Anthropic IPO or BUST!

Speaker A: Dude. It turns out that Winston, Smart Recruiter's first AI hiring sidekick, is taking all the grunt work out of recruiter's day. Things like candidate screening, scheduling, all the admin garbage no one actually wants to touch. Winston can do it all,

Speaker B: man. You know, I'm a fan of using new tech that takes the boring, repetitive crap out of a recruiter's day and allows them to have more time to connect with hiring managers and candidates.

Speaker A: Yep, Winston's doing the heavy lifting while recruiters kick back and do the actual hiring stuff. You know, like talking to people.

Speaker B: I really dig that Smart Recruiters is evolving out of the legacy ATS model and embracing cleaner processes using AI. With most ATS providers, it's like, hey, 2003 called and it wants its 30 minute application process back.

Speaker A: No doubt. It sounds like Rebecca and the team are using Winston to push smart recruiters into the future. I. While the ATS vendors are basically on an AOL dial up modem with a dashboard

Speaker B: with smart recruiters, Winston does the grind and the recruiters get the glory.

Speaker A: For more information on superhuman hiring with Winston, visit smart recruiters.com. that's smart recruiters.com.

Speaker B: start using Winston today. Or I guess you can stick with.

Speaker C: Now we return you to our regular schedule program in progress.

Speaker B: You can check your stack. You can do all this stuff in TA Tech Finder. Uh, is it free?

Speaker D: Yes, absolutely. For. For anybody that's coming to use it.

Speaker B: So you're not going to answer like you answered on, uh, WhatsApp? It's as free as your. Your balls on a Friday night.

Speaker D: That doesn't sound anything like I would say. That's. That's. That's strange. I don't even know where you've come up with that.

Speaker B: Okay, moving on. What are we going anyway?

Speaker E: Robots? You think a robot can replace me?

Speaker F: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's Most Dangerous podcast. Chad Soosh and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Uh, buckle up, boys and

Speaker G: girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.

Speaker H: Yeah. Welcome to the

Speaker I: podcast. Your toppled dictator warned you about the Chad and

Speaker J: Cheese Podcast. I'm Chad.

Speaker B: Check my stack. So, Wash,

Speaker D: I'm Stephen. I've just about dried out McGrath,

Speaker K: and I'm leaving. I should have been working at Tech Wolf vanhysen.

Speaker B: Uh, and on this week's show, we have Microsoft, um, buys out skydance, mandates anthropic IPOs, Dayforce, got her groove back. And who'd you rather? Let's do this.

Speaker A: It's commercial time.

Speaker B: Look, we talk about global talent all the time, but let's be real. International hiring is usually a total compliance nightmare. And you know what I mean. Stitching together random tools, drowning in foreign paperwork, and sweating over regulatory blind spots, it's a massive time suck. That's why it's time to stop bootstrapping and start using Pebbles. Pebble built a decade of compliance expertise directly into an AI driven platform. Instead of taking months of legal headaches to hire abroad, pebble let you compliantly hire across 185 countries in minutes. Yes, I said minutes. Contracts, payroll, benefits. It's all in one place. Pebble sets your global team up for success. And you stop wasting time on manual HR busywork. So stop the HR time suck. Try Pel pebble today and get 25 off your first employees fees for 12 months. Just go to High Pebble AI before it's gone. That's H I P E B L A I. Terms and conditions may apply. So wash out. It's showtime. Welcome back. It's an all European show. Look at this, look at this. Huh? Uh,

Speaker D: yeah,

Speaker B: I know. You're all, you're all smirking because you don't see me as a European.

Speaker D: If you do the rest of the podcast in Portuguese, I'll let you off.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, well, see that, that would be very rough. That would be. That would be very.

Speaker K: Maybe, maybe you can try a Scottish accent.

Speaker D: Yes,

Speaker B: that would be even harder. I think people would understand me speaking Portuguese more than they would in a Scottish accent.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: What's up, McGrath, man, last time we saw you was in Amsterdam at the Musica Bow. Yeah, uh,

Speaker D: yeah, no good. As per my middle name, I've just about dried out. Uh, my nickname. It's been horrible here. We have had

Speaker E: towns across all of the west coast of Scotland flooding with like knee and waist deep water.

Speaker L: Oh,

Speaker K: wow. Okay.

Speaker E: We've had 80 to 90 mile per hour winds. Um, we've been told to stay indoors, get three days worth of food.

Speaker B: So you're

Speaker E: drinking a

Speaker B: lot.

Speaker E: Well, three days worth of food for a fellow at me is a lot more than it is for somebody like you guys. So it's a challenge.

Speaker K: So within nine months, there will be lots of little Scots.

Speaker E: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker D: Yeah, not any from this house. I've had enough.

Speaker B: So leaving, we've gotten a little, A little, uh, you know, distance from, you know, the music about. From the recruitment congress. So when's the next one? Do you have the next one scheduled because we're all, we're all excited. We want to get it on the, on the books, man. When's it coming on?

Speaker K: I hope I can do the next one next year in Brussels. So I would like to alternate between Amsterdam and Brussels, but it's not sure yet. So, um, I'll keep you posted. Let's

Speaker B: move this

Speaker D: along

Speaker J: and Shout out

Speaker B: is brought to you by Proven Base. Uh, everyone loves free bourbon and Free bourbon is spreading the love with, uh, two bottles. Not just one bottle, two bottles. One from Chad and one from Cheese

Speaker M: of Chicken Cock. That's

Speaker D: right. Oh, I love chicken. I do.

