How Lars P. Svane Built a Niche Job Board Empire — And What You Can Learn From It

Introduction

If you're building a job board or thinking about launching one, there’s no better person to learn from than Lars P. Svane. As the co-founder of EuroJobsites, Lars has grown a portfolio of niche job boards that have thrived for nearly two decades — long before niche sites became the hot trend they are today. In this in-depth interview, Lars sits down with Martyn Redstone to share how he built, scaled, and monetized multiple job boards in highly specific verticals, serving thousands of professionals across Europe and beyond.

Watch the Full Interview:

5 Actionable Takeaways for Job Board Builders

Master the Art of Niche Selection — Focus on Mobility & Transferable Skills

Lars started EuroJobsites with a hyper-focus on political and policy jobs in Brussels. Over time, this grew into a network of niche boards spanning sectors like research science, pharma, engineering, and even space jobs. His secret? Choosing niches where skills are transferable across borders. For example, scientists, engineers, and policy professionals often have qualifications that make them mobile across the EU, creating a stronger talent pool.

Pro Tip: When selecting your niche, ask yourself: Are the people in this sector globally mobile? Can their skills transfer easily to other regions? If the answer is yes, you’re looking at a potentially lucrative niche.

Build Before You Monetize — Focus on Audience First

In the early days, Lars didn’t rush to monetize. Instead, he focused on building a reliable audience by offering free listings to universities, NGOs, and policy organizations. This allowed him to create a critical mass of job seekers and postings that kept employers coming back.

"You’re kind of an editor of a little newspaper in some ways. You need to shape the audience," Lars explains.

Pro Tip: Give away access at first. Universities, non-profits, and smaller companies are more likely to list jobs if there’s no barrier to entry. Use this as a foundation to build traffic.

The Power of the 'Freemium' Model

One of the biggest insights Lars shared is the effectiveness of the freemium model. He allowed certain job listings (like internships and NGO roles) to be posted for free. This not only kept the platform filled with job opportunities but also attracted organic traffic, which is crucial for building reputation and trust.

Pro Tip: Offer different levels of listing options. Free for internships and entry-level roles, paid for premium or corporate listings. This creates natural traffic flow while also building a monetizable audience.

Choose Monetization Models Wisely — Quality Over Quantity

Lars experimented with several monetization models, from banner ads to newsletter sponsorships. But he found that the real sustainability came from direct job postings and partnerships with education providers. Rather than focusing on massive traffic, Lars focused on delivering high-quality candidates to niche employers.

"If you can’t monetize the jobs, I’m not sure it’s a long-term business," he emphasizes.

Pro Tip: Don’t just chase page views. Focus on the quality of your audience and the trust you build with employers. A smaller but highly relevant audience can outperform raw traffic numbers any day.

Expansion Through Acquisition & Adjacencies

One of the more unique aspects of Lars's strategy was his willingness to buy existing job boards that fit well into his ecosystem. For example, he acquired Space Careers — a niche job board focused on the aerospace industry — when it was already established but underutilized. This allowed him to plug it into his system and instantly scale.

Pro Tip: If you’ve built a solid infrastructure (database, email marketing, backend systems), consider buying small, underperforming job boards in adjacent niches. It’s often easier and faster than building from scratch.

Full Interview Transcript:

Martyn Redstone (00:01.526)

Lars, thank you for joining me today.

Lars P. Svane (00:04.602)

Hello, how are you?

Martyn Redstone (00:06.414)

I'm very good, thank you. I'm very good, thank you. How are you doing today?

Lars P. Svane (00:09.978)

Good, good, good.

Martyn Redstone (00:11.732)

Excellent. So getting into it. you have built a portfolio of niche job boards, Long before it became quite trendy What was your kind of eureka moment your aha moment that kicked off euro job sites?

Lars P. Svane (00:31.888)

And I guess it was a mix of wanting to do some sort of media business and not really having any super clear idea what it was and then thinking, you know, jobs, it's something that's being advertised. It could be a way to monetize the media business. And I've always been following, you know, classified of all sorts of kinds. I was...

living in a market myself. I grew up in Denmark, but I lived in Brussels doing like kind of policy jobs. there, lots of my friends were looking for that kind of jobs. And there wasn't really any, there weren't that many job sites back then. And I thought, maybe I can make a list of jobs. My co-founder Richard helped build what became really a very niche job sites.

built that for a few years and then we thought, okay, is tens of thousands of people. Let's try and see if we can make a business out of this. we kind of, we could both leave our jobs and think that we could probably come back to that if it didn't work out. So, but we wanted to try and be entrepreneurs and we thought that we had something, you know.

