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Kathryn Minshew. She\\u2019s the CEO of founder of TheMuse.com, a career platform that is used by over 50M folks to find jobs, learn professional skills or advance in their careers. This platform is also used by hundreds of companies looking to grow their employer brand and to hire. Kathryn is a Harvard and Wall Street Journal contributor and she\\u2019s spoken at MIT in Harvard along with the Today\\u2019s Show. She\\u2019s been named The Smart CEO\\u2019s Future 50, INC\\u2019s 35 under 35 and a Duke alum. Kathryn worked at Rwanda and Health Access Initiative and before founding The Muse, she was previously at McKinsey.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \\u2013 The Hard Thing About Hard Things and Traction
• What CEO do you follow? \\u2013\\xa0 Jennifer Hyman, Elon Musk and Jeremy Johnson
• Favorite online tool? \\u2014 Boomerang and Pocket
• How many hours of sleep do you get?\\u2014 7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \\u2013 Kathryn wished she knew it was okay to be different and everything that is worth doing is hard

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:42 \\u2013 Nathan introduces Kathryn to the show
• 01:35 \\u2013 The Muse was founded to be the most trusted and beloved place for people to navigate their career
• 01:42 \\u2013 The Muse is a marketplace with over 50M people who uses the site annually
• 02:00 \\u2013 The Muse has over 600 companies which they help in hiring and employment
• 02:25 \\u2013 \\u201cIf you want really great people, you have to compete for them\\u201d
• 03:00 \\u2013 The companies can reach more candidates through The Muse
• 03:19 \\u2013 The Muse is a SaaS-enabled marketplace
• 03:31 \\u2013 The Muse somehow competes with LinkedIn Recruit and Glassdoor
• 04:05 \\u2013 Most companies in The Muse sign up for an annual subscription
• 04:24 \\u2013 Average pricing is $20-30K but enterprise is higher than the mid-market businesses
• 04:54 \\u2013 The Muse works with every business size in every industry
• • 05:04 \\u2013 The businesses are categorized by team size
• 05:25 \\u2013 Companies that are subscribed have access to different tools on the website
• 06:11 \\u2013 The marketplace on TheMuse.com is where companies can post their profiles and job listings
• 06:21 \\u2013 The Muse has also developed more products
• 06:41 \\u2013 One of The Muse\\u2019s client has 50K to 150K employees
• 07:29 \\u2013 The Muse also assists their Fortune 100 companies on their existing channels
• 08:12 \\u2013 The Muse started targeting individual users
• 08:24 \\u2013 The Muse was launched in 2011 having career related tools and content for individuals
• 08:31 \\u2013 The Muse rolled out their first company profile after hitting 100K website visits per month
• 08:41 \\u2013 The Muse have never had advertising on the website
• 08:58 \\u2013 The Muse had their first 100K users in 6 months
• 09:05 \\u2013 The initial cash for The Muse came from Kathryn\\u2019s savings
• • 09:39 \\u2013 When Kathryn left McKinsey, she had $25K in savings
  • 09:50 \\u2013 Then Kathryn got an offer to work at Rwanda
  • 10:28 \\u2013 Kathryn was 25 at the time
• 10:56 \\u2013 Kathryn has always thought that savings equate to freedom
• 11:34 \\u2013 When Kathryn came back from Rwanda, she started a business similar to The Muse
• • 13:02 \\u2013 Kathryn spent $20K on her first company
  • 13:23 \\u2013 With only $5K left in savings, Kathryn together with her co-founder started The Muse
  • 13:45 \\u2013 Kathryn tried to keep her expenses low
• 14:24 \\u2013 Kathryn started The Muse because she had all the questions and wanted answers
• 14:29 \\u2013 The community then gave Kathryn the answers
• 15:02 \\u2013 The Muse initially had 50 articles giving career advice and providing resources
• 15:10 \\u2013 The first job listing was posted after a month as a test
• 15:29 \\u2013 The Muse used to get paid for the job listing but it doesn\\u2019t work that way now
• 16:17 \\u2013 Kathryn shares how the conversation happened between her and the co-founders
• • 17:11 \\u2013 They wanted to work and make it happen
  • 17:25 \\u2013 The equity between them is almost even
• 17:54 \\u2013 The Muse raised a round for $100K in 2012 and got into Y-combinator
• 18:41 \\u2013 The Muse raised $10M in a series A in 2015, and $16M in a Series B: Q1 of 2017
• 19:12 \\u2013 The Muse is closed to breaking even
• 19:31 \\u2013 There are different ways in building a business and there\\u2019s no one perfect path
• 19:53 \\u2013 The Muse has 600 active businesses
• • 20:10 \\u2013 Some companies just closed or got acquired
• 21:35 \\u2013 Average revenue
• 23:05 \\u2013 The Famous Five
• 23:32 \\u2013 Kathryn\\u2019s book The New Rules of Work

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3 Key Points:

• You can start a business with minimal means and still grow it into a profitable one.
• There is no one perfect path to building a business.
• If a task or venture is hard, that\\u2019s a good sign it\\u2019s worth it.

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Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox\\xa0 \\u2013 The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio \\u2013 Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar \\u2013 Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you\\u2019re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling \\u2013 Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator\\xa0\\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible\\xa0\\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he\\u2019s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives