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