giving everything someone wants.No.
You're trying to do as much as they need and making sure that everything you spend, if you're going to spend more on certain things, it's things which are constructive to development.
And that probably is, thinking back, one of the things that probably separated, but I look at all of the families where you have wealthy parents who
who didn't manage to impart the same drive to their children as those who did, one of those key factors, you're right to say, it's not just sharing everything they want just because you can.Yeah, it's conscious.
It's like, I literally was on the phone to my, well, no, my stepdaughter was on the phone to her dad two days ago, Friday morning, and she says to her dad, I've got to play piano every morning.
When I said to her dad, I said, well, you're being petty to play piano.So like, we've set up a structure in our house where they just don't get pocket money for nothing, right?So they've got a couple of jobs to do, probably nine to 11.
So one's doing the cleats, one sets the table every night, one clears the table every night, and then they have an additional task, and she's got to play piano 15 minutes every day. So, she gets like five a week for doing those two things, right?
And if she misses one of them, she misses 50p and it just won't, but, so it's like, you're not being forced to play piano, but we're gonna reward you for playing.There's benefits for playing piano.
I want you to, because we've invested in her to have a piano and lessons and like, she won't do it forever if she don't want to, but at 11, we're gonna set the tone.And I'm always trying to think of these little things.
I'm always trying to think of these little things.But I don't think there was that much in my house.I think my mum was too busy. just trying to keep us running, that there was none of that.I just figured it out myself, I think.
Well, that's quite interesting.That's a different way of getting drive, I suppose.
Yeah, I think so.So, how did you get into the world of work then?So you go to uni, I think.
Went to university, went to Bristol, went into finance for a decade, actually.Doing what?It was an equity, so stocks and shares.First, I was selling them on behalf of a bank, and then I was investing in companies.
And as I was mentioning to you before we did the show, this will be the second time I've been to Sheffield.The first time was when we took a multi-percent stake in a washing machine company, which went bust a few years later.
It wasn't the best investment.
This is why we say if Atlas fails,
We made some money, we actually sold them for a profit.
So that actually worked out well.It was, it must have been, because then I followed it because it was, it was just... So that was your job on behalf of the bank?Yeah, exactly.
So I would be four or five years was selling shares for other people and then it was... To who?
To hedge funds, to asset managers.And then the next five years was investing.So the first hedge fund I was working with had a hundred and... 130 million under management dollars.And the second one had maybe 200.And that was simply fine.
And it was, you can see my, cause when I, when I graduated, I kind of wanted to be an entrepreneur at that point.And my dad, I'm going to try his to his accent.
It's like, too difficult.You know, what do you want to do this for?Got to finance his money.So he's, he's just saying, do that.Don't be an entrepreneur because it's, it's bloody difficult.
I think there's a lot of people that watch this, I guess, they're business owners. And it's flipping difficult.Obviously the upside is great and it is really rewarding.
But your 20s are years to work and learn.
And yeah, you can be an entrepreneur in your 20s and kill it, but most of us need that decade, I think, to find themselves, try different things, learn from experienced people, and then get the confidence to think, well, all right, I'll go and do something myself.
You're right, yeah they do.So I did that and essentially it was not entrepreneurial but it was about as close to businesses as I could get not building one myself.How academic do you need to be to do that?It sounds very...
There is a debate on that one I guess.I think the entry ticket is higher because it's a very small population of people doing it.
So therefore there's a kind of a screening factor of you need to have gone to a great university or done a graduate degree placement at a big bank.So to get in that way it's quite difficult.But then obviously
Finding a good business, people could spend hours on an Excel spreadsheet finding every pound that goes in and out of the business.Or it can be as straightforward as this.Look at AI.
You could have said, this AI looks big, I'm going to buy some Nvidia shares.And you would have made more money than most fund managers last year.So sometimes it doesn't actually need to be complex.
But it just needs to have curiosity, understanding of what is happening because around you there's always something happening which has an impact on something.
So an investor or the good ones just had this knack of just being able to translate, you know, we'd have a discussion about what we read in the news the other week and someone would be able to say, ah, I should buy that share because of that.
And those people seem to do really, really well.And so it does require some smarts but it is just,
you know, understanding, okay, it's a good business, it makes a product that people want, and I can see that because of this, and this is how big the market could be, so I'm gonna put a, I'm gonna back the management team to see if they can execute.
It sounds a really exciting job. It is really good fun.Do you get paid on performance?The world of hedge funds, asset management is a well paid job on a base level.But you're right, the bulk of it is performance based.
Typically a hedge fund or back in the day, they would call it 2 and 20. So, you, if you were a hedge fund, would get 2% of everything you managed per year as a management fee.
So, let's say I had a $200 million hedge fund, I'd make $4 million revenue for just being there and doing the work, and then I'd make 20% of the performance.So, if I made $50 million for my clients, $10 million would be mine.
So, what do some of these guys earn in a year? I think that the guy who I work with, I'm not going to say his name, but the person I work with who would earn the most money, and this is by no means the most, is probably £60 million bonus one year.
What was your biggest year, can you tell us?Oh no, I'm not going to say that.Not £60 million.Was it seven figures?I'm not going to say.But... It sounds... Why would you leave that though?
If you're on the trajectory... I'm sure, like everybody, the longer you stay in it, the better you get.I think so.
I think that... Because obviously it's a sharp wedge, right?I definitely was not making 60 million, unfortunately.But I think you also have one life, right?And you've got to do the things that you enjoy doing the most.
And to be honest, you can't really be successful in things that you don't like, no matter how good they may pay. period of time, you know, the downside of investing is that you're betting on other people.So you don't have a team so much.
You don't have a business you're building.You essentially are reading what a company is doing and making an educated bet on what they're doing.And that, you know, great, you get to meet the management every quarter.How did that go?Great.
How did that go?Not so well. But after a time, you're thinking, I actually want to do, but I'm sitting here backing others to do.And some people love that, and it's a great job for some.For me, having an entrepreneurial father, I wanted to do that.
I wanted to do, to build.And it got to a point where I thought, actually, if I don't scratch this itch, I'm probably going to regret it.I'm going to become one of those caterwauling old men.If only I did this when I was younger.
So how old were you when you started your business?Yeah, 29 was pro sapiens.So tell us a story, where did the idea come from?
Yeah, so I as an investor was investing in companies and I did not work in the companies that I would invest in.One of them, for example, was Burberry.That was one of the things I invested in, the Mac company.And obviously not worked in fashion.
So how on earth am I gonna find out, me, Jordan from North London, if Burberry, this multi-billion dollar company, is worth is worth more than it currently is.So I would go to an expo network.
And they are very similar to recruitment firms in that I would go and say, look, I'm trying to learn about this Burberry, a particular thing I'm not quite sure about.
Can you find me the person who looks after the handbags or who used to look after handbags at Burberry?And this expo network would go and hunt for them. I would say, I'm looking to find out these five things.
They would then make sure and validate the person they found can answer those questions, and then put me and that person on the phone for an hour, and I would ask the questions that would help me decide, is this a good business to buy or not?
So, in the same way a recruiter might be doing the same hunting for a person to place at a company, Expert Network is hunting for a person to have a short consultation.
And I looked at this business thinking, this magical business, but it was really stuck in the 90s.It was almost a black book business and I'm thinking, I've got all these projects, where's my transcript of these calls?
