The following interview is a conversation we had with Michael Fitzsimmons, CEO & Co-Founder of Crosschq, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $35 Million Raised to Power the Future of AI-Driven Hiring Intelligence.
Mike Fitzsimmons
Thanks for having me, man. Excited to be here.
Brett
Yeah, no problem at all. I’m super excited as well. And let’s jump right into things. So tell us, what are you building today?
Mike Fitzsimmons
So you did a good intro there, but project is building a hiring intelligence platform. And what that is really a data driven platform to help companies make better hiring decisions, fundamentally get better at hiring, hire better people, drive quality of hire, and ultimately just build better companies.
Brett
Take us back to 2019. When you were founding the company, what was about this problem that made you say, yep, that’s it. I’m going to go dedicate next couple of years of my life, at least solving this problem, I should say.
Mike Fitzsimmons
Yeah, I was going to say a couple of years. You’re being generous. I think, as you know, when you start into these ventures, they’re seven to ten years on your best day. Right. Unless something really extraordinary happens. So, yeah, I think deciding to step into a journey of that magnitude was actually, in this case, driven out of just personal experience. So we’re currently, obviously, as I said earlier, in the HR tech space, specifically focused on talent acquisition tech. I knew nothing about this category. I’m a serial entrepreneur. I have founded two prior venture backed companies. One of those that was, again, one of these ten year journeys was a company I built to about 200 million in revenue pre IPO. And we made a couple of hiring decisions towards the end of that journey that we never fully recovered from.
Mike Fitzsimmons
That sort of impaired the progress and the outcome of that business. And so when I got over that and kind of moved on, sold that company to private equity, and looked back, I was like, God, is it me? How did I miss? How did we miss? Is this a me problem or is this a bigger problem than that? And you ask enough people and you realize that hiring still in this country has a 45% fail rate, which means that our companies are ROI negative on almost half of the hires we make. And that was ultimately the inspiration to go and start crosscheck, was lets just fix that problem.
Brett
Trey, I want to ask about some of your previous experiences, so ill ask about the two startups in a second. But I also see you’re at Circuit City in 1995. What was circuit City like back then?
Mike Fitzsimmons
The best. I mean, one of the coolest companies you could imagine. It’s interesting, I had a meeting last week with a gentleman from Deloitte who runs their whole HCM practice, and he was also a circuit city alum at the same period of time. And it’s amazing how little people remember about that company’s journey. But first and foremost, that was the Circuit city was an incredibly entrepreneurial company. Not only were they kind of forefront of this concept of superstores for selling consumer electronics, but while I was there, we launched four different businesses within that. And what many people don’t realize is that Carmax was actually a circuit city incubated business. I was part of that launch team, which was pretty fun. That still exists today.
Mike Fitzsimmons
So it was a really cool company, super innovative, doing really neat things, and I was really lucky to be part of it and kind of learned my chops early at a large, enterprising organization like that.
Brett
Trey, were those like peak days for Circuit City back then in 1995 or late nineties?
Mike Fitzsimmons
Yeah, I mean, peak ish, right? We’re not talking books, but you probably read good to great, which circuit City was one of the best of all time, and then great to gone, which was also profile in that book. Right. So it was when Best Buy was starting to come into the market and best Buy just kicked our ass, frankly, in terms of the core circuit city business. But, yeah, it was in that generation, that 95 to kind of two thousands generation, when e commerce was getting real, new formats were getting real, where people are moving away from self service or moving towards self service and away from the high touch that circuit city was known for and that sort of thing. So it was 95, was it, you know, was kind of in the latter innings of its growth, but still an awesome opportunity.
Brett
Yeah, that must have been an incredible experience. Now, let’s dive deeper into crosscheck here. So let’s talk about maybe like the first three months, six months. Take me back to those new very early days. What did those look like so early days?
