Why Triplebyte Failed

For the premium tier, the problem is less so the efficiency of the matching process because participants have powerful signals, I would say the problem is the efficiency of negotiating a fair term because both parties are not incentivized to go to a public auction, hence no market price. Hence the hiring process may be less so investigating potential candidates and more so "let' just wait two weeks and see who's the highest bidder".

For the subpar tier, the problem is less so the efficiency of the matching process (this still is part of the problem), but more so a cost-effect analysis: is it worth throwing X amount of resources to filter a huge pool of unknown quality candidates?

Obviously, one more problem is that there's no easy way to use whatever incentive to quickly bump up the supply.

So intrinsically, triplebyte/dating app tried to use tech to alleviate the pain point, but it is a part of the bigger, convoluted mating dance, and improving a non-critical part of the whole pipeline doesn't yield a so-called step function gain overall. That, plus venture backing, forces triplebyte to go down the rabbit hole and try to acquire as much of the lower subpar tier network as possible, yet this dilutes their attention and human touch on the premium tier, and goes down a death spiral.

Sorry I do not intend to bash the author or the founders for picking this problem/user need to solve, it just occurs to me that this heterogeneous network with no easy way to increase supply/lower demand, is really hard for a marketplace company and sometimes simply throwing technology onto the white-hot competing segment may not be the groundbreaking solution. I wish the author all the best with their next endeavor

> I would say the problem is the efficiency of negotiating a fair term because both parties are not incentivized to go to a public auction, hence no market price.

Are you referring specifically to salary negotiation here? I think this is one of the things that makes a trusted intermediary useful.

During signup, or during an initial recruiter call with candidates, I ask about salary with the following script:

> Okay, what are your salary expectations? To be clear, I will NOT share this with clients unless you tell me that I can. This is just so we know what jobs you might be interested in - the only thing we'll communicate is whether you match a client's salary range or not and vice-versa.

While I doubt the incentives here align to perfect honesty, it's certainly a lot better than the background, in that each side gets information on the other only after revealing semi-honest preferences used to match them.

> For the subpar tier, the problem is less so the efficiency of the matching process (this still is part of the problem), but more so a cost-effect analysis: is it worth throwing X amount of resources to filter a huge pool of unknown quality candidates?

Yeah, this is where the pitch about centralization - the main pitch I want to make with Otherbranch, since I think the full background-blind pitch was overselling things - comes in. There's some threshold where the cost-benefit analysis is neutral for companies, in the sense that there is 0 expected value to the next marginal candidate. But if we're effectively interviewing for more than one company, that threshold is lower for us, because the cost is similar and the benefit is higher.

I don't expect we're going to be able to get a mediocre developer with a mediocre resume an amazing job. I'm not really trying to do that. I'm trying to get an amazing developer with a mediocre resume an amazing job, or a good eveloper with a mediocre resume a good job - one better than they could have gotten on their own.

The big problem with the model is again misunderstanding your competition and how the industry actually works. The market for skilled developers already functions largely like this. The "talent agents" are engineering managers, both on the sell-side (through references, and bringing over good engineers they've worked with when they join a new company) and on the buy-side (through identifying and recruiting good talent that may not be trying hard to sell themselves). This is a core EM skill - many teams will live or die by how well their managers can identify actually-talented devs, even ones who may not be slick or polished, and bring them onto the team. It's also the EM's responsibility to understand the recruitment process at their company well enough to shepherd candidates who won't look impressive to recruiters through it.