blogging.vc

I’ve got some shameless self-promotion today, but bear with me since I am really excited about the deal: BV Capital is leading a round of financing of Experteer.de, with Wellington Partners of Munich also participating in the round.

Experteer is a career service for everyone aiming to make more than 60,000
Euros annual salary. For a monthly subscription fee, the company provides the most comprehensive offer of jobs in this category and discrete access to headhunters. The user experience is highly personalized and uses slick Ajax feaures left and right.
Experteer includes jobs that you may also find posted on corporate websites, but also many that are posted by headhunters and not available on regular, “open” job search sites. Moreover, Experteer is the only place that assigns a “salary benchmark” to every job, so you have an idea what the market salary for the job is before you have even submitted an application.
In short, the service helps you to constantly and comprehensively monitor your professional environment for jobs that may be the best fit.

From a business perspective, what is interesting is that Experteer turns the job-market business model upside down:
Typically, companies pay a posting fee in order to publish their job ad on a career site. That’s fair, since it gives especially smaller companies access to a larger applicant pool addressable via the job site. And it’s free for the job seeker, which is always nice.
Experteer, on the other hand, charges the job seeker but is free for the job poster, and actually reaches out actively to corporations to make sure it lists their relevant openings, but only accepts jobs €60k+. And if it’s free to post job, there is no reason why any corporation should not want to have theirs listed. Last but not least, headhunters love to post their opening on Experteer, not only because it’s free, but because they feel they get qualified resumes - after all, people who spend money to sign up for a paid service are serious about their career. This means a job seeker get a comprehensive view of the market, and they conveniently get access to it on one site. To me, that’s an incredibly strong value proposition since finding the right job is such an important thing.

From a VCs point of view, I like subscription services for end consumers since they align a company’s incentives with those of its subscribers. What do I mean by that? Experteer’s only interest is to provide the job seeker the best possible experience, because that’s how it makes money…and there is no problem with not getting certain job postings because an employer may shy away from paying posting fees, it does not need to care about promoting certain job posts on its site because someone pays for that, etc. After all, a company’s loyalty is always where its revenues comes from, and with Experteer that’s the job seeker - a powerful proof is the “salary benchmark”, which clearly empowers the job seeker and is something that may be difficult to introduce for sites that rely on job posting companies for their revenues…
I love companies that completely change the way an industry works, especially if it empowers the consumer. I think those are really good venture capital investments, and Experteer, with its great team, is in the right spot to firmly establish the company and its new job search model in Germany.