Martyn Redstone (01:56.206)

And that was back in 2006, am I right?

Lars P. Svane (01:59.249)

It's actually even longer. It was 2006 when we left our jobs. It took a few years for us to be brave enough to leave our jobs. So we could say we were lucky in the sense that we were able to kind of build this in the weekends and evenings and not really maybe try that hard until we thought, now the audience is so big that we have to try.

Yeah, we were lucky as well to have a few friends who could help us. There was a Scottish guy who helped me actually reply to the emails and stuff when I was still working. And Richard Weiss, she's got a background in one of the big accountancies. So she volunteered to do some of the billing and stuff. So we kind of had a small business put together just like that.

It was a very small niche that we started with and maybe we were actually surprised that it was bigger than we thought. there weren't really any competing media doing just jobs. So we kind of by default almost became the one everyone looked at. So we owned that market for a while.

Martyn Redstone (03:14.68)

Hmm.

Martyn Redstone (03:18.466)

fantastic. I mean, that's, you know, it's going back to the days before nobody, people weren't really talking about niche job boards back in, you know, the, early to mid noughties. So, so you definitely were a trendsetter to say the least, to say the least.

Lars P. Svane (03:31.002)

Yeah, I'll take the compliment, it's, you know, I think it's also what a lot of people say, you know, like go for a very narrow niche to start with and then you have a better chance of...

Martyn Redstone (03:35.512)

They think it's absolutely true.

Lars P. Svane (03:48.273)

and then hopefully there will be some adjacencies or some similar things that you can grow into. And yeah, maybe we hadn't thought that completely through, but that ended up becoming research science jobs and later farmer, engineer and climate, which was actually called energy in the beginning. And then we bought space careers.

two years ago from a French founder who was in his 60s. He had kind of wanted to sell it and we thought it fit quite well with our other job sites. for a few years in, we kind of thought we had something like a template. had, as time went along, we had a few people working with us in a back office. We had one database, one system.

one email marketing system and we thought we could use that for other niches. with varying degrees of success, we tried a few things that didn't work as well. We had an economist job site, we've had a lawyer job site that didn't, maybe the lawyers not as international as I had been brainwashed to think in Brussels, but you know, we tried to build.

more job sites with these very narrow niches in areas where we thought the mobility of people like scientists was quite high because,

Martyn Redstone (05:27.526)

So that was going to be a really interesting question, well, hopefully an interesting question I was going to ask you, which was exactly that, which was, with so many kind of job sites that you've tried and some have been successful and some have been failed, how do you decide what niche is worth launching into?

Lars P. Svane (05:49.489)

very good question. I mean, I would say what I already said, mean, if you're identifying the kind of, you know, white-hot center that some of these marketplace gurus say, I would say something that you care about yourself. And someone said it, you know, like you have to go to the weddings and the funerals and among the people in your niche, you have to love it a bit and also just accept that you're going to spend a lot of time on this.

So I think especially if you're in the marketing and sales side of things, it has to be something that you like and enjoy doing and accept that, you know, by having a kind of unfair advantage of knowing the sector better than most people, you understand the quirkiness of, you know, what are the categories, what are the job titles, what are the employers. I think the fragmented market lends itself well to a job board.

And of course, in our case, thought something, if we want to do something international, we wanted something where the skills were somewhat transferable, which might not actually really be case for some of the original job site skills, because it's very oriented towards language and legal and things like that, which are more difficult to move to another country and do in this mosaic of European languages.

And, you know, I mean, of course there's also the marketplace, know, are there any big players already that will come and, you know, destroy you if you try and enter their markets? So if you choose a relatively small niche that doesn't look like it's going to be too attractive for some mega guys next to you, that will probably mean that you can build it up at least the first year or two without being...

out competed really. But yes.

Martyn Redstone (07:52.556)

Yeah. So, so thinking about that kind of first, that first year or two, you know, when you, when you first launch a new, a new niche job board and your, and you go to market, what would be your, what would be that kind of first 12 month market entry plan? How would you, how would you first kind of enter a new market with a new niche?

Lars P. Svane (08:14.966)

say, mean, you build it up from nothing with pretty much offering access to the audience for free to some employers that you either know or where you know that there is an unfilled need of a particular marketplace just for that type of skills. And then you do need to do a little bit of this marketplace chicken and egg stuff where you

get some people on the platform because there are some jobs, try and tempt some people to list some jobs with you, either because it's free or because it's a way to reach an audience that they otherwise couldn't reach. And I think by then sharing those jobs, with, I mean, of course you can piggyback on social media in the beginning, that's probably what we would do if you launched it today.

But I think very quickly it turns out to be also about getting those people who have those particular skills to come back and also engaging with some of the people who have more experience in the niche so that you're not only catering to the beginners and the desperate interns who are applying for 20 jobs every week, because that may actually also become a little bit annoying for the employers. You might have some...

That could be also a problem in terms of international stuff where you have a lot of people who might not have the work permit or they might have an interest in the field but they don't have all the skills and they're just kind of applying for everything. So you need to find that balance between access to an interesting group of candidates where I think that...

Employers also need to accept there will be some speculative applications if you're in any kind of field, but especially in like IT, engineering, you know, you're kind of an editor of a little newspaper in some ways. You need to shape the audience. And I think, you know, doing it in a niche that you care for yourself makes it easier to do and get it right.

Lars P. Svane (10:40.646)

And so, yeah.

Martyn Redstone (10:40.896)

Yeah, I like that. I like that. So so having a bit of passion about the niche as well, rather than just entering it for the sake of business is definitely definitely a key to success, you'd say.

Lars P. Svane (10:53.732)

I think so. also, you know, just that maybe also helps you to automatically find some of the partners for this. So you can do, you know, we've been, some of the successes we've had was from partnering with other media in the sector who didn't have job ads on their platform or conference organizers or, you know, anyone who needed audience for whatever they were doing. You know, it could even be other kinds of events where we'd say, okay, you know, can we...

If we advertise your event and we'll give you, you know, 3000 pence, can you give them to the people who come to the event or something crazy like that? You know, in the beginning we were completely unknown really. So it was all about like building a brand. And you could say that we learned maybe from the first niche, which things kind of worked for us and which ones didn't. And then we thought, okay, let's try that on the other niches. And some worked, some didn't.

Of course, a recruitment fair is kind of an obvious place to go for some of these things. You can find a specialized recruitment fair that's in the niche that you're trying to get into or become an important job site in. That's not a bad thing. But it could also be an industry conference or anything really. It's your imagination that sets the limit really.

and maybe also trying to think ahead what's gonna be the most decisive stuff in the next three, five, 10 years. If you think just looking at that kind of very politics oriented job site we started with, I mean, in the beginning, I think maybe 10 % of the jobs were in like environment, energy, climate policy, but now it's like 25%. And that's one of the reasons we later thought we could make an energy job site maybe.

Martyn Redstone (12:40.236)

Mm-hmm.

Lars P. Svane (12:46.33)

taking some audience from our existing engineer side and some of those climate energy environment experts. And then that became your climate jobs. You know, it's a weird combination of skills, but yeah.

Martyn Redstone (12:58.126)

Super interesting. They're really interesting. Yeah. No, I'd say that's really interesting. So, so you've got that niche that, you know, that politics policy, you know, kind of a site, but what you're seeing is a growing trend in a specific type of, of, of industry or, or, or, um, niche within a niche and splintering off to create almost another niche based on that. That's super interesting. Um, really, really interesting. Um,

When it's so, so, so we've kind of talked about that kind of, know, that initial 12 months that that first go to market, you know, doing a lot of kind of added value stuff, giving away things for free, going to careers fairs, really building the brand. When you're ready to start monetizing. Um, and, and you've obviously, I would, I would think had done your fair share of experimentation when it comes to different monetization models. What's been the most consistently.

best performing monetization model across your board. I suppose which one's been a complete flop as well. You said you've definitely learned from some bad mistakes, but it'd be great to understand what works.

