Ben Newsome

For any start-up or scale up out there looking for free industry insight on the what and how’s of employee benefits, check out the report from Kota Will save you a lot of time! - Link in the comments 👇🏻 #employeebenefits

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⚠️WE ARE HIRING AT JUMPSTART ⚠️ for an awesome Ops Associate. The role will be working directly with me and the fabulous Rachel Howe. >>> What will you be doing? 🗣️Communicating with a BUNCH of startup founders and our fantastic candidates. 📈Spotting opportunities to improve how we matchmake. >>> What do you need? 💬Exceptional comms 🔎A meticulous attention to detail. 0️⃣ Zero experience. >>>What will you get from it? 🚀An incredible startup network. 🤝Best practice on how to get (and how not to get!) jobs. 🏃‍♂️Learn how to move quickly Sound interesting? See the job description and link to apply in the comments 👇. 

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Breakfast with Founders 🥐 last week I had breakfast with Alfie Whattam Alfie is the founder of Alfa - Your Personal AI Recruiter 🤖 Just select your hiring criteria and click search. Alfa will then find, screen, and connect you with the best candidates available, all in just a few hours. Having worked on recruitment tech in the last year, this was certainly an interesting breakfast! We spoke about: - Britain's Got Talent 🎭 Alfie's very early exposure to business was in the world of magic. A finalist who toured the world, performing to audiences, the rich and the famous..! At a young age, this no doubt makes you need to learn and absorb very quickly. - The Recruitment Industry. A space that's spent too much time with little change is shaping up to be exciting for hiring managers and recruiters alike. There is no hiding from the fact that AI is making leaps and bounds towards accelerating qualitative yet repetitive tasks. - Addressing an ICP and becoming obsessed with it. The mass market is ruthless. It's also not for diving straight into. Alfie and I spoke about the importance of seeing value-based returns for ICPs that make your product defensible, but also extremely sticky. Sure, this could work for everyone at some point, but let's just focus on 'someone' for now. - AI as a co-pilot not a replacement. There's a two-fold side to this sentiment, but much of it is attached to trust and staying close to what your customer actually needs. Co-pilots can help product teams become more nuanced with AI platforms, by gaining multiple touch points over time. It's a great way to leverage human behaviour in its current state (particularly outside the startup bubble we live in), until it's time to open the gates of more automation. I'm a fan of solutions that are looking to accelerate real problems at scale, Alfa is no exception here. ----- If you're a founder keen to meet, I'd love to have breakfast with you in London. Investors, sign up to Table for Ten dinners. Link to waitlists are in my featured section. Naturally, I can't meet with everyone, but I'll always try to make time to speak

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We've added 7 team members at Unify from July - September. All have delivered high impact out the gate. Hyper growth is uncomfortable for most people. So joining our team is a bit like drinking from a firehose for the first few weeks. We ask a lot and the ramp up is fast. But very quickly their impact is felt. Here's some highlights of what our new team members have each accomplished in <3 months: Rhea - has reworked much of our original website and added things like our self-service product demo, product demo video (coming soon), and free tools like our email copy coach Shravya - closed a 900+ person customer in her first full month. She's been proactive in revamping our pitch decks and materials. Neema - closed his first deal in the first 2 weeks and has smoked month 1 quota by more than 10x. He's been instrumental in cleaning up our Salesforce instance and thinking through how we use Salesforce stages. Nathan - shipped a new billing page, overhauled our DLS components, and built previewing of smart snippets for select contacts Mitchell - shipped our New Hires signal, which involved a tremendous amount of infrastructure work, vendor evaluations, and unclear scope. Customers are already using the product and ecstatic about it Josh - 18 outbound meetings booked in month 1, 27 and counting in month 2. Pretty incredible logos as well. Anthony - closed his first deal in the first 2 weeks. He's already provided so many actionable suggestions about how to improve our forecasting and planning process. We're hiring for roles across sales, customer success and engineering. We'd love to hear from you if hyper growth sounds exciting. Link to our careers page in the comments.