Mike Fitzsimmons
So I had a investor that was guy named Pete Gettner, who was a VC that was in one of my prior companies, and he had been along for the journey with me, and that company was a ten year journey. Pete was a CEO prior to being at VC, took his first company public, was an e learning company, one of the first real SaaS platforms. So were catching up and he had just done really well on some other investments, and he was talking to me about launching a seed fund with him. And I said, dude, what do you think about us going to fix this problem that we both experienced? He is an investor on that side of the table and me as the operator running the company. And that was sort of the early innings. So we raised a little bit of dough.
Mike Fitzsimmons
We actually went back to a number of our investors that had gotten pained by the experience we all shared. We raised a little bit of capital to go try and build a prototype product, and that was the start of it. So a lunch that turned into potentially launching a seed fund ended up with launching cross check to go solve this hiring issue.
Brett
In those early days, what was the biggest challenge you were up against and how did you overcome that challenge?
Mike Fitzsimmons
I mean, biggest challenge always is just on the product market fit stuff, right? Are we building a product that the world cares about? And in the prep, you’d ask some questions about moments and things of that nature. I’m not sure that ever gets easy. Right. And that was the same challenge then as it is today, which is, are we building the right product for this customer that solves this problem? And I think getting that right early on, I think were lucky that the first product we launched had good fit and we got some good early adoption on it. But that certainly is the piece, not having come from this space, being totally naive. And frankly, both of us not coming from the talent acquisition space or even the HTM space, that was an adjustment. Right?
Mike Fitzsimmons
So you just had to go and build the thing that you thought would best and not be overly influenced by what the rest of the market was doing. And thankfully, we kind of got it right early on. But I think that was definitely the hardest part, was just. Just figuring out, frankly, what to build to go solve this massive problem.
Brett
I can see the downsides of being an outsider to the industry, but I’m guessing there’s also some major upside as well, right? You come in and there’s no blinders on. There’s no, oh, this is how things have been done for the last 20 or 30 years. So I’m guessing you’re able to come in with a totally fresh approach.
Mike Fitzsimmons
Yeah, that was the idea. Right? And I think the other challenge is right, you always hear about product market fit and then you talk about founder market fit, and God bless our investors for trusting me to go figure out the market. But there’s other things too. Just route understanding the ecosystem, understanding where the bodies are buried, what channels you’re going to need to figure out what partners you’re going to need to align with, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it takes a little bit of time. So yeah, it was helpful from a product itself perspective and what to build and not being feature constrained by legacy expectations. But the other piece of that puzzle, it takes you a little bit longer to go figure out how to actually penetrate the ecosystem, to figure out how to go and sell to this buyer.
Mike Fitzsimmons
I didn’t have a network of talent acquisition or HR leaders. That was not the world I had played in for the last 15 years of my career. So anyways, there’s absolutely a balance to that and in this case, great from a product innovation perspective, but certainly a taller mountain to climb in terms of entering a new market that I didn’t have the ecosystem built yet.
Brett
As you dug into the hiring space, was there anything that just blew your mind as an outsider looking at it, just to think like how is this possible? How is this the case that this is how things are done or this is how things work? Did you have anything that just really surprised you?
Mike Fitzsimmons
Yeah, I mean, it still is the absolute core of what we do. And you think about first and foremost this idea that hiring still has a 45% plus fail rate. If you actually step back and think about that for a second like, oh my God, right. Thats alarming in and of itself. So thats number one. But the other piece was we have no accountability to hiring in any of our companies and theres no other part of the business where we spend this much money, not even close, and invest this much capital and dont hold it to the same ROI expectations that we do with anything else. Youre not spending $100 million a year on marketing and not understanding how that marketing actually led to the business results you were trying to achieve.
Mike Fitzsimmons
Youre not doing that with your development team, youre not doing that with your sales team. You’re not doing that with any of your other parts of your organization. So that’s the major thing that is just so mind boggling is that still to this day, I mean, that most of the world is flying blind connecting the dots between who they hire and how those hires actually impact their business objectives.
Brett
Let’s talk a little bit about the go to market motion. What’s the go to market motion look like?