Lars P. Svane (14:06.448)

mean, you could say in the beginning, yeah, we had some, there was a geographical focus to the first jobsite, Euro Brussels, where we thought, okay, maybe you can also make money from things that, you know, people who want to reach those guys who are looking for those jobs in Brussels. So we did manage to, I mean, we did all sorts of banner advertising as well and newsletter advertising because we're sending like thousands of emails out.

I would say in the beginning we thought we'll try a bit of everything. then as I would say anything to do with education seems to work well with job sites. It's also because I mean my co-founder was kind of laughing at me when I said when people are on a job site they're in career improvement mood. And I think that's true. You you're thinking you're looking at a job you're thinking like hmm I wish I could apply for that but I mean you don't have.

completely all the skills that I need for that. Maybe I should consider doing a master's in this or it might not have to be as much as that. You could also just say, well, let me do an AI course or let me do, you know, it depends a bit on the job site. We're talking about what could be relevant. So that in the beginning, that was a real revenue stream for us. But I mean, looking in the rear view mirror, I would probably say that it's

Martyn Redstone (15:15.47)

Mm.

Lars P. Svane (15:31.791)

It's the jobs that you really need to monetize, be able to monetize the jobs. If you can't do that, then I'm not sure it's a long-term business. And we've always been trying to avoid having like, you know, a kind of a flow of jobs from some buying database. We've been trying to add relevant jobs ourselves. And also we've been...

Martyn Redstone (15:43.982)

Mm.

Lars P. Svane (16:00.876)

using freemium to let either universities or NGOs or internships be posted for free. So there were always lots of jobs and that meant we could build up an audience and that audience in terms, know, that becomes the product if you're a bit tough about it because that's what the employers want to reach.

And I mean, even if if in the beginning, a lot of those are kind of maybe universities or organizations that might be a little bit obscure or research centers and stuff like that. I mean, we had a lot of success with these sort of euro organizations because we came from that. So we had like, know, European meteorological satellites, weather forecasts, European space.

Martyn Redstone (16:48.526)

Yeah.

Lars P. Svane (16:55.984)

European molecular biology, laboratory, all these things. That's also what helped us into some of the other niches without starting completely from scratch. But eventually we would then convert that into having some more industry oriented customers in the like pharma companies, engineering companies, aerospace companies, etc. That would say, okay, this is a very interesting audience for us, maybe not for all their jobs, but for some of their jobs. So

You know, as the audience grows and you analyze what are the skills we have in our database, you can kind of use your imagination to think, you know, who are the customers who would be interested in having access to these guys in one place, instead of going to a generalist job board where they would get a lot more relevant applications, I think. That's also, you know, as a niche board.

you do have to accept that you are competing to some degree with the generalist job boards and LinkedIn is a big factor in anything to do with job boards these days. So you have to show that you have access to this group of experienced job seekers who may not be actively looking or they just kind of they just keep an eye on the job market maybe occasionally.

Martyn Redstone (18:05.153)

Is this?

Lars P. Svane (18:23.248)

But by having a very specific type of information that's relevant for them, they probably keep, they stay subscribed to your job alerts, even if they're not really looking for a job right now. And that means that you might give an employer access to those guys because they're interested in the jobs on the platform.

Martyn Redstone (18:44.812)

Yeah, no, I get that. get that totally. That's really interesting. you know, and you're right, you know, even though somebody might not be active in the market, keeping it up to them, showing them the opportunities means that when they are active, they know where to come. So from a monetization perspective, you know, across the across the series, I've talked to people about different, you know, know, time based advertising, you know, cost per application, cost per

click, you know, all those kind of things. What's been the model that's worked best for you? Has it been duration based? Has it been success based? How has it worked for you?

Lars P. Svane (19:25.232)

And it's, you could say, if you would even hesitate to call it duration based because the moment the job goes on the site, whether it's on there for two weeks or six weeks, I think the results don't differ that much. You might get a few more applications in the last four weeks and okay, they may be some of the more qualified guys, but the fact that it goes on the site, in our case, it also means that it goes out in the job alert, it goes out in the newsletter, what have you. You know, we share it on social media.

LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, we've been sharing some of the stuff from other groups and we've got a few partnerships with other media. We've got our own blog about one or two things. That means people are paying to put an ad on the site to access that audience. And yes, you could say that maybe we could also do a cost per click model, but...

think the fact that we built up this very specialist audience on each of the sites means that there is a value to it. I mean, we still have relatively modest prices compared to some of the big guys like StepStone or I think even LinkedIn ends up costing a lot more, even though it may seem cheap in the beginning. mean, we've all got our pricing models, but I think you would mostly get relatively relevant.

