Executing a public job referral model in a down market is a very tough challenge, in fact executing a public job referral model is challenging in a healthy market.

The team at 2Vouch have made the very hard decision of switching this service off for a while whilst we focus our team and resources on building out the new application we have developed The JobGenie.

Jeremy and I would like to say a big thank you to all of those early adopter companies who advertised jobs on 2Vouch and also a BIG thanks to all of you who signed up as referrers on the 2Vouch platform.

We are still very passionate that there is a market for job referrals globally but recognise that you have to have the right business model and funding. We think we are heading in the right direction with the JobGenie.

A few points on what we have learned through the 2Vouch experience.

1. Ensure your start up is well funded to get you through the development phase with enough cash to execute your sales and marketing plan.
2. Focus, focus, focus - build enough functionality in your web application to execute your core offering. We built a BIG comprehensive application that did a lot and it probably did too much. We only know this with the benefit of hindsight. Think Twitter!
3. Venture Capital funding from Aussie venture firms is not realistically a funding option if you are a pre-revenue start-up in Australia.
4. Build the parts of your applications that generate revenue as a priority.
5. Launch early and iterate. If people like your design and think your application is slick at your launch. You’re too late to market!
6. Have the right project management and collaboration tools to manage your agile development. We use Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence. Thanks guys you rock!
7. Make sure you have direct access to your development team. We do now! We didn’t initially and that was a disaster! I will go public with who the Australian Web Development Company was that we engaged first time around but now is not the right time. Needless to say - I would never use them or recommend them!
8. As a Recruiter and then CEO of a tech start-up - I have learned so much. The last three years have been a wonderful ride and I am taking everything I have learned and applying those lessons to the development and deployment of JobGenie On Demand Employee Referral Platform.

All the Best,

Riges Younan

CEO, 2Vouch.

@rigesyounan

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 8:56 pm and is filed under 2Vouch News, Recruiting, Uncategorized, referral recruiting with tags: 2Vouch, JobGenie . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.