Speaker B: I love it. You do. You can't win unless you play. You got to go to Chad cheese.com free to get some bourbon brought to you by Proven Base. Comes right to your front door. Uh, Proven Base, the AI powered deep search, which helps recruiting and sourcing teams uncover and engage specialized, hard to find talent beyond traditional platforms across thousands of sources@proven base.com leaving, you've got one that's,

Speaker N: you've got a shout out that's close to home, one that's close to

Speaker B: your heart and your pocketbook. Why don't you go ahead and talk about that?

Speaker K: That's right. In fact. So you've been talking about the recent acquisition by SAP from the Belgian company Tech Wolf. Yeah. And it was, even to international standards, pretty big. 500 million euros. Yeah, not officially, but that's something. It's a number which is, uh, accepted. But I'm not going to talk about actual the acquisition. I'm not going to talk about what Tech Wolf is doing. Good to know is we were their first customer. So the very first customer Tech Wolf had was House of hr. So we know them pretty well.

Speaker O: That's a flex. Ah,

Speaker K: yeah, we believed in them. And um, the founder of um, House of hr, Connie Van Andriesse, uh, also invested in Tech Wolf. She was one of the first. She actually was the first investor in Tech Wolf. So. Wow, okay. We made Tech Wolf big. Just. That's a flex indeed. But something I really liked and this is why my shout out goes to Tech Wolf is seven or eight years ago, the current CEO and the former, the founder of Tech Wolf, Andreas De Neve, he said his big ambition was of course to become rich, but also to make all his employees rich. And he said, the moment we have an exit, I want all of my employees to be rich. And actually, eight years later he succeeded. So 150 people got all option plans and they all got A substantial amount of money. And this is something I like. It's about sharing the wealth you create as an entrepreneur. Um, and this is something I love. And this is why I really, really love this company. Not because of what they're doing. There are plenty of companies doing great stuff, but the way they treat their people is just something you should admire.

Speaker P: Give me that money.

Speaker Q: Yeah, I mean, what. What a great way to keep

Speaker B: people on, too. It's like, look, I'm here to make you a millionaire. Yes, I'm going to

Speaker R: be a millionaire as well. No, dude, but. But I'm here to make

Speaker B: you a million. That's a great retention plan. That's a great retention plan.

Speaker K: Just stay on board. And the moment I exit, you all exit. Something like that.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker K: They're not exiting, they're staying, but they get the money.

Speaker B: Stephen, uh, he's. He's exiting left and right as well. Uh, but before we get to that, uh, your shout out, Steven, what you got going on?

Speaker E: My shout out, uh, is to all of the absolutely bamboozled TA leaders out there. Uh, that's

Speaker B: a word

Speaker E: crying out for help on LinkedIn, um, with stack help, understanding of tools. Um, I think we've seen the dust settle a little bit over the past six months, and there's just basically cries for help with people giving it, hey, I bought, like, five things the past two years, and I don't know I'm doing with any of them. Help me.

Speaker S: And

Speaker D: I

Speaker E: think,

Speaker D: like,

Speaker E: that's.

Speaker D: That's

Speaker E: a big thing. So, you know, I'm actively really active on the platform, trying to, like, comment and

Speaker D: kind of share my knowledge and that space and just try and kind of help people out. But it's big companies, Fortune 500 company

Speaker E: leaders

Speaker D: of TA that are, uh, are just giving it, hey, what is better here? And what

Speaker E: can we

Speaker D: get

Speaker E: rid

Speaker D: of? And what am

Speaker E: I

Speaker D: using? And I'm just seeing that noise swell. I think I'm probably seeing it swell because I've engaged with a few of them and the algorithm's now rewarding me with all of them as a result of it. But, you know, it is what it is. Um, I'm here for the discussion anyway,

Speaker K: and. Stephen, can I ask you something? You used the word bamboozled, and I have no clue what it means, but Eels, which is a band I really love, they just released a new album and one of the hit singles, not a hit single yet, but one of the singles is called Bamboozled Again. And I took notes. I need to check what Bamboozled means you can explain what. What does bamboozled mean?

Speaker D: Bamboozled means to be confused. Yes. Uh, so.

Speaker K: Confused again. Bamboozled again. Okay, nice. Bamboozled

Speaker B: and.

Speaker D: Or

Speaker B: you've been bamboozled, which means kind of like in a sales stamp, like you've been sold elixir. Right. You've been sold something that really doesn't fit what your need is or it's really not. So you've been bamboozled. So you can be confused being bamboozled

Speaker K: or

Speaker B: you can have been bamboozled. Yeah, one of. One of the two.

Speaker K: So when they're saying bamboozled again, they probably mean I've been

Speaker B: screwed

Speaker K: again. Yeah, something like

Speaker D: that.

Speaker K: Nice. Okay, thanks a lot,

Speaker B: Stevens. I. Last week, JT, uh, and I actually talked about tatechfinder.com because, um, there are so many platforms that are out there and JT is on a tear right now, especially on the can, the Canon experience side of the house. And I totally get that. But at the end of the day, before an employer really can. Can. Can focus on one aspect of their process, they have to focus on the full process.

Speaker D: Yes.

Speaker B: And in most cases, they just, as you've said, they're bamboozled. They have no fucking clue what's going on. It's just crazy. You go to tatechfinder.com and there it says, stephen, it's a better way to discover TA technology. I know that because it says it on the website.

