Angel investment no.2 — Genie
It’s important to me that my fortunate place on the Ada Ventures angel program isn’t one that only I learn from, but something others can too. So I’m sharing my experiences here on Medium for you to read if you wish. If you find anything here helpful, please do comment & clap at the bottom of the post!
In a world powered by technology, the recruitment process is generally quite broken. The model of taking a large % of someone’s annual salary as a fee for brokering deals between people looking for jobs and employers looking for talent seems like an area that’s ripe for huge disruption but the main area of innovation we keep seeing is in the space of jobs boards specifically. There has to be a better way than to arbitrage CVs and cold call.
Well now, there is.
Genie is the talent agent of the future. It uses conversational AI to connect the right talent to the right roles at the right companies, instantly, for the betterment of all sides, creating a more efficient, cost-effective experience for all involved.
So how does it work?
It’s actually quite simple really. While, yes, it is powered by a complex algorithm that constantly learns how to better do its job, the premise is that jobs are looking for people with specific skills and people are looking for roles of a certain specification. This is already the kind of data that we use on job sites when we search for roles but, if the platform knows we’re looking and knows a company is looking for us, why doesn’t it just pair us — like a dating app might — and let us get to the good stuff (interviews, hiring, etc)?
Genie is specifically focused on the creative industry, for now, where roles are [ironically, given the creative nature] fairly easily often categorised by seniority, specialism, past experience, rate, with the variable factor in visually creative roles being the portfolio. In this instance, Genie will ask the employer, in its own conversational style, questions that create a virtual job spec and once it has these, find a number of people looking for work on the platform for roles, instantly pinging them and creating a conversational flow with them too.
The way Genie is set up means that after just a few pings back and forth the best person for the job can potentially be placed in the role, with much of the previously manual back and forth being leapfrogged to get to the good stuff: human conversations assessing cultural-fit, expectations and discussing the finer details before signing contracts (which can be done via Genie too).
Why did I invest?
There are a few reasons I am betting on Genie…
- Recruitment is a space that’s long overdue for proper disruption, i.e. a Paradigm shift that creates a new status quo for the industry. It won’t happen overnight but a company that does what Uber did for the taxi industry may just make that happen, and with profitable business learnings from Uber’s story too.
- The technology, at scale, will do remarkable things — it already works well for some fantastic companies at a relatively early stage for the lifecycle of the company but extrapolating the potential for what Genie could do is where things get really exciting. What if it wasn’t just the creative industry? And what if the technology keeps getting smarter? How many types of roles could be filled instantly? Especially with remote work opportunities continuing to grow. Is there a future where Genie could bring down the average hiring time & cost by a good margin? I think so.
- They’ve lived the problem — many of the team were headhunters in past professions, which means they not only know the space deeply, but they are also well-honed salespeople, which bodes well for business development — a vital component of a business at an early stage (and proving itself as a solid bet to make with early financials looking very good, with monthly updates in the green, regularly showing the company ahead of time across all tracked metrics).
- They’re a little further along — one of the things I’ve come to realise and learn more about along the process of the Ada Ventures angel program is how important (and fun!) portfolio creation can be. Being able to balance risk among different stage companies (within a reasonable bracket defined by thesis), while considering the sectors/products of the companies you’re investing in— and how they might relate to each other — I’ve come to realise, is a science and an art. I’ve only done 4.5 deals now Genie being deal #2 with an article on deal #3 coming soon) which is a tiny portfolio in the grand scheme of things but I’m finding it incredibly rewarding to be able to connect portfolio companies together as you’re able to directly impact growth and opportunities through introductions for partnerships, supply chain, and shared learning. For example, Playerstate and Genie could well work together one day, given they’re both focused on powering the way people find & do work as creators. More on Playerstate here to help understand how that might be the case.
So this rounds up my overview on deal #2 via the Ada Ventures Angel Programme. Hopefully, these pieces help to understand my thinking behind these deals and I hope to look back at them in time to see if my assessments were correct… time will tell!
In the meantime, check out Genie here.
