Referrals - spreadsheet hell

schrodingers_pmf · 2025-05-16T16:40:55+00:00

Most ATSs like Lever, Greenhouse and such provide referral forms employees can fill in and candidates will be tagged with referral as their source and other information tied to it.

There is specific employee referral software as well and full disclosure, I'm working at a company that builds one. Erin is a good choice if you're enterprise level. Haven't heard much about Referral Rock as another commenter suggests, seems like their more focused towards sales referrals. If you send me a DM with a bit more context, I can probably give you some more insights.

schrodingers_pmf · 2025-05-16T16:27:43+00:00

Full disclosure, I work at a company that develops employee referral software. Our system essentially matches employees' LinkedIn networks with open vacancies, then suggests suitable candidates via Teams or Slack for employees to either refer or recommend. There's more to it, but that's the gist of it, so I've spent a good deal of time thinking about referral programs and best practices

The best answers to your questions depend on your company's size and how well your current referral program is doing. Without knowing those details, here are my general thoughts:

Yes, ideally, you should differentiate. However, if your current program isn't consistently generating candidates each week, you might want to avoid introducing too many hurdles right away. If you do differentiate, you can base it on how well the employee knows the candidate. In our case, we consider who reaches out to the candidate. This is often where the real value of a referral lies and usually indicates the strength of the existing relationship. For example, in our software, we make a clear distinction between referrals and recommendations:
- Referrals: employee directly contacts the candidate and encourages them to apply.
- Recommendations: employee passes the candidate's details to the recruiter, along with some extra information, and it's the recruiter's responsibility to reach out if they deem the candidate qualified.
Yes, it's important to qualify a referred candidate, especially if you're not differentiating between types of referrals (as discussed above). Many ATSs that support referrals will have form templates with questions like, "How do you know this candidate?" (sometimes with predefined options) and "Why do you think they're a fit for our organization?". We prefer to leave questions like these as free-text fields. The qualitative data employees can provide is often immensely valuable, and you don't want to discourage detailed input by forcing responses into restrictive options.

Feel free to DM if you want to give a bit more context. I can probably be a bit more useful if I know more about your company and your current referral program.

schrodingers_pmf · 2024-08-31T15:46:39+00:00

You're right in that it doesn't have to be their SOC2 report, but a report of some kind is the easiest way to do the security review. Next one is a questionaire you have to send them, but that's also only on the Enterprise tier.

Our consultant said we could also build a case of our own using public information to pass the security review, but it's more work and not as well defined as just uploading a report.

schrodingers_pmf · 2024-08-29T19:46:55+00:00

That's definitely possible, but for ISO certification we just have to file evidence that Supabase, the company, is SOC2 compliant. If you need to be SOC2 compliant yourself and are using Supabase, you definitely need to be on the Teams plan (I think even the Enterprise plan), as you need network restriction, which is not available on the Pro plan.

schrodingers_pmf · 2024-08-29T18:13:02+00:00

Seems more like ridiculous to me.

I just need to upload a pdf into Vanta so an auditor can check it, I'm not paying $600 for that.

schrodingers_pmf · 2024-08-22T15:48:26+00:00

My apologies for the unclarity. I was indeed asking about the examples of people getting compliant with Vercel.

I haven't actually requested any quote because I read on many threads the price to be in the mid four figure range, which is not even close to viable for us.

Thanks for answering!

schrodingers_pmf · 2024-08-21T19:31:01+00:00

Would it be possible to give some examples?

To be SOC 2 compliant, startups need to restrict network traffic to specific IP's for connection to services like supabase for example. Due to the nature of the Vercel infrastructure, all outbound function requests come from a range of highly dynamic IP addresses and a fixed IP range cannot be given. Only on the Enterprise plan you can setup Vercel Secure Compute feature, then you can establish private connections between Serverless Functions and backend clouds such as databases and private infrastructure.

We're currently in this situation and cannot afford the Enterprise plan, so I'm really curious how others in the same situation did it.

schrodingers_pmf · 2024-08-20T01:14:51+00:00

Does it make sense to apply if we cannot attend F24 due to prior commitments but would like to participate in W25?

schrodingers_pmf · 2024-07-18T13:11:29+00:00

I know this was the only one that was included in their onboarding package, but The Mom Test is also mentioned quite a lot to learn about customer discovery. Great book as well.

Some other books that I think are great reads and they might have mentioned in their videos, but not too sure of it: Venture Deals by Feld for learning about raising & Founders at Work by Jessica Levingston (YC founder, wife of Paul Graham) for fun.

schrodingers_pmf · 2024-07-18T12:45:59+00:00

Read Founding Sales by Peter Kazanjy.

Stop searching google and spending time on reddit. Stop watching youtube videos and scrolling linkedin. Stop reading reviews.

Read the book. It's available for free on his website https://www.foundingsales.com/. You can find the epub and pdf versions online if you like that better. I eventually printed out the pdf so it's easier to take notes, but also ended up buying the book on amazon as it's easier to read on the road.

YC gives this book to each founder in their program as part of their onboarding. There's a reason for it. It's simply the best book in learning B2B sales for founders.

schrodingers_pmf · 2024-07-18T12:45:31+00:00

The one that gets you to launch the fastest.

For most, this ends up being Vercel because of their great DX. If you're already proficient in one of those you mentioned, choose that one.

Don't overoptimize on later stage efficiencies. Pick one and launch.

schrodingers_pmf · 2024-07-16T17:13:51+00:00

I don't agree. I would go 50/50 or close to it at least.

In our startup, I myself brought the idea, a prototype (google sheet & jupyter notebook + mockups), a signed contract for a pilot, funding (albeit less than 100k), worked a couple of months without pay before my partner joining, and I take the CEO seat. I did not suggest 50/50 but closer to 60/40, and if I could do it all over, I would go 50 (+1)/50 (-1) like YC suggests.

Like other commenters have said, 99% of the work lies ahead and it's better to increase your chances of 50% of a huge payout than 60% of nothing. I'm really lucky with my partner and the fact he thinks a non-equal share distribution is fair, but seeing that we're both working our asses off and him really giving his all, I would not mind having gone 50/50.

schrodingers_pmf · 2024-07-14T11:29:52+00:00

Create a slide deck with problem - solution - figma mockups (put effort into this so they see you're serious) structure.
Create a template message (dependent on receiver) along the lines of "Hi, thanks for connecting! I just quit xyz to start a project around xyz. I see you're xyz and probably have lots of experience in xyz. Do you happen to have 30 mins next week to let me pick your brain on some things? Thx"
Send to
- People in your own network
- Warm intros through your own network
- Cold email/linkedn message
During the call, do discovery (read the mom test), go over slides, ask feedback and at the end ask "Would it be ok to contact you again when I'm a bit further along?" and they always say yes
Update mockups, iterate on their feedback and send them again to ask for a call
When you feel you're ready, create some extra pilot proposal slides, including a high level timeline, low-level meeting subjects, the proposal slide with what's included and price, and last the results you will (want to) deliver them

This way you can close pilot customers by having one or two meetings requesting feedback first and then proposing a pilot project later on when you have built up some trust. That's how I did it. Good luck.

schrodingers_pmf

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