Because if I do three expert calls in a day, I'm going to forget half of what I said.Where's that?How do I track what on earth is going on? And it was a very lucrative business as well.I mean, these companies were... You don't own anything either.
It's a services business.
It's a brokerage, isn't it?
You don't own anything.People are already there, the people want it and you just put it together.
Exactly.And I think it was one of those, it was a high margin business.Very important because high margins allow you to make mistakes.
So you'd not worked in it, you'd been a customer of those businesses?
However, because of that, I thought, okay, I've not worked in the business, there's going to be some I don't know.So I actually ended up partnering with a lady who was from the industry.
Yeah, she actually was my account manager when I was using it.And I was thinking, this is a very good business, this. And she agreed.She said, I think it's a good business.She wanted to do something herself.I was interested.
And we thought, OK, we both have two sides of this coin.Let's try it.Let's do it.And that was 2017. a month before I got married, so leave my banking job and then get married with no job.No, I didn't.
I always think to myself, would I have been able to do this with children?Because it's changed my risk profile quite somewhat.But we started in 2017.
And the first month we did two calls.I remember £1,600 we'd made that month.What a delight.
Who's we then?You and the lady?
Just the two of you?Two of us for six months.
And what were you doing?Were you doing the investor relationships?She was doing the... We were kind of running both.
So she was running the projects.So what a recruiter would do.And I was thinking about the software in fact.So I was thinking about we've got to make a platform here to manage this because our USP was this platform.
Did you have any coding experience?Not much, no.
I developed... It was called quantum research, a really weird niche where you know when the internet was coming forward, there was Twitter, there was things with data flowing everywhere and I was one of the earlier people who said actually I don't have to read this income statement
For example, one of the big things I shorted where I sold shares in Foxton's, the letting company, and all I did there was I built a piece of software that scraped all the house prices from all their websites, and it very quickly became apparent that the average sales price of houses they were expecting was not even close to what was on their website.
So it was like they were going to not do well, and it was quite public, but because no one had written a script to pull that information, no one had really noticed it.
So that was about the coding experience, but I'm a maths guy and I think coding requires that logical mindset.But I got into it through, I made loads of mistakes coding, loads of them.
But I think as first time entrepreneurs, fine, you have to make mistakes and you're going to make mistakes.And it's all about knowing which mistakes you can make that are not terminal.
You were like, right, as we build the business of, because it is a people business, to try and connect people, you were going to build a CRM, was it?Yeah.You weren't going to go and buy one.They don't exist.They don't exist, right.
I mean, in the expo industry, which is about a $2 billion industry, so smaller than recruitment, There are 11 companies that make up 96% of the revenue.So it's extremely concentrated.
To enter that market then must have been quite difficult.
Yeah, you've got to build both the software and the service to deliver something that can compete.But at that point there was that change of cusp where everyone was doing it manually and we said well let's just bring a software into this.
And it resonated really well.At the end of the day, like recruitment, you live and die by the quality of the people you send.
So it doesn't matter how amazing your method is, how great your software is, if you cannot bring the person that's going to answer the question, you're over.
If you're a recruiter, it doesn't matter how well we have this software and that software, if you can't find the right person, there's no value you're going to give to them.
So it's the same thing, it is a service, no matter how much software you want to try and bring in.
How did the business evolve?You said it was 40 million in five years?
Yeah, so year number five, which is the last time the accounts are public, it was $40 million in revenue that year, which was just incredible.
So how many people did you have in the business? 300.
300 people and yeah I mean it was unbelievable.
How did it grow?Talk me through the trajectory of year one.
It was I think year one so 2017 was like a half year so that was not much maybe 30 grand I think it went I mean Maybe north of a million the first year, north of three the second year.
What did you do to grow?What part of the business was it?
We did something quite clever with marketing which I didn't realise we were doing at the time but now I realise we were doing and it's the power of difference. It's obvious what people care about, and it's the same in recruitment.
In expert networking, I want to find the right answers as quickly as possible.That is the two things that people care about the most.I guess in recruitment, it's the same.I want the right person, really, as quickly as possible.
The problem is, is that everyone knows that, and everyone is using those same two marketing points.So it's the power of saying, these nine people are talking about, we're fast and we're high quality.We're going to say different.
We're going to say we're actually a technology-first expert network, because we were.And people said, that's different.I'll give that a try.This is a service business where there's unlimited demand.There's always someone looking for the service.
And then that got us the buy-in, but then we had to actually deliver, because after all that, we still had to find the right person at the right time.In that industry, fortunately for us, at that particular point, I'm not quite sure why,
a lot of the bigger companies were doing these, the big projects that were 30, 40 experts, were doing like the first 10 or 15, the easy ones.
And then they were slowing down for the harder ones saying, actually, we could redeploy this team to this new project and get those 15 calls and leave the difficult stuff to the end.We just said, give us the difficult ones.
We'll do the difficult ones.And that scrappiness and then building technology to make that scrappiness more efficient, helped us build this reputation of actually they are delivering experts that others don't.
What was an average deal value in that world?I mean every expert call is between $900 and $1,100 on average.
To do the kind of money you're talking, you needed a lot of people per day, every day.Correct.Is it a classic BD engine? And then once someone's like, yeah, we've got a project, pass it on to a delivery.Someone finds the person, organizes the times.
Yeah, but the BD engine is very different from, I guess, it's quite unique in a way that... you just do good work.
If you get to a big company, because it's very much a land and expand, you start with a company that does a thousand calls a month, and you get three the first month.
I suppose, yeah, it's not like they might use an expo network.They're going to use it.So you just need to get in and grow, basically.
Yeah, there's not many customers in it.Everyone who knows about expo, they use them already. So you don't have to say, well this is what an expert network is.They're like, well we use these four players, why are you different?
It's very similar to a PSL in recruitment.Except for the fact there's 11 companies, there's probably 11 companies on your street, not 11 companies in your network.So it's a bit different in recruitment.
Yeah, so the BDNs are much more different because you're just competing as way less people.
Right.Wow.And how did the technology actually make the difference?
We, in the end, focused on technology that delighted the client, that brought more value to the one-hour conversation, and technology that brought the speed of delivery up.
So an example of the first would be, we were the first people that offered transcripts of calls.So you'd have this call you'd pay $1,000 for, and then with ProSapient, there'll be a transcript of that call.
So you wouldn't just have to remember the right notes down?Yeah.
It was not as cool as it is today in terms of technology was not quite there yet, but we got it there.But that was the first thing.Then on the other side, it was just how do we speed things up?
How do we get a associate reaching out to 30% more people?How do we help them increase the relevance of people reaching out to by 30%?Pretty much on the sourcing thing.And it was loads of little wins, looking, decompiling the whole process of
someone's asked me to find this person, and I deliver this person.There is 100 plus little things you do, and it was very much this thing we can produce by five minutes, that by 10 minutes, and that just added up and added up.
And then it just, but that technology first narrative enabled you to keep focusing on all these different areas.
Yeah.And how did your role evolve over that five year period?
So, good question.At the beginning it was, We both were the jacks of all trades, master of nones, as it were.
And we bifurcated into me looking after product, and my co-founder would initially look after the client services, the delivery, and then went to more commercial when we grew that, that side of the business.And I stayed there, really.
So I would look after the technology and the product at that point, until I stepped out.
