company/team name: transparentc€¦ · social new venture challenge . 2016 feasibility summary...

© 2016 The University of Chicago Booth School of Business Last Revised 2/3/16 www.chicagobooth.edu/entrepreneurship Page 3 of 7

20th Annual Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge and 6th Annual John Edwardson, ’72, Social New Venture Challenge

2016 FEASIBILITY SUMMARY COVER SHEET

COMPANY/TEAM NAME: TransparentC

Please consider our application for (Check all that apply): _X_ Traditional New Venture Challenge ___ Social New Venture Challenge Team Members (Please list main contact for your team first):

Name Email Address Booth Class Year or E/W Affiliation (if non-Booth) Mitchell Kirby 2016 Booth Alyssa Jaffee 2016 Booth Rob Schoder 2016 Booth Jeremy Selbst 2016 Booth

Please list all the participants who contributed significantly to the Business Idea. Attach additional sheets if necessary.

Business Description (50 words or less, please note that this info may be made available on the NVC website):

TransparentC gives users transparency into compensation and satisfaction for the specific companies, industries, and career paths they are seeking to build a career in. TransparentC is the first platform to connect career data longitudinally allowing users to understand not just an individual job, but an entire career path.

Check out the current site at: http://www.transparentmba.com Login: [email protected] Password: chicagobooth

Problem This Business is Addressing:

Currently, students and young professionals are forced to make life altering career decisions based mainly on anecdotal evidence. With limited networks, they often find themselves struggling to make informed decisions about their futures and to analyze the tradeoffs they are willing to make. In today’s environment, there is a lack of accessible, relevant, and complete data for professionals choosing between companies, industries, and career paths.

Here are some statistics from google analytics that should get you excited that this problem actually exists (as of 2/3/2016):

o Active Users: 276 (acquired in 14 days post Beta launch)o Average Time Spent on Site per Session: 7 minutes 14 secondso Average Pages Visited per Session: 17.3o Return Visitors: 36% of visitors are return visitorso Total Page Views: 7,518

http://www.transparentmba.com/

mailto:[email protected]


Social Impact of Business: (Social NVC applicants only) N/A Initial Target Customer Segment: Initial User Segment: Business School Students. This business is a “directed search” strategy and therefore requires network effects to be successful. As a result, we are focusing on serving a narrow segment extremely well to begin with in order to create a large enough network quickly so that the data is useful. Once the business school segment is robust and fully functioning we will expand to other market segments (law students, undergraduate, and the general working populace). The value of the site comes from the robustness of data and its tailored nature to the user group. Initial Monetization Hypothesis: Potential Options (Employers, University & Graduate School Career Services Organizations). This is the largest unknown for us and it is one of the main questions we are trying to solve through NVC. We believe that if we create the network and it is successful, then the nature of the high-wealth captive audience and the quality/robustness of the data will create significant monetization opportunities. Potential Market Size: (if available) HR Recruiting Tech Market Size: Competing or substitutable products: (if available) The competitive landscape includes review sites like Glassdoor, career networking sites like LinkedIn, word-of-mouth, and offerings through career services organizations within academic institutions. However, even with copious amounts of resources out in the market, there is still a large gap in which we believe TransparentC fills. Our product is significantly differentiated from these options and we view the presence of Glassdoor and LinkedIn positively, as they are potential partners and/or acquirers down the road. Here is how our users have identified ways in which we differentiate (and provide value):

Glassdoor: lacks longitudinal data, has no ability to compare similar companies and industries, contains lots of noise (data is rarely relevant to the user), provides limited data granularity in compensation

LinkedIn: lacks compensation or satisfaction data, contains longitudinal data, but only at the user level (no ability to view aggregates and trends)

Word of Mouth: lacks accuracy, sample size, breadth, longitudinal aspect, and is restricted to an individual’s primary network

Career Services: In general, career services organizations provide high level aggregates, are


restricted only to an individual school, and do not include longitudinal data.

