1. We actually have a load balancer of sorts. When we get flooded with requests and won't be able to maintain conversational quality, people get put into the line. It's effective for launches like this. We prefer to not put people into the line, as instant-access users are 38% more likely to engage, but quality trumps all else.
2. Fun you mention this! This is how our business worked at the beginning, but it led to some really absurd dynamics at scale. People above mentioned ethics questions... well, when the company's and coach's profit-motive is to place you in a new role, the advice slants that way. Especially if it's $15k a pop for an engineer. Secondly, this model only work with engineering and SV-based recruiting... and we want to help people who are facing uphill battles in the US -- not just those who already have it pretty good.
3. As we develop a larger network of industry experts and train our coaches, we'll be able to expand further.
4. People can send us whatever they want, but we don't actively encourage proprietary information in any specific way.
5. We attempted a user mentor network before and it didn't scale. The user experience was often terrible for users because we couldn't guarantee consistency or quality of advice -- a LOT of mentors would give terrible advice, and then we'd have to come in to fix the situation. To even detect that, you have to give mentors a shot. Secondarily, if a mentee slacked, the mentor wouldn't feel empathy for them and also slack. When we control the experience, we can play "coach" and get real with people -- mentors don't look to do that usually. Sometimes there are hard conversations and people need to be told their being lazy, making excuses, etc.
6. It works with chat and email. We're trying to think about scale, and live video would require a price point that is about double or triple. That would make it unaffordable for middle America.
Thanks for the thoughts + analysis! Curious your take on my replies.
1. We actually have a load balancer of sorts. When we get flooded with requests and won't be able to maintain conversational quality, people get put into the line. It's effective for launches like this. We prefer to not put people into the line, as instant-access users are 38% more likely to engage, but quality trumps all else.
2. Fun you mention this! This is how our business worked at the beginning, but it led to some really absurd dynamics at scale. People above mentioned ethics questions... well, when the company's and coach's profit-motive is to place you in a new role, the advice slants that way. Especially if it's $15k a pop for an engineer. Secondly, this model only work with engineering and SV-based recruiting... and we want to help people who are facing uphill battles in the US -- not just those who already have it pretty good.
3. As we develop a larger network of industry experts and train our coaches, we'll be able to expand further.
4. People can send us whatever they want, but we don't actively encourage proprietary information in any specific way.
5. We attempted a user mentor network before and it didn't scale. The user experience was often terrible for users because we couldn't guarantee consistency or quality of advice -- a LOT of mentors would give terrible advice, and then we'd have to come in to fix the situation. To even detect that, you have to give mentors a shot. Secondarily, if a mentee slacked, the mentor wouldn't feel empathy for them and also slack. When we control the experience, we can play "coach" and get real with people -- mentors don't look to do that usually. Sometimes there are hard conversations and people need to be told their being lazy, making excuses, etc.
6. It works with chat and email. We're trying to think about scale, and live video would require a price point that is about double or triple. That would make it unaffordable for middle America.
Thanks for the thoughts + analysis! Curious your take on my replies.