Hiring CEOs Still Takes Weeks | Moravi Cuts It to Minutes

[00:00:00] Recruiting is definitely in a new era of tech. It's been there for a while. But when you look at executive hiring or executive search, it is literally just starting now. Executive search is very similar to that. It's still headhunters and it's thought of in a very old kind of 1980s, 1970s type of way.

[00:00:18] A lot of like the tech solutions weren't built for executive hiring. They were built for recruiting. And so when you start to try some of those tools and methods out, it's like there's a nuance and a slight differentiation. Bad things happen if you're wrong. And so if you want to have that proof and that documentation and that justification behind it, that's what we felt strongly about.

[00:00:39] All the benchmarking, all the market mapping, all the assessment scoring that typically takes today three to four weeks. We want to compress that down to a 30 or 45 minute kickoff call with the stakeholders. We don't ever want to show you somebody without you knowing exactly why this person is at the time. Got to show our work. Hey, this is William Tedcup and Ryan Leary and you are listening, hopefully watching the Use Case Podcast.

[00:01:05] Today we have a company of Moravi and we actually have the three principals of Moravi with us. So Ryan, first of all, how are you doing? I'm wonderful. And I think this is going to be a fun conversation just based off the last 20 seconds of conversation. I think this is going to be good. Well, we also had the bid at HR tech. We did. We did. That was a fun. It came out really well. That recording came out really well. It did. It looked sharp. It did.

[00:01:32] So first of all, with the folks at Moravi, please introduce yourselves. We'll just go left to right. There you go. I'm on the left. Matt Mooney. I'm based in Atlanta. I'm a co-founder of Moravi. I come from the executive search side. This is year 33 and retained search for me and jumped in with these two to expand into the world of software. And you are the MA. I am the MA. Yes. You're right. It all starts with that. All right. Alrighty.

[00:02:02] It's good to see you guys again. I'm Vicki Wilkins, another co-founder of Moravi. I'm on the brand and go to market commercial side. And we did coordinate this outfit. No, we didn't. You led with that. You said I'm on the brand. That's it. You got it. Come on now. Yeah. It is in our color palette. So it is. Are those Moravi quarter zips? They are not. They're not. Actually, we know. Sorry. We didn't coordinate that well. No.

[00:02:32] Soon. You sent out the memo. They just didn't read the memo. They don't read my emails. You can just do so much. And you're the V.I. Of Moravi. I am. Okay. It ends with her. It does end with me. Alpha and omega. Got it. Yeah. Jin Rowe. I'm the tech and product side of the business. And I'm the newbie in the executive recruiting world. That's a good thing, actually. Because the old, if it's been in there, it's dinosaurs.

[00:03:02] So actually, the fact that you're young and you're new into it, you're not coming in with a bunch of old ideas, which is great. And you're the RO of Moravi, right? I am. All righty. I just got what you were saying. I was going to ask them the origin of their name. But I just got one. You're the M.A. You're the – I'm like, are these terms I don't know? Like, what if I'm getting ready to do it? It's super code. It is. We'll let you in at some point on it, yeah. Did you not listen to the podcast? No. No, I know how.

[00:03:32] Who was there? Who was there? Of course I listened. But I didn't pick up on what you were saying. But what I did pick up on is you called the right side young, the left side old. I did not say that. I said that coming into an executive search, it's like the folks that are in the outplacement business. It's a very old category. And it's done in a very old way.

[00:04:01] Executive search is very similar to that. It's still headhunters. And it's thought of in a very old kind of 1980s, 1970s type of way. I remember my dad talking about headhunters calling them. And it's like, headhunters? Like, where in Africa are you? Like, what are we talking about? They had two connotations. It was either really good and you were, like, special or they were annoying and really bad.

[00:04:29] And it was one or two. No in between. No in between. Yeah. I don't know if headhunter as a term is ever going to, like, go away. No. No. It's an unfortunate term. It's such an unfortunate term. Oh, my God. It's hard to put a great spin on it. It's really hard. It really is. So before we kick off and get into what you all are doing, I know the name. I know how we came up with the name. Clearly, William does because he's got nicknames for each of you.