Why is this the right team to launch this business? First off, a large difference between this team and competing teams is that we actually possess the in-house ability to create the product. Mitch Kirby, our CEO and CTO, is a full-stack Ruby developer who coded the entire website after wanting this type of career data for himself when he was deciding between career paths. Furthermore, Mitch worked previously in management consulting with Booz & Company and worked for leading venture capital firm GE Ventures so knows what it takes to evaluate and identify promising opportunities and businesses. Alyssa Jaffee, our head of sales and marketing, worked as a Senior Director of Sales at the Advisory Board selling enterprise software to large health institutions. She has significant experience recruiting top sales talent as well as understanding how corporations might find the user information meaningful. Alyssa has also spent a significant amount of time in the venture capital space and can help our team procure outside funding if and when needed. She is scrappy, smart, and the best sales person we have ever seen. Try saying no to her. Jeremy Selbst, our head of strategy and finance, worked as both a management consultant and an investment banker. As a consultant, Jeremy developed significant expertise in data analytics and strategy. As an investment banker, Jeremy worked in the mergers and acquisitions group at J.P. Morgan where he built detailed financial models and coordinated large transactions. Jeremy will be heading our efforts to identify a promising business model and monetization plan. Rob Schoder, our head of customer experience, has expertise both in recruiting and startup growth strategies. Previously, Rob worked at Spencer Stuart and Heidrick & Struggles where he focused on executive search and recruiting. Additionally, Rob worked with Airbnb where he managed the launch and growth of 5 different target markets. Rob will be heading up our efforts to optimize the product based on customer feedback and will be managing the product launch effort in different business school markets. Beyond our individual backgrounds and skills we bring to the table, we already have some tangible proof that this business is solving a significant need. We not only have a business idea, but have already launched a fully-functioning product with over 200 active users currently. Key milestones or estimated time to market: (if available) Dec 2015: Initial Alpha Test (completed) Jan 2016: Chicago Booth School-wide launch (Beta Test) (complete, 25% school as of 1/30/2016) Jan 2016: 100th User On-boarded (completed) February 2016: Improved Product Launch (on schedule) February 2016: Launch Initiated at all top 10 business schools in the United States (on schedule) February 2016: Marketing Website Complete (on schedule)


February 2016: Begin Data Collection Phase for CareerPaths Tool March 2016: Site User Experience/Design Improvement Released March 2016: 1,000th User On-boarded March 2016: CareerPaths Tool Design & Beta Launch April 2016: First Paying Customer Signed April 2016: 80% Penetration at Top-10 Business Schools April 2016: Launch to Top 25 Business Schools April 2016: CareerPaths Tool Launched to On-boarded Members May 2016: 10,000th User On-boarded


CERTIFICATIONS AND AGREEMENTS

20th Annual Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge and 6th Annual John Edwardson, ’72,

Social New Venture Challenge The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Social Enterprise Initiative

5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637

By submitting a Business Idea (“the Idea”) to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business - New Venture Challenge or Social New Venture Challenge (“the Competition”), each Contestant listed below agrees to the following conditions: Originality of Plan. The ideas and concepts set forth in the Idea are the original work of the Contestants and that the Contestant is not under any agreement or restrictions which prohibit or restrict his or her ability to disclose or submit such ideas or concepts to the Competition. Compliance with Guidelines of the Competition. Each Contestant has reviewed the Entry Guidelines ("the Competition Guidelines") and by his or her signature below certifies that this entry and the team or individual it represents complies with the Guidelines and agrees to abide by the Guidelines. Recognition of Prize Money (New Venture Challenge only). As a condition to receive the Prize Money, each winning team must agree to provide Chicago Booth with equity in the Company (that was the subject of its business plan) in an amount equal to its respective award if the company receives funding or otherwise enters into a business combination transaction wherein the surviving entity receives financing or equity in another entity, within three years of the agreement date. Waivers and Releases. Each Contestant understands that the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, each of the co-sponsors, judges, mentors, co-organizers (the “Competition Officials”) and its directors, officers, partners, employees, consultants and agents (collectively “Organizer Representatives”) are volunteers and are under no obligation to render any advice or service to any Contestant. The views expressed by the judges, co-sponsors, co-organizers, and the Organizer Representatives are their own and not those of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business or any person or entity. Each Contestant also understands and agrees that although the Competition Officials have taken and will take the steps described in the Guidelines regarding confidentiality of the ideas and plans submitted by the Contestants, the legal protection of the ideas and plans submitted by the Contestants to the Competition is otherwise the sole responsibility of the Contestant. In consideration of the time, expertise and other resources provided by the Competition Officials and Organizer Representatives to the Competition, each Contestant hereby voluntarily releases each Competition Official and each Organizing Team Member from any further liabilities, responsibilities, and accountabilities relating to or arising out of such Competition Officials or Organizer Representative's participation in the Competition.