Martyn Redstone (20:40.343)

Mm.

Lars P. Svane (20:53.016)

applications at least from our sites. But that also means that it feels fair that even if you are not getting thousands of applications, you don't actually really need that for these very specialized positions. You need 10 or 20 relevant applications and it actually takes a lot of time to filter out the read-off.

Martyn Redstone (21:13.229)

Yes.

Lars P. Svane (21:20.26)

the wrong ones. And I think that can actually be a real problem with platforms like bigger platforms that are less focused to be quite frank. it's time consuming.

Martyn Redstone (21:34.83)

Yeah, I can absolutely see that. And that's the benefit of a niche board ultimately is a more relevant application applicant, more relevant audience. Absolutely. I'm interested in going back to your, your comment earlier about acquiring a, a space niche job board, you know, so for the space industry, a lot of, a lot of the audience that we have, you know, their, founders, their operators, their, you know, they're building up a niche job board.

Lars P. Svane (21:55.152)

Yeah.

Martyn Redstone (22:04.194)

and some of them potentially might be interested in the possibility of selling their job boards in the future. How do you go about valuing a job board? How do you work out, maybe it'd be a great idea just to talk through that acquisition process that you went through with the space job board.

Lars P. Svane (22:28.912)

Sure, I mean was a relatively small board, but in a very focused niche with a kind of European focus, which we thought fit reasonably well with what we were doing. It was a brand that was somewhat known in that sector and it's been around for 20 years. So this means that...

think there was some brand value, but ultimately we did do an analysis of what kind of data do we have here? Is it a substantial number of email subscribers? Are there any CVs in the database that have been collected in a way that comply with the GDPR rules? also have to, one thing is the data you have and another...

question is, can you actually use that data? You know, of course, if you're like a one man show and you've collected some data, you might not have complied with all the rules. If you are a company, you might have to become a little bit more careful. So we also, that was part of the analysis and in the end, there's a bit of a negotiation there. Like, do we think that this is going to work? And what does the market look like?

We have, you could say, specialized in some relatively narrow niches in the first place. So we thought that this would also fit in reasonably well with some of the things we're doing already with the space and engineering and tech. So there were definitely some synergies and that gives it some value for us. But I would also say that if you look at the number of...

say subscribers that actually opened the emails and stuff. are they, you know, who are they? The more analysis, the more data you would be able to give about, you know, the experience that these people have, are they part of a group that are relatively difficult to find somewhere else? What are the alternatives? mean, in the end, that is what it's about. You do we have...

Martyn Redstone (24:32.611)

Mm-hmm.

Lars P. Svane (24:53.21)

tens of thousands of space engineers with 10 years or 15 years experience, that's much more interesting than 5,000 people who just graduated last year, because they're easier to access through maybe cooperating with a few universities. So I think that's also something that, you know, it is tempting to say, great, we can get a lot of graduates, but there is a bit of...

say the trade-off maybe in any kind of niche sector that the most difficult to get candidates are often the most experienced ones. And they tend to be the ones who already have a job and often a relatively well-paid job. So they're less likely to be active job seekers. So you need to tempt them with some pretty senior interesting jobs to keep them as subscribers.

Martyn Redstone (25:28.845)

Mm.

Lars P. Svane (25:47.747)

And that's one of the reasons we thought that this one was interesting. You know, could have been, there could have been more candidates on it, could have made it even more valuable. It could have been maybe more senior candidates, but it was actually, that was one of the reasons we thought it was really interesting. were some people with a lot of experience who were looking at this.

think that's typical as well for these niches that there's maybe even an overlap between the candidates on the one hand and the people looking to Humea. Let's face it, if you're someone in the space industry, you've got 10, 15 years experience, maybe more, you're probably going to be involved in some of the recruitment decisions in that sector as well.

Martyn Redstone (26:21.165)

Yeah.

Lars P. Svane (26:34.2)

So that actually kind of becomes self-fulfilling prophecy a bit when you can build up an audience like that and you can hold on to it for a while. Then knowing that these people are not just candidates but also perhaps involved in recruitment in that sector and that applies for any sector really. So I think that's a good hint to someone trying to build up a substantial audience. Do you have any unfair advantages like with access to a particular group of people?