[00:05:00] Why don't we tell the audience, though? How do we come up with this cool name? I mean, honestly, I think everything else was taken. It's probably the most straightforward answer we give. When we launched the business first half of the year, we started going down this path and came up with a ton. We went through Vicki's branding, right? We went through this massive naming exercise and looking at different things and styles and words. And they were all.

[00:05:28] Values and all of this stuff to get you. All the deep meaning. Yeah. Yeah. Everything was taken. Every URL. The Greek word for change. Oh, we went through all of that. We did. We did. Believe it or not, someone else thought of that. Yeah, it turns out. A couple thousand years ago. And so we just, I mean, it went on and on and on and on. And Jen finally one night came back with that breakdown, Mo Roe V. And we said, okay, yeah. That actually means.

[00:05:57] We don't hate it enough. If you go through this, Vicki's probably the only one that's going to understand this. But when you go through naming exercise, you have the poles of abstraction and realism. So either you do something that's realism, executive search 4.0 or something like that that people can kind of read and go, I think I know what they do. Or you go abstract. And all the realism names, the good ones, the .com, they're all taken. Yeah. Yeah. And they're not really fun either. They're not fun.

[00:06:27] Very literal. Right. Very literal. And again, that's good on some levels. But then trying to optimize like through search with AI and also with Google, it's hard to then optimize those in order to get traffic. Like you'll be able to get more traffic to Mo Roe V than you would, you know, executive search 4.0, which is a horrible name. But yeah. Yeah. I did like the, I'll go a little marketing on you on this one.

[00:06:57] I did like the sort of symbolism though of like the three of us come from, we all came from the same search firm. But we come from very different functional perspectives on the world. Right. So I come from a consumer marketing branding background. You know, Jen comes from a very, very heavy tech enabled product and data background.

[00:07:26] And then obviously Matt is, is been at search, been in search for, for over three decades. And so when you put all of our perspectives together and our commonality of like when we were at that firm, what, you know, what problems did we wish someone else had solved already and really couldn't find it? I kind of like that. I kind of like that, you know, each of us brings sort of a different angle to Mo Roe V.

[00:07:51] So just, you know, there is some, there's some meaning behind it besides our names too. So, right. Right. Right. There's not a lot of great, I would say in the B2B market or there's a lot of great ATSs, a lot of great CRMs, a lot of great technology. In the executive search world, from a technology, pure tech perspective, there's not a lot of great tech. And it slows down the process.

[00:08:21] And I think it increases the, the bill rate because of all those inefficiencies, like researching the person and doing all this stuff. It's a lot of it's still done manually. It's not totally. Yeah. Most all of it's done manually. Why is that? Ryan worked in executive search. What? A hundred years ago. But what, what, what was, what did you use? Yeah. We had tech wise.

[00:08:47] It was a, had a green, green, green text on it and a black screen. That's what we used. Wow. That's it. Well, I think true of probably most of the industry. And what do you, what do you, I mean, first of all, that is an opportunity there. But on one side, you, you question, well, that opportunity has been there for a while. Why hasn't someone fulfilled on the opportunity? Yeah. You see, so one thing that we saw, cause we were buyers, right?

[00:09:17] Like we, that's where we started on the, on the buying side of it. And you can kind of break it out in a few ways. One there, recruiting is definitely in a new era of tech. It's been there for a while, but when you look at executive hiring or executive search, it, it, it, it is literally just starting now. And one of the reasons is a lot of like the tech solutions weren't built for executive hiring. They were built for recruiting.

[00:09:44] And so when you start to try some of those tools and methods out, it's like, there's a, there's a nuance and a slight differentiation that from the outside eye wouldn't really matter. But like when you're actually in it, it does matter. So that's, I think that's one side. And then the other is definitely the ones we've tried before. They're, they get you to a certain point in terms of finding, right?

[00:10:11] But they don't really get to, when we look at what we're, what we talk about or what we're trying to solve, it's finding and it's assessing and it's presenting, right? It's that, that's like all of the very beginning of the search process. How do you make it easier to find, assess, truly assess and, and present and validate those, those options, right? And so no one really did all three of those very well. Right. You had to go to different solutions to do that. Yeah. Which makes you kind of, yeah, cobble it together.

