Companies come in two forms. Either they are copycats who simple copy and paste of existing business models, or they are disruptors, those who bring something to the table that has never been seen before. Loosemonkies clearly and vehemently falls in the later form. For those of you unaware, Loosmonkies is an online job search platform, the likes of which you have probably never seen before. For now, lets just say that it’s a site for match-making of jobs. Recently SD ASIA had the opportunity to have a chat with Loosemonkies founder and CEO Nadim Rahman to get a glimpse into how disruptions are made.
Tell us a little about Loosemonkies, what does it do?
Loosemonkies is a job search website with a twist. Quite simple, almost all job boards that have popped up recently, globally, take a very basic approach. You go there, upload a resume, browse vacant job postings and you apply to those jobs using your resume. This wastes time for both the applicants and employers since both groups have to weave through thousands of jobs and resumes, respectively, to find the best-fit ones.
Loosemonkies, on the other hand, does the ‘weaving’ for you. All you need to do is fill out your profile on the website and their own search engine will take care of the rest. It will take your skills, education, experience, location and many other factors into account, search thousands of jobs to find the ones that require your skill sets and recommend the jobs found for you. It is intelligently displayed as a match percentage score, in a rank format where the jobs which you are most compatible with are at the top and the jobs you are least compatible with are at the bottom. In addition, you can post your own video resume as well as add content to your portfolio section. It has taken the match-making websites and job boards to bring the best of both worlds together.
One of our primary goals is to help save time for both job seekers and employers. Loosemonkies assumes the responsibility of the ‘actual’ search onto itself and further provides employers a premium search feature that allows them to find candidates who haven’t applied to the job but have a strong match.
What is the business model? How do you guys make money?
Our business model is quite straightforward. We charge a fee per job post that an employer wants to publish. Discounted packaged pricing is also available for bigger amounts of job postings. We also charge an additional fee for our very popular passive seekers list to the employer. The passive seeker list, also known as the resume/profile bank is a list of all the candidates in the system that have not applied to the job yet but may have strong matches.
How’d you start?
Back in 1998, I started up a company with Mr. Reza Arif Arfin. We made LCD screens for Telephones and other consumer products. The company was a joint venture with Taiwanese company. We initially started with some seed capital and although we had our rough patches we eventually became a success when the company in Taiwan went public in 2010. That was our goal, and we achieved it but we were pondering on what to do next. So, one fine day in Boston I met up with Mr. Arfin and we talked about a multitude of things and while conversing the idea of making a better job board popped up. The idea came as we started talking about a problem which we faced frequently; recruiting employees for our company. At that point the whole recruitment process was tedious, we would sit and read piles after piles of resumes. Even the head hunting companies that we hired were inefficient since they just threw even more resumes our way. It was really frustrating for us, and, probably for other HR managers too, so we decided to come up with a job board that makes their lives a bit easier. All the particulars for loosemonkies, the way it functions, its business model, fee structure etc came to us over the next year but that meeting in Boston, was truly the start of it all.
What challenges did you face?
We faced certain technical challenges. The product was so advanced that it could not be created by mediocre coders. Thankfully we recruited amazing people in Bangladesh who were experienced and gifted enough to handle the job well. For the final stage of the product we also took the help of some brilliant coders from North America and finished the product within due time.
Another challenge that we faced would definitely be communication. The product was technically very complex so explaining what it did and how it was different, to potential clients, proved difficult, in the early stages at least. This was partly due the fact that there wasn’t a product similar to it in the market, hence there was nothing you could reference it to. For instance, if you open a social networking site then you can always say that its ‘like faebook’ because facebook is similar to what you are launching but for loosemonkies there was nothing ‘similar’ already out there to relate it to.
What stage of financing are you in?
Currently we are at the angel round but we are talking to VC’s for series A financing.
What were your best moments with loosemonkies?
In 2012 went an expo called SHRM in Atlanta Georgia. At that point we neither had money or a finished product and to top it all off our booth was way in the back and to get to us you had to pass all the big shots and their booths. However, even with all these odds stacked against us, we still amassed a very large crowed and were the busiest both at that expo. Also, later we were voted as one the most promising startups and people remembered us from that.
Another great moment came last September in Bangladesh. We had a soft opening for our product, nothing too big, and ended up with over 6000 job seekers overnight with 10-15 thousand people signing up within the next couple of days.
Worst ones?
I ran a startup before so you really couldn’t surprise me with a crisis that I would consider to be a bad moment during the journey of Loosemonkies. However, I will say that when you understand both sides of the coin, both the technical and the marketing aspect of the product, its your job to keep everyone on point, trying to marry these things together was hard.
What advice would you give to people who have just opened their own startup?
My advice to those who have just opened up a startup is to be aware that there will be ups and downs all along the way, but it is those entrepreneurs who are capable of weathering the storms that win at the end. Have a clear vision, work very hard, and go after it until the end.
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