Mike Fitzsimmons
So it’s an enterprise product and we’ve evolved and we’ve kind of tried everything, right. And it certainly changes as the company matures. Early on, the go to market was I did the first hundred deals, right? That’s just what you do. You claw, you scrape, you figure it out. And now we look like a more traditional enterprise sales team. And the motion sales cycles are longer, right. Sales cycles are six months now instead of one month. As you’re moving up market and moving those larger opportunities, we have absolutely seen that digital marketing wholly has become incredibly challenging. CAC is going through the roof and getting to a healthy sales and marketing efficiency metrics is getting more challenging. We’re certainly putting more efforts into hand to hand combat, more efforts into live events that things of that nature.
Mike Fitzsimmons
I’m sure you observe as well, there’s a lot of habits that were formed pre Covid but certainly amplified during COVID that sort of changed how our sellers were selling and were getting really comfortable expecting inbound leads and just doing demos on Zoom and thinking that was going to close the deal, which it did. But that’s changed and it’s gotten more complex. So certainly the motion is definitely, I hate to say it, but probably feels a little bit more old school in terms of yeah, we’re trying to get in front of people were trying to have real value conversations, were trying to demonstrate how were driving demonstrable ROI quickly and its a lot of hand to hand combat, its a lot of human being one touch.
Brett
What did you learn as you made that transition out of founder led sales?
Mike Fitzsimmons
Trey, its a great litmus test on what kind of product market fit you have. You find yourself wanting to be in as many of those conversations as possible, and your ego probably as much as anything, cant let go. But its also a good test that if you can’t get someone else to sell it as well as you sold it, then you probably don’t have the fit that you hoped you had. Right. If it’s too complicated where you can’t replicate that sales motion. So that was an important thing was just being able to step away a bit and make sure we’re focused on the right levels of enablement and the right process and frankly simplifying the product messaging enough where anyone else could sell it. I think that’s a big piece of it.
Mike Fitzsimmons
I’m not sure that ever actually goes away though, that founder led sales. There’s not a deal happening in our company now that I’m not touching in some capacity if it’s of a certain scale. Right. So you’re still involved, you still got your fingers on it. I’m not sure you ever really get away with that. I don’t care what scale you get to. You’re probably still involved in that in.
Brett
Some capacity in that journey to get clarity in your messaging. What did you learn about messaging that.
Mike Fitzsimmons
You need to slow down a little bit. Simple is better. I mean, all this stuff that we all know, but certainly just because you’re seeing value and as a founder, you fall into this trap all the time, right? It doesn’t mean that value is aligning with what potential customer is going to receive from your solution. So that takes some work. And in our case, were way out in front with this whole idea of quality of hire and connecting outcomes and coming into companies with a big bat, telling them that you’re not doing a good job of this, you’re not doing a good job of your hiring, you’re not connecting with outcomes, you’re not measuring it appropriately. And we realized pretty quickly that’s not the right message to your buyer, right. This buyer is doing the best they can do.
Mike Fitzsimmons
They’re doing the best they can do with what they have at their fingertips. And so that might seem like a subtle change, but just empowering them versus coming in and telling them what they’re not doing, they’re two very different things and two very different motions and two very different ways of communicating. We had to figure that out.
Brett
Trey, what about marketing? How would you describe the general marketing philosophy and approach?
Mike Fitzsimmons
I will tell you that I don’t even know what year to put this in brackets, but called the 2016 1718 B2B SaaS demand gen playbook that everybody kind of runs, you know, scrap it. I just like completely throw it out, you know what I mean? Like half of that stuff is completely irrelevant. And unfortunately, we’ve trained set of marketers and those things still are the things. And I think it has stifled innovation and has stifled creativity. And so I think that’s a really important thing to me. I fell for some of that right early. I hadn’t run a SaaS company. I’ve been in the media space and the e commerce space. And so I fell for some of that.