Business Plan Name: Transparent EDU Contestants (Team Members): List principal contestant (point-of-contact) first Name(s): Signature(s) (Check Box to sign electronically): Date(s):

Mitch Kirby ✓ 2/4/2016

Jeremy Selbst ✓ 2/4/2016

Rob Schoder ✓ 2/4/2016

Alyssa Jaffee ✓ 2/4/2016

Mission:

We seek to improve compensation and satisfaction transparency in the career and job decision

making process by increasing the availability of relevant, accurate, easily accessible, and longitudinal

data.

Problem:

Currently, students and young professionals are forced to make life altering career decisions

based mainly on anecdotal evidence. With limited networks, they often find themselves struggling to

make informed decisions about their futures and find it difficult to analyze the tradeoffs they are willing

to make. In today’s environment, there is a lack of accessible, relevant, and complete data for

professionals choosing between companies, industries, and career paths.

Specifically, we think there is an unmet need in the market for data that is:

Closed-Network: The ability to operate in a closed network improves data relevance

and privacy and allows us to achieve localized scale quickly.

Comparative: there is no easy way to rapidly compare companies in a given industry

along compensation and satisfaction dimensions

Longitudinal: when data is available, it is generally localized in time, we seek to

provide the ability to connect career data longitudinally to assess the impacts of

decisions years down the road. For instance, we want to be able to answer the

question, “If I go into X career, what will my options be 3 years down the road, and

how does the compensation change over time? How does that align with my quality of

life?”

Solution:

Our solution is a closed-network platform where individuals can share compensation and

satisfaction data anonymously. The platform then aggregates this data and provides dashboards and

visualizations to help users understand trends and compare similar companies side-by-side. In order to

view the data, users must first contribute to the site, thus providing an incentive to enter accurate

information. Additionally, we encourage adoption and data accuracy through gamification tools and

algorithms that curate the database.

Exhibit 1: Example User & School Dashboard

Progress to Date:

We are extremely excited by the progress we have achieved to date and the feedback we have received

from our early adopters. Here are some highlights:

Launched an Alpha Version in December 2015 to ~30 users to get feedback and improve the site

Launched a Beta Version in January 2016 to the Chicago Booth community through only a

Facebook post and some student-group emails

Acquired 250 users within 2 weeks representing 20% penetration into Chicago Booth

Here are data usage metrics as of 2/3/2016:

o Active Users: 276 o Average Time Spent on Site per Session: 7 minutes 14 seconds o Average Pages Visited per Session: 17.3 o Return Visitors: 36% of visitors are return visitors o Total Page Views: 7,518

Exhibit 2: Google Analytics Data as of 2/3/2016

Technology:

The technology, which is based on the Ruby on Rails development framework, was developed

and maintained in house. Specifically, the platform we have built out includes smart dashboards and

databases that adapt to the user to show only relevant information and that ensure data quality,

consistency, and relevance. Finally, we have developed gamification tools and curation and fidelity

algorithms to promote user engagement and the accuracy of our database.

