Founder Friday: Kyle Connors & Chris Connors, Co-Founders of candidate.fyi 💼
Issue #42
Founder Friday is a content series from SuperAngel.Fund that highlights companies across our portfolio and the inspiring founders behind them.
In our 42nd edition we are featuring Kyle Connors & Chris Connors, Co-Founders of candidate.fyi, the missing candidate experience layer that helps companies attract, win and retain talent.
Kyle and Chris are brothers that bring a complementary skillset to the leadership table. Kyle is a former CTO/VP of Engineering at several venture backed companies, responsible for hiring 50+ people and scaling from $10m to $60m ARR. Chris is a top performing enterprise sales executive who closed the largest deal in Yext’s history.
Today’s hiring process is broken. Lack of transparency around application status, how best to prepare for an interview, a company’s culture, and where a candidate stands in the process makes the life of an applicant more stressful and convoluted than it needs to be. So much so that nearly 50% of applicants decline a job offer to due to a poor experience. Even worse, they end up sharing the bad experience publicly on review sites like Glassdoor, which the majority of applicants look at before applying. Beyond losing out on a quality candidate, this has serious implications for an employer’s brand and reputation as a place to work.
After leaving his role at Google a year ago and embarking on an exhaustive job search, Chris suffered from these pain points himself. Kyle, on the other hand, also experienced these inefficiencies but from the employer angle. He was so dissatisfied with the existing solutions that he even wrote a book on the subject!
It was clear to them that the entire recruiting, interviewing and hiring process was inadequate. Together, the pair knew there had to be a better way and decided to build a solution to revolutionize the experience for both candidates and employers.
candidate.fyi is a candidate experience solution that integrates with applicant tracking systems (ATSs) like Greenhouse and Lever to help companies attract, win and retain talent. It allows hiring teams to engage with candidates more efficiently to reduce support, close faster, and increase acceptance rates.
Since launching their beta in February the product has taken off. In particular, they have gone from $0 to $87k annual recurring revenue (ARR) with 14 paying customers and lots more in the pipeline 🚀. The company is currently onboarding select customers from their waitlist which you can join here. You can also check out their product demo or email me to get connected directly.
Describe your company in 5 words or less.
Kyle & Chris: The missing candidate experience layer
What was your primary motivation for starting your business?
Kyle & Chris: As brothers, we’ve always been working on different ideas together. It wasn’t about “if” but about “when” we would start a company.
We knew we wanted to build a business that checked two boxes - 1. We had the possibility to make a meaningful impact on a large scale and 2. It was something we were both passionate about.
The interview process just hit us at the right time. Kyle was on the hiring side and constantly struggled with how manual the process of prepping candidates and providing them with an experience he’d want. Chris had just gone through interview rounds with several companies and felt defeated by how broken the process was. He felt like this process was setting him up for failure.
We both knew how impactful this (interviewing) time was relative to the focus it’s given is vastly underserved. A person will spend about 8,000 hours at the company they choose. A company places a large investment in the future of its business by hiring someone. Why isn’t this better?
What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?
Kyle & Chris: Find a way to get your first 10 customers (do things that don’t scale) as early as possible, then listen closely to them. Figure out their pain points and what they’re really looking for (it’s not always what they say). Make them happy and have them become promoters of you/your company.
What do you love to do in your free time?
Kyle: Spending time with family and going for runs!
Chris: We have a one-year-old, so when I’m not helping talent teams with their candidate experience, I’m changing diapers or teaching the little guy how to hit a golf ball. I also love getting outside and running, I think it’s the best outlet for a founder.
What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?
Kyle: I haven’t traveled a whole lot recently. A couple of years ago I took a trip to a friend's wedding to a fairly remote town in Turkey. As someone who has largely visited major metropolitan areas, it was fascinating to see this remote town operating independently and without any need for a city. Everyone had a job to do and it got done!
Chris: When we moved from Los Angeles back to NY we drove cross-country. This was an awesome trip. We got to see so many different places and had a blast trying new food, meeting new people, and looking at some of our country's greatest treasures.
What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?
Kyle: In my work life, it’s probably Airtable. I love the no-code flexibility of being able to tailor/customize the tables to my liking. For my personal life, I love little fitness apps - I use this app 7 every morning. It’s a simple 7 minute workout that hits all different areas.
Chris: In my work life, it’s LinkedIn. I spend so much time on LinkedIn, connecting with thought leaders in the talent community. LinkedIn has created the ability to connect with virtually anyone worldwide, as long as they have a profile. I’ve cold messaged the CEO of LinkedIn, on LinkedIn and he responded. It’s pretty crazy when you think about it. Personal life, it’s probably Headway. I love reading, but when I buy books, I usually start them and then don’t find time to finish them. Headway breaks down every book into 10-minute summaries, allowing me to digest the material quickly.
What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?
Kyle & Chris: Resilience, persistence, and perseverance are crucial to being a successful founder. The highs and lows of founder life are very real, but if you can push through the lows then the highs outweigh everything else. Just keep driving forward day by day, and you’ll see success.
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