I met with Bryan Starbuck, CEO of TalentSpring,
at Louisa's, my favorite coffee jaunt on Eastlake. As we were sitting
down, I asked him what market he operated in. He told me recruiting. I
smiled and kindly told him that Founder's Co-op
would not be a good capital source for him. With unemployment going to
10+% in the near term, we definately didn't like the recruiting
marketplace as a market to be investing. I told him it was nothing
personal and nothing about his company and that I'd be glad to listen
to his pitch and see how else I might be able to help him. Well, I'll
be the first to admit it -- 30 minutes later, my initial assumptions
about TalentSpring were very wrong.
After learning
about what Bryan is doing, I think TalentSpring is a very interesting
company with lots of potential. Simply put, he helps big and small
companies deal with the generation and filtering of resumes to arrive
at a pool of 100 resumes that a human should look at and sift through.
TalentSpring uses very sophisticated algorithms and processes to filter
through thousands of resumes so a human recruiter can start with the
best qualified base of potential candidates. The company charges big
companies an enterprise fee which is small enough ($500K+) when
considering the value of getting high quality candidates into the right
positions. Even in an economy with lots of unemployment, his business
makes lots of sense.
Kudos to Bryan for ignoring my
initial protestations and methodically taking me through his pitch.
More Kudos to Bryan for making such an interesting company with such
potential. I think Bryan may still have an issue with his cost of sale
and perhaps with his valuation in this round....but he definately has
the makings for a decent size business!
