Blue Ocean of opportunities: from scratch to 400 thousand video interviews
Julia Kardash, director of marketing for HR-tech service VCV, told at Epic Growth Conference about the launch of the product on the market, where there was no demand.
See the transcript of the report under the cut.
VCV stands for “video resume”. In 2010, the product launched a casting director who solved his problem of finding actors for various projects. Then he, together with a friend, a web developer, launched a service for the job market as a whole.
')
However, it soon turned out that no one needed a product on the market. For recruiters, the problem was not solved, but created. They had to look at random interviews of people with random information about themselves. And the applicants were not eager to lay out such videos and record themselves on camera.
How the service began to work
In 2013, Arik Hakhverdyan, an experienced HR consultant, proposed to change the concept of the product - from video summary to video interview - and change the target audience from b2c to b2b market. In the overseas market, we found similar formats. There was confidence that this could work in Russia.
There is a system in which the HR-manager works. He creates a vacancy and adds exactly those questions that he wants to hear from the candidate. Further the link to this vacancy is sent directly to the candidate. The latter, using any device that has a camera and microphone, records the answers to questions in real time.
Thus, the format of the present interview is preserved, because the time to prepare answers is limited and there is no possibility to overwrite. The interview is saved on the server, the recruiter, at a convenient time for him, looks at it and makes a decision on the candidate.
Product-market fit and first customers
Already six months after the “reset”, VCV signed contracts with three major customers - Sony, British American Tobacco and Beeline. After 100 video interviews, they came with enthusiastic reviews.
The first inspiration quickly ended, as soon as we began to face the first very tough barriers that the market of this blue ocean dictated to us.
Barriers and solutions
The main reason when you enter a non-existent market is that you think you have no competitors. In fact, it is not. Competition is a conservative approach that is very difficult and expensive to break through and change.
Typical objections and how we fought them
Who are you anyway?
We did various offline activities for b2b. For example, closed business breakfasts for our potential audience. The concept of our presence at the event was not aggressive advertising. We gave them cool content, experts and networking.
Plus, PR in the media, which we launched on our own, helped us a lot. If you really offer something fresh, then the media will be happy to tell about you.
It won't work.
And here, of course, it is very cool to work out different cases, if they already exist in your piggy bank. Text cases, video reviews, successful media projects are the basis, but it works.
Or the format of a demo of the day, events where the audience is your potential customers, and your current customers perform on the stage. About the service speak current customers, potential one hundred percent trust.
Our candidates will not record video interviews; they are dinosaurs with new technologies.
The most popular question in the field of HR-tech. In order to dispel this myth, we launched a series of webinars, where our real customers from the fields where the objections came from, say that the VCV service really works and is not complicated at all.
Video interview, this, of course, great, but we need ...
At that stage of development at which we were at that moment, we decided to work individually with each client, that is, to make large projects for clients. At some point it worked, and in a short time we collected a large customer base, with which we work to this day.
In 2016, we managed to achieve self-sufficiency. During the year the video interview service served 75 contracts for 15 million rubles. Revenue doubled compared with 2014.
However, as soon as you prove to the market that such a product as yours is needed and relevant, you should be prepared for the fact that, like mushrooms after rain, competitors will appear on the market that will copy you shamelessly, go to your customers and offer similar technology is absolutely free.
In this situation, we realized that a competitive advantage in the form of primacy in the market does not work, it is just a myth. Only two things work - people and technology.
The decision to work with your service is made by a person for whom it is very important that his pains and needs overlap. No matter how technological your company is, you should always think about the service.
Technological stages of development of the VCV service
Our basic tool is a video interview service. Next comes the development of individual HR solutions.
When you have a startup and there are large customers who want individual things for themselves, your resources start to go for it. If you agree, then the product at this time quickly becomes outdated. If you make decisions for someone, they must be typical, so that later you can easily scale them for the whole product and offer the entire market.
Finally, a multifunctional platform for searching and selecting people. It covers work with candidates at three stages: at the stage of searching for candidates, selection and work with current employees. This is a large number of functions that can be used depending on the needs of the company.
The story about the experiments
In the retail there are candidates who want to work, for example, in “Auchan”. We installed booths with tablets on which to record video interviews on their trading platform. It would seem a rather bold experiment, but it justified itself, and today it works.
Where to go
We decided not to dwell on one thing, but to try everything in parallel.
More product marketing reports available at the @epicgrowth Telegram Channel.
See the transcript of the report under the cut.
From casting to recruiting
VCV stands for “video resume”. In 2010, the product launched a casting director who solved his problem of finding actors for various projects. Then he, together with a friend, a web developer, launched a service for the job market as a whole.
')
However, it soon turned out that no one needed a product on the market. For recruiters, the problem was not solved, but created. They had to look at random interviews of people with random information about themselves. And the applicants were not eager to lay out such videos and record themselves on camera.
