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Below is our September network update. Summary: Sept was basically a flat month for GSV but we’re seeing a lot more jobs being posted (nearly all AI/ML!), a good leading indicator that things could be rebounding. Self-serve, connector referrals and AI/automation continue to drive low/no-CAC growth.
Platform Improvements to increase efficiency & GSV growth:- Self Serve: We generated our first 6 fills from Self-Serve, generating $269k. As I previewed last month, we’ve also improved onboarding to produce higher quality leads, and reduced the number of false positives by requiring more business info up front, adding clarity to sign up flow, and allowing businesses to book calls directly with sales if they want to.
- Automation: We're working towards a future where AI powers all aspects of the client and talent experiences. Within The Professional Network, we've launched Topic Understanding to automatically classify all posts, and Feed Ranking which has led to 40% more contributions. Coming next is the AI based matching algorithm within the Marketplace product, which makes the process of surfacing the right talent dramatically easier. Customers leveraging the system on their own will get quality talent in their client dashboard and inboxes immediately, and those enterprises experiencing our white glove human assistance will get personalized match summaries.
- Referrals: Over the last quarter we have invested in our referral engine optimization and have moved it from sales-only to a self-serve process with the option to connect with sales. This change has resulted in a 5X conversion improvement. In Q4, we will narrow the aperture to focus on better identifying, celebrating and engaging the 10X connectors, in addition to further incentive and tooling experimentation.
Client (demand) side performance:
- Revenue: Our new GCV was down 29% MoM and GSV was down marginally 4% MoM. A handful of large deals were pushed near the end of the month, with ~ $1M in revenue we expect to see materialize in October. For October we’re forecasting $4.0M GCV (up 37% MoM) and $6.8 GSV (up 2% MoM)
- Customers: Overall, the health of our customer base is improving as we hear fewer clients locked in hiring freezes and that hiring plans are top of mind right now for 2024 as annual resource planning sessions are going on this month.
- Jobs: We saw the most qualified new jobs posted in 12mo (since Sept ‘22). This speaks to the momentum and positive signs we’re seeing that the jobs are coming back off of the summer lows and the product improvements that enable clients to join and post jobs without assistance.
- SMB: Thanks to the Self Serve product improvements, we’re seeing bright spots in the SMB space with new GCV up 2x and the average deal size up $27K MoM. Again the vision for the future is that small and medium sized businesses will require no touches from the Braintrust Core Team through a multi-quarter focus on funnel optimization and AI automation. We’re also experimenting with AI SDR and other tools to drive ToF.
Talent (supply) side performance:
- Token: We’ve completed and tested account-abstracted wallet creation for new users on the Base blockchain - the Coinbase L2. This allows us to grant tokens on-chain without forcing users into a 3rd party wallet. Leveraging Base allows users to move BTRST from wallet-to-wallet with magnitude lower gas fees than Ethereum. This opens up the ability for payments between users for career help and really interesting token growth loop experimentation in the upcoming quarters.
Events: We continue to invest in nurturing our talent community through events with prominent industry professionals. Most recently we hosted Matt Greenberg, the x-CTO of Reforge, Credit Karma, CoSo Cloud, and Lockheed Martin, which received over 1200 RSVPs and 74 questions. Talent craves actionable advice and one mentioned “Matt was so honest and it was refreshing to go a bit deeper than the typical surface advice. Thank you!"
As always, please don’t hesitate to reply with feedback or questions.
All the best,
Adam
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