[00:10:39] And they were all sort of close, right? I mean, it'd be now like if you're Uber driver, well, we got you within a quarter mile. Oh, okay. And that's sort of what these other technologies did. They got you in sort of the ballpark, but never, never got you there. Never showed why, never justified and validated why they thought this was a good idea or why this was close. And the answer is supposed to be a little bit more complex, right? And so it's, it's a little bit harder. So the experiences that you're looking for, it's a little bit more complex, a little more nuanced.

[00:11:09] There's a couple of different components put together. So when you try to apply an existing staffing tool on top of it, which is really just looking for specific keywords and skill sets and certifications and, you know, X, Y, and Z. And so when you try to apply that model to this somewhat, you know, the more complex search, it doesn't work as well. So it's harder. And that's one of the main things that we started off with.

[00:11:37] How do we address that specific problem at the executive recruiting level, which makes our solution, you know, more geared towards this complex search? And that's where we started. And that's what we really sought to solve for. Quick follow-up, Brian. When you say, when you're talking about that, I'm hearing it's more of a luxury experience than some of the other, like Bullhorn, great company, does a great job in staffing.

[00:12:08] But a lot of that is, I would say, white collar and down. All right. Y'all are dealing with the upper echelon of white collar. So when you find and assess, you know, and you do and present, it seems to me like the audience is different. They're buying Mercedes or Bentleys or Maseratis. And so they need that type of, I would say, a luxury brand experience. Am I off? Yeah.

[00:12:37] I think there's a level of depth, right? I mean, you know, at the manager, director level, maybe the stakes aren't quite as high. If you're talking about a CEO, if you're talking about a board member, if you're talking about a CFO, bad things happen if you're wrong. And so if you want to have that proof and that documentation and that justification behind it, that's what we felt strongly about. And that's what's different.

[00:13:03] I mean, there are a lot of great tools out there that address the lower level. But when you get up into the executive ranks, they're just we tried. Again, we tried to find it. We were more than happy to buy it if somebody developed it, but it didn't exist. And that's why we ended up sitting here. And in terms of that experience, that polished experience, that expectation, we actually, one of the final stages of the product is solely focused on that.

[00:13:30] It's this polished deliverable of both the candidate and the comparison across multiple candidates. It has to sound right, it has to sound polished, it has to look good, it has to be consistent. It has to really provide insight about that candidate compared to the job specs and why this person is different and stands out and fits this role. And if you can't provide that in a credible and concise and professional way, and to do that is hard.

[00:13:58] If you can't do that, then you miss out. Your answer looks wrong. Your answer looks incomplete and sloppy. And so you don't have that credibility. So getting that final presentation bit correct, going back to that luxury experience, absolutely, it's a requirement.

[00:14:20] Yeah, so I wanted to ask, and I know we've been talking about what you all do and what Morovi is, but let's just say, you know, a scenario where you're at a conference, we have a big booth, you spend $100,000 on the booth, and somebody's walking up to you and say, what do you guys do? What's the quick 60-second pitch on what you guys are doing? You want to take it? Yeah, you take it.

[00:14:44] Yeah, so I mean, in essence, basically, we're taking the first part of the executive search process, which is the really heavy research aspect of it, and we're scaling it.

[00:14:56] We're making it way more measurable, and we're essentially delivering a prospect list where then real experts, real executive recruiting experts can go and take that and fulfill the rest of the search process by actually talking to those individuals and doing deeper assessment. So that's when we essentially say it in a couple words or less, we're scaling intelligently the research aspect at the beginning of the executive search process.

[00:15:26] And that translates to when you think of that first three or four weeks of an executive search project, all the benchmarking, all the market mapping, all the assessment scoring that typically takes today, three to four weeks, we want to compress that down to a 30 or 45-minute kickoff call with the stakeholders. That's the goal. Take three or four weeks, compress it down to 45 minutes. Yeah. Want to follow up to that. And I don't know that you have these numbers, but when you say that, that's interesting to me.

[00:15:54] I want to know what's the impact to the company by you being able to trim that down to a 45-minute call instead of a three to four-week assessment? In some ways, it forces alignment real time early on because historically, you go through that three or four-week research process. You look at a number of profiles. You go back and forth. You interview the first handful of candidates. Then there's just continuous realignment, recalibration that goes on.

