FounderHire
Find a job that values IndieHacker talent
Given the last experiment, I've decided to sunset FounderHire. The alternative would be to niche down in search of companies searching to entrepreneurial, but given the current market landscape, my gut told me I wouldn't be successful.
Companies hire skills, not mindsets - and being entrepreneurial is a mindset.
The last time I posted an update, I was trying to find out if there's a market for people who used to run their own companies and are now looking for regular jobs.
There were 2 things we were trying to validate: if founders are looking to go back to the more traditional market and if companies were looking for people with founder experience.
On our last update we tested those assumptions by building a landing page and doing some ads on social media.
Now one question remained: is there a supply of companies that are looking for entrepreneurial experience?
To validate that, I scraped a bunch of job postings from LinkedIn. I targeted a sample of 18 companies, including Amazon, Google, Airbnb, and Facebook. Then I used a simple keyword search to figure out how many of those ask for founder experience and how long ago were they opened.
Turns out only 7% of the descriptions contained keywords related to entrepreneurial experience. Of those, 60% were false positives. This is quite low.
I have 3 choices:
- to move on to the next project
- to niche down, i.e. to focus on industries or specific job roles where entrepreneurial experience might be more highly valued, such as startups, venture capital firms, or product management roles
- to expand the research beyond those 18 companies
I'm tending towards option #1
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Interesting idea - I'm unclear on whether you are saying:
- You want to talk to companies that would like to hire former founders
- You want to talk to founders who would like to join a company
If you're saying #1, then from personal experience (tech companies), I say people avoid asking for founders because they're flaky and will want to leave to start their thing once they come up with an idea. Instead, they want "entrepreneurial" "self-starters" who like "ownership" and want to join companies because of "impact at scale". So I wonder what keywords you used for analysis.
If you're saying #2, that's quietly a good size group, and I know lots of founders and early-stage folks who have moved on to the next phase of their lives and just want stability, a good paycheck, and less stress. So how do you find those folks and make it seem like it's not a step-down or giving up on a dream?
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Thanks for your reply! Indeed, it wasn't very clear. I have just updated the update with some more context but, in short: we have validated #2 in the past. It's #1 that we were trying to validate.
You make a good point about flakiness. I used those keywords ("entrepreneurial", "self-starter", ...) to try to find good job posts for former founders.
I had to be careful. For example "ownership" may mean that your boss simply doesn't understand what's required of the role and doesn't want to manage you. The word "entrepreneurial" also yields a lot of false positives: for companies that describe themselves or their teams as "entrepreneurial", but whose openings have nothing describing whether being entrepreneurial yourself would be an asset.
I have some news about my project, Founder Hire. I was trying to find out if there's a market for people who used to run their own companies and are now looking for regular jobs.
To test this, I created a small landing page and then used a Reddit ad to measure people's intent. It turns out that there are indeed plenty of former founders out there who are open to the idea of a regular job! We got a conversion rate of 10% on the landing page and a CTR of 0.75% on the ad.
Ok, next steps!
Now I'm pretty confident we have a market on the supply side.
I'm less confident we have it on the demand side, i.e. enough companies looking specifically for some entrepreneurial experience.
So the next experiment, I'm thinking of is to scrape a bunch of job postings and to see how many of those ask for founder experience and how long ago were they opened (the premises being companies have a hard time filling them up).
I'm wondering if you have any ideas for other things I could do to quickly figure out if there's really a market for Founder Hire. And if you've ever tried to find out if there's a market for something you're working on, how did you do it? Let me know!
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As a former (and current) entrepreneur who has looked for, interviewed for, and been hired as a full time employee, the one line that always gets my attention in a JD is "Entrepreneurial mindset."
Any mention of being comfortable in or having experience in startups is also a good indicator.
Lastly, roles that emphasize being self-directed, not needing direction, comfortable with ambiguity, etc. usually mean the hiring manager values entrepreneurial skills.
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I like the term "self-starter" too. "Entrepreneurial mindset" is a great suggestion as it shows the company is conscious about what exactly it's searching for. Unlike "self-starter" which usually just means that the hiring manager either doesn't want to or doesn't have the skills to set the tasks the employee will have to perform.
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💯 agree with your thoughts on "self-starter."
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Thanks for sharing your insights, Fernando! Regarding the idea of scraping job postings to see how many require "founder experience", it's possible that the job postings aren't explicitly asking for this experience, but rather for the same skills that founders have.
My suggestion is to map out all the skills that hypothetical founder candidates may have and then scrape job postings to look for matches.
What do you think? And I want to learn Portuguese, so feel free to comment in your language too 😄
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Yup, muitos posts podem não estarem a pedir a experiencia de forma direta - e eu até pensei que seria bacana criar um modelo NLP que classificasse o post entre "founder-friendly" ou não dado os requisitos do trabalho
Mas será que isso não seria igual a admitir que as empresas hoje não sabem que querem/precisam de "founder experience"? Se elas não sabem que querem isso, as chances delas pagarem para anunciarem em um job board de founders ficam reduzidas - e do meu lado isso significaria maior esforço de vendas para educar meu cliente.
É uma armadilha perigosa: podemos perder muito tempo a nos iludir que precisamos "ensinar ao cliente", quando na verdade estamos atolados.
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I answer in English 'cause doing that in portuguese directs me to a translator for sure 😁 ... But I understand all your text, fine for me
By your presentation post, you're a data analyst, right? We share the profession, I'm a Business Intelligence Analyst 🤜🤛
It's true, there is a bias there 'cause we don't know if companies know (or not) what a founder has to offer. Maybe your next experiment?
If I can offer you help, tell me. We can train my portuguese listening in exchange for some help, ideas and time, as I see you work on the project after-office hours only 🙂
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I'm running this after hours too! That's why I'm doing all these experiments before sitting down to code: it requires less time from me.
As I do this, I also experiment with a experiment tracker I'm building. If it ends up helping, I'll have two products instead of one 😜
Your idea would be experiment#3: if I know what companies are looking for founder attributes (but not founder experience) I'll also know who to send an email outreach to
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It's great to see you taking a data-driven approach to validate the market for Founder Hire. Your Reddit ad experiment definitely shows there's potential on the supply side, and I like how you're already thinking of the next steps to validate demand.
Scraping job postings to see how many require founder experience is a good idea. Additionally, you could try reaching out to HR managers or recruiters directly to gauge their interest in hiring candidates with entrepreneurial backgrounds. Conducting a short survey targeting companies of different sizes and industries could also provide valuable insights into the demand side.
Another option is to find online communities or forums where founders and HR professionals interact. You can post about your idea and ask for feedback from both sides. This could help you identify potential pain points and further validate the need for Founder Hire.
I was having a tough time last year. I got a job that, while it didn't pay really well, allowed me to set my own hours. This way, I thought, I would be able to focus more on my side project and, hopefully, make one for them flourish.
What happened was that I ended up almost full-time. I barely had any free time for my side projects. The time I had set apart for trying to create my own business was almost over. So I decided maybe I should reenter the job market.
It was so frustrating.
My resume was rejected without even one interview. I gained a lot of skills while indie hacking: user interviews, product discovery, development, and even a bit of B2B sales. But the ATS was just looking at my job title and thinking there was a gap.
I bet that IndieHackers have the sort of profile that would thrive in startups and product roles! Surely I wasn't the only one in search of a job - and surely there are companies that are looking for that skillset and experience.
Have you ever considered returning to the "traditional" job market? How did that go?
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