Mike Fitzsimmons
Of, okay, here’s the eight strategies we’re going to pursue from a paid perspective, from a content perspective, from an SEO partner channel, blah blah blah. And you just realize pretty quickly that the world has passed by so much of that stuff and that’s not where the magic is right. And that’s not where it’s going to happen. Certainly as you’re heading up to the enterprise, a lot of it’s important, but I just think that’s critical from my perspective. It’s changing. So those of us that aren’t changing with it and that aren’t adjusting with it’s going to be challenging.
Brett
Preston, what are some of those channels or tactics or strategies that you let go of and said were going to stop doing this, were going to stop wasting money and time and resources on it?
Mike Fitzsimmons
Well, and its also how you manage them. But this is my perception. On partnerships. I think the term is so loosely used and especially in our world where you see company integrates, Company A, integrates with Company B and stand up some sort of referral agreement and all of a sudden assume they’re partners and that they’re going to be actively selling each other’s wares. It doesn’t work like that, never has really worked like that and its not going to work like that. Just having a partner marketing manager to help you exploit that channel opportunity, thats not how it works. In that case, it comes down to the sellers. The art there is you actually have to get hand to hand combat with the actual sellers at your partner to make sure that they are incentivized to go sell your stuff.
Mike Fitzsimmons
But then how do you create energy amongst them and how do you get the sellers at your partner organization talking to each other and the water cooler conversation around that they are generating revenue on helping to move your product, things of that nature. So just very different thoughts where I was like, hey, you sign the deal with XYZ and you just add water and do some activations and voila, you’re going to start getting great leads. It just doesn’t work that way in real life. So I mean those are examples, but you could go down the list I think on the content marketing side too, just for content’s sake and just a lot of that stuff, we’re just, the world is overwhelmed with stuff and with noise right now. So the more targeted the better. And spreading too wide a net. Right.
Mike Fitzsimmons
Doesn’t add any value to anybody. Certainly the paid side has gotten really challenging, both from a retargeting perspective and just your normal paid sort of optimization. I think there’s just a lot there that if I looking back and kind of with regret in terms of some of the mistakes we made or I made, it’s just not failing fast enough. In some of those channels and being a little bit more creative with how we selected the things that were going to go and do.
Brett
This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage, and grow their own podcast. Now, if you’re a founder, you may.
Brett
Be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast.
Brett
I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host, and we handle literally everything else.
Brett
To set up a call to discuss.
Brett
Launching your own podcast, visit Frontlines.io – podcast. Now back today’s episode. What channel are you most excited about? Is it just that old school approach of just one to one combat, or what is that go to channel for you?
Mike Fitzsimmons
Yeah, it’s massive. We. We’re doing road shows now, literally, as we have new product releases going market to market, live roadshows with select small, intimate buying groups. I mentioned to you earlier that I had one of these last night in San Francisco. There’s nothing like it, where you’re actually having real conversations and you’re able to do a nice balancing act between product and showing your wares, but also getting some real human dialogue going and solving problems together. I think that’s a real thing. So just getting better at that kind of stuff. I’ll just be frank with you. I think our last webinar had something like 24 attendees during COVID That was a great channel, and you’re getting all this stuff, but it’s like people are just fatigued with a lot of that. So for now it is.
Mike Fitzsimmons
Yeah, get in front, get out and market. Get on your feet. Go have real human conversations with folks. I think it is a really important thing and something that’s so doable, too. And our buyers are thirsting for it as well, in my opinion.
Brett
Yeah, I think that has to be consistent with everyone. Whenever I get another invite for a webinar, I’m like, no, like, it’s the last thing in the world that I want to do is go sit there for an hour and, like, watch people on the screen. But when I get an invite to go to one of these dinners or a small event, I’m down for that. Very excited about that. I think a lot of buyers are as well.
Mike Fitzsimmons
Yeah, I agree with you.
Brett
Can you unpack that strategy or not the strategy, but maybe take us behind the scenes of this specific dinner that you did in San Francisco. You don’t have to reveal names or anything like that. Talk to us about the planning that went into it, how you decided who to invite, how you think about the impact, whats that playbook look like?