So you had, was it a team-based role, like a leadership role?
Yeah, chief product officer is what I held was my final title.
Because you were, like you say, you were all about the product in the early days.I stayed about the product.So how did your ownership... because you started off- It dropped.Did you go through round the funding?Yeah.
Because to get to that 40 million in five years, that is very difficult to do that organically.Talk me through the strategy of how you grew.
Yeah, we took an angel investment round right at the very beginning.And we probably did four or five rounds, maybe one per year.
We didn't ever do one of those, well actually we did one of these very large rounds, but most of the rounds were very much, what do we need to get to the next step?
So that's kind of a bit different from what you might see in a venture where someone raised 30 million in one go.I'm not sure if what we did was the right answer or not.It was right for us at the time.
But mostly as we raised some money... Were you involved in that process?Yeah, so I most of the time led the fundraising processes and then when we took a proper venture firm in Cement Big Ventures, the subsequent rounds were slightly more led
in an institutional fashion, but prior to that I would look after most of the... You had all these people in your network, didn't you?
You already had hedge funds and investors and... Yeah.You had the network.Correct.You weren't like just... Which definitely was an unfair advantage, absolutely right.But everyone else in the expo network would as well if they wanted to grow up.
Yeah, but again... in a way that they'd always ran.They weren't disrupting their processes, they were just profitable, and then you'd come in and go, ah, what we want to do, this, that one.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.How was that received by the competition?I think we were pooning, like any Amstel.Which is what's going to happen to us, right?
And over time, yes, you're probably right, and over time, what we saw was the best, because there are some amazing big companies in that industry, and the best adjusted and moved towards the platform approach.There's some really great things.
Some said, look, actually, we've got the best network.So it doesn't matter about the technology.We have got the CEOs and you don't.And so we're going to keep doing that.
So what you've seen definitely is, in this particular industry, is a bifurcation of those 11.There's very much four players that are very good.And the rest have sunk a little bit, I would say. But not much has happened.
They're still the same companies really.There's one acquisition by one company bought another one.But it's still kind of the same market.It is, yeah.
Obviously your percentages died as you grow.Did your business make, was it a profitable business, or was it like?
It's profitable now.At the time, were you burning a business to grow?Yeah, correct, correct.That was why we raised money.How does that feel?Because I'm the opposite.
Obviously, I've had a lot of recruiters that are like me, from a pure service-based business where, you know, you are the product until you earn a certain amount, then you invest in people, and so you focus on your balance sheet, and like you say, burning,
through money is kind of a scary concept.How have you dealt with that?
Yeah, it definitely leads to some anxiety-inducing moments, which took me a lot of time to really understand because for many years, it was like there was a shelf life.You could see there is X months left in the bank.
But that is the game that if you go down the venture route, you're playing.Because you're saying, look, we could grow this speed without funding, but if we had funding, we could grow it at this speed.
And the bet you make is that the slice of pie that you have at the end, post-investment, is gonna be bigger than the pie you would have had.
A smaller slice of a big pie.
That's exactly right.But it was stressful, but I think the point there is that you've always gotta remember that If it's a good business, people are backing it because they look at your business less emotionally than you do.
The investor would say, okay, business doing good things, it's growing X, making X profit.We think it can get to there if we invest this much capital.
you'd go through a capital raise, you'd use that capital, and the idea is you're then at the next level.So we always, after every round of capital, grew further.The valuation changed, and then it was okay.
We now need some more money to get to the next step.
How was your relationship with recruitment agencies along that journey to get you there?
It's a really good question.We use them sporadically here and there.So in this business, 80% of the headcount is associates. I would say very similar to people in recruitment.You have your people who are doing the business.
All they're doing is finding people to answer questions.
Correct.Exactly.But the difference between this and recruitment is they work in a bit more of a team fashion whereas recruitment sometimes can be I look after the whole project myself.Was it paid more like? or was it paid more like?
It was more like recruitment, so it was a base salary and then you got a bonus based on what you delivered and it was uncapped, so it still is the same and not just in pro saving, in that industry.
The more calls you make, the more money you have in your bonus at the end of the month.
Was it an office space, like big boiler room type situation?
Yeah, it was very much a big office.It still is.They're in Holborn now.And yeah, it's just arcades, very buzzy atmosphere.
we try and make the offices really nice things you want to go to because it is that atmosphere where you're against the clock when a client says we need to find someone unlike recruitment where you have time so we're going to hire a CFO okay that could be a three four month process when I find the best one here it's like we need the insights tomorrow morning so can you give us the first list in three hours please and you know you're against others so that there is that contingency relationship yeah I mean contract recruitment in my world was not that different like
You know, you're talking about they need a program director for a role and they've had someone already earmarked who's not available.We need someone in the next week.
So you would, Thursday night or Friday night, you'd get that call at 4pm and you'd know they'd given it out to year three competition so you'd be like, I ain't going to the pool, I'm going to carry on. you'd have to deliver.
Maybe not quite as anonymous as you are but also not the perm world either.
You have more complexities because the person might not want the job, they might not be available there, they might be too far away.
So it was in between what you did and what the perm did is what I did. Okay, I'm interrupting today's episode to talk about our sponsor, Atlas, the only AI-first recruitment platform on the market.
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Okay, so Atlas is brand new to the market and launching so rapidly.For the first 200 members, they are offering what's called a Founder's License, okay?And the Founder's License is gonna be a 40% discount for life, okay?
And it's only for the first 200.Now, if you wanna be in the first 200, you're listening to this episode through the RAG, you're gonna have a great chance.Go to www.recruitwithatlas.com and sign up on that page.All right, let's get back to the show.
I can see that journey then.So the investment keeps coming in, you keep growing.Why aren't you still there?What happened to your relationship with that business?
It's a good question.Well, I get a lot.I think at a certain time, businesses grow and they mature.And I love building.The favourite part about this job is to be close to the customer, to build.
If you're a venture-backed business, you're sharing that vision with the investors you have.So eventually, it becomes a slightly more democratic process of which director you wanna travel.And as companies slow, you can't move them that fast.
As chief product officer or whatever you were, did you feel like you had a founder's say?
No, of course you did.But there was a lot of other... Was there a CEO in there?Yes, yes.So we brought in a professional CEO. in 2022, I want to say.And you're right.So at that point, obviously a CEO has to have the end vision.
Is that so weird to have someone else running your business in that way?
But the funny thing is, is that you can't exit a business usually very cleanly.If you are a founder and seller of a business, there's usually a big earn out where you stick around.And so The management team thought it was a big 300 person business.
What was needed was a different method of management.Sounds cool.But at that point it was getting me thinking, okay, can I do the things I am good at?Hunting, finding the direction of travel and very quickly driving there.
because then I wasn't the sole arbiter or the main arbiter of the strategy.
And that probably was the main reason why I remember having a conversation with the CEO at the time saying, you know, I'm gonna, I think, you know, there's not really much I can do in a full-time job here now.When the AI revolution happened,
It was just, it was huge.And I remember we ripped out the whole core system, the search system, and used GPT-2 or BARD at the time.And I said, you know, I'm gonna get this project done.
But after that, you know, it's, I'm not sure I'm worth paying five days a week.I'm literally not, you know, this is the last big project and there's not much that I can give.And at the same time,
You know, this technology was just, I'm looking at this and you know when you're a bit younger, when now you look back at the dot-com era and you think, oh, that must have been fun. Imagine I was at the dot-com era, what would I have done there?
