When a pivot is exactly the right decision
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It’s been a whirlwind two years full of firsts since we started Draftboard. We built a fantastic team, onboarded over 100 amazing companies to the platform, and put out a product that people rave about - I get unsolicited messages all the time about how easy it is to use and how refreshing the experience is.
But, alas, a great product does not a great business make.
Our model relied on scouts earning bonuses for the referrals they make: each time they get paid, their incentive to make more referrals grows. At least this was the theory - in practice there just weren’t enough bonuses being paid.
And what that really means is that our hire:referral ratio was very, very low.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, you must have been sending poor quality candidates”
But no, that wasn’t the case. Draftboard referrals got interviews at 10x the rates (20%) of candidates who applied via LinkedIn (2%). The quality was super, super strong.
The problem is that there are dozens of steps in a hiring process, and each step is an opportunity for something to go wrong. So it became death by a thousand cuts: maybe the company changed the salary, or the title, or the job responsibilities, or the reporting structure. Maybe the candidate got a new job, or got promoted, or didn’t like the hiring manager. Maybe there was a failed interview, or reference check or background check. Maybe the company’s priorities changed; maybe they ghosted the candidate.
All of these are reasons why a conversion (aka a hire) doesn’t happen. And they each happen often enough that we were just seeing really, really low conversion rates.
That’s a big problem for us, because if our scouts aren’t earning bonuses, then they have no reason to continue using the platform.
And that’s what we saw: a spike of interest from new scouts as they’d get excited about the promise of the platform, but then a sharp drop-off as they realized their referrals weren’t getting hired at high enough rates to justify their time investment in using Draftboard.
A few months ago we decided to test some initiatives to improve the situation (like Interview Bonuses), but unfortunately they didn’t solve the problem.
So recently we made the difficult decision to sunset Draftboard…
…but that was Draftboard v1.
Draftboard v2 is coming in January, and it’s gonna be wild: we’re building a whole new take on how you can make your network work for you.
Want us to keep you posted? Click the link in the first comment to sign up for updates & to be notified when we launch.
I can’t thank you enough for being on this journey with us. Without trying (and failing) with this product, we would never have come up with the idea for - or learned the lessons that led us to - our new product. Your feedback, engagement, advice & criticism has been instrumental, and we hope you’ll give it all to us again in round 2!
Stay tuned 🙂
