The fourth time’s a charm. After three attempts to find the right technical co-founder to build a software business, it was AngelList that introduced me to James Craft & Kim Duong – TWO technical co-founders and Honeit, Inc. was born.
James and Kim are experienced software engineers who met 15 years ago while pursuing their computer science degrees. James & Kim built the first version of Honeit from their personal frustrations with today’s inefficient hiring process. The two found it bizarre to answer the very same questions, again and again, with non-technical recruiters who served as a company’s gate keepers. “How does a recruiter know whether or not I’m a good programmer?” and “Why are there so many repetitive phone screens?”, asked Craft.
I moved to the Bay Area from New York City to get closer to technology and pursue my MBA at Berkeley. They say you can’t teach Entrepreneurship, but experiencing the hyper-growth of TubeMogul ($TUBE) while taking evening classes at Haas made for an incredible introduction to startup life. The goal was to leverage my experience on all sides of the talent acquisition business and enthusiasm for HR Technology, to solve a fundamental challenge to the hiring process – the miscommunication between job-seekers, recruiters and hiring managers.
With frustration mounting from three false starts with other individuals who didn’t work out for a variety of reasons (not technical enough, new amazing day job, different country), I was excited to see the role of ‘Co-Founder’ posted by Honeit on Angel.co. What was powerful about Angel.co, unlike other job boards, was the ability to search for specific roles by level (Cofounder), industry (HR or Recruiting), and location (Berkeley or Oakland or San Francisco). With a single click and a brief note, I introduced myself. James & Kim responded with another click and AngelList immediately introduced us through email.
After several meetings and dinners throughout Spring 2014, the three of us discovered we’d make a strong, complementary team and agreed on terms. After graduating from Haas in May, the TubeMogul IPO in July and finding two talented technical co-founders who were just as passionate about re-inventing the hiring process – Honeit incorporated in August.
Fast forward. Today our Interview Communication Software for Staffing Agencies & Corporate Recruiting Teams is live. We’re getting great feedback from busy recruiters eager for leverage more rich data and a better candidate & hiring manager experience. Unlike existing one-way interview tools, the Honeit Platform values the role of the recruiter and live two-way candidate conversations. Honeit enables recruiters to conduct more effective screens and to easily share recorded audio (or video) highlights from their conversations, with clients and hiring managers, to give more time back to the line of business, to accelerate the interview process and to make better hires, faster.
It’s been an incredible experience to date working and learning with these two. I’m looking forward to our next wave of growth and will definitely be listing available Honeit jobs on AngelList.
