Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired

This sounds like a really interesting idea outside of just jobs. For example, I would really love to use this service for market or industry research. I tried to sign up, but there's a form that requires me to enter a bunch of info related to job-seeking. I'm not sure why that's necessary if all I want to do is pay to talk to people in companies?

Also a few nitpicks: The frontpage sign up didn't work for me on Firefox and there's a 24 char max password length, which shouldn't be necessary if you're hashing passwords.

Deepak first let me say I choose to view this community as a group of people who win together, therefore I want you to win, and sincerely wish success for your team. Now let’s get to work on your feedback.

>>[It’s challenging to get everyone receptive to our new approach]

This provides no information. It’s an entrepreneurial truism. Do you think a large percentage of startups visit sand hill road and never get rejected? Even most of the unicorns have their stories. Google, E-Bay (good luck selling barbie dolls), etc.

Big caveat though: Listen carefully to every person who rejects you. Yes some comments will be dumb, but in general you’re asking smart people and their comments can often be uniquely invaluable.

>>[it's controversial to start a recruiting company charging job seekers instead of hiring companies]

Are you sure this is the controversial part? I see no inherent controversy in the concept of applicants being customers, although if you mean there’s limited precedent of success that makes it more difficult to get people’s buy in, that makes sense. It can always can be a problem.

It’s also a signal to your team to reflect, and question yourselves regularly on what’s so different about what your doing that hasn’t been tried before? Why will you will be the ones to show it’s possible to disrupt conventional wisdom? Why are you so sure it will ever happen? Don’t answer those, the questions are rhetorical. I know you have your answers. The real point is I’m suggesting you never stop trying to find flaws in those answers. Every flaw you find makes you more powerful because you can harvest them to adapt, fine tune, improve.

I’ll try to comment more directly on the model now. I try to keep an open mind on these things, but haven’t heard enough (not that my opinion counts :) here to get on board.

Ironically I was in a boat similar to the one you were in coming out of school. Strong ambition to get into the hottest software company in the world, which at the time was Microsoft, even if nowadays a lot of people think of them as about as hot as IBM, or lesser so :).

The problem was I also was still too immature to not be lazy and spend all my time with friends, and ended up earning my CS degree from Whatever University, which for some reason was one MS was no too interested in recruiting at.

You would think being so irresponsible I didn’t have the chops anyway, but it’s just been my thing forever and ironically I had a lot of projects under my belt already to show people - if they would have ever responded to my emails or resumes - which they never did, despite being clearly marked as from a WU graduate.

If I were in finance, doesn’t it sound like a possible customer scenario for you? Assuming it could be, how could someone have lived the scenario, but still not be bought in the applicant customer concept?

Because today I believe there are already ways to solve the problems you are trying to sell solutions to (and to my old problem), that are free yet not necessarily any less effective.

As one example, a while back I suggested one possible path with specific steps on how to do it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15096335

It’s important note again, software development and finance are two different things. However I know just a bit about finance from startup experiences, and also from a best friend who’s a VP of finance and whenever we go out won’t stop ranting about it while all I’m trying to do is hang out and enjoy my beer. Do I mention algorithms to him? No, but I’m digressing...

The point is as different as the professions are, it seems like there are also a fair amount of parallels w.r.t. getting a job.

Therefore I would be concerned that there may be some similar path to my example above that allows a person a chance to show what they’ve got and land a job at a top company, given the right talent and hard work on preparation, and tailoring approaches to specific goals.

The Internet itself seems to be a big problem here. It’s just not that hard to contact even executive level folks if you’re willing to put in the time to get to them. Once in a while they even reply to your first LinkedIn request if your intro note happens to interest them.

Then again, everything I have said could be wrong and I hope it is, so that things can really take off big.

Good luck.

> the alternative is the status quo, where the only ones with access to this information are family members, top school alums, or people in the elite circles.

As you yourself pointed out in another sub-thread, "this knowledge is not rocket science" and someone responded, essentially, that it stands to reason that it is already available on numerous web sites.

Some of that knowledge may even be borderline proprietary (for, an admittedly shallow, example, how to prepare for puzzles in interviews), where the site offers anonymity and publishing in exchange for that information.

As such, I'm not convinced that the status quo is how you say it is, unless you actually are trying to offer access to insider knowledge closer to the "rocket science" level.

I have trouble understanding what significance the "so much as" means, nor even the "sold out", since it appears to have been an acqui-hire, with the (cash) assets being returned to investors.

The company did shut down.

We can only speculate on the founder's motivation.

Thanks! Definitely, when you're in high demand your needs are very different than the vast majority of people The Lobby helps today. Also - our cost is much lower (calls range from $60 - $100), instead of the $3-$5k your recruiter asked for.

Further - they are asking you for $3-$5k up front to get a job, so until they deliver you said job, they're failing.

The Lobby asks you to pay for specific tactical things you do on a 30m call - a mock interview, a resume critique, strategy & actionable tips to improve your interview outcomes.

The value is delivered instantly.