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𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐃𝐎 𝐖𝐄 𝐀𝐒 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐑𝐔𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐏 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐃𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐃 𝐃𝐄𝐂𝐈𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆? I'm in a fortunate position where I speak to a lot of excellent recruiters across several industries, and the common challenge we face (and I include R2R) is delayed decisions. After the hiring boom many businesses went through in 2022 and what followed, businesses are understandably a little more hesitant these days. But it's no good as recruiter saying "just take them, they're really good" or "they're the only one available", we need to help our client base by giving them comfort in their decision. But how? Below are a few examples that have helped me recently: ⬛ Search data. Your client may have conducted 4 interviews, but you've probably done more! 🔶 Market data. "There are only 6 candidates who've ever worked for your competitors in Spain, candidate X is the strongest out of the 3 interested and the others didn't fit your parameters" ⬛ Additional screening and vetting. Jack McLane has helped 5 contractors in the last month find new roles with additional reference checks! 🔶 Where applicable, revisit your commercial model? If we've confidence that our candidate is the correct person, a level of commercial renegotiation may help? I'd be keen to hear from both Recruiters on the ways they'd help their clients and also from hiring managers, on how we as recruiters could help them too in making decisions! If you're hiring and feel the above would help you finish a search, I'd love to discuss how NineTech Solutions has used the above in the last month to help our customers make challenging hires so drop me a message. #NineTech #SaaSsales #techrecruitment #manchestertech

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We've spoken to 50+ recruiters as we build Wharf and one bit of manual research keeps coming up over and over again while sourcing... Trying to figure out whether a candidate has work experience at specific startup funding stages! We’ve seen this repeatedly across technical, GTM, and HR roles that we’ve helped source for at Wharf. Folks end up going to Crunchbase or Google to get this info, slowing them down and getting them out of the flow state 🧘‍♂️ We just dropped CrunchProfile, a mini Chrome extension that automates common manual recruiting research on LinkedIn and Github! On LinkedIn, it pulls up what funding stages a candidate has worked at. On Github, it summarizes what tech stack they work with, and grabs their email from commit logs. Here’s what it looks like 🙂 DM me or comment below if you want to try it out!

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It takes 34 seconds to create an AI interviewer and start interviewing. As a product team we've spent a tonne of energy on making Ribbon as intuitive as possible. Any recruitment team (or really anyone who wants to interview!) can get setup and interview in <1 min. Join teams like Tactable, Katalyze AI and 100+ others finding top talent with Ribbon

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VCs should be doing more commercial DD. Doing this can impact the high failure rate in SaaS. I speak to Founders every week that have raised a seed round 6-12 months ago and it’s clear that the odds are stacked against them. The Founders sales ability isn’t strong enough. The TAM is not big enough. The pipeline isn’t a real pipeline. The GTM motion isn’t defined. Knowing these at DD stage and having a plan to improve on those findings is key. Otherwise the Founder is left with an unrealistic way to achieve the more aggressive targets, and this only becomes compounded with the greater VC pressure, and it can easily become a quick fire way to burn cash and reduce runway. Founders - What commercial DD would you like from VCs? VCs - What can be done to improve commercial DD? #vc #founders

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You're managing 150 to 300 doors today, but your sights are set on 1000 and beyond. But growth isn’t just about adding more doors—it’s about the challenges that come with it. Staffing, resident support, maintenance. The reality? Scaling isn’t as simple as duplicating what you’ve already got. The real question: How do you grow without doubling your team? How do you make sure every tenant, in every market, feels cared for? Enter FlexWurx. Not just another tool, but a partner. An advanced AI platform that doesn’t just automate—it collaborates. A team of AI agents, working together, around the clock. They handle everything from maintenance requests to resident communications, learning and adapting to your specific needs. Ready to rethink how you scale?