[00:16:23] And then you head down this path. And you alter it five degrees and go down this path. So we're trying to force those issues. We're trying to have a little bit of that conflict 10 minutes in, not 10 weeks in. And that's – so I think it gets them to the right answer, but it also gets them to the right answer in a healthier, kind of more dynamic process and a whole lot faster. So are we talking to folks about, like, from a price, quality, and speed perspective?

[00:16:50] This is going to be faster, so brace yourself. This is going to be more of a higher quality. And so because of what we put in and the way our process is built, the way the technology is built, it's going to force a higher quality outcome. I dare I say – and it will be cheaper. So maybe it won't be cheaper. Maybe we get two of the three.

[00:17:15] But if we get two of the three faster and higher quality, I think that is really strong for buyers that go through it and have historically gone through this. I mean, you all have all heard this bit. You're not going to get fired for hiring high-ranking struggles. Right. Yeah. Right.

[00:17:35] So to get them to move from that firm or any other firm like that, to get them to move to something like this, it's going to have to resonate. It's going to be like, okay, why? Well, listen, let's just talk about 10 weeks. You're waiting for this person, and every moment that you're waiting is an opportunity cost of what they could be doing right now for you. So if it's a six-month search, let's just say we can do that search in a month.

[00:18:04] That's five more months of productivity-ish. Again, I don't know if those are the right numbers. But how do you all talk to prospects about that? We're telling them the initial measurements and things that we could do better and things that we could pull up.

[00:18:24] So, for example, if we're not able to do proper assessments or background checks on a lot of the candidates because it takes a long time to get to that short list. And then after that, you have to get down to a small enough list where you can do those additional elements. And perhaps that's taking too long or cost too much, so sometimes it gets nixed.

[00:18:46] But we're really trying to give the opportunity to pull those processes up front in the process. That's number one. But then through that process, if we can look at a broader set of candidates, provide better answers because we looked at more people more consistently. We looked at it from multiple angles, so hopefully the answer is more unbiased and more accurate, more deeply researched.

[00:19:14] Our goal is to really get to that better answer. So, as you said, it may not be cheap, but hopefully it's more valuable. So we're starting from there. I think there was a specific thread I actually just lost. It's very important. It's super important. It'll never come back. But when you all say the word assess, I think qualify?

[00:19:45] And how far off am I in my thinking? Because when you say it, I think, Vicki, you're the first one that said it. I'm like, okay, qualify. Why? Is one that spoke of the other? Yeah. So I think that, yes, when we say the word assess, there's initial assessment and then there's deeper assessment, right?

[00:20:06] What Jen was talking about, which is, hey, we've got the final three candidates and we need to understand how are they going to fit into the culture, soft skills, leadership style, everything we kind of think of when we think of executive level assessment. What we mean in assessment at the beginning stage and the platform is a lot of tools are essentially regurgitating, you know, this is where this person works.

[00:20:35] This is, you know, the sector they're in. This is the role that they have, but it's not actually assessing them based off of the company that's hiring, the role and what the role is looking to accomplish. Right. And so that's a big difference that we felt really needed to be addressed, which is you can match all day long, but actual assessment at the beginning of the process doesn't really exist anywhere.

[00:21:05] Because you have to study, all right, where has Jen come from? What roles has he had? What experience has he had in those roles? What have those companies actually achieved and done and what industries are they in? All of the aspects and the connect the dots on Jen and his experience as a chief product officer. There's more assessment to that than just keyword matching.

[00:21:31] And that's the difference of assessment when we're saying, hey, we're not just finding, but we're assessing and then presenting. That's what we mean by assessment. And some hard examples. We're looking at your track record. We're looking at the companies you've been in and their performances at those companies.