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape includes review sites like Glassdoor, career networking sites like

LinkedIn, word-of-mouth, and offerings through career services organizations within academic

institutions. Our product is significantly differentiated from these options and we view the presence of

Glassdoor and LinkedIn positively, as they are potential acquirers down the road. Here is how we are

different:

Glassdoor: lacks longitudinal data, has no ability to compare similar companies, contains lots of

noise (data is rarely relevant to the user), provides limited data granularity in compensation

LinkedIn: lacks compensation or satisfaction data, contains longitudinal data, but only at the

user level (no ability to view aggregates and trends)

Word of Mouth: lacks accuracy, sample size, breadth, longitudinal aspect, and is restricted to an

individual’s primary network

Career Services: In general, career services organizations provide high level aggregates, are

restricted only to an individual school, and do not include longitudinal data.

Should we be lucky to get into NVC, we are dedicated to continuing to explore the competitive

landscape in this market. This is an incredibly fast growing space and technologies are emerging to

help support this growing problem. Ultimately, the large incumbents don’t scare us, they excite us.

They prove this is a huge pain point for those looking to find guidance and inspiration when

choosing the right career and right path.

Go-To-Market Strategy:

Given we are pursuing a Directed Search Strategy (Prof. Schrager 2016), it is extremely

important for us to obtain local scale quickly in order for the platform to be useful. As a result, we are

focusing on business schools as the initial target market. Business school students are inherently looking

for new career options, likely care the most about this data, can be accessed relatively easily through

Facebook groups, email lists, etc., and are small enough that meaningful scale can be achieved quickly.

We have already launched at Chicago Booth, and are planning the following roll-out:

Top 10 Business Schools (By End of February 2016)

Top 25 Business Schools (By End of March 2016)

Top 50 Business Schools (By End of April 2016)

Once we have achieved significant business school penetration we will next focus on other user

segments. We have already identified three additional target segments: Educational Institutions,

Entrepreneurship (founders and startup employees), and Recruitment Agencies.

Market Information:

In terms of assessing the market, our most direct comparable is Glassdoor. Glassdoor is

currently valued at $1B as of their last financing round and they have 6.5million reviews, meaning each

review is valued at $150 (Market Watch). Additionally, our product would most appropriately fit in the

HR Tech space. Here is some exciting data on this market (Tracxn HR Tech Report 2015):

Total $5.7B in Funding across ~350 Companies with $4.4 Billion invested between 2010-15

Total of 62 acquisitions with 34 Acquisitions in 2014 and 2015

$70M Invested and 84 Rounds in the recruitment space alone in 2015

Notable investments in last three months

o Shift Gig (Recruitment) - $22 Million, Series B from Renren Inc., Chicago Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, GGV Capital, Garland Capital Group, KGC Capital, Pritzker Group, Wicklow Capital. – Nov 24, 2015

o Appcast (Recruitment) - $5 Million, Series A from Point Judith Capital, Irish Angels, Baird Capital – Nov 12, 2015

o Fiverr (Recruitment) - $60 Million, Series D from Square Peg Capital, BVP, Accel and Qumra Capital. – Nov 12, 2015 • Talentsoft (HRMS) - $28Million, Series C from Goldman Sachs – Oct 27, 2015

o Phenom People (Recruitment) - $6 Million, Series A from Sierra Ventures – Oct 20, 2015

Key Risks & Questions:

While we are very excited about the initial traction to date there are a number of risks and

questions that we seek to address over the coming months, including:

Problem Identification: Our current hypothesis is that the available compensation and

satisfaction data is inadequate and students and professionals would love to have access to

more robust, relevant, accurate, easily accessible, and longitudinal data. We would like to better

understand how big these painpoints are, which are the biggest, and how these problems can

be best addressed. We’ve built an initial business model canvas, however, we need to further

flesh out this information (Tebbe, Entrepreneurial Discovery).

Business Model Identification: If we are successful in creating a product that users love and one

that encourages them to enter robust data then a business model will emerge. Our initial

hypotheses for potential business models include: employer advertising, paid job postings, data

monetization, among many others. Through NVC we would like to flesh out our monetization

strategy further.