Speaker D: Yeah,

Speaker B: um. Yeah, right on the. Um. So why did you start it? And how. How is it better? I guess that's the. How does it make things better?

Speaker D: Okay, so really simply, I started it because I've sat on both sides of the house. So I've sat on, um, committees that were responsible for buying things or being part of new tools. Never responsible for the decision, but part of the wider discussion that was going to take place. And, you know, been a vendor, Right. I've been a vendor that has had to position themselves against other people and knowing, Fine. Well, that they can't do that thing that they said that they can do, or certainly that they can't do it well. Um, and certainly that our product marketing, not necessarily. Well, not at all at Poetry, because we don't have a product marketing department, but certainly in others that our product marketing is 12 months ahead of what our capabilities are. Um, and actually we need to know what we can do right now and what we're capable of. And I felt like, um, I've seen a lot of posts of people being genuinely confused about what AI could do for them what their current tech stack has in terms of that, where that lines up what

Speaker E: tools they

Speaker D: need

Speaker E: to buy. And going out there, like I just said,

Speaker D: um,

Speaker E: two

Speaker D: minutes ago,

Speaker E: grabbing

Speaker D: a whole bunch of things and seeing what sticks. So

Speaker E: I decided to have this kind of like the sales

Speaker D: methodology of what is the problem that your customer is trying

Speaker E: to

Speaker D: solve

Speaker E: for. And then let's work backwards and

Speaker D: then let's present how we can solve that problem to

Speaker E: them. I

Speaker D: just decided that it was time

Speaker E: that TA technology

Speaker D: as a

Speaker E: whole displayed itself that way. So you just

Speaker B: built it is what you're saying?

Speaker E: Yes,

Speaker M: yeah, I

Speaker D: just built it, but built it with,

Speaker E: with people in mind

Speaker D: that

Speaker E: um,

Speaker B: are

Speaker E: going to go through the process.

Speaker B: In process, in process in mind. So how many vendors are currently in the platform?

Speaker E: Uh,

Speaker D: 15. 10 at

Speaker E: the last.

Speaker B: Yeah. And how many of them are applicant tracking systems? There's going to be a nice core of applicant tracking system.

Speaker D: Well,

Speaker E: I actually told

Speaker D: you a number,

Speaker E: uh,

Speaker D: I

Speaker E: think a couple of days ago. It's gone up since then.

Speaker D: That's 277. Now. There's actually an additional um, piece of information to that. Uh, hris suites that have built in atss. 326 is the total. So it goes from 277 to 326.

Speaker B: So you weren't even counting those in the first place?

Speaker D: No.

Speaker B: Oh, that's why I thought you were counting those. And those are kind of like free, you know, gift with purchase when you buy an HCM. But there's an

Speaker D: extra 50 of those. Yeah, there's an extra 50

Speaker E: of those.

Speaker B: So. So the problem is usually bigger than one, than just one platform. Right. And you have your check my stack feature. Now a couple of different things. First off, for all the, the TA people that are out there, you can check your stack. You can do all this stuff in TA Tech Finder. Is it free?

Speaker E: Yes, absolutely. For, for anybody that's coming to use it.

Speaker B: So you're not going to answer like you answered on uh, WhatsApp. It's as free as your, your balls on a Friday night

Speaker D: sound. Anything like I would say. That's, that's, that's strange. I don't even know where you've come up with

Speaker B: that. Okay, sure, moving on, moving on. So leaving, quick question. You, I mean you guys and your companies, because you guys at House of HR, you have 50 plus companies underneath the House of HR umbrella.

Speaker K: Mhm.

Speaker B: Do you guys go through a process like that often to take a look at your stack, see how everything connects Process, methodology, those types of things.

Speaker K: Yeah. But thank God it's not my problem as a problem. Problem of our cio. So, um, I can come up with fancy new ideas and he has to figure out how to make it work for the whole company. That's, um,

Speaker B: it's, it's beautiful to be able to hand that off. That's very beautiful to, to hand that off. I love it.

Speaker K: That's very. But actually, we do, we do have some kind of a program to make some things mandatory so we can all benefit from the scale.

Speaker B: Nice. We're going to go ahead. We're going to jump into 60, uh,

Speaker T: percent of the time it works

Speaker B: every time. And it's not working 60 of the time for me. It's fantasy football time. Brought to you by our friends at Factory Fix. Right. The number one recruiting platform for skilled trades and manufacturing talent. So there's lots of movement this week. Unfortunately, mine was down. Jarrett. I'm still number one. Jador's man, uh, Saginaw. Scott Clark is up one spot to number two. Ben by six. Koontz takes over the third position. Joel shut the front. Shador Cheeseman up four slots. He was eight. He went to fourth. Uh, Nicholas. Go Birds. Taishak moves up by one. He beat my ass. Dejan. Better than pretty good. Amare plummets from second to sixth. Bosco Ballers moves from second to. Or, I'm sorry, up two to seven. Mackenzie Mac Attack. Maitland moves up two spots. I got beat by Ty. Shaq, as I just said. So I'm down two spots to number nine. Nick laces out. Livingston down from five to ten. That's a big move. That's a bad move. And rounding out the bottom two are the same hail, Molly, Sly, and any given Desiree, Goldie. That rounds it up. And it's, uh. It's kind of sad for those two. It's kind of sad for those two.

Speaker D: I love Molly, so it's sad to see her down. Down at the bottom end of, uh, that. Not so keen on Joel. So it's a real shame to see him rising to the top yet again.