[00:21:49] And it's not a direct correlation, but we're looking for somebody who's had a progressive track record in great companies that have had a positive progression in the company's revenue themselves. And in doing that, we're also measuring multiple instances of having done certain activities and events, as well as if they're looking for revenue growth or turnarounds or some sort of specific measurements,

[00:22:18] we're trying to provide certain X to Y type of measurement to provide background data points to support those assertions and assessments. So there are many things that we continue to build in. And assessment, again, is something that as Matt does his research, if he's looking for certain things and looking to draw out conclusions and assessments about a certain person's experiences,

[00:22:44] these are all things that we're trying to build into the logic so that, again, we're not letting this system make things up. We're providing lots of examples and things to look for that allow us to tell that story. And again, it's to really mimic what Matt does and how he assesses people. And not just Matt, we're continuing to get feedback from a lot of our prospects and customers. And we're continuing to add that and build that in. And that's one of the things that I continue to work on a daily basis. And we're really proud of that.

[00:23:14] Our logic is literally improving on a daily basis because we continue to provide feedback. And it's really a learning mechanism. And we look at it, we look at a candidate or a situation contextually and holistically. In some ways, it's going from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. It's not just, okay, you were here from point A to point B. But what happened around that? What fundraising, liquidity event, acquisitions, whatever it may be, those things matter.

[00:23:43] Those things add a tremendous amount of context. So that's what we've wrapped around it. And I think that's where it starts to make a difference. Hey, not only where you were, but what makes you tick? And how were you formed by what happened during those periods? That's where we think we can start to add real value. Yeah, it's an interesting point. And this is ages ago when I was still recruiting.

[00:24:06] One of the, I think, the challenges we've had at that level was we weren't able to, without manually going in and doing a whole lot of work. You said weeks on end to do this. We couldn't really tell you what this person did at the company other than what they told us or our own digging to figure that out.

[00:24:27] But we never knew when they were at this company, in your example, a funding or a liquidity event or anything around that person's tenure there. What was their effect there? What experience did they get out of that? And what projects were they potentially working on? All of that stuff. We didn't have that option. We just had to dig and manually do that. And the entire industry largely does that today. Still manually going through that. Yes, they get to the answer. Right.

[00:24:57] It just takes longer. See, I'm not sure they get to the answer, Vicki. Yeah, that's possible. So this goes back to tech recruiting, but we'll stay in executive search for a moment. Just because someone was at that firm in a role at that time doesn't mean they were really truly a part of what happened.

[00:25:18] Like, again, if someone says in tech recruiting I have JavaScript, well, you don't know the breadth and the depth of that skill. You just know that they were at that company, and they could say that they know Java. But you don't know truly if they were, again, kind of getting back to different personas, were they leading that? Were they a part of that? Did their team do it and they took credit for it, like all that stuff?

[00:25:47] I don't think historically we know that about executives. We know what they tell us. We took a guess, and we went with it, and oftentimes we were right, and sometimes we were wrong. And when you were wrong, it hit hard. And that was the challenge. So the question I have from that that keeps coming to me is when you're talking to prospects or clients, where are they getting the most value right now?

[00:26:17] One of the main, well, I'll start with, you know, the reactions, based on the reaction, the thing that resonate most is starting from the output and the deliverable. Because it gives me a quick, polished insight to how this candidate compares to the actual job description and all the things that we've set up. These are the things that we're looking for, and it's going to answer that question. So it starts there.

[00:26:45] It's being able to credibly show that, you know, very concisely telling you that this person is a good fit for this role because X, Y, and Z. And here's the backups. And we start with the 30-second summary, and we get down to the actual specific line item details that support those qualifications and assertions as much as we can. And then at the end is where we actually highlight some of the risk points.

[00:27:11] Hey, we don't know enough about these areas, so you will want to ask these type of questions in the next conversation or interviews. Or these are some of the areas that look like a potential risk, so you might want to dig deeper. So we do really draw a line between what is able to be known about a candidate based on experience and based on what they tell us. And as you said, it is absolutely true. There's stuff that we won't know until we spend a lot more time with the candidates.

[00:27:39] That's not something that we're going to be able to solve with anything that we have today. And it's not even something that you can oftentimes get right with interviews. They can tell you everything, but until you actually work with them and they're actually doing the thing, you don't know. So there are some things that we draw the line and say, this is not something that we're going to be able to get from the data that we have today or the technology. It is something that we're going to leave to the experts to focus on.

