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

For example, the product marketing team at Facebook has pretty different skillsets & requirements they're looking for than the product management team for a specific silo (perhaps even more so than in banking, where the skills are still kind of similar in terms of Excel/PowerPoint and financial analysis).

In tech - I'd bet it's even harder to commoditize advice and every team is even harder to prep for. One team might focus on Python, the other on mySQL, the other might have a manager that likes to test in some weird way. And tech has very high turnover (banking alike), but interviewing processes are more flexible from what I hear so it must be even more dynamic (as in if your manager changes every 12-24 months, interviewing processes for that team change too), whereas banking interviews have largely remained the same for years and still people crave for this advice.

This is what I've heard- so feel free to refute any of this, it's not primary knowledge.

"Definitely agree that this could be a problem. Practically speaking - we keep identities anonymous and so employees are protected.

Ethically speaking - if you have a buddy inside the company, they'll tell you how to prep with information the company wouldn't want you to know anyways.

It all comes back to our main point - if you don't have an inside connection, you don't get the juicy insights someone with that advantage does. So your odds of landing the job, let alone knowing what it takes to land it, are always lower. We bridge that gap - everything else in our view is a solvable problem because this engages current/former employees in the recruiting process + helps companies discover more talent.

The summary is that we're fine with keeping it anonymous now and here we have to take a bit more of a disruptive approach. Airbnb and Uber were both illegal (As in literally breaking laws) and still scaled and ultimately succeeded because they believed in the fundamental benefit of their service to the world.

The Lobby is completely legal, just maybe against some company policies, but we feel the benefits far outweigh the cons of some random company policy, even for the company itself as described above."

The fact I anonymously revealed company information does not bring meany immunity wrt my current contract. I can still be terminated if they find out. Would I risk getting fired for $100? No way. If I don't want to take this risk, I'm not going to be a "customer" of The Lobby and thus, you get the chicken & egg problem others talked about.

I think I'm primarily "opposed" (for lack of a better word at 2AM, but you get the idea) to your pitch for ethical & risk profile reasons. These reasons are inherently personnal and the next guy over can be entitled to a very different pov.

However I think that the legal risk for the employee and thus the marketing/sourcing risk for The Lobby, still stand?

Wish you all the best :-)

To use a distasteful analogy: in the US, two consenting adults having sex is legal - two consenting adults having sex where one pays the other for the 'service' is not.

So I think there will definitely be a subset of companies and employees where this will be a problem. One way to allow this subset of employees to take part in your service might be to offer some (non-political) charitable donation in exchange for their time. That way they can contribute, feel like they did some good in the world, and still be able to say to their employer (if it ever came up) that they didn't receive any compensation in exchange for helping potential new hires.

Assuming for now that the basic business is legal, and that the only issue is compliance with company policies, another potential 'hack' might be to just let people get 'karma' that builds up in their account at The Lobby, that can be converted at any time into cash. Then the people providing this info could choose to 'cash out' later, when they leave the company, or use it to pay for intel about other companies when they themselves are looking to move

Feel free to contact me if you want to chat :)