Speaker B: Yeah. But he got knocked down a few slots last week and he's. He's pinballing back. Listen, I was

Speaker E: involved. I was involved last

Speaker D: year. I

Speaker E: didn't think I'd

Speaker D: miss it. I do,

Speaker E: but I, it's just.

Speaker D: I can't stay up

Speaker S: till three in the

Speaker E: morning

Speaker S: watching games.

Speaker E: Any

Speaker B: dude. I don't. I don't do that. I watch the highlights in the morning and it's the most beautiful thing because they're like 12 minute cuts.

Speaker E: Yeah.

Speaker B: And it gets most of the good stuff and then I get to watch most of the games. Anyway, we're gonna get on to the, the important stuff. So is it weird hearing your sound effect?

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. I don't like that though. Yeah, I actually hate that. But it's okay.

Speaker B: Gotta have Leaving. Leaving. Doing some sound effects. Are sometime soon.

Speaker K: Can I.

Speaker B: Yeah, of course. No, I hate

Speaker D: my job.

Speaker B: That's for the AI leader. Yeah. Anyway, Anyway. Anyway, uh, we have, uh. How do you say you're prepping for layoffs without saying you're prepping for layoffs? Well, Microsoft just ordered 60,000. Yes, that's a six with four zeros behind it. 16,000 employees, voluntary buyouts. While Skydance offered employee buyouts with a healthy helping of get your ass back to the office. That's right. A mandatory return to office and buyouts announced right after the Paramount in Warner Brothers merger. Okay, Stephen, do you think AI had anything to do with this?

Speaker D: I think that Microsoft is doing that thing I used to do when I was in my late teens and I wanted to break up

Speaker E: with a

Speaker D: girl and I was

Speaker E: like, I'm just gonna,

Speaker D: uh, I'm

Speaker E: just gonna

Speaker D: annoy her a little bit more and hope that she goes, yeah,

Speaker E: I'll

Speaker D: just leave the cupboard door open. So she bangs her knees, she's like, oh, goodness. And then, you know, don't open the car door. Be like, oh, he's not

Speaker E: chivalrous

Speaker D: anymore. I'm just kidding, I'm

Speaker E: just

Speaker D: kidding. But like, there is that kind of thing of like, you know, the writing's been on the wall for, for quite a few

Speaker E: years

Speaker D: now, um, you know, with a lot of their employees. So much so that I'm now actively seeing people speak

Speaker E: about that

Speaker D: on

Speaker E: LinkedIn as well.

Speaker D: You're saying, like, listen, this, this looks like it's not going to go well for me regardless of whether say yes or no right now. Um,

Speaker E: and

Speaker D: look, AI of course has an influence on how all these large tech companies work and how they move. I think over hiring during, you know, post Covid era has still a lot to do with that. Um, and I think that they live to regret it, much like many of the other companies before them have, um, as well. So it's just, it's unfortunate to see because it's a lot of lives. It's a lot of lives being affected and you can't escape from that. But AI is definitely not all of the cause.

Speaker B: So what do you think on The Skydance side of the house.

Speaker D: I mean, I've not had a chance to really go into it m in as much detail, so I probably wouldn't add loads

Speaker E: of

Speaker D: value

Speaker E: to

Speaker D: that, um, to be honest with you. So

Speaker B: I gotta tell you, I tried watching a few episodes of an AI generated series on YouTube this morning. It was bad. I mean, it was really bad. But it was bad because it was from a small studio. It looked really good, but the storyline was total shit. Right. And I think that this tech is evolving and getting better at a rate that we've never seen. So yes, Skydance will be betting on AI on the content side of the business, no doubt. And from the, from a major standpoint is if they have storytellers, really damn good storytellers, they can actually get the AI to match the story in itself. What are your thoughts? Skydance, uh, and Microsoft there leaving.

Speaker K: The first association I made was a Skynet from Terminator.

Speaker B: And that would probably be close to true. Yes.

Speaker K: Yeah. When it's about AI and you're called sky, then, uh, people should start worrying. But, um, I'm not sure if it's really their purpose to let people go. And that's the reason why they make people going back to the, to the office. Uh, probably it is, but it's not official. It could be, but I think it's really risky because the people most likely to leave are those with the best alternatives, those who are getting the opportunity to get in, maybe even a better job. And those you probably would like to let go are going to stay because they don't have those alternatives. So if that's the case, if that's the reason why they are, um, calling people back to the office, then they made a big, big mistake, I'm afraid.

Speaker E: I've worked at companies where they've done that. Right. Like that's. I've, uh, worked at companies where they've mandated return to

Speaker D: office

Speaker E: for everybody but the

Speaker D: CEO.

Speaker E: Um, and um, you know, the, the. It's not worked out.

Speaker D: Yeah, it's

Speaker E: not worked out in their

Speaker D: favor M.

Speaker E: At

Speaker D: ah, that time. Right. And they've moved on

Speaker E: beyond.

Speaker D: Beyond that now. So, um, which is,

Speaker E: which

Speaker D: is good. They've

Speaker E: recruited

Speaker D: really well since then.

Speaker E: So,

Speaker D: um.

Speaker E: But

Speaker D: the thing is, I would say from the creative standpoint and

Speaker E: that,

Speaker D: you

Speaker E: know,

Speaker D: remember when,

Speaker E: what,

Speaker D: 2022,

Speaker E: every

Speaker D: AI image that you generated had six fingers and like three eyes and you know, all of that kind of stuff.