[00:28:05] So we actually draw the line between where we want to apply the technology and the solution and the platform versus where we want to have free up the expert to be able to spend more time in these areas. And that's something that we're very conscious about. I love that. So last question is more conversational like this until we get to some of the software stuff.

[00:28:31] So fitability to the team I know is somewhere in this process because the next executive that joins your team, right, how are we going to figure out that they can mesh well with the three of you? And I don't know where that's in the process. First of all, I've never done executive search. So there's that. But I know it's important or I feel like it's important, but I don't know where it is that we can tackle that or if we tackle that.

[00:29:01] I should be. Well, first of all, they have to wear black. That's how we know if they fit in. Seriously. Yeah. There are a couple of ways we look at it. So, look, I think the first thing we wanted to really attack was where have you been? What have you done? What are the results? What are the pieces around that? There is kind of this entire second half of the act, I think, industry-wide. No one's quite figured that out yet. When you get to the assessment, the deep psych assessment, the referencing, the background check, I think that's still to be determined.

[00:29:31] But part of our theory is get really good at where have you been, what have you done, what are the results? And then free up more time, have an elevated experience around the things that we do well as humans. That having that interaction, looking at culture fit by ruling out all of these other things and fine-tuning and better calibrating on some of the key competencies and skills,

[00:29:54] that allows you more time to focus on the things that matter around culture and how to, you know, the behavioral elements that ultimately determine if somebody wins or loses. All the hard skills, yes, that matters. And there are a lot of people that have the hard skills but just are not a good culture fit. So if we can help you refine and get really close on the hard skills, I think the cultural piece and the other elements, the soft skills, begin to become that much more obvious.

[00:30:20] And those are things that, again, by making you more efficient and freeing up time to do that, that's where I think, again, we can add some serious value. Ryan? He looks frozen. All right. So we're going to get to the software part because, you know, the folks that listen to this show, they're trying to build a business case for why to work with Morovi. So let's do this.

[00:30:49] Your favorite part of the demo. You all do demos. I'm probably, you know, I'm assuming at this point you all can do demos on your own, et cetera. So what's your favorite part of the demo? And we'll start left to right again. Yeah, I think the coolest thing, typically, like when we're doing a demo, we always love for them to give us a job specification. And it's something either they've recently finished or maybe one that's active now.

[00:31:14] And so for me, the coolest thing is forcing that alignment on the front end when we run the job spec through and it spits out, hey, here are the top five or six criteria. Here's the language around that. And here's the scoring associated. To see them kind of light up and gravitate and perk up around that piece is a whole lot of fun.

[00:31:32] And then as we run the program to see the results that spit out and we'll have the top 10 or 15 people that come down the list and they'll say, hey, five or six of these we had as candidates. We had in play. Here are three or four others. Man, we hadn't thought of, but that's a great idea. So to see that play out real time and get that reaction and really that validation real time for me is, again, it's great justification that, man, we're on to something here.

[00:32:02] We're in that process when they see it, and it could be at this point, but we're in that process when they see it, are they kind of like, you know you have them and this is going to work? Yeah, it hits them right away. I mean, they'll call it out. Hey, there's Bob. There's Sally. I mean, they can't hide the fact that, hey, we hit the bullseye. They're excited. And that's ultimately the test. That's the validation.

[00:32:28] If we can run it and reinforce where they went and who they hired and what they did, but then show them this additional 30 or 40% of the landscape that creatively or, you know, they had a filter. They had blinders. They didn't think to go here. They had a filter. That's part of, I think, where we feel there's significant gain because we're pushing the envelope. We're prompting them to look in areas that maybe they wouldn't have gone to left of their own devices.

[00:32:53] Usually second demo, we ask for something that they've been doing that's really hard, that's active, that's live. We do it then and there. So we tell them to bring a job description and we do the process with them. So it's really a point of we'll prove it to you. We have nothing to hide. We can do it as quickly as we say we can in front of clients as you would. So we do it with them.

[00:33:16] And when they see the results pop up, especially when they see people that they've found along with people that they never would have found, that's always a great proof point for us. My favorite demo. Neither of them were on it the other day. That's why it was your favorite. You didn't tell us about it. It wasn't why it was my favorite. But we were on and literally they knew nothing about Morovi.