We're in it.We're in it again, right now.And a lot of people don't realise it wasn't this big bubble that happened for a little bit of time, it was five years.
From the mid-90s to the late 90s, this crazy run as this technology, which absolutely as we know now was completely changing the world that we live in. People were thinking, where's it going to go?
They were making these crazy bets of different things.But that was the opportunity to build.And this is the opportunity again, because until this point, a lot of people have come across recruitment CRMs, ATSs.
They are all the same, because they are all using the same approach, the same technology.And to be blunt, if AI did not exist, or the generative AI, I would not have bothered with Atlas.
Because you cannot pull someone away from a core system of record. without having something that's 10x better.No, 100%.
I'm at ProSapien, finishing up there.
How many years ago is this?Yeah, it must have been the end of 2022.That's five years.Times are bleeding now a little bit. And it was a, yeah, I need to be first here.
Plus, you know, there is the fact that I owned X percent of my first company, but I got to own a lot more of my second company, which again, from an economic standpoint.
So where did the idea for Atlas, like you've told me a bit offline, but like you go, you've never done a day in recruitment.It doesn't even sound like you lean too heavily on recruitment agencies for the growth of ProSapien.
You said it was about a like-for-like sector, something similar.So how did you get that idea?
So when I was thinking about where I want to apply AI as a second time founder, I went through some really weird iterations.I even had a few conversations with one of my lawyer friends about a legal platform.And then I just thought, come on, Jordan.
You've got certain unfair advantages.And in life, you should use those unfair advantages. And I had just spent five years building what is regarded as the best piece of software in the expert network industry.
The expert network industry is connecting people together for consultations.And so it was simply where can what I've built already be the most easily applied and recruitment is the... Did you realize how competitive recruitment was and how much...
Like you say, 11 companies versus 30,000 in this country alone.Did you know at that time that it was so much more competitive and so many more little players?
I had an inkling, but obviously now really spending the last year and a bit in the industry, it's very apparent how different the market is.Because as a recruitment, they are buying you, I suppose.
And that is why, you know, why do you go from one over another?There's a thousand to choose from and it's a much heavier relationship game.It's why my business exists, right?
Because I'm all about backing the person and elevating.If someone's already good at their job offline, they'll be a miles better performer if they've got an online presence too.I'm not creating the performer.They've got to be good at recruitment.
That's the bit that I don't want to get involved in.I want to just help them elevate that and find their voice, et cetera, because it is so competitive and it's so difficult.
And especially, people keep telling me about the US, I should crack the US for Hoxha, and I'm like, there's a counter argument to that, because the market's so big over there and there's less competition over there,
I don't think the need to innovate is quite the same as here.Whereas here, we're in a goldfish bowl.
There's literally fish everywhere, everyone's competing, and there's not that much availability, and so people need to be different, they need to stand out.There's more need to innovate, which has obviously played more to the focus for me.
So talk me through the strategy. to familiarize yourself with this sector, because it's pretty impressive what you've gone and done.
Yeah, because one thing I think that my dad has taught me, and maybe it's one of the things which kind of, you know, I'm an autistic guy, is that I'm very hyper-productive, and that's helped me be successful, I think.
I typically, when I focus, I can do a lot of work in a short space of time.So it was easy for me to get everything structured and start building atlas, but at the end of the day,
So many people don't understand just the nuances that go into the difference between an amazing piece of software and an average piece of software.It's things like button clicks.
You know, we've just brought a feature where you just hit CTRL D or CMD D and it dials the person, the profile you're on.It's like the smallest feature ever.It took our front-end guy an hour to build.No one's even made it yet.
I mean, some companies are 20 years old.And you only come across these things when you're kind of in it and you realise, what's pissing me off? What's the blocker to do this or that?Where am I wasting hours of time?I'm a product guy.
What I'm really good at is building software that essentially makes people more productive.At ProSapien, the revenue per associate was way higher than any other company of similar size to us.
And that's what I'm... Do you think it's different though building a software for your business than building a software for multiple people?Like now you're building a software for other businesses.
You have less control of how they're going to use it now.Whereas before you could mandate and train, you had access to everyone.
And you could say there was one way of doing it and that's it.What I'm learning here is that recruitment, there is no tried and tested approach.
Everyone, because it's an extension of them, they will create a business around what they're good at and work how they're good. And for everyone, it's different.
I had a guy who we did a demo with that he was like, there's not enough colors on Atlas for me.I need more graphs.And I was like, I haven't heard that before, but I get it.Because some people, they just say, I want to see things visually.
And that was that person's requirement.And so we're finding that with Atlas, we have to make a lot of ways to do the same thing.Because everyone's got the way they want to do it.
But there is a tough middle ground here, and I think a lot of people have got unstuck with this point, particularly in CRMs, where you can't build everything for everyone.
And sometimes a customer will come with a feature that you can't... One guy we had yesterday who clearly just wanted a system that already exists, and he'd say, can you make the buttons look like this, look like this other system?
And I think we got to a point saying, look, you know, if you want, you should really go for that system.You clearly want that system where, you know, this is the one you need to go, go with.Yeah, no problem.
And I think there's an element you've got to realize, what are we trying to achieve?What's the clear vision of this software? And so what we not do.
So it's listening to the problems people are having, figuring out what things should we do and what we should not do.And that's been a lot harder than, you're right, doing your own system where you have the process.
And everyone thinks, right, the process is going to change to this now.So the software should do this now to fit the process.Here it's very much, we've got to build everything so that people can actually use Atlas.
Like you can't just have a bit of a CRM, it's gotta be all of it.And then what we've tried to do is just shove it into the market with early adopters as quickly as possible and just said, look, use it, break it, tell us what's good, what's bad.
And this is what we've been doing for the last four months.Getting some fantastic early adopters.
You're in the Slack chat, exactly.It's busy, it's very busy.Stuff every single day going off.And what's been great is that people are saying, look, this thing's really bothering me. And it's just little things.
And you think, no problem, I'll fix that.Three days later it's fixed, and people are like, Jesus, I have to put a ticket with big company from year enough.Give me an example of something you've changed that's so simple like that.
Sure, so one gentleman had said, he pasted a link to a job on LinkedIn.And it just had a really crap, like, it just had the link, there was no picture.It didn't even have any metadata.And he was like, this looks kind of ugly.
I said, you probably might actually.Never thought about it.I honestly never thought about what should the image of the link of the job post look like.So I said, guys, what can we do about this?
So we created like an image called, just says apply here with some nice color background.And then in the metadata, it's got the job info at the beginning of the description salary.
So now when you paste it, so we built it in two days, paste it, and now it looks jazzy. One guy said, I want a call log.No problem.We had activity notes.We just made a shift tab and it makes it a call log.
So this stuff is just little things that they use regularly.And we think, let's just delight customers.So when they come and say, I really want to see that, we show, look, software is actually not complex.
So the point of it is that we are building it for you to use and for you to make more money as a recruiter.And these little showings of doing so, I think, is one of the key aspects of how you can get that buy-in from your early adopter.
So if we look at like, I won't go through everything, because we'd be here all day, right?If we went through like, the journey of a recruiter in my head, right?
