In this episode of Selection Talks, Stefan sits down with Laurens van Nues, co-founder of Magnet.me. Laurens talks about how Magnet.me got started on campus in Delft, the role job postings play in attracting talent, and the hard lesson he learned when the company was growing fast while running into its own technical limits.
Q: How did Magnet.me start during Laurens van Nues's time as a student?
A: Magnet.me was founded on campus in Delft, before Laurens van Nues had even finished his studies. He started the company together with a few fellow students, based on his own experience as a student recruiter for a recruitment agency, where they referred fellow students to companies in exchange for a small fee.
Q: Why did students in Delft know the big companies but not the scale-ups, according to Laurens van Nues of Magnet.me?
A: Large companies and consultancy firms had no trouble finding students in Delft, showing up at career fairs and sponsoring events. Just around the corner, YES!Delft was full of interesting scale-ups and start-ups, but according to Laurens van Nues, students had no idea they existed, simply because you only find what you actively search for.
Q: Why does Laurens van Nues of Magnet.me compare a job posting to booking a hotel?
A: Laurens van Nues believes a job posting is often a long, dull wall of text, while the company and colleagues behind it are actually the most important part. He draws a comparison to booking a hotel or ordering food, where you always see a photo of what you're actually getting, and to dating, where you want to know who you'll be having a drink with before you show up.
Q: What went wrong when Magnet.me was growing and got featured in NRC Next?
A: Magnet.me was growing fast and got featured in the Dutch newspaper NRC Next, but had to go offline that very same day because the traffic couldn't be handled. Further development of the system was expensive and inefficient, which according to Laurens van Nues eventually led to a lawsuit over the valuation when buying back shares.
Q: How did Magnet.me resolve the technical crisis under Laurens van Nues?
A: The team rebuilt the entire system with an in-house tech team, whose CTO and core members have now been with the company for more than ten years. Everything was migrated from the old system to the new one over a single weekend, a process that according to Laurens van Nues took about three years in total.
Q: What advice does Laurens van Nues of Magnet.me give founders about sales?
A: Laurens van Nues advises founders to get good at sales early on, because it's just as much of a craft as building a product. He notices that the best salespeople at Magnet.me have all done cold calling themselves at some point, because that's the best way to learn what customers are actually struggling with.
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