[00:33:44] They didn't really know how it would work. And we hadn't prepped anything. And I essentially kind of got them in and they said, hey, I've got this problem right now. I'm in this search right now. Here is the job description. Can you just like, can we just go through it with this problem I have at this moment? And I was like, oh, God, I hope this works.

[00:34:08] So then they come in and I take the job description from like the chat and the video. I plop it in. I'm like, all right, let's go through a couple of the criteria. What have you discovered so far that you're really looking for in this role? And in five minutes, they have a target company list they didn't have before.

[00:34:32] They have a target list of five or six individuals that did not show up to them for a variety of reasons because they were looking at it very literally in the parameters versus looking at the criteria of the role. And I mean, it was my favorite. I mean, literally, it was a 25 minute conversation and we solved their problem. That's that's what I like the most when you literally when at that moment you're solving a problem and you can see it on their faces that you just took away some pain.

[00:35:02] I'm sorry. I missed it. It was great, guys. It wasn't recorded. Yeah. It never happened. It may not have even happened, but it sounds good. Yeah. No, it's a great story. Yeah. It's fantastic. Are you all a do you consider yourself a technology company or a services company? I do. No, we're absolutely. We're absolutely. Yes. Yes. Oh, yeah. Emphatically. Yes. We're a software company. We're a technology company. I think we always felt like, hey, absolutely.

[00:35:32] There's a great services play. But the reason for being is around the software. That's where we felt we could make the most impact. Be disruptive. Really help, again, to pivot and shape an industry that has not changed ever. Ever. Yeah. And we want to use our technology for the service aspect. So, I mean, it just depends on the need. You have some people who come to us who they don't want to go learn a new software or that, you know, they're in a hurry. They need something now. They need an answer right now.

[00:36:01] And we can use it for them, right? To give them that short list of answers. Some just want you to do the entire thing. So they can come to us. We'll use the platform. But, you know, we'll go all the way through the search process for them. And then others really just, they want to do it on their own. They want to take it internally. And they just want the software aspect. All right. Real quick question, Ryan. Just a white label question, which is probably something you're going to get to.

[00:36:29] Can other search firms use your technology white labeled? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we built it. I didn't expect that answer, by the way. No. Look, we built, first and foremost, we wanted to build something that I would use every day. And I do. And I love it. And it's great. But I do think, I mean, we felt, hey, if every search firm used this platform, if the venture private equity talent groups use this software,

[00:36:56] if mid-cap and large-cap enterprise internal executive search groups use this software, hey, great. We're more than happy to help out. Yeah. And so it's a great question. I wasn't going to ask that. But what I was going to ask, it was just so great, I couldn't even think of it. The question I had, though, is what are the, when you're talking to people, you're expecting or you're wanting to hear certain questions.

[00:37:26] What are the questions that they're not asking that you really wish they wouldn't? Or maybe another way to phrase that could be, what are the questions that when they, or maybe on top of this is when they ask these questions, you know, they know what they're talking about and you know that they don't feel. Without dogging anybody. Yeah. I'm going to back my way into that a little bit. I was just, what came to my head when you asked that was a call I was on the other day

[00:37:51] and with, with a very experienced search, search person. And you're like, God, this is so flexible on how I want to search. Like a lot of the tools, they lack flexibility and they force me into sort of this one route of research and everyone, at the end of the day, everyone does research a little differently. Right. And so, and I love like what, right when she said it, I was like, Oh, I wish I had thought

[00:38:21] of that in terms of how we position it. But I was like, but yeah, you know, right. It is very, it is very flexible. And so I think what, what I really want people to ask when they get into it is how, how would my, the way I research, how do I use this? Like, right. How do I, how do I get into it? Because that's the whole point of Morovi is to guide you through sort of the different ways to look at something that maybe you hadn't thought of before and to, and to recommend different ways.

[00:38:50] So I, I would hope that they would ask sort of like, yeah, based off how I am used to doing this, how would I use this? And when we get questions about, okay, so I use these tools and I do my search this way and I have these issues. What do you do differently? How do you solve my problem? That always makes it easier. They know what they're talking about. They know what they're looking for. We know what we are solving for.