So let's say, I'll use this topic, because it literally blew up on LinkedIn last week, right?I get specced CVs every single day.I get five a day, I think, from recruiters.And 99% of the time, I just delete them.
And sometimes I reply back, and I give them some feedback. And I'll be honest, last week, I was like, I think it was just one too many.I had an email and I was like, it was just so vague, so generic.It was selling like a finance candidate.
I wasn't interested in the candidate at all.I was just like, and I probably made a mistake because I took a screenshot and I put it up on LinkedIn and I've been hammered by it.
I've had like a quarter of a million views and shit loads of people haven't got me.And look, I understand where they're coming from.My execution was wrong, but my intention was to say, To me, this is Paul.Forget the guy, I don't care about the guy.
I didn't name him, I've got no interest in naming him, because it's not him that's the problem, it's the process in our industry that you can grab a CV, and just because I've got the title CEO, I'm automatically gonna want that in my inbox.
Not tailored, not personalized.If it had said like, hey Sean, anything to do with Hoxha whatsoever that was remotely accurate.I'd have already, it'd have been on a better footing, but it had nothing.
It was just like, you're a media agency in London, which I'm not.And it was like, this guy might be good for you.And I was like, it's crap.So my intention was to say, how can we improve this process as an industry?How do we stop?
Because if you send out 10,000 of them and you get three bytes back, you think, a lot of recruitment agencies think, that worked.Whereas I think three bytes, 900, $9,997 didn't reply.How many of blacklisted you have thought, that was a load of shit.
Put you on a spam filter, because I can click report to spam.Every time these things come through, you can get rid of them.So is there a way of using AI to spec CVs in a more personalized way?
I definitely think so.It's one of the features that we've... it's on the roadmap and I wanted to solve it but I haven't come to the conclusion yet of whether the spec CV is dead or not.
I hear two ways of the story but... I think, look, people can choose what they want and you're not here to tell people not to do it.
And you're not here to say don't do it because it doesn't benefit your business.I just think
the brand benefits and there's a there's a hidden damage to it that people don't think about they think i got three bites but what you don't realize is that you're burning data all the time of people that are going to block you and they're not interested in this again depending on how well it's written and there's low i just think if you could if there's a way i could be more efficient at helping you say don't send that to that person or
just changes some of the lines to be a bit more specific.
That's exactly what we're thinking about.So we have a Chrome extension where you can send multi-step, multi-touch outreach to either candidates or prospects.
And one thing that's on the roadmap, which we can build quite easily now because we spent six months building an AI massive data pipeline, is that you say, OK, I want to spec this most placeable candidate, let's call her Jane,
some people that might want to hire her.So I go and find job description, a job opening that she'd be perfect for.I can say to AI, here is job description.
With Atlas, this is every single thing that we know about Jane, every call we've had, every interview we've done, every note, every email, every resume, if she has more than one resume.
And I can say, just write me three bullet points of why, three points where her experience matches experience there. Because we have a short attention span.And I think people forget the fact, why is this specking?
Because I think specking is good, if it's done properly.At the end of the day, hive is different.
My argument isn't specking, it's the execution.Yeah.Make it better.
Yeah, so here you could say, look, you'll hive this person, and here are three specific things that you need that this person has in spades.Bam, bam, bam.And if you're lucky that that person is just not, the beginning of the process hasn't gone well,
The higher man is going to think, yeah, that does sound like the answer to my problems here.Do I really want to spend three months without a CFO or whatever when I could read this and it actually might be the right person?
So AI can make that massively more scalable because currently to do that, even with chat GPT, it takes about 20 minutes.You know, you've got to get all the data, you've got to plop it all into chat GPT, adjust it.
we can bring it right into the process.So you literally find, go to LinkedIn, find Hire Manager. paste job and click generate.And it would say, hey there, we've got this fantastic candidate who's is.
But that'd be so much better than hitting send to 10,000 people.Yeah.It takes a bit more time, but it's, and also I'm not hiring.I haven't got a job description right.So it's got to be tailored slightly differently.
Like, look, I'm aware that you're not hiring right now, but.Yeah.You know, having seen Hoxo online and saw that your headcount has plateaued for 12 months.I mean, I'm making this shit up.Yeah.But you know,
Is there any way that your finance function, you know, you're not utilizing your cash correctly or whatever, like, therefore we've got this person who's done this for a very similar business to you, would you like an instruction?
If not, look, would you mind telling me what might be important to you for the next 12 months where I could actually send you something more appropriate?That would be like, I'd be like, that's clever, that's good.
They've hit me with a real, they've made me think. they've already preempted that it might not be right.Instead of being like, I think this person would be good for your business.It's like, why?I don't even know you.Like piss off.
Like it just, it put me off.And like I said, my execution was probably not great and it had a backlash, but I'm not the only person who feels this way.
I remember I used to get three or four a day of a chief product officer so people sell tech roles and the amount of times I would get a spec for the wrong stack completely and our jobs would be on LinkedIn.
We did use recruiters and actually I always used to play, it's the right game, I said Thanks, so if they did hit on what I wanted, so let's say they saw that I was hiring a Python engineer, I said, look, Jordan, got a great hiring engineer.
I said, OK, always the same thing.I'm very happy to give you one shot.Is this CV you sent me the one shot you want to send? 90% were like, nope, I'll come back to you.But we did use, we used particularly for the senior role.
But again, that is different.If you're not hiring at all, you've got no publication out there, and it's just because you've got a job title, I just think it's there.And that was my point, it wasn't that the process or the concept is wrong.
There's no indicator.The process is poor.So that's one thing you're looking at.When it comes to the whole,
I know one of the big things we're gonna talk about, and I'm really excited about it, is this whole admin assistant AI note-taking functionality.But in a practical sense, how can a small business benefit from that?
So, I think about recruiters having a block of time.
And in that block of time, there is the high productive time, you're doing a really good piece of client spec work, you're doing some sourcing for some candidates that are really good, and you've got your unproductive time.
And I've asked, if you had to estimate, what would it be between unproductive and productive?And the point here is, let's just assume it was 50% and 50%.
That means that you could theoretically make twice the revenue if you could get rid of that admin garbage. And every recruiter, no matter how small their company is or how big it is, has a huge amount of admin.
The amount of people that I'm sure have been forcing people to code the system, get the data in.
Coding is the one, yeah.If you don't get that right early on, in current and previous platforms, Forget it.
Exactly.You should not have to code anymore.In fact, I'll tell you what answers today and where it's going to be tomorrow.Because this is one thing.
Coding, any job that essentially, if you could tell someone who's maybe just left school, gave them a 50 minute piece of instruction they could do it, that is something you could automate.
If you do the same thing a hundred times, it should be automatable. Today, Atlas, when you get a resume from someone, you don't have to do anything with it.That resume already goes into Atlas.It already tags that with every industry, every function.
Doesn't matter what language it's in.Doesn't matter if they say, I'm a software developer, I'm a software engineer, I'm a programmer, I'm a programmer.It's still gonna say, they're a software developer.So- How does it know?AI.Just AI.
We use, so unlike a lot of systems in this industry, because when you're an old system, it's very difficult to crowbar AI into your creaking old system.Sprinkle a bit of AI over the top.
It's like an old car trying to turn it into an electric car.