Speaker B: Not now.

Speaker D: We're only, you know, three and a bit years past when that was first A thing. And now you cannot tell. You know, it is, obviously you can tell because you see so much of it in our world.

Speaker B: But

Speaker D: for people like my grandparents who are walking down the street or my parents who are not clearly involved, they don't, they don't see it the same way that I see it. So ultimately it has just, you know, self improved through learning, um, you know, the design techniques that will come for companies like this. But I think that you're absolutely right, Chad, in terms of like the, if they get good storytellers in there, then you know, that's what's going to make the difference. But then how long do those people last? Right.

Speaker B: How much do they pay them? I mean that's a lot of things.

Speaker D: Once you've got to grips with that, over a year or two, do you really need them anymore?

Speaker B: So I mean, on the, on the Microsoft side, I see this happening for two main reasons and this is just my thoughts, you know, the cost of AI. You know, we'll be talking about Anthropic's IPO later in the show, but Microsoft is putting their chips all over the board. They've invested 13 billion in OpenAI, about 5 billion in anthropic, over a billion in inflection AI, 15 to 16 million in France's Mistral, and nearly 700 million in figure AI. And there's more. Trying to keep pace with AI while spreading your chips all over the place is burning cash and cutting headcount, uh, apparently feels like it's going to stem some of the burn. The second point, um, is more political. I believe it is, it is cost, but it's also political. This feels like a big old you to the U.S. department of labor because remember, the Department of Labor called out Microsoft specifically to stop the use of H1B visas to fill positions in the US which impacts over 6,000 positions. So personally, this feels like the start of a massive global restructuring for Microsoft. Yes, they, they did mention Canada and UK in the announcement as well, but to me that felt more like a smokescreen. Um, so to review Cost of AI is high. DoL shit themselves live on TV by forcing Microsoft to offshore to at least think of offshoring these positions. It's a two pronged issue right now. I see. I'm sure there's many more than that, but from the guy outside looking in, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker D: I certainly had a look at quite a lot of these large companies and um, you know, enterprise kind of level companies all the way up to the Microsofts of the world, but you know, starting kind of much smaller than that. That what you found quite often is big layoffs were announced and in silent hiring in offshore positions were happening at the same time and kind of like ushering people in the door at like a third of the cost. Um, and that was never talked about, you know, it just, it just kind of just displaced each other. So that certainly wouldn't surprise me. Um, you know, what you've just said there? Uh,

Speaker B: yeah. And as we look at politicians who perspectively have never been in business before, they might be attorneys, they might have been in politics for most of their lives. They don't understand the levers that companies actually use to win against countries. Right. That give them tax breaks, that do all these different things. So it's really weird now leaving in and around your area and in Belgium and Dock and those types of areas, do you see companies moving that much at all just for tax breaks?

Speaker K: Actually yes.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker K: yeah. And it's a problem, uh, Belgium is becoming too expensive, uh, concerning taxes. So uh, they're leaving their headquarters to for example Luxembourg where it's much cheaper and they don't actually do anything there, but they just have some kind of a postal office and then uh, suddenly they have to pay less taxes. We have the same thing with Ireland for example. Everything in Ireland is concerning taxes. Much cheaper.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker K: yeah, uh, it happens.

Speaker D: Isle of man is the UK's version, isn't it? Things like that. It's just tiny little ions that, that have flat rates of 10, 15, 20%.

Speaker B: Mhm. Well, all I can say is,

Speaker U: shall we play a game?

Speaker B: We will be right back.

Speaker A: It's commercial time.

Speaker V: Let's be honest,

Speaker E: half the people applying to your job haven't even read the damn job description. They're just smashing the easy apply button like it's a slot machine.

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Speaker B: T A L R O-O.com Tal Rue clarity in job advertising. It's showtime. All right, kids. Oh. It's time to play our favorite show. Who'd you rather for the audience out there. Here's how we play Stephen. And leaving. They're going to imagine themselves in a bar at 2am uh, you're a little tipsy and you have two choices. You can only go home with one of these. Okay, we have contestant number one. Town. An AI assistant start up. Town nabs unicorn valuation four months after launch. A two year old San Francisco based startup developing AI assistance. Town targets businesses giving each employee an AI assistant called a townie. That's so bad. That helps with tasks. By connecting to tools such as email and calendars as well as other core work systems. Employees Townies can talk to each other and share approved information. I don't know if that's good. Uh, they can also now work with customers and other outside the company. Others outside the company. Town nabbed a unicorn valuation announcing a $108 million Series B. That is town. Now, contestant number two, we have Zenzap. Yes, I have another Guinness, please. Uh, Zenzap. I don't know where these names come from. Okay. I don't know where they come from, but I don't know that I'll forget it. So maybe it's good. Uh, zenzap, a private messenger with AI that wants to help companies communicate with their staff and arm them with their organization's context. That is, it doesn't seem like you're arming them with much. You're arming them with your organization's context. Okay. While staying in line with it and security rules. I do like that. The company has raised 44 million in funding. One of the founders said, quote, zenzap is not focused on developers like Slack, but on the other 99% of employees using personal messaging apps and waiting for an agent of their own. Um, people desperately want a clear separation of work and their personal lives. And the adoption of personal and work agents make it imperative that separation happen now. That's right, kids. So that's that. Zinzap. And that is Town. Steven, it's. Who'd you rather it's two in the morning.

Speaker E: Yep.

Speaker B: Who are you going home with?

