Sophie Adelman: [00:00:00] But I think people forget that all of these companies started off with humans going out into the streets and making that business work.Speaker 2: [00:00:12] [music playing] Welcome to Two-Sided, the marketplace podcast, brought to you by Sharetribe.Sjoerd: [00:00:24] Hi, I'm Sjoerd, CMO at Sharetribe, and I am your host. In today's episode, I speak to Sophie Adelman about talent marketplaces. Sophie has a lot of experiences with that. She was the first international hire at hired.com, a tech recruitment marketplace. There she led the expansion of Hired from the US into the UK, and after that, Sophie founded WhiteHat, which matches ambitious people with an apprenticeship at employers. We discuss how liquidity works in marketplaces like this, how all marketplaces basically start off as a managed marketplace, how important can be to educate one side of your marketplace, and the general importance of data; a terrific talk altogether, and again, filled with some real gems.Uh, a quick note on the audio quality, so, Sophie sounds fantastic, but it turned out after the recording that there had been a small, uh, buzz on my side. Our amazing producer, Nemanja, was able to reduce it significantly, but at times, you might hear a strange light buzz when I'm talking. So, no worries, there's nothing wrong with your audio setup, and I apologize for any auditory inconveniences, but this just happens sometimes. Now, enough said, let's listen to Sophie discuss talent marketplaces. Enjoy.[music playing]Hi, Sophie, uh, welcome to the podcast.Sophie Adelman: [00:01:47] Thank you for having me.Sjoerd: [00:01:49] Hey, before we, uh, dive straight into all the marketplaces, maybe you can tell the people at home a little bit about your background, sort of, kind of up until Hired, because that's where I want to straight dive into a couple more questions.Sophie Adelman: [00:02:00] Sure. So, I grew up in the UK, British born and bred, and I, I, I started my career, actually in conference production. I was a conference producer, was my first job, and which is a very entrepreneurial role. I did that for about a year, and then I went and worked in investment banking at Goldman for about 18 months. I have to be honest, I didn't really love that experience. It was in 2007/2008, so the financial crisis was a terrifying time to be starting your career, and lots of different ways, and I don't think it was the kind of opportunity that was the right fit for me and my skill set, but it was a great learning experience. And then from there, I went and worked at Egen Zehnder, which is an executive search firm, uh, doing so, searches, management appraisals, really understanding how companies are built, and how people think about talent and talent assessments, which has obviously been a thread throughout my career, and something that I, I feel very passionately about.And then went off and did a, an MBA at Stanford. I can very happy to talk about my experience of an MBA. I think it's a very personal choice why people go and do that, but I, I had an amazing time, and I feel the lessons I learned from that are now coming into play, 10 years later. And then, before Hired, I actually worked in finance. So, I worked in investing for a family office/investment trust. So, quite an eclectic career in that regard.Sjoerd: [00:03:21] Yeah. And then now, actually, with the addition of the MBA, I think somehow I missed that, because I was kind of surprised because I was doing some background research on you, and then, how did you get into hired, and I was checking and I said, "Well, that's quite a entrepreneurial position for someone who comes seemingly out of mostly investment banking, that's not a ..." It's usually the other way around that a entrepreneur goes somehow on the capital side, uh, rather than... So, maybe y- you could tell us a little bit more, like, how did you get across that opportunity?Sophie Adelman: [00:03:50] Well, I think the Hired oppo