Yeah, exactly right. They're busy trying to make very average writing assistants.Here, we've built it into the fabric of what Atlas is.So, we didn't even go with a Daxter or TextKernel, because they weren't as good as what we needed.
So, we built our own GenAI parsing engine, which does this. And what's next?
You know, we have tagging, but custom AI tagging is coming, which generally means, I mean, let's say, for example, I'm a finance recruiter, and I'm looking for a banker that has this industry experience.That's my tag.
They've got commodities experience or finance experience.I can say, this tag is experience, so please read the resume, or from the information you have, tell me what industry they focus on specializing in. And that can be totally automated.
And you could say, find me everyone with a tag of, you know, commodities.
Yeah.This is my software.I want to tag software engineers because the key word's not enough, right?So Atlas is amazing in that I can say React and it will show me every single person that has ever uttered the term.
Then if I click on that profile, it will then tell me, like ChatGPT responds to you,
when you ask to make a poem or something like that, it will say this is the person's extensive experience with the thing you've just asked me based on all of the information that I have.You can say narrow this down now based on the following.
Exactly right.Some people will say I still want tagging.No problem.You can say here are the 50 technologies I like, care about, so when you get a resume, please tag these technologies to this resume.
That can be fully automated now, so the age of admin is over.
Do you know what the one thing that used to really get me was when I was in contract recruitment, it was knowing rates and deadlines of people finishing.And that was as good as your notes, because if you didn't write that down...
and I was always a big one like I didn't want to be I remember we like we used to do call recordings and listen back and if you could hear someone tapping on the keyboard while they were listening to a candidate it was like just sounded shocking you're like you're not listening you can't type it so you're not responding at the moment you're not asking better questions you're not actually providing a solution you're just fucking no you're a dictator or dictaphone so
Basically, I tried not to type.And I definitely didn't use my handwriting because it was a waste of time.So I would always try and remember.And my memory is, I'd say, I don't know how you measure it, but I know I've got a good memory.
I can probably remember something that's happened every single month since about 20, 20, 20, 2003.On the month, I remember something.It's a bit mental.So my memory at work used to call me like Rain Man.
They'd be like, who's that candidate who did that?I'd be like, Bong.And they'd be like, how the fuck does he know?Anyway. And I'd still struggle with rates and dates.So I'd go like, he sat down $5.50 or $5.75 a day, not sure.
Is it finishing in March or April?And it was always pop-up.And you'd phone them up and you'd always have to confirm everything.
So I'm like, if every time I had that call that was measured and tracked, I could just say, tell me now five people that are within this rate or available from this date.And that just changed everything.
That's what we're actually building.So currently, if you use Atlas now, you'll realize, you'll notice that essentially if someone utters a salary, it puts it into a salary box.
So as soon as you put the phone down, it will say, salary, current salary is X. It automatically fills that.
What about manager names?Because that's another one.The industry is obsessed with getting leads, right?Who do you work for?I work for Jordan. So like, again, trying to get that name written down, remembered.
You could do all the best work in the world to navigate that conversation and then not quite get the name right and it could be difficult.Or someone's accent was difficult or whatever.Is there any way you could...
So when I use Atlas and BD calls, I've made a template so you don't have to rely on a question asked to somebody.You can make your own template and you can write your template.Were there any managers mentioned?
Can you outline what the names were and where they work?So that you can just apply that template again and again.
So I have it for... How do you apply it?I mean like you finish the call then you... It's applied.
So the call's transcribing all the time.And then it goes into the note function with the template attacks?Yeah.Right.And then it populates the fields as well?
Yeah, you're right.It will essentially, after the FAD, listen to the call again, get your instructions, and write the notes to the instructors you've given it.
What about things like... And again, it might be on the roadmap, but like diary management? That's the assistant, isn't it?Like, when I'm actually free, do I really need to go and reach out to that candidate to get that exact time slot?
Or could they argue it via email or whatever?Could I just say, look, you need to find me a slot for Peter Johnson on X-Week to get in.And the hiring manager's calendar availability is this.That'd be pretty cool.
The first thing we built, actually, canonlove.com.We're taking it down now, because we built that the first thing, and it's funny, people just didn't like to interact with it.It was a fully semantic engine, and I would use it for all my interviews.
It was Amy.I was thinking more in an email.
Oh, yeah, it was an email.It was Amy, was my assistant's name, AI assistant, Amy.What was her last name?Something to do with eye. And it was fun, but it just, I don't know, people just didn't want to do it.
A lot of the recruiters told us, actually, I use this slot to reconfirm things.Yeah, true.So I want to have the calls and scheduling.Now what we are doing, so the AI scheduling system on Atlas,
when I go to hit schedule on the system, because it knows everything you know, it will say, before you've written anything, it will say, right, you've agreed these three slots, which one should we start with?That one.
Then it populates the whole slot based on the conversations it's found and say, okay, that looks right.Yeah.Submit.Next one, this.So it's all about the little wins.
Instead of you organize it on the calendar, then you've got to open up there, say what have I ordered there, have I got that there, where's that going to be?It throws all of that out.
So that's three minutes saved there, three minutes saved here, and that all really adds up because then you forget with all this kind of faff,
that invades the focus time that you have, you can just really focus and say, right, in the next three hours, heads down, let's get some BD done.Let's do 30 calls, 40 calls.And you have to worry, oh, F, did I forget to schedule that interview there?
This is the stuff that you shouldn't have to worry about anymore.
I've got a lot of notes from your product, so I just wanted to refresh myself quickly.So this co-pilot feature says here, Atlas stores everything your entire company says, hears, reads, and writes.
Imagine you can recall your entire company's knowledge with a sentence.How do you practically use it?
Is it like a search file?It looks exactly like chat.On the right-hand side of a person, client or person, there is a box.Could you say something like,
Who was the guy I placed at Miller Insurance Brokers in 2013?
No.No.Because the problem with AI is that it's the context.You have to give it a set amount of information.It can handle it one time. So you have to be very specific about it.
Who was the male?Which placement did I make in January 2013 to Milan and Chortlew?
But we haven't created a context for that.So we first created it around the person.So we have an AI around each person. but we haven't gotten around a company or around projects yet.And we probably will get there.
The way we think about it is we just ask our customers, what things do you want to see next?
Yeah, I think what you're focusing on is the most important bit, right, is this big vacuum of data that people have got, which, you know, they're all running around LinkedIn sending fucking emails, but they've already got the data, most people.
They just don't know how to access it.That's correct, yeah.So you're saying, I like in a CRM, to most people's CRM behavior, like going shopping,
fucking starving, go to Sainsbury's, spend 150 quid, fill your freezer and fridge, eat one meal, and then go starving again, three hours later, and just go straight back to Sainsbury's and do that again, and just leave the fridge to just decompose and die.
That's what they're doing, right?And what you're saying is, this food is available on an online basis now, we've got direct access to everything, and we're not relying on your quality notes and tagging to make sure the data's accurate.
The data itself will tell us what we need to know.
If I'm off on holiday for two weeks, people would have to think, oh God, she knows about this candidate, maybe I'll give them a quick call.Anything that I know is on the system.
It's not going to ever be something that's going to help you make really slight informed decisions, but it's there to bring back the things.
Things like, I'm writing a report, and there's this anecdote which, in my opinion, shows some really, like, resilience.What was that story?I can just say, remind me of that story that they mentioned.
