Tom Brunskill, Co-Founder and CEO of Forage shares lessons from closing the biggest brands in the world, reshaping employment with education, building a successful salesforce, solving the cold start problem and so much more.
Nov 21, 2023
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Tom Brunskill, Co-Founder and CEO of Forage, discusses reshaping career education and employment. Topics include his unique upbringing, transitioning from a lawyer to founder, selling to enterprise clients, challenges in building a category-defining company, and the future of personalized education.
Leveraging existing relationships and creating incentives helped Forage address the challenge of building and balancing the marketplace dynamic between students and employers.
Selling to enterprise clients requires building trust and establishing long-term relationships, with signals of trust like being part of Y Combinator or having notable customers used to overcome initial skepticism.
Building a category-defining company involves stepping out of comfort zones, leveraging personal and professional networks, and focusing on signals rather than traditional markers of success.
Deep dives
Building a Marketplace and Balancing Supply and Demand
In the early stages of Forage, the challenge of building and balancing the marketplace dynamic between students and employers was addressed by leveraging existing relationships and creating incentives. Companies like King & Wood Mallesons were the first to join, and pre-enrollment campaigns were used to generate interest and collect information from students. Trust and credibility were also established by highlighting partnerships with reputable Australian companies, which helped gain the attention and trust of US-based enterprises.
Lessons in Selling to Enterprises
Selling to enterprise clients requires a focus on building trust and establishing long-term relationships. Signals of trust, such as being part of Y Combinator or having notable customers in the Australian market, were used to overcome initial skepticism. Building relationships with the talent acquisition teams rather than other departments was found to be the most effective approach, as they were more aligned with Forage's North Star metric of getting the right people in the right seats. Additionally, leveraging authentic relationships and contacts within the organization contributed to gaining trust and securing initial conversations.
Navigating Product-Market Fit with Enterprises
Finding product-market fit in the enterprise context involves considerations beyond just the product itself. Understanding the cyclical nature of the market and adapting to changes is crucial. Educating customers on the long-term value of engaging and attracting talent, as well as highlighting the downstream impact on productivity and culture, has been a key approach. Additionally, focusing on selling to the talent acquisition teams, who are invested in building a better workforce, has yielded the most successful customer relationships.
Getting Uncomfortable and Building Relationships
Breaking into enterprise organizations requires stepping out of comfort zones and taking proactive measures. This includes reaching out to potential contacts through LinkedIn, asking for introductions, and overcoming any reluctance to ask for favors. Leveraging personal and professional networks, such as Y Combinator alumni, has also been effective in gaining access to key decision-makers. The importance of building trust and human connections cannot be underestimated, as it is a fundamental element of establishing successful enterprise partnerships.
Category-defining company and the challenges
Building a category-defining company is difficult and challenging. The speaker acknowledges that there are days when they question their decision to embark on this journey. Timing is crucial, as many category-defining companies fail because they are ahead of their time. Despite the difficulties, the speaker's company aims to redefine the recruitment process by educating candidates and focusing on signals rather than traditional markers of success.
Customer love and leading product indicators
The speaker emphasizes the importance of customer love and measuring it beyond traditional metrics like NPS. For their enterprise-focused company, a key leading indicator is gross dollar retention, which shows how many customers continue to pay for the product. Another important metric is the percentage of hires coming from their platform and the quality of those hires. By focusing on these indicators, the company aims to ensure the right candidates are placed in the right roles while building a better workforce and improving economic outcomes.
Reshaping education and employment, with Tom Brunskill, Co-Founder of Forage
Forage is on a mission to transform career education and employment. By offering job simulations from leading companies, they enable students to gain real-world skills and experience, enabling them to make more informed decisions about the career they pursue. This innovative approach challenges traditional recruitment methods, focusing on education first to create a more inclusive and diverse talent pool.
✅ How Tom’s unique upbringing primed him to tackle the problem
✅ Transitioning from being an “unhappy lawyer” to founder
✅ Finding the formula for selling to enterprise clients
✅ The challenges of building a category-defining company
✅ The “holy grail” of personalised education
Want to learn more?
Episode Highlights from Tom:
"Instead of hiring first and training second, you should actually be using software that educates the candidate pipeline first and then using that pool of talent and the signals that are surfaced in that experience to hire exceptional candidates"
“We’re category defining, we’re painting a different future for what recruitment can look like, and that’s challenging. These companies have recruited in a very specific way for a very long time, and it can be challenging to will that future into existence.”
"I hope that education does become more responsive to workplace needs... It's about how do you broaden the surface area of luck for young people to end up in roles that do stimulate them"
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