Martyn Redstone (26:47.854)

clients.

Yes. Yeah.

Lars P. Svane (27:04.152)

in a sector you love, and do you want to hang out with those people and build that insider knowledge a little bit? Because what are you really selling? You're also selling, it's a meta company in a weird way because we've got like maybe 300, 400 different companies using a site like that over a year or, and that makes it easier for the job seeker as well.

Martyn Redstone (27:05.986)

Mm.

Martyn Redstone (27:10.775)

interesting

Lars P. Svane (27:33.325)

it's a little bit more on the silver platter. you see, something from the European Space Agency, maybe that's kind of obvious, but there may be some smaller companies that you haven't heard about, but that could have some really interesting jobs. And that's, in a way, it's similar to the niche we came from with many very small NGOs, industry associations, consultancies, law firms, et cetera, from the outset.

Martyn Redstone (27:46.883)

Hmm

Lars P. Svane (27:59.567)

And that becomes the core of the niche. And then you can maybe find adjacencies to that niche that like to use that marketplace as well. That's, yeah.

Martyn Redstone (28:08.982)

Yeah. Yeah. That's that crossover that we were talking about earlier, which is just super interesting. But I found that really interesting because you traditionally, a lot of companies, you know, when they, when they go through a potential acquisition, they tend to be valued on their revenue. and, and I think that what you're trying to say here is that job boards, a lot of the time, it's not, it's not just about the revenue. It's about the audience and about what you can offer to, to that niche and whether that audience is high quality, relevant.

as well. there's kind of a slightly different factor to look at when it comes to the economics of job boards.

Lars P. Svane (28:45.754)

Yeah, I mean, it depends very much on the niche you're in, I guess. But, and also that would maybe, it does depend on that who a potential buyer would be. So it's difficult to say something super general about that, but I remember going to a few of these job board conferences and listening to presentations about the valuation of like Manpower, Adecco, Randstad, and you're looking at these.

Martyn Redstone (28:50.126)

Yeah.

Lars P. Svane (29:13.176)

enormous bars on the bar charts. You're looking at the job boards. Of course, that's partly because they can maybe get a percentage of an annual salary from people who they placed out. But okay, they have some costs as well, but they're running a business which is enormous compared to the advertising cost of putting...

Martyn Redstone (29:18.222)

Hahaha

Lars P. Svane (29:40.473)

a job I don't so it's not that surprising but that could maybe also be a hint to who the potential buyers could be if they can see, okay, here I got access to a niche I'm already in and these guys have built up an audience of a huge number of very specialized people from that area that could at least give you a hint to who could be the potential buyers if you're thinking of that.

It's not that surprising in the end when you think about it. yeah, mean, some sectors are, you know, if there's growth in a sector that plays a role as well, I mean, if I had an AI job board with lots of people who actually have the skills that people are looking for and can't find anywhere else, that would probably be worth a lot more than, you know, a job board in a sector that's declining.

Martyn Redstone (30:12.286)

interesting, really interesting.

Martyn Redstone (30:34.862)

Mm.

Lars P. Svane (30:35.972)

But having said that, you need to use your imagination as well. I mean, think a lot of those automotive engineers that might be in trouble now, they might actually have some of the skills that are used in the defense market. And you came from telecommunication yourself. You told me before we started the call. I mean, if you're a radio frequency engineer, that could actually be quite a good skill in space engineering, because there's a lot of that.

Martyn Redstone (31:03.086)

It's good to know, good to know. It's only been 25 years since I did it, so it's, there might be a future career in space for me yet. It's great.

Lars P. Svane (31:11.568)

So I mean, yeah, in a way you need to use your imagination to think about what are the, who are those candidates and who are they valuable to, you know, that's part of your job, I guess, as a job board manager.

Martyn Redstone (31:21.804)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it just, proves that, you know, you really get your niche as well. And you understand the skills required. You understand what hiring managers are looking for super important, you know, to make sure that, you know, that you can offer those kinds of, know, strategic relationships with your clients to, to, show, know, that, that sometimes you need to look outside that, that generic profile. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly.

Lars P. Svane (31:41.072)

Mm-hmm.

