Montreal Tech Watch

Techvibes covered Jobbook yesterday in a long descriptive article that shows all the new features. Recently, Jobbook was also covered by Montreal Gazette’s Jason Madger back when the site launched at the beginning of the month. There are also other blogs happy to report all the good things about jobbook. There are many sides to the story though.

An innovative design

There are many startups claiming to understand the online job market, and Jobbook approaches it like a dating site. Candidates first create a profile, and then indicates to the site what sort of jobs they’d like. They will then receive alerts on new jobs. When back to the site, they then go through a list of jobs, and “Like” the ones they’d like to apply to. Employers then go through the list of candidates who liked their jobs, and if successful, Jobbook will get 5% of the candidate’s first-year salary from the employer.

The design means canditates don’t have to go through the long and painful process of introducing him/herself to the company, and employers don’t have to go through spam, or invest in a job listing fee. It adds an original facebook-y component to the online job market, which has been so far dominated by the rather old-schools Monster or eLance.

The online job market is very lucrative and fierce; startups like oDesk are bringing new markets to the table, there’s a wave of hopeful “AirBnB but for jobs”, while there’s still a lot of free job boards. And it’s interesting to see another Montreal upstart trying out something new.

Aggressive marketing

The “innovation” doesn’t stop there though, and Jobbook is also looking for creative ways to promote the service. The news section of the site have nice-looking photos and articles, with a professional design. There’s no original content though, and most articles are in fact aggregated from various established sites like the New York Times, Mashable, and any other site having news that would interest a job searcher. Is copying another site’s content infringement? Jobbook includes a “Read the original post” at the end of the article, and law in Canada about Fair Dealing is very vague on what you can or can’t do, but what’s clear here is that Jobbook isn’t adding original comments, review, criticism, and the whole system actually looks like they’re just re-publishing their favorite RSS items.

I understand the rationale though, it’s certainly very good in terms of search engine marketing, and will get your site ranked well by Google for the targeted keywords.

Eclectic group of investors and business partners

As reported by the Montreal Gazette, Jobbook already sits in a sprawling 4,000 square foot office in a prime location. The offices feature a basketball court plus a gym. That’s explained by the fact that one of Jobbook’s investor is a real estate developer. Other investors include 73-year old Jean de Brabant, a lawyer, who is the original godfather of Jobbook while Antoine de Brabant, his son, and Noah Chaimowicz, the CTO, are presented as the cool co-founders of Jobbook. Other shareholders include Michael Boyd, ex-Fonola, plus any other individual or group that is interested in business partnerships with Jobbook.

Giving 1 company share to “affiliates” for each new registration

Like many web and mobile startups, Jobbook is trying new marketing tactics to promote their service. The site’s founder signed a deal with Zach Newburg, the president of student society of McGill university, where he would be entitled to one share for every McGill student that registered. Zach Newburg went on trips to Ivy Leagues schools, Ontario, and in England, contacting various student clubs about presenting McGill, but then arrived with Jobbook founders, and pitched instead the website to student society representatives. There was a big uproar at McGill university, both Newburg and Jobbook explained it was a misunderstanding, and Newburg is now in a more official role as VP of student relations.

Naughtiness

When asked about this deal, Newburg said he couldn’t reveal it, having signed a non-disclosure agreeement (NDA) with Jobbook founders. Other student reps have joined in, and Jobbook now boasts 5,000 new users in one month.

The business practices are amusing, to say the least. In Paul Graham’s essay, “What we look for in a startup”, referenced by many investors, one of the fourth quality of a startup entrepreneur is “naughtiness”, defined as the capacity to bend rules to their advantage, and beating the system.

Jobbook’s practices are certainly not illegal. Even the star of the web AirBnb is known for spamming craiglists users in its early beginnings, enticing them to register on the site. Facebook got started initially by leeching student information through Harvard servers, without the users’s approval. And don’t even get me started on Groupon.

In Montreal, there’s a selection of startups using blackhat SEO and other “creative” tactics to get users. There’s even an industry of spammers in the city (such as the case of the spammer ordered to pay $800m to Facebook). Even in collaborative environments like Notman House, we’ve come across entrepreneurs using those creative practices, where one copies someone else’s ideas and then re-optimized them.

Where’s the technology advantage?

We can call those practices naughty (or hustling?), and when you’re a startup, with limited resources, in a ultra-competitive market, that’s a path many entrepreneurs are taking. They’re pressed by investors to increase cashflow, sign distribution deals, and find a way to “make things work”. In cases where you don’t have a technological advantage (i.e. your product pitch can be easily replicated by any new CompSci graduate in a few months), some business-oriented cofounders take the lead and will be tempted to bend the rules to their advantage.

As stated earlier, Jobbok’s tactics are certainly not illegal. It’s just amusing to see a conservative organization like McGill unhappy with those practices. For MTW readers, and especially programmers, what you can remember is that many startups begin like this. And for bloggers: do a minimum of research, don’t just copy&paste what the press release says

Check out Jobbook