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Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

getboost.io

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Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#101

Post by ztratar »

patch_cable wrote: post #59
ztratar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boost is 100% confidential. People talk about complex power grabs and political situations all the time. For Boost to work well, people need to be able to trust it with Information thy want confidential.

Talking about complex power grabs and political situation is a bit different than encouraging employees to upload confidential information, which is what I think tIONTamINariciA. Would you consider adding anything to the UI to discourage your users from those potential lapses in judgement? And if not, what do you do to protect the sensitive information you may find in your hands?

So far we haven't had anyone give us any information that's super juicy, so we're not worried about a built-in UI to discourage it yet.

Once we can expand the team further, hiring a full-time security engineering staff will be a priority. As of now, we have the basics down... full E2E encryption, security access privs, etc.

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#102

Post by ztratar »

scdoshi wrote: post #21

This might be just me, but the most important thing to me when I get advice is: - who am I getting it from - what do I know about their life/experience - under what circumstances Because that let's me adjust how much importance to put on it. Getting advice is generally not the hard part, figuring out which advice to follow and which to discard is.

Totally agree.

We help people build external social support networks as well.

In addition, as is true with all good coaches, most conversations circle around introspection and talking through analysis rather than imposing our own advice. We still give plenty of advice, but we also are aware enough of the nuances that exist and we-don't-know-what-we-don't-know.

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#103

Post by ztratar »

seem_2211 wrote: post #54

Cool idea. I like it overall. I don't know about the idea of having "experts" talk to you. I've spent a lot of time thinking about my career and talked to a few experts and it's a real mixed bag. In some ways I see this in the same way I see most formal mentoring programs - the best way to get an amazing mentor is to arrange it yourself. There's a way to do it, but it's hard. That said, there's a massive amount of po…

Hey! Message me -> zach@getboost.io

We actually played that game before. We were arbitraging candidates for their job hunt -- taking a % of their salary upon successful new job. The issue was, most frequently, was that you'd have to invest a lot of time/money into people and there are a lot more "talkers" than "doers". So far, the recurring revenue model has been a lot more psychologically pleasing, haha...

But yes -- our goal is to really help people become better and move up the career ladder faster. If you're passionate about that, I do think we should chat!

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#104

Post by ztratar »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #32

Quick question, trying to get my head around the product: Say I just got an email from my boss that I think is passive-aggressively accusatory (e.g., perhaps it lays out the specifics of what she wants me to do tomorrow in a way that I think she's implying that I can't be entrusted to get things done without detailed instructions). I paste the email into Boost, asking for feedback; am I crazy, or is this an accusator…

The humans are trained career coaches who are on our full-time staff. They are obliged to follow all privacy and confidentiality agreements that the company follows itself.

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#105

Post by ztratar »

tsunamifury wrote: post #45

Have they thought about adding in Motivational Coaching? I would easily pay for that as I need to perform at a very high level for long periods of time with little advice. I would pay probably upwards of 300 a month for regular access to a motivational and strategic coach a la the main character in Showtime's Billions.

Boost does motivational coaching as well! We brought in some CBTs (Cognitive Behavioral Therapist) who recommended we train our coaches in it.

I can't guarantee it'll be as high quality as the Billion's actors though. ;)

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#106

Post by ztratar »

DictumMortuum wrote: post #77

Good idea or not - I am worried about the security of this. Some of us have signed contracts that specifically mention that we shouldn't share company information with third parties. Even if a person hasn't signed a non disclosure, how ethical is it to share in-company politics with others?

We are too -- that's why we are working close with our lawyer to understand all the implications.

We're also working on DB security. Our data isn't large enough yet to really be a big target -- it's pretty boring right now -- but we'll invest in it right when scaling hits promising Series A-style levels.

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#107

Post by ztratar »

peteretep wrote: post #48

I'm a recruiter who's been a CTO, contract developer, consulted for most of the large international staffing companies, run (very) occasional courses on career development for developers, and have hired many people as a technical interviewer. I give a lot of free advice to developers I represent. I will be curious to see if there's an actual market for this.

Recruiters only give advice to job seekers.

Also, most recruiters (sorry) can't be trusted. Their motivation is not aligned with the candidate's best interests -- candidates are their product.

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#108

Post by ztratar »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #73

I'm not totally convinced but sufficiently intrigued to give this a go. Are you focussing purely on low to mid level employees inside a company or also catering to freelancers and such people who have similar though not exactly the same needs?

Hey! We have a wide variety of users and are trying to figure out if we want to niche, but so far a lot of the success has been against broad markets.

Low/Mid level employees are certainly much easier to help. Less complicated political situations, etc.

We have a couple freelancers on the platform... probably about 15 or so. Their discussions usually center around improving their external brand and customer pipelines.

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#109

Post by ztratar »

gailees wrote: post #41

How do you manage such an insanely low price point?

I always love when this advice contrasts with "Why does it cost so much" :P

Our entire engineering team is dedicated to building tools that make our career coaches super human. Unit economics can get healthy pretty fast.

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