[00:39:15] So then the question, as Vicky said, really depending on what their current process is, what their current tool sets are, we know where the shortfalls were. Because we used it. We tried it all out. We were looking for different ways of making that all work. So then we get to tell the story of our platform, really trying to balance between that flexibility and being a powerful search engine that allows different nuanced, complex searches in an accurate

[00:39:43] and data-driven way, but also being really easy to use. And that's a hard balance, especially from the product side. And one of the ways that we really try to overcome that, and really, again, we're trying to take this really long, complex research, this manual that's weeks to an hour. And that's hard. The way that we're able to do that is you've got to help guide and navigate and teach the end user as much as possible through the process.

[00:40:11] So not only flexibility, not only are we applying multiple search paths to get to the answer, because everybody does it differently, and there's different ways that gets you better answers in certain situations. So we build multiple paths to that. But for the end user, we're all along the way, there's recommendations that's happening.

[00:40:34] And that's something that we use to reinforce best practices, provide some alternatives that can help improve their answers. And even finally, based on who you like and who you dislike, we're recommending changes to the algorithm so that you're seeing more of who you like and less of who you don't. And that's a part that we're continuing to invest into is getting better every day.

[00:41:00] It's my favorite part of the platform because it's the one that really helps provide the answers at the end of the day, the best answers possible, as easily as possible, while staying connected to your current search, current process, what I know and what I'm expecting. So we're really trying to balance between that flexibility and that ease of use. And it ends up being the smartest recruiter you've ever met. And I think that's what really jumps out.

[00:41:30] The other thing for me, not necessarily a question we get, but just the reaction to see how they respond when they get in the platform, when they see it in motion. I think not that they're going in with low expectations, but I think people tend to be blown away. And I think because it was built by search people, brilliant technology, amazing kind of UI, UX, the overall experience, the look and the feel and the flow. It's really cool to see the reaction and how they engage and how they light up.

[00:41:58] It's like, okay, yes, it really works. The deliverable is amazing. That's, I think that's what's so rewarding when you see it's like, man, we're onto something here. We were, we were on a call about a month ago with someone we've all known for a while. And, and at the end, he's like, you guys, this is like so much better than I thought it was going to be. And we're like, I don't know if we're insulted or we're backhanded compliment. I've had my expectations.

[00:42:24] We're watching so low, it didn't suck near as much as we thought it would be. But it was, it was Matt's point. It was kind of good to hear. It's like the kind of like the, oh, it's a, we're a skeptical crowd in the, in the executive world. And we, as buyers, we've been sold a lot of goods that didn't end up working. So, so I, you know, to hear kind of that skeptical part and be like, oh, whoa, like this actually does do what.

[00:42:54] This looks like it works. But that is, I mean, that's a great point around, you know, why the industry has been slow to change, why it's been slow to evolve. I mean, at the end of the day, as a search partner, I'm paid to be skeptical and I'm paid to be judgmental. And that's what I get paid to do. And, you know, you've got to justify it. You've got to prove it. So that crowd is not going to be quick to embrace new and different and change. Hey, we're rock solid. We're dependable.

[00:43:20] So I do think that skeptical and judgmental, it makes for an interesting sales process as we go out and talk to people. But that's where it's fun to see them blown away and exceed expectations. Speaking of which, every single assessment, scoring, skills found, previous experiences, everything is justified.

[00:43:42] Everything is provided, backed up by data points and proof because we don't ever want to show you somebody without you knowing exactly why this person is at the top. Got to show our work. Ryan, I've run out of questions. Yeah, I was going to say that. You know, that's the one thing I was going to say is being able to show the work, like we're in, like, sixth grade math.

[00:44:07] But being able to show the work and back it up with real, credible data means a lot in this space. Especially at that level. Yeah, and it builds a lot of trust because I think it was Vicky or one of you two that said, if you mess up, bad things happen. Right? And they can't afford that with you. But, William, I'm with you, man. I'm good. I bought everything that I need. Great episode.

[00:44:35] Thank you all so much for carving out time for us. This is fun. And loved it. We appreciate it, guys. It was good to see you both.