User Data Entry & Retention: In order to be successful, we need to encourage users to enter as

much data as possible and to come back to the site often. We are in the process of developing

automated email marketing campaigns, gamification tools, and UI improvements to address

these issues, but we suspect they will be an ongoing challenge which we will iterate on.

Management Team:

Mitch Kirby, our CEO and CTO, is a full-stack Ruby developer who coded the entire website

after wanting this type of career data for himself when he was deciding between career paths.

Furthermore, Mitch worked previously in management consulting with Booz & Company and worked

for leading venture capital firm GE Ventures so knows what it takes to evaluate and identify promising

opportunities and businesses.

Alyssa Jaffee, our head of sales and marketing, worked as a Senior Director of Sales at the

Advisory Board selling enterprise software to large health institutions. She has significant experience

recruiting top sales talent as well as understanding how corporations might find the user information

meaningful. Alyssa has also spent a significant amount of time in the venture capital space and can help

our team procure outside funding if and when needed. She is scrappy, smart, and the best sales person

we have ever seen. Try saying no to her.

Jeremy Selbst, our head of strategy and finance, worked as both a management consultant and

an investment banker. As a consultant, Jeremy developed significant expertise in data analytics and

strategy. As an investment banker, Jeremy worked in the mergers and acquisitions group at J.P. Morgan

where he built detailed financial models and coordinated large transactions. Jeremy will be heading our

efforts to identify a promising business model and monetization plan.

Rob Schoder, our head of customer experience, has expertise both in recruiting and startup

growth strategies. Previously, Rob worked at Spencer Stuart and Heidrick & Struggles where he focused

on executive search and recruiting. Additionally, Rob worked with Airbnb where he managed the launch

and growth of 5 different target markets. Rob will be heading up our efforts to optimize the product

based on customer feedback and will be managing the product launch effort in different business school

markets.

Sources:

1. HR Technology Report. Tracnx. December 2015

2. Discussion with Prof. James Schrager, 2/2/2016

3. “Google Capital leads $70 million round for job review site Glassdoor”. Market Watch. Jan 6,

2015.

4. Entrepreneurial Discover. Mark Tebbe & Brian Coe, 2015.

5. User Interviews & Feedback:

User Why do you use TransparentMBA

? How can we improve TransparentMBA?

How would you rate your

experience? (1-6)

What do you like most about TransparentMBA?

A

Looking at rankings of

various companies

across industries.

A few issues. 1) Averaged data can be very deceptive, especially with small sample sizes, 2) there is no verification that people worked for these companies or not, 3) I suspect

that people generally criticize their pre-MBA role and are overly optimistic looking ahead to the future (or regarding

accepted offers over the summer); similarly people are likely overly negative for internships where they did not receive an

offer - this results in extremely biased data

3

Seeing how the data comes out for different companies, though I don't

believe it. Who knew everyone hated McK so much?

B Information! More data and analytics 5 Data available

C

It's really great to get more detail

into specific companies and

the compensation

provided.

A few different areas: 1) Make sure to clearly separate pre-MBA versus post-MBA

roles. Lots of us worked for overlapping companies both before and after Booth and it is confusing to try to determine what is "apples to apples" when assessing post MBA roles.

2) On a similar note, it would be helpful to split the data based upon years after undergrad or business school. As we gain more data points, it would help to be able to judge the

seniority of members to evaluate compensation. 3) Building on the point above, sometimes the salary b/w

pre/post MBA roles gets confused as titles change b/w firms. 4) Would love to get some detail on salaries by geography /

role within companies as well (i.e. product manager vs supply chain at Amazon, or a generalist role versus a specific

practice at a consulting firm). 5) Would you mind rounding the numbers within the charts to

the nearest $? Just a GUI comment, would make things easier to read.

4 It's significantly more granular than

the employment report.

D Find out how

much companies are paying

Clearly define which salaries are MBA internships, which are post-MBA full time jobs, and which are pre-MBA salaries

6 Simplicity

company/team name: transparentc€¦ · social new venture challenge . 2016 feasibility summary...

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