So it gives me the story, great, pop it in, now I've got a great kind of report.I can look to the client like I'm the most knowledgeable person alive.
Because I can then almost create an electronic version of the client to say, will the client like this person?But based on the last six months of conversations where he's like, this and not that, yes or no.That's interesting.Yeah.
In fact, we interviewed for an AQA for Atlas.And Pavel, my VP of engineering, he said, oh, I had a candidate, but I just didn't feel he had quite the drive we need.
So, instead of asking, I went to the Paddwell's Tranship and I wrote, oh, Paddwell didn't feel this person had drive.What aspects did you feel?And he gave me three examples.And I said, oh, Paddwell, were these three things?
He was like, yeah, that's exactly what he said.So, like, Jesus Christ. It's amazing, you're busy now working on code, I have to say, Pavel, stop coding, let's discuss and debrief.
He gave me his bullet points and I can figure out the rest because I had everything.
I think it's the synopsis that's the most important thing.We've got Fathom AI for our Zoom calls, I can see how they work. and the beauty of Fathom for me has been being able to summarize everything.
I don't really want to watch the 55 minute recording, I just like reading the notes and the notes are so good.I know you're bringing this into your products in the future, right?It's already there.
Zoom.It works on Google Meet and Teams.
To be honest, Teams I think is more prevalent in our industry than Zoom anyway.We've had to go in an order.Zoom is going to be one we need to crack.
No one asked for Teams that much, although it's happening more now.Adding Zoom is six days work.We ask, what would you rather us do?
What about from a data perspective?One of the big things around Cube 19 was a huge product because of the data it could pull out.And we used to use one called Insight Square.Have you heard of that?I haven't.
So basically, you'd have Bullhorn, and then you'd pull out, you know, the reporting capability was so basic that you'd have to use a third-party software to be able to create dashboards and slice and dice the data based on what, you know, I want to look at my
CV sent this month versus six months prior?Are we on track?All that kind of stuff.Revenue, deals, everything's in there.Have you got a management information dashboard?
Yes, we do.This was one where we actually embedded another company called Metabase.Dashboarding is really complex and really hard. and it's so easy to get it wrong.
And so we thought, look, we have a focus and it's a large problem we're trying to solve, but we cannot do everything.
Instead of, we could sellotape together a dashboard, but Metabase, our partner, their company is literally, we build a product that you can embed into SaaS applications.So it's So they've already thought about it?
Yeah, it's beautiful, I can spin up things easily, clients can spin things up.
Is that included in the platform?Yeah.So they don't have to pay extra?
Wow.We have to pay unfortunately, but that's part of our costs.That's a great thing though, I think it is.
Because I think part of the pain for a lot of our customers is, so I've got to buy your CRM, and then I've got to pay a load for that, and then I've got to have that bolt on, and that bolt on, and that bolt on, and before you know it,
fucking expensive.And if you can take a lot of hit and try and build in a complete package.
Which is why we're kind of going, because we've got a lot now, but a lot of time people say, where's the to-do lists?It's the one thing which I get.And I say, look, we're going to get to the to-do lists.
I have a very clear vision of what the AI to-do list looks like, but I don't want to spend three weeks of time bolting together some garbage to-do list.
because this is not atlas like you have you've had 20 years of CRM saying we've got all the features and then you go on them and you're like well you okay you've got it theoretically you've got it but it sucks and
So I'm trying to change narrative and say, look, I'm not gonna do that yet.I will do it probably around this date, and that's that.
If you really need a to-do list now, and you don't want to use Monday or Trello or Notion, then we're not yet the product for you, and that's absolutely fine.But when we get there, and we will, we'll come and have a conversation.
You can't please everyone.Right, this is my final question around the product, because I think if I look at my historical partners, support has always been the biggest problem, right?
So, you know, especially when a company grows and gets more users on there, you know, how do you cater for everyone?You know, from the guy who was one of your first customers to that huge enterprise client.
So what is your approach now and what is going to be your approach in the future to supporting people?
Yeah, so currently it's me and Eric and we're 24-7.We have a Slack channel for all the early adopters.It literally never stops as well.It does not stop.Do you get any sleep?Not much, not much.
But you know, having three kids, I'm used to no sleep now.So it's a peaceful time in the evenings.It's really important support.
We are using Intercom firstly, so what we try and do is we make, instead of making ridiculous webinars, another hour long webinar, it's just questions or problems always, I can't do this, how do I do that?
So Intercom's got this amazing AI system where you write a question and it uses the, it gives you the answer based on the whole help desk.So we essentially film these little one minute videos and steps for every single question.
And so the first line is someone will come into Intercom and say, how do I do that?And if we've asked the question, it will say, this is the way, here's a video from Jordan, do you have anything else?
And as soon as, if they want to talk to a human within a minute or two, Eric or I are there, and that's how we aim to keep it.So Intercom are finding 89% of requests coming in are answered satisfactorily without coming to us.
But I always say, you know, when you're on Slack, I'm there anytime.You know my email, give me a shout.On intercom, you just hit speak to a person.When you're on board, you have my calendar again.
Like, as simple as we've made the system, I understand that it's a complex system.It's the core of a people, someone's business.And therefore, you've got to make sure that there's a human a minute away when someone needs it.
Because it's someone's livelihood and someone's business, and you need to be cognizant that.
That's not scalable to be you, Eric?No, not at all.So you will build a team around it?
Absolutely.We're already beginning to hire first people.So plan is, we have a rough estimate, but the concept is that
you should be able to speak to someone within a certain time frame, a minute or two, and I'm gonna obviously be training the client, so my next job of the many hats you wear is head of customer service.
I think Parker Conrad from Rippling is a $13 billion business, he's still customer service is his title.So that'll be my next thing, so I'll build that team myself, and that's gonna be built in a very different way.
It's very much, the job title, the job is on LinkedIn currently, and it reads very differently. I want someone who really wants to learn the business, to actually play around with it, use it as a user for a month before they answer any queries.
They need to understand the product, they need to be involved in every time you release what's new, give it a try, so that you can say, okay, Mr. Customer, this is how I use it.
I'm not just reading the help desk that you're reading, I actually have used it because I also speak regularly to Jordan.
I must say, HubSpot is a platform we use and they've gone well.They've done really well with that.They're a US-based business, global provider, but you can usually get a call back within a few minutes or someone's on chat and they're really good.
They're really responsive, they understand your questions. You can tell it's a person, they've nailed it.I'm sure you were on top of things like that.
It's important for people, isn't it?I think that's the hard thing about this industry, isn't it?This software rec tech. There's so many things you want to cover.It's not just here's a product that does something cool.There's other aspects.
So how do you see the business and the product growing and the way you'll grow the business?Is it going to be similar angel investment every year?What's your strategy on this front?
It's a great question.So fortunately, because I've had one success, You know, the capital's been easier this time.We have some really amazing investors that backed me once that are coming in again, which I'm very, very grateful for.
And we've raised, you know, I think we've raised nearly two million bucks of pre-seed.We don't really need any more, to be honest. And the waitlist currently will gouse to profitability immediately.
We haven't even shouted about it yet, which is exciting.It's bananas.So maybe it's the right thing to do a round next, I don't know.But we think that we can give the big bullhorn a run for their money.
Not next year, but in the next few years, I'm sure. It's, this is a, this is a quantum shift change.And it's not just, oh, Atlas against, we're doing it and no one else is.
