740: He's Helped 20,000 Land a Job, $4m Raised, $200k MRR
Chau Nguyen. He\u2019s the founder and CEO of Hirewire, an on-demand hiring app for hourly workers. In his previous venture, Chau hired over 20K people only to realize his hiring process was broken\u2014and that\u2019s when he got the idea for Hirewire. To date, Chau has raised $4.1M in funding.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? \u2013 Good to Great
- What CEO do you follow? \u2013 Elon Musk
- Favorite online tool? \u2014 Slack
- How many hours of sleep do you get?\u2014 5
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \u2013 \u201cThere is no replacement for hard work\u201d
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Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:14 \u2013 Nathan introduces Chau to the show
- 01:47 \u2013 Chau\u2019s previous venture was Campus Special
- 01:50 \u2013 It\u2019s an online platform for college students
- 02:00 \u2013 They had 4K sales representatives meeting merchants
- 02:11 \u2013 Chau had Campus Special for 8.5 years before selling to a public company a few years back
- 02:28 \u2013 Chau was 25 when he launched Campus Special and he\u2019s 36 now
- 02:47 \u2013 Campus Special was doing $15M in revenue when he sold it for $25M
- 03:45 \u2013 The negotiation was just about what the buyers would pay for it
- 03:55 \u2013 It was bittersweet for Chau to sell Campus Special but still proud of it
- 04:27 \u2013 Chau owned 100% of Campus Special
- 05:00 \u2013 Chau stayed on board with the acquirer for a year
- 05:30 \u2013 Chau thought that he can use his past experience in hiring
- 06:15 \u2013 With Hirewire, Chau saw the need to invest heavily on the product and technology, hence the fund raise
- 06:29 \u2013 Initial raised was $2M and the next round was $2M as well
- 06:36 \u2013 Both rounds are convertible note
- 06:47 \u2013 Hirewire is a marketplace where employers and job seekers can connect
- 06:52 \u2013 It is a mobile app to speed up the process
- 07:00 \u2013 There\u2019s chatting with images and videos
- 07:06 \u2013 Next release will be focused on on-demand hiring
- 07:25 \u2013 Hirewire has a monthly subscription for employers and free for applicants
- 08:10 \u2013 Hirewire has a pay as you go model for small businesses
- 08:20 \u2013 The monthly subscription is usually for big companies like McDonalds
- 08:40 \u2013 Hirewire\u2019s core customer based are the recurring customers
- 08:48 \u2013 Hirewire focuses on the restaurant industry which has the highest turnover
- 09:08 \u2013 Hirewire charges per location per month, starting at $50 to $100 depending on usage
- 09:53 \u2013 Hirewire was first launched in Atlanta and was on beta for year
- 10:00 \u2013 They launched with nothing
- 10:24 \u2013 In one year, Hirewire got 4K employers to sign up, over 100K job seekers with around 1K people hired
- 10:56 \u2013 Hirewire has 2 drivers that allowed them to grow quickly
- 11:00 \u2013 First is hitting a pain point
- 11:44 \u2013 Second is doing the application online
- 12:14 \u2013 Hirewire is in 4K locations with 5K hiring managers
- 12:30 \u2013 Some locations can have at least 2 hiring managers
- 12:40 \u2013 Average MRR is a little over 200K
- 13:06 \u2013 Hirewire has been and is still testing pricing
- 13:31 \u2013 Gross customer churn
- 13:40 \u2013 A restaurant\u2019s churn could be 100-200% like losing an entire team
- 13:56 \u2013 Prior to launch, Chau was really afraid of what will happen but still think that they make the hiring process easier and faster
- 14:19 \u2013 Ultimately, people will stay where they\u2019re happy and making money
- 14:31 \u2013 Hirewire is retaining 95% of the employees which makes the churn 5%
- 14:50 \u2013 Team size is around 15 based in Atlanta
- 15:07 \u2013 Hirewire does paid acquisition
- 15:17 \u2013 50% of the job seekers are from organic traffic
- 15:23 \u2013 Hirewire also uses social media channels to drive users and has spends $10-25K monthly
- 15:54 \u2013 Freightos has a marketplace model plus SaaS
- 16:38 \u2013 Chau\u2019s goal for Hirewire is to be very sticky with high retention on the employer side
- 17:19 \u2013 Hirewire is not making money on the marketplace aspect and just on the SaaS aspect
- 19:10 \u2013 The Famous Five
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3 Key Points:
- You can\u2019t stay at where you are forever, change is constant so move on and start anew.
- Leverage what you\u2019ve learned in the past to create something that can refine the system.
- Always test your product first.
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Resources Mentioned:
- The Top Inbox \u2013 The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- 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\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible\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