Mike Fitzsimmons
Yeah, I just love the balance of it too. And we could be a lot better at being a harder selling organization. Were really not. But that is reflected in how we put those together. So that was a twelve person event last night. Had two of the top analysts in our space, just industry analysts that cover the category one had just recently published a book, so that was cool. And he brought signed copies of his book for the folks that joined. And then we had a nice little mix. We had three existing customers. We had a handful of prospects too, probably three prospects. And then a couple of folks from our partner ecosystem, some of those channel partners ish that I mentioned earlier. And just a really nice balance and it’s just good conversation, right?
Mike Fitzsimmons
You’re talking shop, everybody’s in the space and you know, comparing notes and it’s really that simple. We did this one at the battery in San Francisco, which you’re local so you know where that is was just a cool setting to do it. And the feedback is just consistently really positive on these things.
Brett
And then are you giving a talk at all or is there any speaking like that? Or is it really just about putting these people in a room and letting organic, natural conversations happen?
Mike Fitzsimmons
It’s really the latter to earn your right to then go and have additional one one conversations and go deeper. Right. I think it’s all part of the motion, if you will. So we keep it pretty light. We’re not driving anything down anybody’s throat. And probably something we could do a little better job of is putting a little more structure to it. But we like people to be comfortable and we don’t want them to feel like they’re coming. We don’t want to feel like it’s a timeshare thing. Right. And that we’re fortunate to hear the pitch in order to get the meal. It’s not that vibe at all. So it’s pretty laid back.
Brett
And how many of these roughly do you plan to do this year?
Mike Fitzsimmons
We’ll probably do every six weeks. And this is new for us in terms of going. We’ve always done local Bay Area and some of our more concentrated areas, but we’re doing Boston, New York, Miami, Atlanta. We’re kind of stretching our legs a little bit this year, so more to report on that as we go. But early Reed is. It’s a winning play.
Brett
Is the idea to take normal spend that you were spending on trade show booths and events like that, which I know can be ridiculously and absurdly expensive in most industries. I’m sure it’s the same in your industry. Is the idea to eventually take, spend from there and put it into doing more of these kind of smaller, more intimate, more personal events?
Mike Fitzsimmons
That’s exactly. And to be honest with you, it’s even fed into how we attack those live events. We’re not a booth company and never have been. And what’s always worked well for us on those is this exact same strategy of having a couple of great analysts, prospects, customers in an intimate, high end dinner kind of environment right around those conferences. That’s always been a winning play for us. So keep it focused. Don’t need to go wide, don’t need to have our name on the lanyard, but make sure that we’re connecting in a human way with people.
Brett
When it comes to the category, I’m guessing that category that you’re really trying to drive towards is hiring intelligence. There are a number of other companies on that are kind of in this space. And what I found is that everyone talks about it in a completely different way. There seems to be no standard definition. Is there a standard definition now? Or what does that definition of hiring intelligence look like from your perspective and your point of view on the market?
Mike Fitzsimmons
Yeah, I’m glad you’re asking the question, because when you deconstruct category creation and your deconstruct categories, you could look at these ecosystem slides and like your head is just going crazy. You’re like, I don’t know, let me just throw a dart at this thing and see where it sticks. And I know we’re roughly in this kind of an area, but with that said, we kind of stood up this term of hiring intelligence because we didn’t think there was good definition for what we’re doing. And really what we are doing is trying to infuse as much data in every aspect of the hiring process to ultimately optimize processes and drive more quality of hire. And so there’s so much stuff that goes into that and that’s kind of how we landed on this hiring intelligence.
