berkimbayev

Okay. You have the right to think in any way you want. But LinkedIn cannot change their model overnight, it has a stable business and income. Yes, they have many smart people, managers and engineers, and expert shareholders - but their goal is to keep the status quo. That's the problem with large stable businesses. And that's why we always have disruptive startups - that change the status quo and shake the whole market. Apple did this with the iPhone, when many people said buttons would stay forever. LinkedIn has a small number of active users, because they have expensive subscriptions. That's the point. Nobody is interested to use the product that doesn't provide value. The marketplace model would allow users to earn from their profiles, increasing the activity 10x times, increasing the overall revenue. This is how AirBnB works. This is how Amazon works. This is how AppStore works. You can always make basic open profiles with basic info. But if you want to get detailed info, contact the person, chat, interview, sell something - then pay. This is the merketplace model. The entire point of my entry is to describe this model to smart doers, who will take this idea and build the next billion-dollar business.

LinkedIn has 1 billion users and generated only 15 billion. Of which only 7 billion from Recruiter premium plans. This is very small amount for the number of users. With the marketplace model they could easily reach 60+ billion, since all users will be interested to make money from their profiles, generating views and other activity. Just re-read my points and think about it twice. The marketplace model is much better than current subscriptions.

The marketplace model is suitable both to find candidates and to find leads. Ultimately, it's a perfect model to find people. No matter if it's recruiting or sales or dating or anything else. Pay to view the exact profile you want, to the owner of that profile, and that's it.

I've used both Recruiter and Sales plans. Both are shit with no valuable features. The price is too high. But the question is - why can't you contact people and make sales stuff, if it was a marketplace? The feed will be open. Only the profiles will be private. If you want to contact someone, just pay for that contact. It's that simple. No need to buy a monthly subscription for the whole database and shitty features.

Other implications:

1) the platform will not push everyone to activate premium subscription; 2) users will promote their profiles to earn more, eventually covering marketing costs

It's possible to implement some down-vote feature, if you see a profile that doesn't match expectations. A user with many down-votes can be banned and alll payments will be returned.

What if they make some basic info visible? E.g. role, company, and university. Similar to those headlines.

What if they connect the amount paid to the years of experience? For example, you pay less to view a student's profile and more for a top professional.

The weights to the parameters are also always changing. But slightly. This is where AI comes into play.

By the way, the scores are always growing, because one of the main parameters in some activities is duration. Especially in regular employment. The more you work in one company, the higher is the score for this activity. But there are also results. Employees with better results can be higher in rankings even if they have less experience.

Interestingly, most users try to provide as much information as possible, to increase the score and grow higher in rankings. Then, other users try to catch up. The system basically regulates itself. When all activities are added by all users, we end up with the objective ranking making all users agree. Especially if they know each other (e.g. classmates or co-workers). But real life doesn't stop, and the rankings are always changing because of new information.

Thanks, good point. I've read the rules and decided not to add, since I don't provide a link. The system is currently closed due to budget constraints. In short, I've build the entire database with weights and formulas built-in. It's different from LinkedIn or other platforms since there are much more fields to fill. First 1000 invited users were mostly graduates from the same university. Now looking to apply into YC but I'm a little bit late.

Just a dozen of lessons I learned from several startups. Cannot name them “valuable”, they are just lessons, nothing more. I’ve read some books of other founders, listened to some interviews, and hopefully you can read something new here. The lessons are short, there are no detailed explanations, so you can think by yourself.