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Calling all Tech Start-Ups... Have you ever struggled to know when to hire a Designer full time vs when to use a contractor? If so, we've put together a FREE report you might be interested in. We conducted in-depth interviews with eight leaders who had worked for a start-up in their career. These leaders provided detailed information about their companies’ design hiring strategies, ROI measurement methods, and factors influencing their hiring decisions. We've compiled our findings in a free report called 'Design Hiring Strategies in Tech Start-Ups Report' and with the link in the comments. What will you get from this report: - Understand optimal design hiring strategies - Discover industry insights - Make informed hiring decisions We'd love to know if any tech Founders / CEOs out there find this useful, so please do let us know. — Thank you to the following people for speaking to me 🙏 Milimo Banji Ankur Sharma Leeanna Pitt Philip Reynolds Talia King Philip Shuldham-Legh ✍️ DJ aka David Jarvis Jason Knight #tech #startUps #founders #CEOs #hiring

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Are you looking to attract the best talent for your company? With the new financial year, we've just released our Talent Insights Report for 2024! We've spent the past year surveying over 1,500 professionals in the tech sector to get insights into: - What candidates want (and why they are moving) - How to design a recruitment process that attracts the best - What benefits to provide to retain your top-performers Some of our key findings included: - 40% of surveyed employees ranked salary as their top priority, followed by improved work-life balance - 70% are being approached by more than 4 recruiters a year ('the war for talent' is real) - 69% would consider changing jobs if they had to be in the office more than 3 days a week Check out the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eaaiWcdi #talentinsights #talentattraction

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✨Four innovation gaps, one fast-growing £1bn market: My deep dive explores where the UK fertility market is poised for disruption: 1️⃣ Pre-IVF alternatives 2️⃣ Democratised access 3️⃣ Integrated wellness services 4️⃣ Patient community support The numbers are striking: Average IVF cost = £7,454 per cycle, yet success rates vary from 32% to 4% based on age. This creates a massive opportunity for startups to transform the fertility journey. Featuring success stories from Béa Fertility, Gaia, Peanut App, and Fertifa - pioneering startups who are already making waves. 🌊 Curious to hear your thoughts: Which gap presents the biggest opportunity for innovation? Read the full analysis here: https://lnkd.in/eGXdHP9t #FemTech #VentureCapital #HealthTech #StartupEurope

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Founders are always asking how we're so much faster than development agencies - 2 week's isn't exactly industry standard for a fully functioning MVP... When we say we deliver MVPs quickly, it’s not just loads of developers working around the clock. It all stems from our internal tech we’ve developed and refined to get founders to market faster without cutting corners. Without being too specific, we have a few key tools: - Project Setup Wizard: This allows our developers to generate a product in it's basic form in a matter of hours. Something that traditionally takes weeks. - Custom Co-Pilot: Yes, we use AI (of course). Enabling our developers to rapidly generate functionality with full context of the project and our codebase - Flexible components: not as innovative as our other tools but still powerful We’re obsessed with removing roadblocks, so instead of spending time on foundational elements, we get to focus on what really makes your MVP unique. It’s tech specifically designed to help founders launch sooner, iterate faster, and maximise every bit of feedback for the next round. Our goal is simple: deliver robust MVPs that get you to market quickly and let you keep building without missing a beat.

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I was looking back at gross margins and our EOY performance for 2024. We hit 86% 🤯 It’s funny because we’ve increased spend on COGS, but they don’t grow based on usage. Why? I think there is a hidden talent amongst our engineering team that can factor in spend and unroll some founder mistakes 🤪. I don’t want to give away all the secrets, but other founders or infrastructure nerds need help with cost management feel free to holler at me or John Solis