Mike Fitzsimmons
So it’s an emerging, it’s early in terms of the categories evolution. I think you have sort of talent analytics has been a pretty mature category. You actually have a category called talent intelligence, which has leaned more towards internal mobility and things of that nature. So these things kind of just take their shape and its oftentimes challenging and were not trying to confuse anybody anymore. But for us, when we said, hey, were just going to stand up and own this, because we don’t think anybody else in the world is doing this and the ways we are. Its really about that. Its really about how are we bringing actionable data and insights to companies to help them optimize their hiring and improve their quality of hire? Thats the jam.
Brett
Whats the plan to make sure that the market embraces and adopts your definition of hiring intelligence and not one of the competitors out there?
Mike Fitzsimmons
I don’t know that there’s a silver bullet to that. It’s just a function of building awesome product that your users can’t live without because it’s solving a bunch of really practical challenges for them. And it’s amazing to us in terms of the things that we initially thought we’d be solving versus some of the things that we’re actually solving for now. We have capabilities that it’s just amazing the types of things that we’re able to actually help companies on their journey that we didn’t initially hypothesize. We have companies using us now to look at how much money they’re spending on the candidates they get from. Indeed. And looking at historically, a lot of companies have looked at cost per hire, but that’s been the metric. And now they’re looking at cost for quality higher.
Mike Fitzsimmons
And now they’re able to actually go back to the $4 million they spent with indeed last year and have a real conversation with them about the fact that on a fully loaded basis, they’re probably spending three times what they thought they were spending. I bring that up as an illustrative example, and I could go down the list. We have companies that are using assessments to select talent, and we can actually show them that those assessments are telling them to hire the wrong people and that they’re actually driving a lower quality because the assessment is just broken and isn’t a good match for their type of success. So theres just a lot in there and I think were still early innings but delighting our users, driving quantifiable ROI and ensuring that were covering the whole gamut, versus companies that are focused one component of it.
Mike Fitzsimmons
There’s companies that are just focused on the interview side or just focused on some other sides. I think that’s really critical for us is being able to holistically answer the question for an organization of how do I fundamentally improve my hiring? How do I use outcomes to influence improving quality of hire, et cetera, for.
Brett
Most of your customers, then, is this a new line item that they’re creating with hiring intelligence? Or is this replacing and consolidating some other line items that they had.
Mike Fitzsimmons
Yeah. So it’s an interesting one because the closest kind of neighbor is probably in the people analytics side. Historically, talent acquisition and hiring, though, has been the lowest priority for a people analytics team. They’re usually focused more around HR type of stuff, believe it or not. And so, yeah, it’s a combination of sort of taking some share from their spend on their people analytics. It’s a simple way to think about it that is likely going to either headcount and other potential tools or into some other part of their stack and just giving them one solution by which they can kind of get access to all of it.
Brett
Let’s talk a little bit about funding. So, as I mentioned there in the intro, you’ve raised over 35 million to date. What have you learned about fundraising throughout this journey?
Mike Fitzsimmons
I don’t know that my opinion is even that relevant because were lucky to be part of that 2021 vintage. I’m a realist. I think that it wasn’t as hard to raise funding in 2021 as it might have been in other times in my career. Right. So, look, I’m thankful for it, and I don’t stare at gift horse in the mouth. I remember when we took, we did our series A, and then were approached by a pretty large fund about doing extensions that and adding onto it. And I remember there was some disagreement at the board about that, and I’m like, no, we’re doing it. It’s just, it’s a no brainer. And I’m thank God that we did at that time. So I think that just is another good reminder that capital is not always out there.
Mike Fitzsimmons
And you try to be perfect in engineering, your fundraising strategy, you’re never going to be perfect at it. And if you have good access to capital on fair terms, and I still am of the mind that you should take it when it’s there. But like I said, I think that was a unique period of time and were blessed to kind of raise when we did. I think what’s happening now, we’ve all seen it, the valuations. We’re not talking about a 1020, 30% decrease in valuations, we’re talking about a multiplier of that. And subsequently, it’s going to put more pressure on companies like us that raise a pretty healthy series A to over perform in order to go and raise again.
Mike Fitzsimmons
So I think we all know that and just calibrating our investment and how we’re deploying our capital based on that kind of new market dynamic is right is pretty obvious.