Speaker D: Uh, going home with Town.

Speaker E: Um,

Speaker D: simply because I would say that Zenza had me.

Speaker E: I

Speaker D: love

Speaker E: company context

Speaker D: in products. I think it's really important that guardrails

Speaker E: are

Speaker D: set. I

Speaker E: think

Speaker D: it's

Speaker E: really important that AI is used

Speaker D: safely and

Speaker E: in context

Speaker D: and all of that Kind of stuff. But just given all your employees, really not blur the lines between home and

Speaker E: company life,

Speaker D: giving

Speaker E: them

Speaker D: all access to this AI kind of like widget that's going to be live 24. Seven, does that give you a hard stop? So for me, how is that tool going to be used? Is it going to have clear boundaries of time being on and off? Is it only going to be on? And when you open up your laptop, is it going to be on your phone? Like, I understand the process of it, right? But, like, if that's the point of the tool existing, it feels like it blurs those lines more than makes them steadfast. To me, I like the concept, I like the idea of it. But. But I'm going with Town. Although I really wish we could, uh, change names of both if possible. Um, but yeah,

Speaker B: I'm

Speaker Q: leaving

Speaker B: Town. Or Zenzap.

Speaker K: Same here. Same here. I'm going home with Town. Yeah. Because Zenzap is asking me to move my team into some kind of a new chat app, which they will not be using because they have plenty of other apps and they will forget about it. And Daun promises me to give everyone an assistant that's going to work across the tools they already use. So I bet on the assistant. And the interesting part to me is that one assistant can talk to the other, so we basically don't have to do anything, which is a great thing. Have my assistant talk to your assistant and, uh, go to the bench or something.

Speaker B: Then I don't have to talk to you. That

Speaker K: escalated quickly.

Speaker B: That escalated quickly. And that's beautiful. So a, uh, couple of different things. So, you know, I think on the Zenzap side, I think it's really smart to pull together a newer version of Slack that was built in an age of AI and agents. Totally get that. It feels really like, like a smart play to get acquired. And yes, that's exactly what they're looking to do. Much like Slack did with Salesforce few years ago. So many huge platforms need new tech and smart people to keep them ahead of the competition. Now, Town, dude, their domain is town.coma4letter.com. I mean, come on, that's fucking crazy. Plus, they have a. An agent that's a paperclip called Cliff, an homage to Microsoft's 1997 Clippy. Remember Clippy? Yeah,

Speaker K: I hate this Clippy. I

Speaker D: love Clippy. But I would be number eight at the time.

Speaker B: Clippy's back. Well, it's not Clippy, it's Clippy's. It's Clippy's. Uh, you know, nephew. Nephew, uh, Cliff. Okay.

Speaker D: Is a townie not. Are they from Boston? Is a townie not something.

Speaker B: A townie is known as somebody who never really leaves.

Speaker D: Okay. A

Speaker B: town, I mean, they just, they just stay in that town their entire life. Which, I mean, it's all good. I mean, what if you're in a Boston? I mean, Boston's huge. It's usually like small town. America is like when you're in a small town, you stay there your whole life. Uh, so, yeah, you have a townie now. What I do like about this the most is there if you, if you saw their videos and, and how they've actually marketed is their Dr. Seuss like storytelling around the product, which makes it easy to understand, it's comfortable and hell, tell me a company that's not shopping agents right now. Right? So it doesn't have to, for me, it doesn't have to be 2am in the morning. I don't have to be in the bar and. Or drunk. I would stone cold sober in the middle of the day,

Speaker D: pick up,

Speaker J: take home a town and take home a townie, baby.

Speaker D: We'll do, do another, we'll do another segment on this, another day, which is who wins out of all of us to get the tiny. But that's, you know, that's for another day.

Speaker B: There's more than one town, so I think they can spread them around. I think they can spread around. Uh, we're moving to Day Force, which we don't talk about enough around here. Day Force, uh, announced that it has agreed to acquire Ribbon, an AI native recruiting technology company that helps organizations source, screen and engage qualified talent more quickly and efficiently. The acquisition will add specialized agentic recruiting capabilities to Day Force, including Ribbon's conversational, voice and video AI technology helping organizations conduct high quality candidate interviews at scale. Stephen, you're all over this. What do you think?

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, the first thing is, uh, I thought I was having a bit of div javu when I seen the news. Um, thank you very much. Anybody that knows Ribbon knows that one of the co founders is called Dave Vu. Um,

Speaker E: and

Speaker D: I just had to get that in there,

Speaker B: barely,

Speaker D: but I love it. Right. What did we speak about at, uh, the start, which was recruitment leaders being lost in this kind of like myriad of like, what does my tools do? There's too many things to choose from. Um, you know, through Care Ta Tech Finder, I'm seeing this massive kind of tools are spreading across multiple categories. Right. So before in 2005, one thing did one thing and that was it. It did nothing. Um, we still did that thing 10, 15 years later, right? We still were okay. No, no, we're the really good people at recruitment, marketing or sourcing or this or that now. And I'll just use my own stats. Again, not that this is all about me, but now the average company on that website has 5.2 categories that it covers, um, across all 1500 vendors.

Speaker B: So the platform has five

Speaker D: plus categories they could fit into, uh, you know, five different categories. And we're so, so like Dayforce by acquiring something like Ribbon adds a really useful tool to their arsenal, puts it under the Day Force umbrella, gives their customers instant access to it and means that they start to play against the bigger players that are already doing, you know, the same thing or you know, the, the more well known players rather than the bigger players, you know, in their space. So I think, um, for me, I'm always a fan of this, I'm always a fan of streamlining, bringing in more tools to one belt, um, and giving people that option.