It's just we are the first people that have got the privilege to build a CRM after generative AI.And because we've done that, it means our technology stack is the right for purpose, whereas no one else's are.
And having built a business before, it's almost, if I will say, is impossible. to replicate.One thing I put on LinkedIn last week was saying, we are 18 months into GPT-4, 18 months, a year and a half.
If your CRM provider has not built proper AI by this point, do you really think it's around the corner?So I think with that in mind, we've got a clear run.
If we execute well, have a bit of luck, delight the customers, we can hopefully become a real player in this industry.
Amazing. So if we look at now, where do you see yourself?Is it a five year play?I know you obviously don't have a crystal ball, but what do you see in the future for this business and for you personally?
Because you talked about being involved in the build and loving the build.How do you feel about the Atlas build?
There is many years of building left, I'd say.So it's tough to crystal ball.Generally, I love building.These are the happiest work moments, I would say, is this stage.
And getting to build businesses like this and working with some of the amazing people we've got is tremendous.It's just so energising, so much fun. What is Bullhorn's last revenue publicly, like $300 million, $400 million?
I've got a long way to go to get there, but that is obviously clearly the quantum, the size you can build a business in this industry.And I don't really want to build another one after this one.I think I'd be quite happy just building this one.
Do you have a goal or something per, obviously you've got three kids, how old are your kids by the way?Five, three, and eight.
nine months, three quarters.
Similar to me then in the little one.
What's driving you to be sort of like, you've done really well, you could probably live a nice life without working that hard if you measure your management spending correctly, but you're not doing that, you're going for the bulwark, you're swinging for the fence, right?
Why?What's driving it?What's the point?
Why do you care?No, I think, look, as I've said to many people, I'm not, Obviously, I am money driven, right?Everyone is, to an extent, money driven.
But for me, what is success, and I repeat this all the time, is I want to send my three kids to private school, I want to go to the IKOS resort in Greece twice a year, and I want to live in Hampstead.That's kind of my three things.
You don't need 300 million for that.
That reminds me so much of my conversation with my coach a few years ago.I mean, my number was only 5 million that I wanted in the bank. not 300 million revenues, but I said, I want 5 million in cash.And my boss, my coach was like, all right, cool.
Paint the picture of your life at that point.And I told him.And he started laughing his head off.And I was like, what are you laughing at?He goes, it's not what I expected.I said, why?He goes, because I'm still waiting for the bit you need 5 million.
And really, I wanted to live in this house I've got now.I wanted my kids to go to a great school.I wanted to go on holiday every six weeks. I do that now anyway.I don't have anywhere near 5 million in the bank.I love building.
It's not about a monetary value then or a side project that comes off, it's actually the joy of doing it.
Yeah, I mean look, this is the joy of, maybe it's the exploratory part of it, this is a new technology. Everyone's running around thinking, what on earth are we going to use it for?There's so much potential.
And to get to be at the bleeding edge of this, to say, actually, those peeps are doing that.I think we should do that.And no one really has the right answer.We'll find out in a bit of time.That's just really good fun.
And then, obviously, it's just the competition of, like, you know.And you almost create the competition, like, oh, these guys, they're big now.We're going to get bigger than them.Because it's just fun.It's just fun.But you are right.
it's not for me it's not money and I've put that into paper because you know with this one because of my my first business being successful I had a much larger share of the second one, me and my co-founder together own the lion's share of this business and I've already signed a pledge to give a huge amount, so all the team have got options and more options than
than you would get any other company.But on top of that, I think I'm pledging over half my stake now to the team upon any success.
So one of my driving ambitions is, I don't know where it came from, but I really wanted to be able to say, I made a business that got 50 people onto the property ladder.I'm not quite sure where that came from.And I got a few with ProSapien.
But generally, I just think to myself, do you know what, Jordan?
you know you're lucky to be running this business and you've got some amazing talented people but so often people join startups and even if it goes well they'll make you know they can make a really nice chunk of money but it's never going to be retirement money and I thought you know what
let's say it was 500 million, some bonanza success, and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, what do I need that much money for?And if I could say, you know what, team, you literally, you've done equally hard nights than what I have.
This is not only mine.That is probably the ambition to say that I could achieve this and help other people.And that does, and if I get that, then I'm probably, that's pretty much all of my business aims covered.
My final question was one that was written by a previous guest.I always ask the previous guest now to give a question for a future guest.And they said, when did you know you wanted to be a business owner entrepreneur and why?
You've kind of answered that around, I think your dad would be the biggest inspiration, am I right?So what age do you think you knew, I wanna be like dad?
When I was 10, it's quite funny.
I was a weird kid. A very good friend of mine, Adam, I'm not going to give you his last name because only I should take the embarrassment that he doesn't deserve it, but we made the business club.The business club?When we were 10.What was that?
It was a club to make business, Sean.It was the business club and we were 10 year old.How do you make business happen?
so we make schemes and one of them was this magazine we made so I grabbed my dad's digital camera at the time that was like a very early stage big old thing and I'd take pictures around the school and I'd make little cartoons of the school when I was one
and that was called the Wire Mag, sold that for 50p a go, made a good £10 there.We did one raffle where we found, there was a chocolate called Astro, if you remember, they were like these little chocolate balls.
And they went out, obviously they didn't sell for very long, so I found like, obviously there was a corner shop that had like the overage of them, so I bought the overage pack and did a raffle, you know, made a return on the raffle for that one.
The business club was a thing?The business club.£30 profit I think in year one.Unfortunately it didn't last into secondary school.I had to go through puberty then.You definitely had an early adoption.
I would go the opposite.I mean I did some early things but I thought the way you say the business in this funny word, I actually thought the businessman was a job. I thought it was someone's job title.You wore a suit, you were a businessman.
I thought that was a job.I was like, you're a teacher, you're a doctor, you're a businessman.I don't know any of them, so I can't really relate to them. Jordan, thank you so much.We've rambled and I think we've explored your background.
I hope people feel more connected to you as we launch this partnership and as your platform is now ready to go.Obviously, people can check out with recruitwithatlas.com.We're going to set up that link for people to check it out.
If people just want to ask you questions, LinkedIn's a good place to get you.
You can ping me on LinkedIn, absolutely.
Do you want to give your email out as well?
Do you want that for the rest of the people listening?I don't know.They can if they want to.It's Jordan at RecruitWithAtlas.com.Ping me any questions there. AI will reply now.AI will reply, yes.
Jordan is on it, by the way, he's on it.Look, obviously we're going to be in touch with you throughout.There's lots of discussion about the platform through the show.
I want to get you on again in less than 12 months' time to see the progress, how we're getting on.And it is live and available for people to start using right now.It is indeed.
All right.Finally.Good luck.Thank you so much, Sean.Appreciate you having me.
Pleasure. Thank you as always for listening to today's show.I truly hope that you got value from it.
Honestly, it's the only reason I take time every week to ensure that my audience, you guys, future and existing recruitment owners, you're learning from each other to make this industry that I love so much stronger.
And today's episode is brought to you by my business, Hoxho.I'm the CEO and founder, and we're on a mission to help brand recruitment agencies and their people better.
I want to help people have the tools to stand out in the most competitive markets in the world.So I'll see you again next week with another episode.Catch you soon.
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