Brett
And not to go backwards here, but I did write down a note that I wanted to ask about. What are your views when it comes to analyst relations? Obviously, you had two analysts there at that dinner, so I’m guessing it’s important to you. What’s your view there, and how important do you think it is to have analysts help you define this hiring intelligence category?
Mike Fitzsimmons
Yeah, I think it’s vital, right. Because they’re the ones that are going to be talking about it, especially on the influence with some of these enterprise buyers who are turning to a lot of these analysts as core centers of influence to help them navigate where they need to be investing. And so I really do believe in it. I put a lot of time and energy into it. Our company puts a lot of time and energy into it. And you certainly would like that cohort of influence to be on your side versus not on your side. So like anything else, if they’re part of helping you craft the story, and they’re also part of being able to offer feedback and help clarify and that sort of thing. So I’m a big believer. I put a lot of energy into that part of the house.
Brett
So what advice would you have for a founder who’s just now beginning to work with analysts? A lot of the founders I work with, they view, like, this world of gardener and analyst is like a black box, and there’s a lot of unknown there. What advice would you have for them?
Mike Fitzsimmons
Well, I think Gartner can be a black box, and I think you have to earn your seat at the Gartner table, and that takes time. Right. And I think if you understand where you are in your journey and where they are, and you calibrate your expectations properly, I think that’s really important. And certainly I wanted Gartner to stand up a category for us on day one. Right. I thought, why the heck are they not doing that? I wanted Deloitte to be reselling us on day one. Why the heck are they not doing that? But there’s just certain natural course of scale that you have to achieve in order to achieve those kind of milestones. But there’s a whole cohort that’s not Gartner that are influencers, right?
Mike Fitzsimmons
And I think in this market, as were talking earlier about the shifting demand gen market and how influence is happening, we know how important influence is, right. We know how important those voices are on helping you achieve mind share with your target customers. And so I think it’s a really cost effective, high ROI investment to make and I would just advise founders earlier in their journey, just calibrate your expectations but dont sort of stare a gift horse in the mouth and put the effort in, especially on those influencers that maybe dont have a national brand because they truly can help.
Brett
Preston, final question for you, lets zoom out three to five years into the future. Whats the big picture vision here?
Mike Fitzsimmons
Trey our belief is that hiring is ten years behind sales and everything. If you even think about applicant tracking systems or CRM for hiring and talent acquisition is a relatively new phenomenon. Whereas Salesforce, its almost if you map the Salesforce journey for revenue teams to whats happened in hiring, I think were about ten years behind. And our view is that certainly in three to five years were going to be catching up. Revenue intelligence is a very mature category on the sales side of the world of just being able to better visualize your pipelines and optimize and all those good things. We have a fundamental vision that hiring intelligence is going to be the same thing. We think it’s going to be an absolute necessity for every organization to have a platform by which they can better forecast and optimize their hiring.
Mike Fitzsimmons
So that’s our vision for it. And the outcome of all of that is back to where we started. It’s back to solving this problem of 45% of our new hires don’t work out. That sucks for companies, that sucks for talent and for the individuals that take jobs that don’t work out for them. And if that’s our north star, is to get that right, I just think in three to five years we’re going to be that much closer to getting that right.
Brett
Amazing. I love the vision and I’ve really loved this conversation. We are up on time and I couldn’t live with myself. I keep you on and make you late to this warriors game. So we’ll have to wrap here. Before we do. If there’s any founders that are listening in, they feel inspired, they want to follow along with your journey. Where should they go?
Mike Fitzsimmons
Certainly can just email me@fitzcrosschq.com and that’s crosschq.com or hit me on LinkedIn. Mike Fitzsimmons, Crosschq and I’ll definitely hit you back.
Brett
Amazing, Mike, thanks so much.
Mike Fitzsimmons
All right, man, thanks.
Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit Frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode search for category visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
Twitter
facebook
linkedin