Reader- Did I ever tell you the story of how, in 2011, I filed 600 job applications and heard back from almost none of them. That was the year I stopped applying and started building my own business instead. Fifteen years later, I still don't apply for jobs… and the system that broke me back then only got noisier with AI on both sides of it.

So when Eric Bruder, co-founder of Poozle, told me he watched 8,000 applicants collapse into a single hire at a previous company, I heard the exact thing I walked away from in 2011, except Eric walked toward it and quit his job to fix it.

I have driven growth for two-sided marketplaces before, including two job marketplaces, so I know how hard the cold-start problem is.

To solve the low interview-rate problem, Eric built the employer side of the marketplace first before inviting a single job seeker onto the platform.

Once he had a strong base of hiring companies and active opportunities, he added tools and features for candidates.

That sequence is important because, as candidates entered a marketplace with real demand already in place, that dramatically increased their chances of getting interviews compared to larger job boards.

LinkedIn and Indeed can't make quality their core product north star without breaking their own revenue model. A bootstrapped founder can. That’s the gap that Poozle was built to fill.

​Read the full interview here >> ​

WHAT WE DISCUSSED

• Why 8,000 applicants collapsed into a single hire, and the structural problem hiding underneath a bad hiring cycle
• The knockout-question trap on big platforms, where applicants burn effort on dead-end roles and employers pay for impressions either way
• How Poozle sequenced a two-sided marketplace by scraping 100,000 public roles to manufacture supply, then emailing hiring managers to manufacture value
• The founder-led content engine driving 150 to 300 DMs a day with zero paid marketing, and the single-channel risk that comes with it
• Why LinkedIn and Indeed retreated from skills-based matching, and what that opening means for a bootstrapped team
• The quality-over-monetization bet and what consumption pricing costs in predictability and buys in loyalty
• The interview-rate data, 8% for go-to-market roles on Poozle against roughly 0.1% for LinkedIn Easy Apply

REFERENCED

• Poozle: https://www.poozle.io/​
• LinkedIn Easy Apply (referenced for the 0.1% interview-rate comparison)
• Indeed (referenced alongside LinkedIn on skills-based matching)

WHERE TO FIND ERIC BRUDER

• Poozle: https://www.poozle.io/​
• ​Eric Bruder on LinkedIn​

MY BIGGEST TAKEAWAYS

The move I'd copy first is what Eric did after he built the initial candidate pool.

Most founders focus on gathering supply. They recruit users, build inventory, or fill the platform with listings and assume activity will follow.

What Eric discovered is that this wasn't enough.

His interview rates stayed flat until he started emailing hiring managers directly to share with them curated candidate recommendations.

Instead of waiting for employers to search the platform, he actively connected the right candidates to the right opportunities.

That was the turning point.

Building supply made the marketplace look active, then creating successful matches is what made it valuable.

Here is the part I keep thinking about... LinkedIn and Indeed both tried skills-based matching and retreated, because quality interfered with how they make money. If you think about it, a platform that gets you hired fast is one you stop paying for more quickly - so, yeah.

Eric and his brother answer to no one, so they made quality the core product. Their go-to-market interview rate is 8%, against roughly 0.1% for LinkedIn Easy Apply.

The lesson for founders: find the place where the market leader's business model forces them to underserve the customer, and build there.

And the part I find myself repeating to clients: run one channel as hard as it pays, but always know your number. Eric's job-seeker growth rides almost entirely on founder-led LinkedIn content.

He's clear-eyed that it's a single point of failure, and just that awareness helps you start mitigating the risk. If you can't say what percentage of your pipeline rides on one channel, that's the first thing to go measure.

If you're staring at your own version of this, book a free discovery call and we'll identify the highest-leverage opportunity to drive more growth for your startup.

All the best,

Lillian Pierson

Fractional CMO & GTM Engineer

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