Coffee aims to connect the next generation of professionals. Over mobile, of course.
It all started thanks to a conversation on Tinder between Coffee co-founder and CEO Nathan Bernard and a young investment banker who mentioned the challenges she encountered when trying to casually meet other talented young professionals in New York City. Her #1 gripe: the inability to tap these networks to get information on up and coming companies that were offering employment.
Which is when Bernard and co-founder/CCO Sawyer Xie began to build Coffee.
And what more casual way to get the conversation started? Bernard tells us more about his social recruiting app.
Tell us about the service.
Coffee is a mobile community of hiring managers and job seekers. Our aim is to help our generation find employment through social networking.
Essentially, what Zappos is doing with their social recruitment network, but at scale. Search ‘coffeetheapp’ in the iOS app store and we will be the first result!
How is it different?
At Coffee, we don’t believe that a job posting should represent a person. Instead, a person should represent a job posting. Job search should be a social experience. You’ll learn a lot more about a company by seeing, connecting and chatting with a real employee/hiring manager rather than just reading a boilerplate job posting. This sort of social recruiting is going to be huge in the next few years.
It’s also apparent now that mobile recruiting is going to become increasingly relevant, which is why we’re mobile first. That’s where all the job seekers are. Millennials check their phones on average 2-10 times throughout the day and spend around two hours on them. The millennial generation wants and needs to find employment via mobile and 40% of Millennials abandon application processes that do not allow them to apply via mobile.
We ultimately want our community members to support one another. 70% of jobs are found through networking and we want Coffee to make that process easier for job seekers.
What market are you attacking and how big is it?
Over 56% of students graduate college without an internship or job lined up. Additionally, 80% of Millennials (18-35) want to switch careers and are expected to do so 12-15 times over the course of their lifetimes. We want to help young professionals find jobs and switch careers through networking on our app and overall, the recruiting market is worth $12.6B.
What is the business model?
We will be releasing value add features that allow hiring managers to better promote and hire through our mobile app. These will be available in the coming months. Stay tuned!
How is your product defensible?
The user base is one defensible aspect. We have seen thousands of hiring managers and job seekers join our community after we launched on July 8th. All of our growth has been organic and we’re excited to continue expanding the community. There have already been some great success stories!
What are the milestones that you plan to achieve within six months?
Within the next 6 months, we aim to generate revenue and finish building the Android version. Our team is solid, but always open to speaking with talented engineers and marketing/sales people!
If you could be put in touch with one investor in the New York community who would it be and why?
I’d like to speak with Ben Lerer, but he invested in a competitor of ours.
Why did you launch in New York?
It’s the best city in the world. We love the diversity of people and different types of work being done here. The energy of the city is infectious.
What’s your favorite place to eat in NYC at 1am?
Coppelia. Get the pan con lechon sandwich.
