How I'd launch CareerBites - A better college career center

Today's product idea is unique in that it's already being built...by a Looseleaf Cannon subscriber. Thanks Kamesh for the idea to write an issue on your company CareerBites. He's excited to see what I came up with, but there's something here for each of you too!

Each week I help founders & marketers spark their creativity by sharing a new product idea & how I'd launch it.

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A few things from me:

Welcome to 60 new subscribers who joined this week!

A few weeks ago, I got a reply from Kamesh asking if I'd done any write-ups on products for college students. I hadn't, but when he told me he was building a product for college students, I asked if I could write a future newsletter on his own company.

So...here we are. Enjoy!

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Now, onto this week's product idea: CareerBites - better career education for college students.

The value proposition:

• CareerBites is what college career centers should be for college students - proper education about careers. Their website's headline says it best: "You've probably sampled more ice cream flavors than careers. Let's change that."

• Each "Career Bite" is a mini-module about a particular career that covers a day-in-the-life & the typical work you'd do, with mini-quizzes along the way. I tried a "Career Bite" & was impressed. You can hover over highlighted key terms like "Account Executive" or "Enterprise" & get helpful definitions. What I like is that it's not just a paragraph of text to read, but it's incredibly interactive. Each slide has a few sentences to read, & then you get a interactive exercise to test both what you learned & your intuition. For example, "If you're meeting with this client, which of these questions should you ask?", or "Which of these people would be the right contact to sell to?"

• CareerBites' sign-up form currently includes options for both college students & experienced professionals, but I think their core value proposition is for college students & they should lean into this. They're the ideal audience, & by building & designing for just one person, CareerBites will offer a better product.

How I'd launch:

• CareerBites has a ton of potential & it'd be easy to focus on building a complex platform without ever validating it. Luckily, this isn't what they're doing. They've built their interactive Career Bites using Bubble, a no-code platform that makes it easy to create web apps. If you have a web app or SaaS idea, consider building an MVP in Bubble. You'll be surprised by how powerful it is. Most businesses can be validated for free & more easily than you think.

• CareerBites' target audience is college students who are exploring careers. As Morning Brew learned early on, the best way to grow in a specific medium is to promote yourself on the same medium. For example, if you're a newsletter, get promoted in other newsletters. By tapping into the audiences of other career-focused organizations, CareerBites can find students already interested in exploring careers.

• It's important to target the right organizations though. For example, Wonsulting & CultivatedCulture offer resume reviews & job search strategy, but they're serving students at the bottom of the job search funnel who already know what job they want. CareerBites needs to find organizations that serve student at the top of the funnel who are just starting to explore different jobs. If the organization is a company (like CareerVillage.org), the best strategy might be to cross-promote to each other's email lists, but if it's a college club (like the Michigan Business Group at the University of Michigan), they'll likely promote your content or an event you put on to their members for free.

• Providing value for free is the easiest way a for-profit company can get other organizations to promote them. Online content can be valuable, but events are often easier for other organizations to promote, & feel more personal, like you're putting on the event just for them. An event at a specific time also creates urgency & is a familiar part of the student experience on campus. You can promote the same events in tons of places: to professors, college clubs, in Facebook groups, & sometimes even via university career centers. Career centers are often hesitant to promote for-profit companies, even if the event is free, but when they do promote you, you can reach thousands of students at once. In my previous job, I ran dozens of career prep webinars for hundreds of students clubs & got thousands of attendees, all via cold email.

Since CareerBites already has a website (which is great, btw), here are a few improvements I'd make:

• First, I'd make the social proof more personal. They have testimonials from people at students at Duke & Michigan, but they've anonymized the names. If at all possible, I'd ask those students if they can display their name publicly & include a photo. The more personal, the more students will relate.

• Companies often make the mistake of including distracting visuals on their home page that look pretty but don't actually add anything. I love CareerBites' ice cream analogy, but their ice cream visual isn't adding anything to it. I'd replace it with screenshots of a Career Bite so students can more easily visualize the offering.

• Currently, website visitors see two main CTAs: "Sign up" & "Try "Try a Career Bite". They'd likely increase conversion by moving "Sign up" to the upper right next to "Log in" & just getting people to try a Career Bite.

• When someone does sign up, eliminate friction by not asking for a name or password right away. Capture their email, & then have them create a password. That way, even if they don't finish signing up, they're on the newsletter list.

• Finally, as mentioned above, I'd focus on just college students, & remove any mentions of experienced professionals, recent graduates, etc. It'd be interesting to test whether high school students are a good audience though. They're more likely to still be exploring careers, but also more likely to not be thinking about careers at all.

How I'd scale:

• A great way to scale is via organic LinkedIn content. LinkedIn is one of the few remaining social media platforms with more people consuming than creating, which makes its organic reach insane. I post daily on LinkedIn & average around 2,000 impressions per post. Career Bites could post on LinkedIn about professional development, resume tips, & career exploration &, with quality content, quickly build an audience of people ripe for using CareerBites itself. I usually recommend posting on one's personal page rather than a company page, as it's more personal & your audience will translate to the next company you build.

• In the medium-term, CareerBites should consider SEO, getting blog content to rank in Google search results. Career development keywords are extremely competitive, but with so many different keywords & topics to rank for, I'm almost certain they'd be able to find some ideal high-volume low-difficulty keywords with a tool like Ahref's. There's also the opportunity to create content around new career keywords that don't have any SEO competition yet. By keeping up-to-date with the industry pulse, you can identify SEO opportunities as new terms & trends emerge.

• A final challenge of scaling will be figuring out how to monetize. My initial hunch is to launch a Premium plan with unlimited Career Bites & limit the free plan to 3 Career Bites a month, or something similar. 1:1 career coaching calls could also be offered on a higher tier, or on a pay-per basis. Luckily, CareerBites doesn't need to worry about monetization yet. They should first focus on building a great experience & prove that people want to come back to it again & again.

Why it would work:

• College career centers suck. They can be helpful, but they throw a ton of bureaucracy in the way of providing value. I did a week-long fall break career trek during my sophomore year of college, learning about accounting, consulting, & finance, but a lot of the material was basic, & I could have done most of it online in a couple afternoons. CareerBites can offer better value, more simply & more accessibly.

• CareerBites is focusing on the right things. At the end of every Career Bite, they let you grade your answers if you provide your email. Offering value, & then having additional gated value is a fantastic strategy & will let them build an awesome audience via email. They can nurture email subscribers with content like more quizzes, new Career Bites, & events, & ultimately cross-promote bottom-of-the-funnel companies like Wonsulting & Cultivated Culture as an additional revenue stream.

Why it might not work:

• Career development is a crowded space. It might be the most common topic to post about on LinkedIn, as a result of a low barrier to entry - everyone knows something about it. But, these types of posts are popular for a reason: they get the most engagement. It's both a high-demand & high-supply space. If CareerBites can establish itself as a leader, their future is bright, but will they be able to differentiate themselves?

• People idolize brand names like McKinsey, Stanford, & Goldman Sachs, meaning that if you don't have these names on your resume, you're at a disadvantage. Can CareerBites' stand out with quality content & no brand names? Perhaps, if the content is really good. Luckily however, it's easier than most people think to partner with brand-named people. CareerBites could get alumni of these companies & schools to offer testimonials & even do 1:1 coaching for students.

Question for you:

How can you reach potential customers for free before investing a ton of time in building your product?

That's all for this issue!

Cheers,

Luke

P.S. As always, respond with the biggest challenge you're facing & I'll try to help how I can!

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