How the service began to work
In 2013, Arik Hakhverdyan, an experienced HR consultant, proposed to change the concept of the product - from video summary to video interview - and change the target audience from b2c to b2b market. In the overseas market, we found similar formats. There was confidence that this could work in Russia.
There is a system in which the HR-manager works. He creates a vacancy and adds exactly those questions that he wants to hear from the candidate. Further the link to this vacancy is sent directly to the candidate. The latter, using any device that has a camera and microphone, records the answers to questions in real time.
Thus, the format of the present interview is preserved, because the time to prepare answers is limited and there is no possibility to overwrite. The interview is saved on the server, the recruiter, at a convenient time for him, looks at it and makes a decision on the candidate.
Product-market fit and first customers
Already six months after the “reset”, VCV signed contracts with three major customers - Sony, British American Tobacco and Beeline. After 100 video interviews, they came with enthusiastic reviews.
Guys, this really works and saves us time. Within one month we can pass through ourselves much more candidates, choose the coolest guys.The HR market is not so big in Russia, and as soon as a completely new technology appeared, it quickly found out about it, without any movement from our side, the entire market.
The first inspiration quickly ended, as soon as we began to face the first very tough barriers that the market of this blue ocean dictated to us.
Barriers and solutions
The main reason when you enter a non-existent market is that you think you have no competitors. In fact, it is not. Competition is a conservative approach that is very difficult and expensive to break through and change.Typical objections and how we fought them
Who are you anyway?
We did various offline activities for b2b. For example, closed business breakfasts for our potential audience. The concept of our presence at the event was not aggressive advertising. We gave them cool content, experts and networking.
Plus, PR in the media, which we launched on our own, helped us a lot. If you really offer something fresh, then the media will be happy to tell about you.
It won't work.
And here, of course, it is very cool to work out different cases, if they already exist in your piggy bank. Text cases, video reviews, successful media projects are the basis, but it works.
Or the format of a demo of the day, events where the audience is your potential customers, and your current customers perform on the stage. About the service speak current customers, potential one hundred percent trust.
Our candidates will not record video interviews; they are dinosaurs with new technologies.
The most popular question in the field of HR-tech. In order to dispel this myth, we launched a series of webinars, where our real customers from the fields where the objections came from, say that the VCV service really works and is not complicated at all.
Video interview, this, of course, great, but we need ...
At that stage of development at which we were at that moment, we decided to work individually with each client, that is, to make large projects for clients. At some point it worked, and in a short time we collected a large customer base, with which we work to this day.
In 2016, we managed to achieve self-sufficiency. During the year the video interview service served 75 contracts for 15 million rubles. Revenue doubled compared with 2014.
However, as soon as you prove to the market that such a product as yours is needed and relevant, you should be prepared for the fact that, like mushrooms after rain, competitors will appear on the market that will copy you shamelessly, go to your customers and offer similar technology is absolutely free.
In this situation, we realized that a competitive advantage in the form of primacy in the market does not work, it is just a myth. Only two things work - people and technology.
The decision to work with your service is made by a person for whom it is very important that his pains and needs overlap. No matter how technological your company is, you should always think about the service.
Technological stages of development of the VCV service
Our basic tool is a video interview service. Next comes the development of individual HR solutions.
When you have a startup and there are large customers who want individual things for themselves, your resources start to go for it. If you agree, then the product at this time quickly becomes outdated. If you make decisions for someone, they must be typical, so that later you can easily scale them for the whole product and offer the entire market.
Finally, a multifunctional platform for searching and selecting people. It covers work with candidates at three stages: at the stage of searching for candidates, selection and work with current employees. This is a large number of functions that can be used depending on the needs of the company.
The story about the experiments
In the retail there are candidates who want to work, for example, in “Auchan”. We installed booths with tablets on which to record video interviews on their trading platform. It would seem a rather bold experiment, but it justified itself, and today it works.
Where to go
We decided not to dwell on one thing, but to try everything in parallel.
- Entering the mass market in Russia in the format of a hypothesis that our tool can be relevant to medium and small businesses.
- Going abroad. In 2017, we got into the San Francisco 500 Startups Acceleration Program and became the only Russian startup that went through all the stages of selection and received investments.
- The conquest of the global market. When you enter the international market, completely different requirements begin to appear for your product than were in the domestic market. We decided to focus on product development in the field of artificial intelligence, machine learning and emotion recognition.
How to survive in the blue ocean
- Focus on the needs of the market and the pain of people.
- Feel for product-market fit quickly.
- Experiment.
- If you have two strategies, try both.
- Make typical scalable solutions.
- Always keep the service in focus.
- Rely on your own strength.
- Focus on the international market.
- Always be ahead of the competition.
If you do not want to get into the depressing statistics about the fact that eight out of ten startups die in the very first year of creation, you need to very quickly grope for product-market fit.To do this, you need to run a maximum of hypotheses in testing, to experiment as much as possible. If there are several ideas, take everything, try and then what works, just scale.
More product marketing reports available at the @epicgrowth Telegram Channel.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/460703/
All Articles