From the founders

I got 12 job interviews in two weeks

· 6 min read · By Anthony Castrio, Co-founder of ApplyAll

Originally published on Anthony Castrio's Substack. This page is a copy for readers on applyall.com.

Hello friends & family,

It's been almost three months now since I sold off my indie-businesses and started looking for a job. Here's what's changed in my life since then:

  • I started a new job!
  • Moved to New York City.
  • Got SMILE eye surgery (20/20 babyyy).
Anthony wearing sunglasses after SMILE eye surgery
Me in my $6500 pair of sunglasses. (Free with SMILE eye surgery.)

Currently I'm bouncing around between NYC sublets while I neighborhood shop and look for a long term rental. My current place gives me 30% off rent for keeping it vegan, and my next spot is 50% off in exchange for cat-sitting. If I can keep finding situations like those maybe I'll just keep subletting forever.

My biggest news this quarter is (drumroll please 🥁🥁🥁): my job search is over!

I'm joining ApplyAll.com as a co-founder. Tagline: Apply to 200+ jobs with just 30 seconds of work.

*Wait, is that a job? I thought you were done with startups?*

Here's what happened:

Two months ago I sold both Indie Worldwide and Bot Eat Brain and decided to get a normal job.

While I searched, I also freelanced part-time for now-co-founder Tal fixing bugs and shipping features on their startup ApplyAll, a service that finds and applies for jobs for you.

Since we were already working together, Tal let me use the service for free for my job-search.

It was shocking how much more candidate friendly the experience was. All I had to do was upload my resume and *boom* interviews. So. Many. Interviews.

A calendar packed with job interviews, company names blurred
Blurred company names to protect the innocent.

Instead of searching for jobs all day, I sat back while the interview requests poured in for me to choose from. I was booked with a dozen+ back-to-back interviews two weeks out.

The experience as a job-seeker is 1000x better. It worked so good that I decided to turn down all those interviews and join the team.

I tried to get a normal job and failed. So here I am, in founder mode again.

Anthony and Tal meeting in person in New York City
Tal & I met up IRL for the first time in NYC last month after co-working virtually for almost a year. And did you notice? No glasses on my face :D

We already passed $100k in revenue this year and 500+ customers. The only problem... no profit yet.

My job is to fix that in the next 6 months or I'm fired. (Actually everyone on the team is kinda screwed if we can't figure things out by then).

Why don't we have any profit?

We're working really really hard to make sure every customer only gets applied to relevant jobs. We don't just want you to get interviews, we want you to get hired!

When Tal built out the platform, the top priority was figuring out if anyone would pay for this service at all. Scaling & profit were problems for the future (the future is now).

So we have a lot of overhead:

  • We manually onboard each customer. Double-checking your resume and fine-tuning our search parameters to only find you the best jobs.
  • We manually fill out each job application to make sure all your information is correct and your application is indistinguishable from filling out the application yourself (if not better).
  • We charge just barely more (and sometimes less) than what it cost us to run the thing in server time + Upworkers + software.

How much money are we losing on each job application? Honestly couldn't tell you, that's another problem to be solved ASAP.

Customer testimonials about getting interviews through ApplyAll
What we lack in profits we make up for in happy customers. Now I just need to find a landlord who accepts testimonials in-lieu of rent.

Plan of action

  1. Get our finances in order. This month we're moving all our transactions to a single business bank account. Got a corporate credit card. And we're setting up accounting software. By next month I should be able to tell you exactly how much we're profiting (or bleeding) each month.
  2. Reduce our costs. We've exhaustively stress-tested our process to figure out how to find & apply for the best match jobs. It's time to automate everything we've learned so that we can scale up from serving a handful of customers a day to hopefully hundreds of customers a day.
  3. Analyze & Optimize. We've set up product analytics. We're A/B testing new price points. We're expanding our marketing channels (hit reply if you want to become an affiliate and make $20+ per refferal). We're starting partnership conversation with resume builder and job board companies (know anyone? Would love an intro!).
A Stripe chart showing month-over-month ApplyAll growth
Targeting +∞ growth every month. (We recently switched to a new Stripe account).

The $1,000,000 Pitch

Job-seekers are at a huge disadvantage compared to employers.

Here's what you need to know if you're applying for jobs right now:

The companies you are applying to process thousands of applications for every opening. They use automations to filter out candidates.

Personalized applications don't matter if they never get read by a human in the first place.

We give you the tools you need to even the playing field:

  • we find high-paying jobs for you that match your experience and goals.
  • we do all the manual labor filling out applications.
  • we make you look professional.

You get hundreds of hours of your time back and find your dream job in weeks instead of months.

“So cool! How can I help?”

I'm glad you asked!

If you have any unemployed friends looking for a tech job in the USA, please send them to ApplyAll.com and we'll help them find a job.

(Expanding globally and to all industries in the medium-future but we're only doing USA tech for now to make our operations manageable)

That's all from me, thanks for reading!

Yours Truly,
Anthony

Anthony Castrio, Co-founder of ApplyAll. Anthony joined ApplyAll as co-founder after using the service in his own job search. He writes about the company on his Substack. LinkedIn

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