Speaker B: So Leben, do you guys, have you dealt with Day Force at all?

Speaker K: No, I didn't even know them to be honest.

Speaker B: Okay, talk about that because you obviously did a little research around them. Ribbon, obviously, uh, a startup. They were bought not Ribbon, but Day Force was bought by Tama Brava earlier this year.

Speaker K: I really don't know Dayforce. I, um, of course didn't know Ribbon AI. And thing is, if they're focusing on the staffing industry, which is our business, then I think they're too late because what they are trying to integrate now is something we already have, automated job interviewing, um, transcribing from audio to written text and parsing it to the ats. If you don't have it as a staffing company by now, you're far too late. So you're probably going out of business because of the market getting smaller and uh, consolidations coming up. But um, I don't know, Dayforce, maybe they are aiming to the multinationals which probably don't have this kind of technology yet and then this might be a very good addition to their portfolio. I don't

Speaker E: know. Yeah, I mean DForce are. So we did a little bit of work with Dayforce isms, um, for kind of joint customers. They're in like almost 200 countries. They have uh, like 50,000 customers or something like that. So that's the base that I'm speaking to is like that kind of global base of if it's going to be really helpful for your people to have access to something that is infinitely better than the

Speaker D: experience that you give them today, then great. If you're adding technology to try and take market share, then that's an entirely different thing.

Speaker B: The land and expand. Uh, you know, you want to land a customer, you want to keep the customer, you want to expand the customer within. And if you've bought a human capital management system, for God's sake, you don't want to choose another one. And, and I don't think Day Force has made an acquisition since 2024. And after being acquired by Tom and Bravo, which I'd said earlier this year, it's about time. I mean, it feels like Day Force really needs this. I mean, being the fun and quirky human capital system management system only goes so far adding specialized agentic recruiting capabilities to an eight cm. Wait a minute. They're an HCM platform. They're not even known for recruiting. So what are they doing? Buying high volume, top of funnel technology? Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Time out Workday bought Paradox.

Speaker E: Yeah.

Speaker B: SAP bot smart recruiters. Okay, okay, it's this. Feel it. So it's kind of like a me too buy. But it's pretty amazing to see recruitment tech and top of the funnel get some attention around this, this freaking joint and believe it's getting the most attention because it's low risk compared to talent management, payroll and any the perceived boring yet essential. So the question is, will Day Force follow behind Workday and SAP by elevating Ribbon's CEO to lead all their recruitment tech? Because that's exactly what uh, SAP and workforce did. And I guess time will tell.

Speaker D: Yeah, they flirted with that world they have for, for a while. You know when I say we were involved in deals with them, like it wasn't from them being the hcm, it was from them providing uh, recruitment technology, um, that they had, you know, acquired or partnered with. So um, it was not like they've been standing completely on the outskirts. They have been. And you know, they've dipped, they've dipped a toe in, they've dipped a foot in. Um, this looks like we're maybe going to jump in in the near future. That'll be, that'll be interesting to see how that pans out.

Speaker B: Well, I'll tell you who is jumping in. Oh my God. It's anthropic. We'll be right back.

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Speaker B: All right. Joel is creaming his jeans right now because Anthropic is going ipo and that's initial public offering for you non acronym users out there. Uh, Anthropic's first half of 2025 revenues was $1.16 billion. What it first half of 2025 compared to 2026 which was 16.3 billion. So they went from one point, uh, about 1.2 to over 16 billion. Now that is amazing revenue growth. But what's even more amazing is Anthropic's net loss of over 80 billion. That's 8, 0 billion in the first half of 2026. So I'll say that again. 80 billion in losses. Okay, are we finally at the point of the AI bubble bursting? McGrath, what's going on here?

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean I saw Anthropic files come up on my phone because I have the, I have the text a bit big because I'm high issues these days. And I was like, no way. And I was expecting to click it and say for bankruptcy as the next few words. And I

Speaker E: thought, oh no, the whole, the house of cards is falling down and this is just the start of it. But you know, um, obviously it's not that, that's not the news. Um, I mean, look, I probably don't understand enough about top level business to know how companies like Anthropic and OpenAI can consistently publish country wealth defining losses and still operate for years and years

Speaker D: and years.

Speaker B: That's a great way to put it. Country wealth defining losses. Yes.

