When he launched Wanted Technologies ten years ago, David Tanguay had no idea of the surprises that awaited him, or of the new path he would finally end up taking. Today, David Tanguay has chosen to tackle new ventures. He is being replaced by Scott Burton, the new president and chief executive officer of Wanted Technologies. He talks to us about this exciting experience and gives us his vision of this market in full swing.
Tell us how Wanted Technologies came about
Like many start-ups, we were off to a rocky start, but landed on our feet after a rough but successful development.
It all begin in 1997, when I was 23 years old. My friend Ian Delisle and me had the idea of creating a Copernic for jobs, i.e. a job ad search engine for candidates. With a degree in computers and political science, I was looking for work after being laid off, and had encountered first hand the difficulty of sifting through tons of ads from the many job sites to find the good ones. After one year of development, our first product came out in May 1998, with no budget: www wantedjobs com.
At that time, the Internet was the darling of the investment world. We succeeded in raising CAD$5.5 million in three years! By 2001, we had some 60 people on board, Web traffic of 350,000 unique visitors, and major U.S. groups as advertisers. We were right in the middle of the famous Internet bubble. . .
Wanted Technologies, a fairy tale come true?
Yes, but this lovely tale ended even faster than it started. We received the full brunt of the effects of the dot-com crash of 2001—our revenues fell to zero and the team went from 60 to 10 people in just a few months. No company wanted to advertising online anymore, and GoogleAdwords was not yet there to save the day. We were cornered!
So what was your strategy?
We had to reinvent ourselves; everything had to be started over from scratch to save our investment while finding a profitable business model. We fumbled around for a year, trying various things. We finally decided on a B2B formula, which allowed us to keep our job ad aggregating technology while targeting it to professionals. This meant we could count on marketing paying services instead of unpredictable advertising revenues.
The technology remained similar, of course, but we had to fine-tune our engine: if B2C valued quantity over quality, then B2B was exactly the opposite. We can now state that we post 99.9% of what comes out on the Web. Moreover, we had to add a data memorization functionality, since professionals want to see a history. We have an archive of all the job ads posted online since 2002!
Toward what type of companies did you turn to?
Our first clients were staffing firms, who were interested in the possibility of monitoring online job ads on a daily basis and thereby keep up with market trends.
In 2003, we entered a niche market that proved to be very fruitful: media groups. Newspaper career sections generate sales of US$12 billion a year, vs. $6 billion for the Internet, but the loss of their clients to the Internet is pushing newspapers to find out which sites their former clients have turned to. Using our technology, they can fine-tune their sales pitch to lure these clients back.
Right now, 97% of our clients come from the U.S. We also have some 40 big Canadian clients, such as CanWest. So two years after the crisis, Wanted Technologies was up and running again!
Do you plan on diversifying?
Wanted Technologies has just bought its only real competitor, New York-based Corzen. This aggregator was more focused on B2C, but it allowed us to get into the automobile classified ads market, always with the ultimate aim of targeting media groups. Last year, we also entered the promising residential real estate advertising market.
Where do you see the online job ad market going?
We are really going through a new phase. The years 1999 to 2001 saw the appearance and rise of job boards, then the job ad aggregators came along to put all this information together. Today, social networks have arrived on the scene and I am convinced that this new wave will change the face of the online job market as we know it, because they allow access to those highly sought-after passive candidates!
This does not mean the end of job boards altogether, but that their future growth will probably be limited. Likewise, the mini-bubble of job search engines is drawing to a close. Even if times are much less turbulent than in 2001, I think that most B2C job aggregators still operate at a loss. B2C requires massive investments in advertising, and the rewards are sometimes slow in coming.
Why leave Wanted now?
Wanted Technologies has really been an incredible experience. In almost ten years, I led the company from start-up to public company status, with Wanted being listed on the stock market two years ago. This new status profoundly changes the objectives, though, and in my opinion, require another type of president. I think I’m more of a start-up guy—I like the challenges of companies in the launch phase!
Any particular project in mind?
I already do a lot of coaching, and have become somewhat of a crisis situations specialist in the field. . .
Naturally, I also have some start-up projects in mind, but nothing really specific for now. I’m going to stay in the Web and technology sector, but won’t necessarily be focusing on recruiting.
Thank you very much!