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🚀 'London-based Popp AI raises €4.3 million to further enterprise recruitment with conversational AI' 🌟 Your next game-changer is here! 🌱 Calling all investors and founders: Dive into actionable insights, groundbreaking ideas, and strategies to take your journey to the next level. 👉 Read it now: https://lnkd.in/gneNKt9R ✨ Popp AI has successfully secured €4.3 million in a seed funding round led by Emerge and SuperSeed Ventures. The funding will enable the company to expand its presence across enterprise recruitment teams, enhance its AI capabilities, and streamline hiring processes. Founded by Sam Dhesi, James Cochrane-Dyet, and Ilyes Benmansour, Popp AI focuses on transforming recruitment […] Don’t miss out on this must-read for leveling up in the world of startups and investment. Let’s innovate, grow, and succeed together! #Leadership #Innovation #Startups #Entrepreneurship #Founders #Investors #Growth #Strategy #Success

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For anyone going to Slush tomorrow: Interested in building your product 3x faster and with 90% less effort spent on devops? Drop by the Google Cloud booth at 4pm local time to watch André Eriksson demo the future of cloud development using Encore x Google Cloud.

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IF YOU CARE ABOUT QUALITY OF HIRE - WATCH THIS 👇 We launched game-changing updates to our Insights last week - truly the next era of interview intelligence - today we're highlighting a massive one. Since Day 1 we've been talking to our clients about how to drive quality in hiring which is (a) really hard, (b) staffed by volunteers, (c) a black box. Interviews are 🔑 to hiring outcomes - so we pioneered capturing data. Now we're delivering a long-awaited wish for our clients. A SINGLE NORTH STAR 💫 TO TRACK ACTUAL INTERVIEW QUALITY Here’s how BrightHire’s Interview Quality Report works: - It measures 📏what happens in every interview across 10+ dimensions.  - Then calculates the North Star metric: your Interview Quality Score! 🎉 - Finally, a core KPI to drive shared accountability across your org. - All tailored to your definition of "great" - a customizable score Looking for the big picture?  🪟 Get the exec view to spot key trends with a single pane of glass 👀 View your org’s overall interview performance ✂ Slice & dice by department and even by interviewer  📊 Benchmark against other orgs Want to dive deeper? 🔍 Drill down with powerful filters and track progress over time 📈 Identify where to improve, drill into specific depts, people, stages, etc. I am * so * excited for this for many reasons: - It replaces anecdotes with hard data - It creates an easy to understand, single goal - It empowers TA teams * massively * - It drive org-wide alignment and accountability I'd love to hear what you think! Shout out to Andrew Price Matt Madeiro Tyron Yamaguchi William Leeds Abhishek Sarihan Will Decker Cheryl Neoh Camila Grizio 🙌

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I have spent a decade building SaaS products. Over the years, I’ve realised how blessed the SaaS industry is thanks to the treasure trove of benchmarks, reports, and metrics that help SaaS founders create a roadmap to scale their business. However, I realised that the recruiting industry lacks this level of clarity. While there are industry veterans who make assessments instinctively, there’s no science (yet) to determine whether a recruiting agency is on the right track, let alone if it has the potential to surpass the $1 million revenue mark. For agencies that manage to cross the $1M revenue milestone, there is no data-backed research on scaling 10 or 100X. So, we decided to change this! We analysed thousands of recruiting agencies of all sizes, growing at different rates. Our latest ebook is here and it’s a data-backed, insightful read on what it takes to scale recruiting business to $10 million in Annual revenue. It talks about what are the key metrics and most importantly - sales vs recruiting - if you're an upstart - where should you be focused? Check out the e-book here: https://lnkd.in/g-hQi85g

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I’m looking for 5 burnt out founders 👋🏼 > You’ve got product-market fit, and focused on increasing your margins and streamlining your operations > You’re starting to think about where new growth will come from, but struggling to balance being future focused and scaling your current business > Your team is stretched as it is on your current business, and don’t have the capacity to hire a team to think about the future and threats of competitors > Your business is focused on helping people live healthier and happier lives Does this sound like you? Leave a " 🙋🏼‍♀️ " in the comments below (or tag someone that comes to mind)

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