Launch HN: The  Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
About 10 years ago, I had a similar idea (called RungJump).<p>It allowed you to fill out a detailed job dossier about your position at a particular company, and then users could purchase the dossier; RungJump would take a cut, and the person who wrote the dossier would get the rest.  It was kind of like a premium version of Glassdoor, where the expectation was the dossiers would contain more candid info.<p>Here are some of the problems I ran into:<p>* You had to solve the chicken-and-egg problem twice.  Once to attract insiders and once to attract paying users.  It was hard.  I would imagine The Lobby will face the same problem, and in fact possibly even to a larger degree, since my dossiers were &quot;write once and then forget about it&quot; whereas The Lobby is scheduling phone calls, so the insiders need ongoing availability.<p>* Quality control is hard, because of the information imbalance.  Who&#x27;s to say whether a particular insider is actually giving you information that&#x27;s worth the price of admission?  If you knew enough about the company to call B.S., you wouldn&#x27;t be paying for the service.  I would imagine The Lobby will face the same problem.<p>* Employers really, really do not like their employees being paid on the side to dish about the company.  And employees were (rightly, I think) hesitant to potentially put their jobs on the line to make a little side cash.  In fact, the more exclusive and well-paying the job, the less likely it was worth the risk for insiders to participate.  I would imagine The Lobby will face the same problem, especially since it&#x27;s starting out with a narrow focus on &quot;elite finance&quot; roles, and promising anonymity only goes so far.<p>* As Deepak noted, it can be hard to persuade job seekers to pay.  One big reason for that?  If you don&#x27;t have a job, money is probably tight.  And when your target demographic is, in general, hard up, it can be a very difficult business model to get right.  The Lobby is trying to get around this problem by partnering with colleges who subsidize the costs; I think that&#x27;s a smart move, and I wish them luck!