Speaker D: And I think it's just interesting to me that like uh, you know, it's just sit back, get the popcorn, let's see how it all kind of works out. But I just don't see a world where it's going to work out that great, to be honest with you. Um, it's like my immediate feelings and, and that great for anybody that is involved, you know. Involved with it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean we can sit back and watch, but I mean we're all mired up in this, right? I think it's like seven companies that are driving the stock market right now. Seven. And if this one Topples. It's a, it's, it's fucking house of cards, dude. I mean, welcome to the Upside Down. We were literally in Bizarro World. Not only is AI going to bring us to an extinction level event, which how many of these CEOs have actually set, we are actually going to buy stock in that extinction level. This gets filed under humans are really stupid. Back to the math. Okay. And the business model because that's what humans obviously believe in. Um, roughly 80% of anthropics revenue come from uh, businesses paying for use of processed information, AKA token tokens. Right. Those prices have been at bargain basement levels. We're talking end cap prices. The question is now, now that they're moving public, everything is public, including this crazy 80 billion in losses that I mentioned. That's 80 billion in losses. What's going to happen from uh, the standpoint of driving revenue? So I actually dug into it and this is what their current base is and what their current market opportunity is. So uh, they have 50% of Fortune 500 companies currently paying, uh, as currently paying customers, 70%, 7 0% of Fortune 100 companies who have bought into Claude. Business ops of the global 2000, over 30% of the globe 2000. They're high value customers. Now Anthropic has over 14,000 enterprise customers, nearly 12,000 clients. They're uh, spending about 100,000 a year. You have close to 2000 spending a million, and then you have like 250 clients spending 10 million a year. So Anthropic has to unseat uh, major competitors to gain market share and expand spending from clients. Plus at the start of 2026, OpenAI's developer share was below 25%. By the end of Q3, 2026, it was back up to 50% with their launch of their new tools. So OpenAI ain't having all of that. So during a single week In September of 2026, China's deep seat captured over 24% of all text requests on open router. Actively pulling budget away from Anthropic and Google. This, I mean this is a hell of a fight, right? But the thing is, are, are they tearing the house down around us? Leaving? This is a lot of information. I'm going to sit back and breathe a minute and maybe go in the fetal position. Uh, go ahead and tell me what you think.

Speaker K: First of all, the growth in revenue is impressive and it's going to grow much faster the coming years. And I know I can't project on my own company, but if I Look at the spending we do at Anthropic, at Claude, uh, the last months compared to the last year. It's growing very fast. Everyone is starting to use it.

Speaker B: Do you think it's going to continue at that level, though? At that hockey stick?

Speaker K: It will be exponential, I think even.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker K: Because those, um, tokens are becoming more expensive.

Speaker B: Ah,

Speaker K: we just keep using more. And it's addictive. That's a problem. And they get us hooked up. That's one thing. And then you were talking about, um, a loss of 80 billion. That's not exactly what's happening. I mean, it's in the books. It's a loss of 80 billion, but in fact, it's investments. It's 70. Um, 2 billion out of the 80 billion is some M. Kind of, um, it's a financial thing, but it's not cash burn. Totally not. So this is something they'll carry on the coming years and it will make them financially stronger. I remember when, um, Tesla went to ipo, the shares were overvalued. And I looked at it and I'm never going to invest in something like this. It's a crazy idea. And one guy is going to, uh, okay. And each year those shares only got more expensive, more expensive. So I never bought them. And our private banker invested in them and my funds, or what's it called, uh, 4% was Tesla. And in the end, now they're pretty much making money. So it's possible. And this is what's going to happen with Anthropic. It's going to be extremely overvalued, and it's going to stay overvalued for years and years to come. But, uh, shares will only get more expensive. I believe in it. And I think Microsoft. You just were talking about Microsoft investing in all these, uh, tools. They were first investors, so they'll get, uh, rich from this ipo, even richer.

Speaker E: Do you think? Um, it's one of those things where we're almost as a human race. We're not going to be given the choice whether these companies succeed or

Speaker D: not.

Speaker E: Right. Essentially, we're. We are kind of being forced down an alleyway,

Speaker D: which

Speaker E: is this

Speaker D: is the way the world just works now.

Speaker E: And

Speaker D: you're going to

Speaker E: contribute to

Speaker D: our exponential growth,

Speaker E: um, as a result of that. To your point, right. I use these tools at

Speaker D: a very small scale,

Speaker E: um,

Speaker D: leaving for the stuff that I

Speaker E: do. My

Speaker D: subscriptions a year ago

Speaker E: were worth $30. They're now $150, you know, $200, $300.

Speaker D: And that's just one guy

Speaker E: in

Speaker D: a room

Speaker E: doing

Speaker D: it. That.

Speaker E: And

Speaker D: it's,

Speaker E: you know, but,

Speaker D: but it's,

Speaker E: it's

Speaker D: funny how it's like you just don't mind doing it because the results are better than they were the last time that you did it. Right.

Speaker E: Uh, you know, it

Speaker D: becomes that kind of. So you

Speaker E: put

Speaker D: that as a company scale, an enterprise scale, then you know, that's, that's a lot of, a lot of money going out the door. Um, you know, I think for, for me, the only thing

Speaker E: that

Speaker D: could potentially slow anything like that down would be a real environmental impact assessment that comes from the kind of the government down. Um, and when I say slow it down, I mean like trip it up for about five seconds and then it just gets back up and starts running again. Um, but there is maybe, you know, something around that that's kind of capped from a, uh, you know, from either a country level or a global level where we say that you can't exceed X, Y or z.

Speaker K: Yeah. But as we speak, it's an American company. The, uh, current government won't give a shit about environmental issues.

Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. That's the only thing I can see slowing it down.

Speaker K: Yep. M.

Speaker B: Yep. Well, and again, we've been told there's a possibility of extinction level events, and we're buying stock in extinction level events. There's no dad joke to get us out of this. Shall we play a game? Great job. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you coming on. I'm gonna go in the fetal position over here in the bar, finish my, uh, my Guinness. But thanks for joining.

Speaker D: Cheers. We out.

Speaker K: We out.

Speaker X: Thank you for listening to what's it called? Podcast, the chat, the cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you

Speaker K: don't even know.

Speaker X: And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar blue nacho pepper jack Swiss. So many cheeses. And not one word.

Speaker K: So weird.

Speaker X: Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on itunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chad cheese.com. uh, just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.