Lars P. Svane (31:46.289)

That's a very good point. You're adding value in that way. Because that's something they might not have thought about themselves or there might be some unexpected applicants if you use that platform which gives you access to thousands of people. And that's what a marketplace is all about.

Martyn Redstone (31:54.411)

Exactly.

Martyn Redstone (32:04.578)

Mm-hmm. No, absolutely. So, Liza, that's been really, really interesting. like to finish these interviews with one question, which is about looking back on your career and your experience and your history in the kind job board place. If you were launching a new niche job board today, or you were talking to somebody who was just about to launch a

a new niche job board, going back over your experience over the last 20 years, what would you do differently today than you have done in the past? What would be your top three pieces of advice to a new job board founder?

Lars P. Svane (32:53.23)

I mean, of course, I think, I guess I said, yeah, go for something where you feel you have an unfair advantage, where you access to an audience that's difficult to find. And then maybe be a bit ruthless, but be also hard on yourself in thinking, does the market really need this? And go out, force yourself to go out and have some product interviews.

with people in the business to talk about what are they using now. And if we had an audience like this, and let's face it, it's relatively easy these days to mock up a site where you could at least show something that looks like what it would look like. And then show that to some people that you maybe know from that industry or area that you want to launch it in. And really just try and really be

tough on yourself in the kind of lean startup way. There was a book called, what is it, Nail It and Scale It. You need to nail it before you spend your many months and lots of money on doing this. mean, of course you can use something like Jayboard or a competitor to build a site relatively quickly and then maybe, yeah.

Martyn Redstone (34:02.413)

Yep.

Lars P. Svane (34:22.224)

I'm kind of making one big point here, but I think do something in a niche where you actually enjoy spending time with the people who are in the niche and where you have a bit of an insider knowledge. And I think maybe we didn't completely adhere to our own...

I mean, we ventured into a few things where we thought, oh great, we have this audience, let's try that as well. And some of the things worked out better than others and maybe we spent a little bit too much time not admitting to ourselves that this is not really taking off. But it is difficult, know, because you're always thinking, oh, it's just around the corner and oh, now we've got two customers. We're gonna get some more. I mean, yeah, that's, is.

hard, that part of being a startup and an entrepreneur to try things, but if you can accelerate that process and try and do it as quickly as possible and also just accept that that takes time, go and talk to those people. Don't be afraid to pick up the phone or write an email to someone you don't really know because very often they'll actually be quite interested in talking to you and you might learn something.

at an early stage that it could have taken you months to find out. I mean, yeah, that's part of any startup, think. I mean, I think also just something that's out there today that wasn't there when we started 20 years ago. It's just amazing how many good things there are. There's something called the Marketplace Conference. There's these big venture capitalists like NFX.

A16Z and even Benchmark, they had lots of podcasts and blogs about this kind of stuff. mean, in the end, it's a marketplace. Maybe go to the job board, Connect conference or rec bus or something like that if you can afford it and try and learn about what these different questions are before you throw your money or your time after something.

Lars P. Svane (36:39.792)

But in this no code AI base, it's probably easier to launch something than it's ever been. if you have access to a specific niche audience industry, then the chance of being able to try it out is actually real. You can do that without sinking a lot of money into it, which means more competition.

Martyn Redstone (37:05.428)

Excellent, Yep.

Lars P. Svane (37:09.104)

price goes to the ones who can define it well.

Martyn Redstone (37:12.686)

Absolutely, absolutely. Lars, what a fantastic few pieces of advice. Absolutely, make sure you've got access, know what you're getting yourself into, and test the market before you spend too much money. Absolutely love those pieces of advice. Lars, it's been ridiculously interesting and brilliant to speak to you today.

Lars P. Svane (37:13.2)

See ya.

Lars P. Svane (37:36.804)

Thank you. That's very kind.

Martyn Redstone (37:40.694)

Yeah, and thank you so much for giving up your time to join me. I really, really appreciate it.

Lars P. Svane (37:44.933)

Thank you. Well, thank you for running an interesting blog that hopefully can help other people try and get this right. I think the world of marketplaces is interesting. So it's been fun for us. Great. Thank you. Good to talk to you.

Martyn Redstone (37:54.392)

That's the plan.

Martyn Redstone (38:01.24)

Thank you so much. No, really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Lars.